The Brethren

January 15, 2015
The compelling first in a series of French historical novels, deftly translated and published for the first time in English.Chateau Mespech is a fiefdom relentlessly imperiled by the weather, Gypsy bandits, royal and religious duplicity, and the plague. Merle proceeds slowly, but his detailed descriptions of the daily workings of a 16th-century household are anything but dull. Pierre de Siorac, using notes from his father's diary, the Book of Reason, spins the tale. His father, Jean de Siorac, was an apothecary's son and sometime medical student who became a legionnaire, earned a title and then a barony for his exploits, and retired to the Perigord region with his fellow legionnaire and adopted brother, Jean de Sauveterre; they're both Huguenots in a period when France is torn asunder by religious civil war. De Siorac marries Catholic Isabelle de Caumont, which soon makes the philosophical dispute personal. French kings come and go. Catherine d'Medici, sister of the pope and France's regent, for whom religious faith is "but a pawn on the chessboard of France which she could play according to the moment or need," is busy scheming. The plague decimates the people, and the butcher bandit Forcalquier ravages the long-suffering countryside. The two Jeans remain loyal to France even after their Huguenot religion is outlawed. Merle peoples his tale with memorable characters: villains, maids, legionnaires and townsfolk, and especially de Siorac, who maneuvers among prelates and princes and is generous to legitimate sons and bastards alike. Merle's is a French epic, more genteel than Dickens' poor-child English tales and less doleful than Tolstoy's Russian sagas.

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February 1, 2015

In the mid-16th century, Jean de Siorac and his companion Jean de Sauveterre, veterans of the Norman legion, return to the Perigord region of France where they set up a community in the recently purchased Chateau of Mespech. Siorac and his wife, Isabelle de Caumont, soon have a family--Francois, a feckless lad; Pierre, the stalwart narrator of this tale; their half-brother, Samson, slow to act but nevertheless brave; and various females, relegated to lesser roles. They are soon joined by other soldiers and various relatives, all determined to survive in a time of recurrent famine, plague, religious conflict between Huguenots (French Protestants) and Catholics, evil barons, and mercurial townfolk. VERDICT Before his death in 2004, French author Merle published 13 books in his historical fiction series, "Fortunes of France." This volume, first published in France in 1977, marks his U.S. debut. While compared favorably to Alexandre Dumas by British reviewers, Merle lacks both the swashbuckling brio found in The Three Musketeers or Rafael Sabatini's Scaramouche and the expansive grandeur of Ken Follett's medieval epics. What Merle does well, however, is integrate into a tale of family life, a host of intriguing factual details that in the end make this a very enjoyable read.--Ron Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson

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