A Booke of Days : A Journal of the Crusades

A young French nobleman, Roger, Duke of Lunel, leaves his home to join the forces to recapture Jerusalem, yet the holy crusade turns horribly wrong as he witnesses savagery, betrayal, and deceit all around him, and he begins to believe that he will neverreturn home

This intriguing historical novel is a standout in the genre. Rivele (coauthor of the screenplay for Oliver Stone's Nixon) structures his fiction debut as a journal kept by Roger, Duke of Lunel, an 11th-century French nobleman who joins thousands of knights, soldiers and pilgrims on the First Crusade against Turkish forces occupying the Holy Land. Roger enlists in the pilgrimage to atone for guilt he feels over his illicit courtship of the "dark and handsome" Jehanne, whom he marries after the death of her first husband, Eustace of Valdevert. But he discovers that the price of remission of a sin may be far greater than the sin itself. As a chronicle of war, the journal works effectively, distilling the immense scope of the Crusade through the filter of Roger's perspective as knight and pilgrim. His recounting of battle scenes may not rise to the grandeur of traditional historical epics, but his record is all the more personal and moving since it contains the weary, often disillusioned thoughts of an officer at the end of a long day. The diary also describes the fierce rivalry, even treachery, among military and church leaders, as well as the obstacles of disease, starvation, desertion and alien landscape. Suffering is not the whole story, however, for Roger is a man of contemplation and reflection who continually questions the true motives of the pilgrimage. His European-bred prejudice against the Turks dissolves when he observes them, especially in light of the ever increasing barbarism of his fellow Christians. Then his views of religion, duty and love are altered forever by his relationship with Yasmin, an educated Turkish woman. Roger's honest, tenacious quest for redemption in the midst of the Crusade's inhumanity and ignorance makes this an absorbing and intelligent look at a remote period of history.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A historical saga of Pope Urban II's perverse ``armed pilgrimage''--that is, the First Crusade--brilliantly folds post- Vietnam cynicism and late-20th-century spiritual doubt into a bloody, muddy, horrifyingly surreal march to Jerusalem in 1096. First-novelist Rivele, a screenwriter and playwright, begins this medieval pastiche as a roots tale, in which he tells of his personal discovery of a diary kept by his fictional ancestor, Roger l'Escrivel (the writer), Duke of the Proven‡al region of Lunel. Presented as Rivele's modern translation (with delightfully ironic annotations) of Roger's diary, the story begins with bumbling Roger's seduction by a peasant's wife. After the cuckolded peasant apparently drowns himself, Roger, a fretful Candide, seeks to atone for his guilt by joining the 30,000 nobles, knights, and peasants who make up the First Crusade. As if he were writing a Vietnam combat novel, the author revels in ghastly scenes of violence and depravity laced with unexpected wit. When the brain-damaged peasant Peter Bartholomew burns himself to death clutching a holy relic that was supposed to protect him from harm, and when the bloodthirsty Normans, who decorate their armor with the severed body parts of their victims, let political intrigue almost destroy the ragtag remnant of a once-mighty army, Roger confronts God with a very 20th-century version of despair. His suffering is made only worse when he falls in love with a wise and beautiful Turkish poetess, Yasmin. Yasmin's mystical mutterings about faith and emptiness increase Roger's spiritual agony, which reaches the breaking point when he abandons Yasmin, who is now pregnant with his child, to join his comrades for the final assault on Jerusalem. No feel-good sophistry or sentimentality relieves Roger's Pyrrhic revelation within Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre. A stunningly mature novel of faith, violence, love, and loss that, while rooted in late-20th-century nihilism and uncertainty, remains scrupulously faithful to its period. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Rivele recounts the incredible odyssey of one of his own ancestors, an eleventh-century French crusader. Seeking remission for his carnal and spiritual sins, Roger, duke of Lunel, enlists in the First Crusade launched against the Turkish infidels occupying much of the Holy Land. Joining forces with an armed pilgrimage sanctioned by Pope Urban II, he bids farewell to his family and abandons his Provencal estate. As he travels across Europe and into the Near East, he dutifully records his remarkable and exotic experiences in a journal, earning him the nickname l'Escrivel ("the scribbler"). When the religious expedition degenerates into chaos and brutality, Roger's idealism is shattered by the base realities of battles fought in the name of God. A vividly rendered and historically authentic account of a journey of self-discovery underscored by the tragic loss of both love and faith. Margaret Flanagan

Rivele, who coauthored the screenplay for Oliver Stone's film Nixon, has written a structured story of the Crusades. Highly detailed, it is told in diary form by Roger, Duke of Lunel, apparently an ancestor of Rivele. Roger, whose character is priggish in the extreme, joins the First Crusade to liberate Jerusalem from the Turks and leaves his wife and home in Provence. He travels across many lands and meets many people, most of them very unfriendly to him and his cause. After many gory adventures and having spurned many acquaintances as unworthy, he surprisingly falls in love with a woman who is his polar opposite, a young Muslim poet. Love does not make him any more likable, and his affair ends sadly. Eventually, with much sturm und drang, he ends up back home, worse off than before. This work is exquisitely detailed with interesting annotations on many of the pages, but the story never really takes off. It reads like nonfiction, and tedious nonfiction at that. Recommended only for serious students of the Crusades.?Lesley C. Keogh, Bethel P.L., Ct.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.