Lent
A Novel of Many Returns
by Jo Walton
Tor
2019
The first time I watched the movie Life is Beautiful, I thought it was simply an Italian rom-com. When my partner - who recommended Jo Walton's Lent to me - first read the book, she only knew that it was about Italian monks during the Renaissance, and that based on the author's reputation, it probably had some kind of speculative component. I took a little more convincing than that, and so I went into it knowing something that caught her totally by surprise. If you keep reading, you'll know it too, because I hardly know how to talk about Lent, let alone recommend it, without saying what it's really about.
I haven't read that many historical fantasies, but I have read at least two set during the Renaissance - Umberto Eco's Baudolino and Catherynne Valente's Habitation of the Blessed, both of which feature blymmes and skiapods and other humanoids the ancient Greeks believed lived in foreign lands. For the first half, Lent is essentially straight historical fiction, a retelling of the last 6 years in the life of Girolamo Savonarola, an ascetic monk who lived in Florence, preached a strict Christianity, organized a bonfire of the vanities, and was himself hanged and burned in 1498 for opposing both the Medicis and the pope.
Girolamo can see demons and banish them (Walton describes them like the monsters that show up in the margins of illuminated manuscripts,) and he believes he receives prophetic knowledge from God. This is only barely fantastic though, since mysticism was common enough at the time, and the events in Florence are basically a this-worldly contest between factions in an early democracy to determine whether Florence will be a city of commerce and splendor, as the merchants want, or a New Jerusalem that is ruled by God's laws as much as it is secular authority. Walton uses plain language that makes these debates feel contemporary, and the spread of ideas via sermons and other public speeches reminds me a bit of social media. She even makes Girolamo's opposition to the power of wealth sympathetic to a reader like me, someone who the real Savonarola would have likely condemned.
What makes this book science fiction is what happens halfway through, when Girolamo dies and then relives his same life, the story resetting to the events of 1492. At this point, we're in the realm of alt history, as Girolamo tries to get a different outcome, even as he remains committed to preaching the gospel and saving men's souls. The first half of the book is fine, but this is where Walton puts her foot on the accelerator and the plot really starts racing. Because Girolamo isn't just reincarnated once, but several times, with each life getting about half the pages of the one before. I guess this is technically a time-loop story, but those usually just repeat a day or so, while Girolamo is operating on the scale of years, and because he's a Great Man, operating at a crux of history, both he and Florence travel some wildly different trajectories across the iterations.
Each life is still portrayed realistically. Walton is thoughtful about how history might change - and stubbornly, might not - based on the actions of one very charismatic man living in one city at a time of unrest across Europe. The structure reminds me less of other time-loop stories, and more of something like Rachel Swirsky's "The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers from Beneath the Queen's Window" or Walter John Williams' "Daddy's World" - stories that start out in one genre, but become increasingly philosophical and science fictional simply because they refuse to end where we expect them to, and keep going and getting stranger due to the long passage of time.
I haven't read that many historical fantasies, but I have read at least two set during the Renaissance - Umberto Eco's Baudolino and Catherynne Valente's Habitation of the Blessed, both of which feature blymmes and skiapods and other humanoids the ancient Greeks believed lived in foreign lands. For the first half, Lent is essentially straight historical fiction, a retelling of the last 6 years in the life of Girolamo Savonarola, an ascetic monk who lived in Florence, preached a strict Christianity, organized a bonfire of the vanities, and was himself hanged and burned in 1498 for opposing both the Medicis and the pope.
Girolamo can see demons and banish them (Walton describes them like the monsters that show up in the margins of illuminated manuscripts,) and he believes he receives prophetic knowledge from God. This is only barely fantastic though, since mysticism was common enough at the time, and the events in Florence are basically a this-worldly contest between factions in an early democracy to determine whether Florence will be a city of commerce and splendor, as the merchants want, or a New Jerusalem that is ruled by God's laws as much as it is secular authority. Walton uses plain language that makes these debates feel contemporary, and the spread of ideas via sermons and other public speeches reminds me a bit of social media. She even makes Girolamo's opposition to the power of wealth sympathetic to a reader like me, someone who the real Savonarola would have likely condemned.
What makes this book science fiction is what happens halfway through, when Girolamo dies and then relives his same life, the story resetting to the events of 1492. At this point, we're in the realm of alt history, as Girolamo tries to get a different outcome, even as he remains committed to preaching the gospel and saving men's souls. The first half of the book is fine, but this is where Walton puts her foot on the accelerator and the plot really starts racing. Because Girolamo isn't just reincarnated once, but several times, with each life getting about half the pages of the one before. I guess this is technically a time-loop story, but those usually just repeat a day or so, while Girolamo is operating on the scale of years, and because he's a Great Man, operating at a crux of history, both he and Florence travel some wildly different trajectories across the iterations.
Each life is still portrayed realistically. Walton is thoughtful about how history might change - and stubbornly, might not - based on the actions of one very charismatic man living in one city at a time of unrest across Europe. The structure reminds me less of other time-loop stories, and more of something like Rachel Swirsky's "The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers from Beneath the Queen's Window" or Walter John Williams' "Daddy's World" - stories that start out in one genre, but become increasingly philosophical and science fictional simply because they refuse to end where we expect them to, and keep going and getting stranger due to the long passage of time.
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