- Hardcover: 336 pages
- Publisher: Jonathan Cape (4 Jun 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0224079433
- ISBN-13: 978-0224079433
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 3.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 317,266 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Hodd
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Product Description
Review
`Adam Thorpe's novel is richly enjoyable on many levels...[a] strange and lovely book.' --Daily Telegraph
`brilliant and original novel'
--Historical Novels Review
`brilliant and original novel'
--Historical Novels Review
Book Description
The brilliant new novel from a truly great writer - a return in style to his great novel Ulverton
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Oh, this is good. It's a novel-as-manuscript rescued from a ruined church in the Somme during the war, originally written in the 1200s, translated from Latin with footnotes so plentiful you feel as if you're reading a scholarly text instead of a novel.
By trying to relate the true story of Robertt Hodd, the monk-minstrel narrator inadvertently creates the entire Robin Hood myth. In this text, Robyert Hode is a cruel, selfish murderer with his own unique set of personal ethics, compelling enough to attract followers of similar murderous bent. There's no singing in the broad greenwoods, no Maid Marion, no Lincoln green and certainly no giving to the poor.
Identities shift throughout. The unnamed narrator wanders from place to place, changing as he does so. Spellings are rarely constant, adding to the sense of inherent unreliability and intangibility of reading a text from so long ago. There's a real sense of history being created - we're all so familiar with Robin Hood the much-loved outlaw that this re-telling of the underlying story is a shock - and convincingly real. It's a fascinating novel and the best one Adam Thorpe has written for a long time.
By trying to relate the true story of Robertt Hodd, the monk-minstrel narrator inadvertently creates the entire Robin Hood myth. In this text, Robyert Hode is a cruel, selfish murderer with his own unique set of personal ethics, compelling enough to attract followers of similar murderous bent. There's no singing in the broad greenwoods, no Maid Marion, no Lincoln green and certainly no giving to the poor.
Identities shift throughout. The unnamed narrator wanders from place to place, changing as he does so. Spellings are rarely constant, adding to the sense of inherent unreliability and intangibility of reading a text from so long ago. There's a real sense of history being created - we're all so familiar with Robin Hood the much-loved outlaw that this re-telling of the underlying story is a shock - and convincingly real. It's a fascinating novel and the best one Adam Thorpe has written for a long time.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Why Adam Thorpe is not celebrated as one of the best writers in the world I just cannot fathom. It might be that he transcends any genre category so critics don't quite know how to place him. Or it might be that his oeuvre is perceived as uneven simply because it has such a wide range. In these times where readers and writers alike are categorised and pigeon-holed to a ludicrous extent, someone you just can't pin down should be valued beyond the norm. Like Jim Crace, with whom he shares many attributes, Adam Thorpe deserves better recognition for the sheer brio and adventurousness of his writing, not to mention it's cerebral qualities.
Hodd is not an easy read. It is steeped, broiled - almost pickled in the medieval mindset where every thought must be fed back to God and embroidered with religious reservations. The manuscript on which it is based is presented as being a recovery from the ruins of a French church (where it may have been hidden by a travelling mendicant at some time in the last century - for the narrative is being translated in the 1900s, during the First World War) and tells of the events of a few months in the life of a miserable peasant, educated by a holy hermit, taught letters and to play the harp as a child, who falls in with a band of outlaws led by the eponymous Robert Hodd. Favoured by Hodd, he eulogises and thereby creates the legend of Robin Hood, though this is not a tale of good deeds to the poor and ill-treatment of the rich, but one of venality, rapine, violent robbery and murder.
Caged about by scholarly footnotes this document represents an almost hallucinatory vision into the reality of medieval existence: brutal, verminous, filthy and vibrantly irreligious as Hodd first deepens his hold on his gaggle of lost souls with talk of a world made free by the banishment of the concept of sin - "And all things created shall be the property of the free spirit, whether living or inanimate; and so the poor shall be made rich and the present and horribly covetous rich be slain and cast into ditches, and every great house or abbey or palace be burned, and no man's wife or daughter be any more his and his alone, for lechery and adultery are vices only in the fallen world, and the world of the free spirit is unfallen!" The footnote for this speech remarks that Hodd's rantings are similar to the beliefs of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, first identifiable in France and along the Rhine at around the time of this narrative (the 1220s).
