Eifelheim [Hardcover]

 

 

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I feel sorry for genre writers. Great novels can be lost to snobbery. Perhaps I should clarify. Great novels may be lost to me because of my snobbery. I am speaking specifically of Science Fiction. Perhaps it's the metallic covers, or the possibility that someone, at some point, is going to get probed. Not for me. However, sometimes these things are out of our hands. As a lifelong reader and as someone who used to work in a bookstore, I can confidently state that books find us, not the other way around. If we are meant to read a book, it will show up in a friend's hand, or be conspicuous on a shelf, or, as in my case, be reviewed in a magazine I happen to be reading. The review for Eifelheim was short but the premise intriguing. A mathematician, Tom Schwoerin, discovers a geographical anomaly in the Black Forest area of 14th century Germany. A town disappeared and was never resettled. As a cliologist or mathematical historian, he becomes interested. Patterns of resettlement are predictable, even areas devastated by the plague. "People lived there for over 400 years, and then no-one ever lived there again." Tom's girlfriend, Sharon Nagy, is a theoretical physicist researching `the multiverse', which has something to do with the space-time continuum and the inside of a balloon. Suffice to say I read Eifelheim with a German dictionary and Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror by my side, but I gave the physics stuff a pass. Tom and Sharon's obsessions, his historical, hers almost comically obtuse, are unintentionally parallel pursuits headed for collision more than 600 years in the past, to Oberhochwald, as Eifelheim was known then, a medieval village not unlike other villages of its size in Europe, but very much unlike others in that it's the site of an alien crash landing in 1348. This is the part where people like myself start rolling their eyes and making snotty comments about the kind people who read this, well, martian stuff. Just to get it out there, yes they have green skin, six fingers, and 6 billion mile stares, but if Kurt Vonnegut can include the occasional visitor from Tralfamadore in his novels, which granted, has disappointed some readers, why not extend the same latitude to other so-called `serious' writers?
The story alternates between the contemporary and the medieval, the latter as seen through the eyes of the local priest, Father Dietrich. He is an intellectual, educated in Paris and fluent in philosophical discourse, but he is also, rather charmingly, a man of his time. Curious about the creatures and quick to engage them in conversation and debate, which is translated by the their computer, he matter-of-factly deduces the strange machine must be a heinzelmannchen, a `little man' in a box.
The villagers don't fear the aliens, or Krenken, as they are called, as beings from another world because they have no concept of `other worlds.' They fear them as they might fear any stranger in war-torn, pestilence ridden Europe-as a potential threat to home and hearth. Some react with superstition, demonizing and blaming the aliens for the plague, creeping inexorably toward Oberhochwald, much as those elsewhere blame the Jews. But the truly fascinating element of this part of the story lay not in what could have been a stereotypically xenophobic response to uninvited guests, especially guests that resemble grasshoppers, but in the way the villagers and the Krenken begin to embrace one another.
But as with any disparate population forced to co-exist, they both influence and confound. Alien technology, little understood, is nevertheless enlisted to spy on war parties gathering nearby. As winter approaches and the cold threatens to kill the thin-skinned aliens, the locals invite them in, thus initiating the `pilgrims' into village life, which for some, includes baptism. By Spring, `it seemed as if the Krenken had always been there', settling into the `rivalries, rhythms, friendships, and jealousies that marked village and manor.' The details are rich, the relationships complex. Michael Flynn has done his research and we as readers are rewarded with a masterful depiction of everyday life in the Middle Ages. But this is the 14th century and the world is on the precipice of destruction.
Facing starvation and desperate to leave, some of the Krenken misinterpret Christian salvation as a literal rescue from their predicament. "What means salvation to you?" asks Father Dietrich to one of the Krenken. "That we should be taken from this world to the next, and so to our home beyond the stars, when your lord-from-the-sky-at last on Easter comes."
As the plague, or `the pest' as it is called, begins to decimate Oberhochwald, a distraught alien named Gottfried questions the Priest, "Wherefore did we pray His aid?" Dietrich shakes his head, "All men die when God calls them back to Himself." Gottfried answers, "Could he not have called more softly?"
Connection is a strong theme in Eifelheim. Ancient and contemporary worlds run parallel, fates are woven together in extraordinary, heartbreaking ways, and the universe itself may be more knowable than we could possibly imagine.
"It is no comfort," says one of the aliens, "...but there is no other manner in which the world could be fashioned that would bear life. There are...numbers. We have shown that these numbers could be no other. The smallest change in any and the world would not stand. All that happens in the world follows from these numbers: sky, stars, sun and moon, rain and snow, plants and animals and small-lives. And from those numbers come also ills and afflictions and death and the pest. Yet had the Herr in the sky ordered the world in any other way, there would be no life at all."

Eifelheim is an elegant, and moving novel, and I'm very grateful that fate interceded on my behalf and prevented this science fiction snob from missing a truly great story.
And not a probe in sight.

I was extremely excited by the premise of this book having read numerous reviews on it, all of them favorable. As an avid sci-fi reader it sounded like a breath of fresh air, a book standing proud from the myriad of similar space operas and other novels that rely of futuristic technobabble to support their weight. Something set in plague-ridden Europe in the Middle-Ages sounded like something truly unique.

But to be honest, after the first 100 pages I found it turgid, dreary and after that I had a great deal of trouble getting to the end of it.

It's clear Micheal Flynn has done his homework. The book is thick with his research on both the Middle-Ages and the more esoteric theories of hyper-dimesional space. But at times it seemed that the author REALLY wanted you to know that. It felt as if he were saying, "Hey! Look at all the things I know about this stuff!" instead of focusing on plotting, pace, characters and their motivations.

Characters appear from no-where, even though the scene started off with no mention of them being there, and are often introduced by simply speaking a few lines in any given scene, as if we're supposed to already know who they are. There are numerous scenes where literally nothing happens to push the book forward, and then when something does happen to pick up the pace a little, it has little to no relevance to the story as a whole. Therefore the middle of the book can feel like a series of sequences that seem scattershot and random.

The modern day story fares no better either, unless you find people talking, making suppositions and rifling through research papers exciting.

Don't expect cliffhangers, tension, taut-plotting, drama and an exciting pace to this novel. It's one man's research with a bit of a sci-fi twist, with little thought paid to making it an entertaining read.

This is a strange and intriguing combination of historical novel and science fiction. Michael Flynn has apparently done his history homework very thoroughly, and as a result, he falls into the same trap as many other serious historical novelists: he wants to share all the cool stuff that he found out, even if it might not be a good idea to do so from a story-telling point of view. Now, he does have interesting historical factoids to share, but he goes a bit overboard with them. Similarly, the modern characters are allowed to speak whole sentences in various languages (German, Latin, Hungarian?) which are never translated into English. I thought at first that the proficiency in other languages would turn out to be important to the plot, because it was given so much play. But in hindsight, it seems like he was showing off his research again.
My main complaint, however, is that neither the modern story nor the historical one reach a satisfying conclusion. His modern-day explanation for why the village was never resettled doesn't convince me, perhaps because he made such a strong initial case for why it was so unlikely for the village to have not been resettled after 800 years. His final answer simply seems unequal to the task. And the historical scenario doesn't let us see the death of two of the main characters, how a crucial tombstone came to be carved, nor how one character came to be called a saint in later years (a designation not lightly given). As a result, it is yet another novel which is crying out for a sequel so as to resolve plot points that should have been addressed in the 400+ pages of the original book.

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