Sidney Chambers unveiled!
The Road to Grantchester (Grantchester Mysteries #7) by James Runcie
This is the prequel to the wonderful series that is Grantchester. But here's the thing of art and form, of image and words. I love the tv series. Because I'm addicted to the visual presentation of Grantchester I adore Sidney and all the other characters. I ask myself a question. How to divorce that exploration of the visual senses from the literary imaginative senses? Need I?
Bother! I can't! I keep seeing the actors doing their thing. I hear their voices in the prose. Should my already imaged characters be different from my imagined literary characters? Does it lessen the story's ability to stand in its own right? Well you can't put the genie back in the bottle! That's enough of a convoluted thought process, I just have go with what I've perceived through all the mediums. Hopefully one informs and enhances the other.
It's pre war 1938 London and the story opens with Sidney's best friend, Robert Kendall's eighteenth birthday dance. Sidney dances with Robert's sister, fifteen year old Amanda. Amanda decides that she will call him Chambers. And this marks the beginning of them knowing each other.
Five years later we see Sidney as he's about to enter the European Theatre of World War II. In Italy to be precise.
We experience Chambers' sense of loss as those beside him die in unspeakable conditions and in nightmarish battles. With him we rage at the hopelessness of soldiers being fodder, sent up mountainsides only to be repeatedly mowed down. We understand how all this is shaping Sidney into what he will become.
As he tries to make sense of it all the idea of why, and the justness of a God looms large.
The buildup, despite the horrors is steady but it's really only in the last chapters that more is revealed as Sidney realizes his calling to be a man of the cloth, under the umbrella of the Anglican Church. He struggles to capture his view of God, his relationship with God, and how that might inform his actions.
The tension between Amanda and Sidney, the way their relationship just never quite gets the ground, the lost opportunities, is marked by Sidney's hesitations. He's always to measured, too late.
The secret for that is unveiled.
This prelude does indeed point the way for us to know more deeply the Sidney we love. To how he comes to be in Grantchester where the friends he surrounds himself with become ours, and to the never ending question of his relationship with Amanda.
I enjoyed the journey.
A Bloomsbury ARC via NetGalley
****
Bother! I can't! I keep seeing the actors doing their thing. I hear their voices in the prose. Should my already imaged characters be different from my imagined literary characters? Does it lessen the story's ability to stand in its own right? Well you can't put the genie back in the bottle! That's enough of a convoluted thought process, I just have go with what I've perceived through all the mediums. Hopefully one informs and enhances the other.
It's pre war 1938 London and the story opens with Sidney's best friend, Robert Kendall's eighteenth birthday dance. Sidney dances with Robert's sister, fifteen year old Amanda. Amanda decides that she will call him Chambers. And this marks the beginning of them knowing each other.
Five years later we see Sidney as he's about to enter the European Theatre of World War II. In Italy to be precise.
We experience Chambers' sense of loss as those beside him die in unspeakable conditions and in nightmarish battles. With him we rage at the hopelessness of soldiers being fodder, sent up mountainsides only to be repeatedly mowed down. We understand how all this is shaping Sidney into what he will become.
As he tries to make sense of it all the idea of why, and the justness of a God looms large.
The buildup, despite the horrors is steady but it's really only in the last chapters that more is revealed as Sidney realizes his calling to be a man of the cloth, under the umbrella of the Anglican Church. He struggles to capture his view of God, his relationship with God, and how that might inform his actions.
The tension between Amanda and Sidney, the way their relationship just never quite gets the ground, the lost opportunities, is marked by Sidney's hesitations. He's always to measured, too late.
The secret for that is unveiled.
This prelude does indeed point the way for us to know more deeply the Sidney we love. To how he comes to be in Grantchester where the friends he surrounds himself with become ours, and to the never ending question of his relationship with Amanda.
I enjoyed the journey.
A Bloomsbury ARC via NetGalley
****
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