From this it is possible to see the germ of ideas that later surrounded Hodd's activities and were eulogised into legend. Our own miserable narrator, however, presents the truth behind the legend, knocking it into a cocked hat at the same time as he is coerced into singing the praises of his misshapen and irredeemably venal band of brethren.
So no, this is not an easy read but it repays patience and determination to live for the space of the book in this fascinating rendition of our medieval past. The rewards are very great in terms of understanding and revelation. The pleasure is in the language, cadence, feeling and Thorpe's insight into this strange and wonderful world.
Hodd is not an easy read. It is steeped, broiled - almost pickled in the medieval mindset where every thought must be fed back to God and embroidered with religious reservations. The manuscript on which it is based is presented as being a recovery from the ruins of a French church (where it may have been hidden by a travelling mendicant at some time in the last century - for the narrative is being translated in the 1900s, during the First World War) and tells of the events of a few months in the life of a miserable peasant, educated by a holy hermit, taught letters and to play the harp as a child, who falls in with a band of outlaws led by the eponymous Robert Hodd. Favoured by Hodd, he eulogises and thereby creates the legend of Robin Hood, though this is not a tale of good deeds to the poor and ill-treatment of the rich, but one of venality, rapine, violent robbery and murder.
Caged about by scholarly footnotes this document represents an almost hallucinatory vision into the reality of medieval existence: brutal, verminous, filthy and vibrantly irreligious as Hodd first deepens his hold on his gaggle of lost souls with talk of a world made free by the banishment of the concept of sin - "And all things created shall be the property of the free spirit, whether living or inanimate; and so the poor shall be made rich and the present and horribly covetous rich be slain and cast into ditches, and every great house or abbey or palace be burned, and no man's wife or daughter be any more his and his alone, for lechery and adultery are vices only in the fallen world, and the world of the free spirit is unfallen!" The footnote for this speech remarks that Hodd's rantings are similar to the beliefs of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, first identifiable in France and along the Rhine at around the time of this narrative (the 1220s).
From this it is possible to see the germ of ideas that later surrounded Hodd's activities and were eulogised into legend. Our own miserable narrator, however, presents the truth behind the legend, knocking it into a cocked hat at the same time as he is coerced into singing the praises of his misshapen and irredeemably venal band of brethren.
So no, this is not an easy read but it repays patience and determination to live for the space of the book in this fascinating rendition of our medieval past. The rewards are very great in terms of understanding and revelation. The pleasure is in the language, cadence, feeling and Thorpe's insight into this strange and wonderful world.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
When I started this book, I was confused for a minute. I thought the book was historical fiction, a retelling of the Robin Hood myth. If so, who then was this Francis Belloes and how come there where tons of footnotes? Of course, this is the central conceit of the novel: it is a translation by the aforementioned Francis Belloes of a far older manuscript. This manuscript is the autobiography of the monk mentioned in the blurb. So it is historical fiction, just done in a very clever way.
Before getting to the meat of the novel, I want to focus on the framework for a bit. This framework consists of the translator's preface and the footnotes. I really thought these were well done. They made this book not just a historical novel of medieval times, but of World War I too. And the further the novel progresses, the more WWI intrudes into it through comments inserted into the footnotes by Belloes. The footnotes were the main reason I was confused at first. I looked some of them up and they all came out as existing titles, some of them even available from the library where I work! The amount of work that must have gone into researching not just Robin Hood and the medieval life, but into pre-Interbellum publications on Robin Hood-related texts and also WWI soldiers, is mind-boggling.
The story of Hodd isn't so much about Robin Hood as much as it is about how the legend of Robin Hood was born. The novel's narrator, a monk whose real name we never learn, was a minstrel before taking the cloth and through circumstance ends up part of Hodd's gang. The novel is divided in four parts, much as our monk's life was influenced by four masters. Only three masters are explicitly named, the hermit, Brother Thomas and Hodd, but one could name the Church as his final master under whose guidance he spent most of his days. Interspersed into the story of the monk's time as Muche in Hodd's band are his recollections of his previous masters. There are also some more theological contemplations, though never to excess as 'Belloes' has excised the largest part of these. The recollections provide an explanation of why he fell in with Hodd. They show how the monk felt himself superseded as first in his masters' affections by new boys and feared abandonment. Hodd first makes him his first disciple and this lure proves too much for Muche.
