This is a review of The Magic Circle by Beth Dora Reisberg (bethdr@jps.net).
Katherine Neville is one of my favorite writers. Her first novel, The
Eight, was an international bestseller, a two-tiered story that mixed
chess, the French Revolution, the Oil Embargo of the 1970s, and romance on
the Mediterranean Sea. I couldn't put it down for days. Her second novel,
A Calculated Risk, a New York Times Notable Book, was an engaging and fun
romp through the world of banking and high finance and opera.
The Magic Circle, her third novel, is her most ambitious one yet. It is a
story about the big picture and transformation; it is the story of an aeon
- a 2,000 year cycle - that began at the rise of the Roman Empire and the
birth of Christianity and that is approaching its completion right now.
This book is about humankind's quest to harness the power of the earth and
heavens for such a transformation.
The heroine of The Magic Circle, Ariel Behn, calls herself a "girl nuke," and works as a nuclear security expert in Idaho. When we first meet her she
is driving in treacherous snow conditions on her way back to Idaho from San
Francisco where she left her brother's shrouded remains in a casket, blown apart by some unknown bomb while operating in an advisory capacity for the
military. His death is as sudden as his disappearance from her life some years ago.
Ariel soon learns that she's been bequeathed with precious family papers that her brother, Sam, had inherited from their grandmother. Why she has
been given these documents and why everyone in her family wants them before
she can uncover what they are is what Ariel must solve. But this wouldn't
be a Katherine Neville novel without huge amounts of history and science,
puzzles and word etymology thrown in. As Ariel pursues the meaning of the
manuscripts she uncovers the hard truths about her complex family and their
role in twentieth century major events such as the Boer Wars in South
Africa and World War II. Like Scheherazade, the story teller in One
Thousand and One Nights, Neville weaves tales within tales, only this time
they go backwards into history as we learn about ancient initiation and
transformation rituals, runes, Uranus, power spots, who Jesus might have
been, and what the Song of Solomon may actually mean.
Neville's historical segments are delicious and compelling. The reader
becomes a local observer of, for example, the last week of Jesus's life,
seeing the events from Pontius Pilate's and Joseph of Arimathea's view.
The magic circle evokes a place to do ritual, to connect with our
community, be it the neighborhood, our families, friends or the planet. It
is for each of us to enter into the magic circle and transform. This book
provokes questions and imaginings, and rereading. Neville delivers another
tour de force, and leaves us wanting more.
-reviewed by Beth Dora Reisberg
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