Accismus

Burt Hecker thinks he was born in the wrong century. He believes that true progress stopped in the Middle Ages, and devotes himself fully to that era, wearing medieval robes, drinking home-brewed mead, and doing nothing OOP – out of period. He is the founder of the Confraternity of Times Lost Regained (think Renn Fair circuit, pre-Renn), which meets at his wife Kitty’s Mansion Inn. Tod Wodicka’s novel opens in Germany, where Burt has journeyed with a chant group that celebrates the life of Hildegard von Bingen, a medieval anchoress and mystic. Ordered by the Court to join the chant group as an anger management alternative (after being arrested for DWI), Burt at the novel’s opening is widowed, estranged from both of his grown children, depressed, and has secretly purchased a one-way ticket to Germany. He has sold his wife’s Inn, and does not plan on returning to the US; rather, he hopes to search for his long missing son, Tristan, who is living in Prague.

As the novel unfolds, Burt’s past is slowly unraveled through flashbacks, while in the present day, he travels to Prague in search of his son. We learn how he met his wife, the crucial role his mother-in-law played in their relationship, of his wife’s excruciating death from cancer, and the circumstances that led to both Burt’s children disowning him entirely. Or, well, we sort of learn that. Burt is the very definition of an unreliable narrator, and seems unable to admit to himself in the retelling what it was about him and his lifestyle that caused his children to find him detestable, rather than merely eccentric and pitiable. Wodicka has stuffed this novel with fantastic, original characters – too many to recount here, in fact; each character, no matter how minor, is well drawn and compelling. But these characters spend the majority of the novel expressing their intense anger and frustration at a high volume, but with no conviction – I could never quite determine why everybody was so very pissed.

ASBW is original, interesting and entertaining, but ultimately, I found it tedious. It’s as if Wodicka came up with a fantastic hero, and then couldn’t quite figure out what to do with him – Burt keeps leading up to an insight he is ultimately unable or unwilling to express.