While religion figures greatly in the story, it never becomes preachy. The religious outlook of the main character isn't just due to his vocation as a monk; in the Middle Ages religion was the linchpin of most people's existence. The book also shows the long overlap between Christianity and paganism in medieval times and the way people were still searching for what Christianity was exactly, resulting in various heresies, some of which are referenced in the book's footnotes.
At the end of the book, the monk has come full circle and we've seen the birth of the Robin Hood saga as we know it. I truly enjoyed this book. While not a fast read, despite its slim 305 pages, it's an engrossing one. It's a fascinating look at how history can become legend and at the Middle Ages in all their rough, bleak glory.
Before getting to the meat of the novel, I want to focus on the framework for a bit. This framework consists of the translator's preface and the footnotes. I really thought these were well done. They made this book not just a historical novel of medieval times, but of World War I too. And the further the novel progresses, the more WWI intrudes into it through comments inserted into the footnotes by Belloes. The footnotes were the main reason I was confused at first. I looked some of them up and they all came out as existing titles, some of them even available from the library where I work! The amount of work that must have gone into researching not just Robin Hood and the medieval life, but into pre-Interbellum publications on Robin Hood-related texts and also WWI soldiers, is mind-boggling.
The story of Hodd isn't so much about Robin Hood as much as it is about how the legend of Robin Hood was born. The novel's narrator, a monk whose real name we never learn, was a minstrel before taking the cloth and through circumstance ends up part of Hodd's gang. The novel is divided in four parts, much as our monk's life was influenced by four masters. Only three masters are explicitly named, the hermit, Brother Thomas and Hodd, but one could name the Church as his final master under whose guidance he spent most of his days. Interspersed into the story of the monk's time as Muche in Hodd's band are his recollections of his previous masters. There are also some more theological contemplations, though never to excess as 'Belloes' has excised the largest part of these. The recollections provide an explanation of why he fell in with Hodd. They show how the monk felt himself superseded as first in his masters' affections by new boys and feared abandonment. Hodd first makes him his first disciple and this lure proves too much for Muche.
While religion figures greatly in the story, it never becomes preachy. The religious outlook of the main character isn't just due to his vocation as a monk; in the Middle Ages religion was the linchpin of most people's existence. The book also shows the long overlap between Christianity and paganism in medieval times and the way people were still searching for what Christianity was exactly, resulting in various heresies, some of which are referenced in the book's footnotes.
At the end of the book, the monk has come full circle and we've seen the birth of the Robin Hood saga as we know it. I truly enjoyed this book. While not a fast read, despite its slim 305 pages, it's an engrossing one. It's a fascinating look at how history can become legend and at the Middle Ages in all their rough, bleak glory.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Quite, quite extraordinary
It's hardwork, but to anybody with a half decent English Lit. interest, who still remembers their Chaucer and all that, it's a heritage feast. This is where we came from. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Gargantua Pantaloon
Poor old souls
As the rediscovered printer's proof of a translation of a lost copy of an original Thirteenth Century manuscript, this novel presents with over 400 scholarly footnotes (as well as... Read more
Published 3 months ago by J. Currie
A Modern Classic
It's so disppointing to see that some reviewers found this book dull, because I was captivated right from the start and consider it to be nothing short of a classic. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Roger Shallot
Not Sure Why I Don't Like It More
I'm in two minds about this book - it was obviously well-researched, and Thorpe can certainly write. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Karen Field
Interesting idea but boring
The book is written in the viewpoint of a medieval monk, which is rather interesting, but the arcaic english and the long descriptions make it a bit boring. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Alda Delicado
Hodd Slogg
Sorry but I found this hard going, shame really as I'd looked forward to it. Perhaps it was the writing style, or perhaps it was because I'd just struggled through Wolf Hall, but I... Read more
Published 22 months ago by Dazed but not confused
This seems to be a more accurate account of Robin Hood.
After reading this book, it becomes clear that this is the basis of later Robin Hood tales.
A very good read and puts things into perspective.
A very good read and puts things into perspective.
Published on 18 Nov 2009 by C. R. Nicholas
A Good Idea, but not for me
The story provides a fresh approach to the Robin Hood legend. I didn't enjoy it though, the story and narrative were hard to follow and I had no idea what was going on from start... Read more
Published on 4 Aug 2009 by Daniel Taylor
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