The Sheriff of Nottingham - Hardcover

Kluger, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067084022X ISBN 13: 9780670840229

Publisher: Viking, 1992

Synopsis

Has there ever been a less lovable character in folk literature than that craven creature, the nameless Sheriff of Nottingham?

He remains to this day, fed byHollywood versions of the legend, the hateful, impotent foil to thatcelebrated bowman, Robin Hood.  Now, with his novel, The Sheriff of Nottingham, Richard Kluger turns the timeless tale on its head in a vivid,compassionate narrative based upon authentic and quite startlinghistory.

Through a fusion of art and documentedfact, Kluger portrays a far different sheriff.  Philip Mark, a soldierof fortune from Touraine in the heart of  France and actually cited byname in the text of the Magna Carta as objectionable to the king'sbarons, is a complex figure, a man with a heart, a conscience, and deftpolitical instincts.  Posted to Nottinghamshire in 1208 as the crown'schief law officer, he is answerable only to King John himself, a monarch who has been handed down to posterity - perhaps not altogether fairly - as an unredeemed tyrant presiding over a tumultuous age.

In vital, dramatic colors, Klugerpaints a panorama of that England at the dawn of modernity and itsprincipal players and events.  Here are dark intrigue and adroitstatecraft, hand-to-hand combat and sharp wits in collision, anavaricious ruler  attempting to seduce his sheriff's wife on Christmasnight, and the hatching of the Magna Carta itself at Nottingham Castleone fine September eve in 1213 (along with the reasons why Philip Markis specifically mentioned in that immortal document).

Storytelling at its most gripping comes in the novel's powerfully moving centerpiece.  Thirty sons of Welshwarlords are consigned to Philip's castle as royal hostages on theorders of the king to ensure that their volatile fathers behavethemselves back in chronically rebellious Wales.  The boys are treatedwith respect and kindness by the sheriff and his family until a yearlater when King John thunders into the castle courtyard at the head ofhis entourage and, in a fury over a new Welsh uprising, roars at Philip, "Hang the hostages - hang them all - and at once!"  How Sheriff Markresponds to this grim command forms the moral core of the novel.

In The Sheriff of Nottingham, Kluger has woven an engrossing medieval tapestry that transports thereader beyond the mists of time and legend to witness the struggle of asingular character seeking to act honorably in a time ruled by savageimpulse and civil uproar.

About this title

About the Author

Richard Kluger is an American author who, after working as a New Yorkjournalist and publishing executive, turned in mid-career to writingwidely lauded books on U.S. social history.  His two best known worksare Simple Justice, generally regarded as thedefinitive account of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 landmark decisionoutlawing racially segregated public schools, and Ashes to Ashes, a critical history of the cigarette industry and its lethal toll on the public's health, which won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 1997.

Reviews

Kluger inverts the Robin Hood legend in this earthy, richly textured revisionist tale to focus instead on the customary villain. A National Book Award finalist for his nonfiction ( The Paper ; Simple Justice ), Kluger casts as the Sheriff of Nottingham one Philip Mark, an actual French soldier of fortune appointed sheriff by King John early in the 13th century, when the Robin Hood legend may have taken hold. No villain, this sheriff is an ambivalent figure, torn between duty and conscience and intent on rooting out pervasive corruption in the realm. Guided by a wife who cheats on him, idealistic Philip faces a gentry seething with resentment and a brutal monarch who orders him to commit monstrous deeds. To save his skin, Philip strikes a deal with Robin Hood (aka Stuckey Woodfinch), depicted here as Nottingham Castle's brazen royal woodsman and a staunch foe of the king's oppressive laws. Though his prose is sometimes a bit stiff, Kluger weaves a magnificent medieval tapestry of near-Chaucerian zest and complexity.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Taking full advantage of the poetic license that fiction affords, award-winning social-historian Kluger returns with a sixth novel (Un-American Activities, 1982, etc.), painting the popular legend of Robin Hood and his nemesis in an intriguing, entirely different light. Sheriff Philip Mark shines forth from the outset as a veritable paragon of virtue, arriving at Nottingham Castle in 1208 with his family to take up his position as a reward for battlefield service rendered to King John in France. In contrast to the pilferers and scoundrels who preceded him, and in spite of the inclinations of nearly all who serve him, Philip quickly establishes his tenure as a model of propriety and decency, in which his loyalty to the King can never be doubted. Aided primarily by Sparks, his faithful, keen-witted adviser whom he raises from castle obscurity, and his eminently practical wife Anne, who advances his cause in her own way--satisfying her needs in the bargain--the Sheriff gains general respect and no small amount of enmity from those over whom he gains the upper hand. His oath of obedience is sorely tried at times, never more than when called upon by his enraged King to hang a group of well-born Welsh lads held hostage in the castle, but he remains true to the end, hoping for but never receiving knighthood as his just due. In his tenacious struggle to retain honor and dignity the Merry Men in Sherwood Forest play a minor, largely comic role, while the broader historical pageant involving the King, the Church, and conditions leading to the Magna Carta receives full consideration. Vivid though the pageantry is, the Sheriff himself is too noble for his own good; his ethics prove predictable and tedious, and spoil an otherwise impressive saga. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Kluger's revisionist novel portrays the infamous Sheriff of Nottingham of Robin Hood fame as a scrupulously upright man fighting to retain his integrity in a vicious world, and his loyalty to a king whose cruelty and capricious temperament are legendary. Employing a wealth of historical detail that informs and intrigues without overwhelming, the author brings to life a wide variety of complex characters; readers will react with moral ambivalence and sympathy to even the worst of them. Kluger's novel is a detailed, evocative portrait of the age of corruption and conflicting loyalties that produced the Magna Carta. Highly recommended.
- Cynthia Johnson Whealler, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, Mass.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 067084022X
• ISBN 13: 9780670840229
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 544