Silence Ye Ye itibaren Pecket House, Pecket Well, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire HX7 8QJ, İngiltere
I loved this book. It is a very long and probably best to read on a beach holiday as there are many characters and it is difficult to keep track of all of them if you are only reading for an hour a day. A couple of the characters seemed to be quite similar to those in Pillars of the Earth, although that is not necessarily a bad thing. I have heard that filming starts on a TV adaption on Monday (11th July) by the same team who adapted Pillars of the Earth, with TV airing in 2012. I am sure this will be fantastic too.
I picked this book up because I'm fascinated by early Christianity and it's myth, and antiquity in general, and I love novels where educated people couch their story in the frame of history - I found it to be overall not an un-enjoyable read, but a bit disappointing. Perhaps my perspective of Malarkey's effort at the novel is askew since I've read many of the Nag-Hammadi texts (and find them not as mysterious as she tries to make them) and many of the acknowledged sources for her book (which sometimes tell a better story, though that may be unfair since commentaries & histories are not burdened with contrivance and plot and the need for overt creativity). I felt her conclusions about the texts in the story were manufactured and reaching, and thus weakened the novel in general. As a result the tension felt forced and feigned throughout, which was frustrating. I'm willing to concede though that it maybe part of the point and reflects the broader reality of the Nag-Hammadi find: the Gnostic Gospels as a concept should be at least a little bit ground breaking to most people of faith, but still to this day elicit mostly a briefly raised eyebrow followed by a yawn. Read the actual texts if you have the chance. A bit obtuse, but lovely as verse. The novel is entertainment, but ultimately not lost to me is the irony that I may have more enjoyed a novel about gnosticism if I knew less.