REVIEW: Book of Forbidden Words: A Novel by Louise Fein
… a new historical novel set in a world of banned books and censorship, in which an encrypted manuscript unleashes a chain of consequences across 400 years …
1552, PARIS: The printing press is quickly spreading new ideas across Europe, threatening the power of church and state and unleashing a wave of book burning and heretic hunting. When frightened ex-nun Lysbette Angiers arrives at Charlotte Guillard’s famous printing shop with her manuscript, neither woman knows just how far the powerful elite will go to prevent the spread of Lysbette’s audacious ideas.
1952, NEW YORK: Milly Bennett is a lonely housewife struggling to find her way in her new neighborhood amidst the paranoid clamors of McCarthy’s America. She finds her life taking an unexpected turn when a relic from her past presents her with a 400-year-old manuscript to decipher, pulling her into a vortex of danger that threatens to shatter her world.
From the risky backstreets of sixteenth-century Paris to the unpredictable suburbs of mid-twentieth century New York, the stakes couldn’t be higher when, 400 years apart, Milly, Lysbette, and Charlotte each face a reality where the spread of ideas are feared and every effort is made to suppress them.Dramatic and affecting, and inspired by the real-life encrypted Voynich manuscript, Book of Forbidden Words is both an engrossing story about a timeless struggle that echoes through the ages and a testament to the indomitable spirit of those who dare to let their words be heard.
CW/TW – mention of past rape of secondary character, violence against women
Dear Ms. Fein,
I thought this book about books and women sounded interesting without being yet another bookclub/bookstore entry. It is a dual-timeline – well, actually the 16th century section has entries during several different years and the timeline jumps a bit. But don’t worry as the chapters are headed with whose POV the chapter focuses on and the date. Tenses also change at times between third person present, and third person past. I didn’t really notice it too much but if it bothers you, now you know it happens.
Given the complexity of the plot, I’ll just let the blurb do all the work in explaining what the book is about. The story is definitely feminist but not militant feminism. The three main women – Milly, Charlotte, and Lysbette – are women of their times and have to duck and weave around the restrictions placed on them by men and the times in which they live. Lysbette also faces the religious upheavals of Henry VIII’s efforts to divorce Katherine of Aragon when the convent to which she’d been sent is dissolved. Later another character tells Charlotte that with the return of Catholicism under Queen Mary, it will now be the Protestants who face being burned at the stake.
Several aspects of the plot resonate from the 16th century through to Milly in 1952 and up to today. Charlotte is a woman running the printing business which she inherited from her father. Her standards are high, her reputation is sterling but she faces men muttering at working for her as well as challenging the shoddy work of the paper guild of Paris. It isn’t just now that product standards are slipping. Heretic hunters also abound which causes Charlotte to have to not print some things she strongly believes in and take on more conservative religious texts as a possible shield. Heretics are now being burned not only in England but also France.
Lysbette is an orphan who was taken in by Sir Thomas More but who is also hampered by her lack of a dowry. Lysbette had known a brief bit of respect and of living in a place with women in charge when she was in Barking Abbey. Women in general were disdained but nuns were still respected and the nuns of that Abbey ran what sounds like an empire. She’s brilliant and educated but when hard times arrive, she finds it impossible to parley her knowledge into a job. Her only joy is now writing her take on More’s “Utopia” but with women in charge.
Milly worked at Bletchley Park but after the war, there was no interest in her skills despite a supervisor vouching for her. Now while happily married and adoring her children, she faces mind numbing housework instead of mind enriching challenges. It’s also difficult for her, an introverted and bookish Englishwoman, to fit into the new world of American suburbia on Long Island. After she takes on the work of deciphering the manuscript, she feels alive and willing to write some slightly subversive stories of her own for publication.
But the suppression of women, ideas, heretical religions, and intellectual freedom in the 16th century is resurrected in the Red Scare of the 1950s when communism, foreigners, non-Christians, people of color, and anyone not toeing the line of happy suburban utopia reaches new heights. Internment and immigration also play a role here.
I like how the book ties all this together. For most of the book, it feels organic rather than like a checklist being marked off. The middle does sag a little due to some repetition and explanations but then takes off again when the rubber meets the road for all three women. One woman’s fate is shown from early on and I wish the prologue had been left out. For two of them, I honestly didn’t know how things would turn out and was deeply invested until the end and then surprised. For a 384 page books, the pages flew by. B
~Jayne
AmazonBNKoboBook DepositoryGoogle
