The Chymical Wedding
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Product Description
Product Description
Soon after moving to the secluded Norfolk village of Munding, Alex Darken has a disturbing encounter with the ageing poet Edward Nesbit and his young lover Laura. They are obsessively researching the lives of Sir Henry Agnew and his daughter Louisa who lived in Munding in the nineteenth century and were deeply engaged in alchemical practices. By recovering the lost secret of the hermetic mysteries, Edward and Laura hope to find an alternative to the destructive materialism of the post-industrial world. Once drawn into their fervent quest for knowledge, Alex finds himself entangled in a passionate and intense intrigue that reaches across two centuries. A beautifully written, ambitious and captivating novel, which takes a profound look at issues of nature, human existence and forgotten knowledge, "The Chymical Wedding", which won the 1989 Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, is already considered a classic for its stylistic prowess and philosophical resonances.
About the Author
Lindsay Clarke is the author of 7 novels, including THE CHYMICAL WEDDING which won the Whitbread Award for Fiction in 1989. He has been Writer in Residence at the University of Wales, Cardiff, where he became a long-term Associate of the MA Creative Writing programme, is Creative Consultant to the Pushkin Trust in Northern Ireland, and has directed conferences at Dartington, been Scholar-in-Residence at Schumacher College, and has lectured widely in England abroad and tutored many courses for the Arvon Foundation. He lives in Somerset with his wife who is a ceramic artist.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
55 of 59 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If, as I was, you were put off by the synopsis of The Chymical Wedding, don't be. Normally I never read a book with the word "obsessive" in the blurb, and for those of you who don't either, I'd like to set the record straight. Lindsay Clarke's The Chymical Wedding is one of the best novels I have ever read. It may contain obessions, dark sides, self-centred fathers and tormented ministers but the mood of the novel is completely at odds with this description. It sits light to life. It's capable of encompassing all the vagaries of human existence in the way that the best nineteenth century novels did (I'm thinking particularly of Middlemarch). It deals with some very dark topics, true, but it's wistful, rather than tormented, and in a way that is very English. Of course it tells a story -- two stories, which are woven together compellingly. The characters in the present have to try to unravel what happened to people in the same place a hundred years ago. (If you liked Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time, or are a fan of Penelope Lively, then you'll like this bit.) The Chymical Wedding has some pertinent things to say about the difficulties of being a man (or indeed human) in the late twentieth century. It looks at some aspects of the occult without the credulousness of the New Age movement, and finds them to occupy a very necessary, and long-forgotten place in our culture. They have been neglected to the detriment of our collective mental health. But, best of all, it has an effect at a very deep level. It tugs at you, as life tugs at Alex Darken, makes you sit up and take notice. The whole book is suffused with a greenish, golden light, which will stay with you long after you put it down.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a wholly captivating piece of work. Whether you are in the slightest knowledgable about alchemy or the Hermetic tradition or not, you'll soon pick plenty up on your journey through this work, and journey it is. It is a work of erudition, often by no means simple and I would advise anyone to keep a dictionary handy since the vocabulary is glorious, rich and to the point, the whole structure of the book being superbly composed, some of it sits on the very thinnest edge of understanding - you don't get to coast through this work. I can quite see why John Fowles said of it that it excited him enormously. It is an exciting book on many levels; it sets you thinking; it reveals how the lead of humanity can be transcended into gold - at a price: do you tell or do you not tell? Is the Hermetic secret exactly what it says, ever to remain a secret? It seems it is - unless you are prepared to go and do a lot more work yourself. Yes, I liked this book a lot. I admire its integrity. I admire the intellectual capacity of its author. I very much admire the way he pieced this together. We have a lot to learn from alchemy and this is not a bad dip into it. Not bad at all.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
'The Chymical Wedding' is a fascinating, intelligent novel, I really liked it. In 'Bright Dreams and Hard Knocks: A Journal For 1991' - published in the first issue of 'Projections' (1992) - John Boorman reveals that he and Lindsay Clarke wrote a screenplay for 'The Chymical Wedding' but were then, frustratingly, unable to raise the finance for the film. In view of Boorman's interest in Jung, Alchemy and myth, not to mention his stunning cinematic gifts, it seems likely that we've been deprived of a masterpiece.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Everything a reader could wish for ...
The Chymical Wedding is everything a reader could wish for from this very talented writer. Historical drama, alchemy, parallel lives and relationships ... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Karen Baxter
Interesting but flawed and very much of its time
I really liked the early parts of this book, but ultimately I came away a little disappointed.
The symbolism is ponderous, and Clarke far too often tells rather than... Read more
The symbolism is ponderous, and Clarke far too often tells rather than... Read more
Published on 27 Nov 2009 by Thomas A. Marshall
Gripping!
This book is one of those which you cannot put down because you are constantly on the verge of discovering something and you simply can't postpone reading the next chapter. Read more
Published on 2 Dec 2008 by Christina Croft
OK but not great
I was recommended this book by a friend and therefore felt that I had to finish it. It is full of portentous mysticism and I never really got into it. Read more
Published on 22 Feb 2002
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