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Yes, that Lawrence of Arabia

November 30th, 2009 Lisa - Central

How can you really like a character in a novel, but not really enjoy the book?  I found myself with that dilemma while reading Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell.  I loved the main character/narrator of the story, but had a lot of trouble with the book itself.

Agnes Shanklin is a not very pretty woman raised in Ohio by her disapproving, domineering mother to doubt everything about herself.  Her favorite saying to Agnes was ‘you don’t like that.’  She forced Agnes to go to Oberlin College with her sister to get herself a career as a teacher (she wanted to do settlement work).  Her brother and sister did manage to escape - Ernest joined the service, and Lillie married a missionary - but the farthest Agnes got was Cleveland, where she taught in elementary school.  Her biggest act of resistance was to adopt a deformed dachshund named Rosie.

Then the Great Influenza hits.  Agnes loses her entire family but inherits so much money she becomes independently wealthy.  After she emerges from her grief and disposes of her relatives’ estates, she decides to go to Egypt.  Lillie had been there with her missionary husband and two children - all gone - and had written many letters regaling Agnes with tales of the places and people she encountered - including ‘Neddy’ Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia to you and me.  Agnes takes Rosie and boards a ship to discover the area Lillie loved.

And this is where it all falls apart for me.  Almost as soon as she arrives, Agnes bumps into Lawrence, and she gets invited to join in peripherally with the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference - which is attended by Winston Churchill and Gertrude Bell, among others. The conference is where the current disastrous boundaries of the countries we now know as Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Palestine and Syria are to be determined and with that the ownership of the all-important oil rights. Russell finds it necessary to instruct the reader on the politics of the region (which I doubtless needed, but did I want it?) through the conversations Agnes has with Lawrence, Churchill and others. While interesting, it felt too lecture-y and the conversations were stilted and bogged down the story.

In the midst of all of this, Agnes also meets Karl Weilbacher, a German spy who had been trailing Lawrence during WWI. A handsome, charming man who loved dachshunds, Karl was upfront with Agnes about being a spy and being married.  Agnes, acting on her own for the first time in her life, does not care about either. She is happy to share what information she overhears with Karl, and becomes his mistress.

So, the lecturing, the insertion of a fictional character in the action of real events, and the lackluster but frankly bizarre (I won’t spoil it) ending ruined the book for me. I would have much preferred if Agnes went on her travels and discovered Egypt as a country of interesting local people and mysterious history on her own. While I enjoy learning about history in historical novels, I don’t appreciate an Introductory History Course with my fiction.  Having said that, I loved Agnes. She just had a way about her that I enjoyed. So, a mixed bag for me but if you don’t mind too much history with your fiction, this may work better for you.

Entry Filed under: Historical Fiction