The Bruegel Boy - Emma Darwin *****

By Brian Clegg

To really appreciate this novel, it helps to have an interest in the Reformation in Europe and in the art of Pieter Bruegel the elder, as it is steeped in the minutiae of both – as it happens I do have such an interest and found it a joy. Emma Darwin’s fictional central character Gil becomes a model and amanuensis for Bruegel: however, although Gil’s life and experience from youth to old age provides the backbone, it is his religious faith that drives everything.

I usually struggle with non-linear narratives – it took a while to settle into the three threads here: Gil’s chronological life, his written account of this, subtly edited from reality to try to get him into a religious order late in life, and his experience as an old man in a mission to retrieve a religious statue that may get him a place in the abbey. But, sticking with it, things did become easy to follow.

More often than not, I read genre novels rather than literary fiction. The genre novel’s focus on plot over character details feels like the reading equivalent of a shower rather than a long bath. All too often, the literary novel’s bath is cold and scummy – they can be hard work to read, rather than an enjoyable experience. But this is an immersion in a warm delight. That’s not to say everything is sweetness and light – these were dark times – but reading The Bruegel Boy was a pleasure.

For the modern reader this is an alien landscape. The religious fervour of the period is quite at odds with modern European life – and where, for instance, Mantel was able to introduce the UK reader to similar religious turmoil in a familiar setting, the Low Countries setting Darwin gives us feels more exotic and complex, with different factions of Protestantism set against the Catholic hierarchy, and the whole political context coming from the influence of Spain as well as the papacy. Yet Darwin never lets this become too distancing – and the constant little reminders of another world (even just saints being Sint Whatever) are part of the reason this is so enticing.

All too often, when I’m reading a literary novel I feel I need to continue reading as a necessary chore – here it was much more a matter of wanting to get back to the book and find out how things were going to develop. And I had to keep looking up the Bruegel paintings that were referenced, adding another layer of detail when seeing again these remarkable works. Her best yet.

You can buy The Bruegel Boy from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.org

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.