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perhaps more romantic and socially conscious than Rutherfurd’s, Rutherfurd also employs the technique of following a set of families through a period of time, by NANCY ROBERTS tracing their lives, loves, fortunes and failures over an extraordinary period of time. I first read The Princes of Ireland: The Dublin Saga when developing an interest in my Celtic roots. It was an amazing trip through Irish fact, fiction, According to Wikipedia, “Edward Rutherfurd is a and legend, but I learned pen name for Francis Edward Wintle (born 1948 in an important thing that Salisbury, England). He is best known as a writer of epic historical novels which span long periods of his- would serve me well in further Rutherfurd readtory but are set in particular places. His debut novel ing: be prepared to be “Sarum” set the pattern for his work with a ten-thouengrossed, and focus. While sand-year storyline.” they are works of fiction, Ten-thousand-year? Yes, and he does justice to his are not easy reads. You these epic pieces of fact-and-fiction. He is not the will be whipsawed from only writer to indulge in a long work based in fact using fictional characters to move the action forward one family line to another (or sometimes, leaping about) in time. James Michen- as they interact, drop out of sight, or even hand the er’s work was similar, and I happened to be reading storyline off for a Hawaii while traveling to that state, and was able to generation or two. And to actually see the places about which he wrote. say “storyline” is to assume there is a linear through-line. Not so. Where Michener’s style, though sweeping, is Rutherfurd’s “story” is the story of the place, as seen through the eyes of carefully selected families, and individuals within those families. As noted, you must be prepared to pay attention. Covering 900 to ten-thousand years, even if the book is 800 pages long, will mean you will be racing through time, even if within the confines of a single city (London, or Paris) or among a group of people, or even, as with the book I’m part way through now (The Forest), within the confines of a plot of land. Aside from the enormity of the timeframe, and the plethora of characters, Rutherfurd adopts a variety of voices, of necessity, within each lengthy chapter. In an early chapter of The Forest, he even writes from the point of view of a mother deer and her offspring as they outrace hunt“Edward Rutherfurd is a pen name for Francis Edward Wintle ers, both legal and (born 1948 in Salisbury, England). poachers. Generally, though,
The Write Stuff
Edward Rutherfurd Extraordinary Author
Congratulations! Gary Whitham
