Bookreporter.com - THE TENTH GIFT by Jane Johnson

THE TENTH GIFT
Jane Johnson
Crown
Fiction
ISBN: 9780307405227

“There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they have never happened before, like larks that have been singing the same five notes for thousands of years.”

These well-chosen lines from Willa Cather mark the start of the gripping and entwined tale of two women --- one an affluent modern-day woman, the other a servant girl from the 17th century. Thirty-something Londoner Julia Lovat is enmeshed in an affair with the husband of her erstwhile best friend. Her married lover ends the affair abruptly, giving Julia an uncharacteristically generous gift in parting: an antique book of embroidery patterns. Julia finds original diary entries from the early 1600s written in the margins of the book in tiny, nearly indecipherable print.

As Julia transcribes these entries, she becomes engrossed in the life of the book’s original owner and diarist --- 19-year-old lady’s maid Catherine (Cat), who yearns for a more adventurous life than the one that appears to be in store for her. Cat is a gifted embroiderer who hopes --- somewhat optimistically, considering her era and circumstances --- to be recognized as a master artist. She is being pressured into marrying her upstanding, if uninteresting, young cousin. Cat hopes for some great adventure that will avert this dull fate, allow her to see the world beyond Cornwall’s borders, and in turn show the world what she herself is capable of achieving. Her idle ruminations on the future come to an abrupt halt one day as Cat, along with 60 others, is captured by Barbary pirates (or Corsairs, as they called themselves) during a daring slave raid on the Cornish coast.

Julia, who has become invested in Cat’s fate and wishes to escape her own past, decides to travel to Morocco to pick up the thread of Cat’s narrative after she is sold as a slave. In doing so, she embarks on a life-altering journey of her own, finding much in common with Cat, who may in fact have been a distant relative of hers.

The storyline moves seamlessly from Julia to Cat and back, capturing each woman’s life with great verisimilitude. This incredible story was inspired by first-time author Jane Johnson’s own life. She wanted to write a novel based on the life of a family member who was rumored to have been captured during a slave raid by the Sallee Rovers (Corsairs from Salé, now Rabat) and taken to North Africa. During her research into her ancestor’s life, she discovered that between the 16th and 19th centuries, over a million Britons, many from Cornwall and other coastal regions, had been captured and enslaved by the Corsairs. Johnson’s research led her to Morocco, where she met a man whose striking appearance impressed her so much that she cast him as the pirate chief in her novel, never suspecting that she herself would eventually marry the man in a Berber ceremony and move to a remote village at the foot of the Atlas Mountains to be with him.

Johnson’s writing is infused with her own understanding of the two cultures, British and Moroccan, and she does a credible job of explaining the diverse viewpoints of her central characters in ways that remain true to them and their times. She weaves historical fact unobtrusively through the narrative, pointing out, for instance, that the Ottoman Corsairs took to piracy primarily in retaliation for the atrocities committed by Christian Spain on the Moors, such as the expulsion of third-generation Moroccan immigrants from Spain during the reign of Philip III.

The spice markets, narrow lanes and heady perfumes of Morocco; the wild beauty of the Cornish countryside; and the rhythms of daily life in each are captured in lush, sensuous prose. The descriptions of embroidery are so lovely as to make you want to learn to sew, or at least go admire a beautiful old shawl. The portrayal of the slave raid and its immediate aftermath, although detailed, is somewhat lacking in emotional resonance, but even this does not deter from the general narrative flow. The only jarring note in the entire 400-page book came towards the end, where a minor and tangential plot line felt forced to accommodate a supernatural slant to the story.

This small criticism aside, Jane Johnson has spun a truly masterful tale, confidently weaving historical fiction, suspenseful romance and literary sleuthing into one captivating narrative.

--- Reviewed by Usha Reynolds (Usha_Reynolds@hotmail.com)

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