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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

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Books for the Masses: Gutenberg’s Apprentice by Alix Christie

23/9/2014

6 Comments

 
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Blogs, e-books and print-on-demand technology are heralding a new era in publishing, a democratisation in which anyone with access to the Internet may become a publisher or book reviewer. It’s perhaps too soon to tell whether this will be a curse or blessing for readers and writers, but there’s no doubt that we readers and writers live in interesting times. But this is nothing new: revolution and reinvention lie at the foundation of publishing, which makes a novel set in mid-fifteenth century Germany particularly pertinent today.

Peter is unhappy to be called home from Paris to corrupt and feuding Mainz, wrenched by his father from his vocation as a scribe copying sacred texts. He’s unhappier still when apprenticed to the blunt and ambitious Hans Gutenberg in a fetid workshop of hellish furnaces and tedious tasks. His introduction to his master’s mission is unsettling:

Each of those lines ended with an utter, chilling harmony, at precisely the same distance from the edge. What hand could write a line that straight, and end exactly underneath the one above? What human hand could possibly achieve a thing so strange? He felt his heart squeeze and his soul flood with an overwhelming dread. (p16-17)


Meanwhile, his father has his eye on the commercial potential of Gutenberg’s invention:

Books everywhere, and costing less than manuscripts – in quantities that simply stun the mind. Imagine how the world would look if anyone could buy one! (p49)

It’s not until a role is found for his meticulous calligraphy that Peter can renounce his dream of returning to Paris. What follows is an account of the combination of commerce, craft and creativity that led to the invention of the printing press and the first mass-produced Bible.

While strongly rooted in a specific time and place, the novel is rife with parallels to small-town and workplace politics in the modern era, especially when that work entails artistic creativity. How do you weigh up the relative merits of the aesthetics of the printed page versus the need to produce volumes at an affordable cost? How do we ensure effective teamwork:

It was remarkable, how lightly they all worked without the master breathing fire. Each man was part, yet apart, responsible for his own task – just like the scribes who penned the students’ books in sections. (p192)

that each individual contribution is appropriately acknowledged, interpersonal rivalries managed and group loyalty maintained? How to safeguard one’s intellectual property and maintain secrecy in the development stages while securing financial support from outside?

The arrogance and narcissism of Gutenberg’s character:

He moved as if his garments shone, and none might touch them – as if the chain that bound him to the ordinary world had snapped. (p 286)

is reminiscent of Dean Jocelin in William Golding’s novel, The Spire; I’ll leave it to others to identify any present-day mavericks whose self-belief gets things done but makes them a torment to work for. The politics of production in the need to grease the palms of both Church and Guild was convincingly handled. There’s a nod to time and motion studies, supply chains, shifting deadlines and the anxiety of second guessing the market. Yet while I admired Alix Christie in making the mechanics of invention and manufacturing the subject of her debut novel, it was overly long for my liking. With her background as a letterpress printer, one would imagine that she relished researching the various stages of printing press development; I would have preferred to have been spared some of this fine detail. I thought I was immune to the lure of romance until I found myself suddenly more engaged when, almost halfway through, Peter started courting. Indeed, there’s a wealth of human emotion in the story but, in the early chapters, I felt forced to peer too closely at the spaces between the printed letters to find it.

Guttenberg’s Apprentice is published today by Headline Review; thanks to them for my Bookbridgr advance proof copy. If you’re interested in the social history of the late Middle Ages and the interplay of human frailties and organisational structure under the shadow of the church, this might well be a novel for you. Your comments are welcome on any aspect of this post.
Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
6 Comments
Norah Colvin link
23/9/2014 04:07:44 pm

I really enjoyed this review Anne. It sounds like it could be a book for me! Thanks for sharing. :)

Reply
Teagan Kearney link
24/9/2014 03:16:52 am

I enjoyed reading this review, Anne, even though I don't read much historical fiction as I think it's a real challenge to write about momentous events, such as the invention of the printing press, and yet keep the human interest/conflict/tension at a level that engages readers. Although the love of this event must be dear to the heart of this author (as your review indicates) I find it's the human interest which pulls readers in the most. Nonetheless, this book sounds like a fascinating read.
Going off at a tangent, I have heard it said that the biggest achievement of Christian missionaries throughout the world was the spreading of literacy!

Reply
Charli Mills
24/9/2014 07:05:39 pm

And, yes, I am interested in the social history of the medieval ages. But I don't know that I would read something so detailed. I like a swift moving book unless I'm researching. An earlier medieval writer, Geoffry Chaucer, often wrote stories about modern politics cloaked in fiction, often adding a disclaimer that it was just something he dreamed. I like that idea, using an historical platform to examine modern issues. Not at that level, yet. Another great review!

Reply
Annecdotist
26/9/2014 03:06:55 am

Thank you, ladies. I think this is a great novel for new learning and a peek into a different period of time. I'm also much more interested in the human issues which weren't quite as strong here as I would have liked. But I did enjoy the shock-of-the-new angle and the group processes at work. I think it's a bit like Andrew Miller's Pure for its examination of how things got done in a different age.

Reply
geoff link
27/9/2014 05:11:15 pm

Now this is my sort of book. There are two that spring to mind, which are attempts to give flesh to true stories, both which I loved - more non fiction than fiction but because the authors personalised them they seem more like fiction pieces. Dava Sobel's Longitude and Simon Winchester's the Surgeon of Crowthorne. This book is clearly fiction but because it sits inside a real situation it has that crossover feel to it. I will add it to my list.

Reply
Annecdotist
30/9/2014 03:02:29 am

Good point, Geoff. Sometimes there's a very fine line between fact-based fiction and narrative non-fiction – and I'm not sure myself where it would be, but this is a novel that sits very much on the boundary.

Reply



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