Written on the Dark, the new novel by Guy Gavriel Kay, strikes me as a meditation on narratives—how we shape the stories of our lives, and how, if we are important enough or are caught up in significant events, others may reshape them.
This is hardly new territory for Kay; over the course of his career, reflections on the nature of storytelling have become increasingly more central to his writing. “You can die at the margins of a story as easily as at the centre of it. Or just be a glancing comment in another tale.” he writes at one point, reminding us again that a book (like life) is a tapestry of interwoven narratives. Someone who appears only briefly in one story, perhaps even dying there, remains at the heart of their own.
Ever since The Fionavar Tapestry, Kay has occasionally paused the main narrative to briefly follow characters who might otherwise be mere footnotes. Over time, these asides have claimed more space—and perhaps influenced his choice of protagonists. They are no longer the epic, larger than life characters of the early novels, but instead they might easily have been those marginal figures in one of his earlier works. While it is true that anyone, no matter how important, can be a passing mention in someone else’s story, it is much harder to imagine a character like Ammar or even Crispin passing through a story without leaving significant ripples.
To continue beyond these initial musings on the novel, I need to venture into spoiler territory.
Thierry Villar, the sharp-tongued tavern poet who narrates most of Written on the Dark (there are other point-of-view characters, but they are all secondary to Thierry), does end up influencing the course of history on at least two occasions, but he is very much dependent on more powerful men and women to do so. He is used by others to influence the greater narrative (which he does through his words), but he could not have chosen to do so on his own.
The book takes place roughly two generations prior to All the Seas of the World, primarily in the city of Orane in Ferrieres, the analogues of Paris and France in Kay’s “two moons” setting. It opens with the murder Rollin de Montereau – brother to the mad king Roch of Ferrieres – by their ambitious cousin, Laurent de Barratin. Needing a clever man who knows the taverns of the city, the provost of Orane recruits Thierry to the cause of finding out who was behind the murder. Though this first part of the plot is resolved relatively soon, it reshapes Thierry’s narrative by connecting him to powerful new friends and enemies, leading him down a different path in life.
Indeed, in looking at the historical inspiration for the larger events of the story and for the main characters, I felt as if Kay handled them a touch differently than in his previous alternate history novels. Because of the intervention of provost, Thierry’s narrative diverges from that of his real-life counterpart Francois Villon, ultimately prospering and living a long life. A late-book tavern quarrel might have ended very differently had Thierry not made certain key connections by then. Might one say that a more benevolent author crafted his narrative this time?
The novel is divided into three parts. The first focuses on the murder and the court case that follows, with the politics of the court – especially the interplay between the nobility, the church and the legal system—drawn in intricate detail, and it was a delight to read. In the second part, Thierry is in exile from his beloved city for his own safety as Ferrieres faces the threat of an Anglecyn invasion. They seek to exploit that the mad king no longer has his brother at his side and is att odds with his most powerful cousin. But a peasant girl named Jeanette, who claims to hear the voice of Jad, restores the king’s mind and helps change the tide of the war through her sacrifice. If you know the history of the period, you may find yourself surprised by the turn of events. Finally, in the third part, Thierry returns to Orane and the last act of the story begun by the murder of the king’s brother plays out, culminating in a spectacular way. Beyond that, a very beautiful, elegiac epilogue follows.
There was something that didn’t quite flow for me in the transition from part two to part three. I can’t quite put my finger on it and the story regains its footing soon enough, but it felt as if some momentum was lost to introspection. Beyond that, I found the book beautiful. Kay’s prose is unlike anyone else’s: every sentence is something to savour, and his reflections on the act of writing and storytelling are rich and resonant. I’ve said before that I miss the more epic characters and the raw, less subtle emotional beats of earlier works—but even so, I love the writing.
And, I dearly hope there will be more of it. Because I cannot help but to feel like this book felt…final in some ways. Kay has always loved making subtle allusions to his other books (and these also serve to strengthen the image of all these different stories making up a big tapestry of interwoven narratives), but I don’t know that a single book has ever had so many. There’s a sense of a circle closing, of a narrative being tied together, especially in the final chapter and in the epilogue.
Speaking of the final chapter, there is both a “holy shit” and a “WTF” moment and both were utterly unexpected. The first one does make a lot of sense in the context of a story featuring a writer, who is reflecting on nature of stories. The second is a callback that almost made me drop the book – well, Kindle reader – and which perhaps also ties to the first surprise. After all, one should probably consider just who it is that the character ends up invoking with his desperate plea?
Ah, what the heck, I am too excited to just be coy about all this. I did say there would be spoilers, though from here on I am not just spoiling the plot of the book but also some of the more or less hidden allusions.