THE PALE SURFACE OF THINGS
By: Janey Bennett
Hopeace Press: Victoria, British Columbia
2007 (pb)
Several weeks ago I received an e-mail from author
Janey Bennett, who asked, half apologetically, if I would review her novel,
The Pale Surface of Things. It had received several awards, but it
was still largely her responsibility to promote her work.
Because the premise of the story sounded intriguing—a
young American archaeologist excavating on Crete runs out on his bride-to-be
on their wedding day and the girl is his patron’s daughter—I gladly
accepted the offer. I anticipated a somewhat madcap adventure/farce a la
Arthur Philips’s recent best-seller, The Egyptologist.
What I received was a wonderfully crafted, superbly
written nuanced novel of redemption that deserves a wide reading public.
Author Bennett claims to have spent seven years in researching and writing
this, her first novel, and I believe this labor of love was worth every
moment of her effort.
The tale is deceptively simple in many ways. It
follows the paths of several characters—an American archaeologist, Douglas
Watkins, who indeed does leave his bride at the altar; an orthodox priest,
Fr. Dimitrios Papadakis, born on Crete but reared in the United State who is
following in his grandfather’s pastoral footsteps; an American entrepreneur,
George Hanson, who seems to be following in the footsteps of Sinclair
Lewis’s Babbitt and his hopelessly narcissistic daughter, the hapless
bride-to-be Denise; a young Cretan widow, Vasilia and her son, Aleko, both
of whom befriend Douglas while he is on the run; a thuggish village
politician, Spiros Kiriakis and his equally thuggish son, Manolis; and a
variety of citizens of the villages in the shadow of Lefka Ori, the white
mountains of Crete. These wonderful characters, introduced at the outset as
rather one-dimensional creations, become nuanced and complex as the
narrative unfolds. They lead their separate existences and then at
meaningful junctures, as if in a literary minuet, they idiosyncratically yet
gracefully enter into and impact on each other’s lives and then step back
once again. The language of the narrative is equally graceful as its
rhythms seem uniquely suited to convey the timelessness of life in the
Cretan countryside; the sense of place and atmosphere is brilliantly evoked
by author Bennett.
Remembrance of things past, in particular the Nazi
occupation and brutalization of the island of Crete, plays an integral part
in the novel as Fr. Dimitrios must face the demons of his family’s past—but
in so doing he provides an avenue for Douglas Watkins, feckless and
self-absorbed at the outset of the novel, to redeem himself and his
existence. After a series of harrowing adventures and near-disasters,
Douglas finds new meaning and richness of life represented in the
traditional culture of the Cretan countryside. Fr. Dimitrios defines this
lesson succinctly with his statement late in the novel: “This small
village, Vraho, somehow contains every shading of human life. To love this
place is to love the world.”
When you read The Pale Surface of Things, you
will learn about Crete and its people; you will learn about iconography; you
will learn about archaeological obsession; you will learn about the horrors
of the Nazi occupation of Crete; you will laugh at some of the characters
and you will cry with others. But most of all, you will know that you have
read a truly remarkable piece if literature! Four trowels for this first
novel by Janey Bennett—but only because I can’t give more!
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