Green Darkness

Book No: 32
Title: Green Darkness
Author: Anya Seton
Genre: Fiction- Historical/Paranormal
Completed: 6/29/09
No. of Pages: 621
Rating: 3.5/5***

Green Darkness was one of my all time favorite books having read it about 30 years ago. This year I chose to do a re-read, something I rarely ever do; now I know why it’s not a good idea to mess with memories.

According to my copy, an original 1972 copy, this is a story of a great love that spans from 16th century to the present day and a brilliant reconstruction of the Tudor period; only part of that is true.

Green Darkness mixes a story of reincarnation and its roots in a love story from 500 years earlier. The problem for me this time around is I didn’t find the love story all that interesting.

Celia and Richard Marsdon are recent newlyweds and have come to Richard’s family ancestral home; soon the two are acting very differently to each other and during a weekend house party Celia collapses and is hospitalized. While Celia slips deeper and deeper into a catatonic state, one of her guests, Dr. Ankanada, very familiar with past life regression believes this is the only way to help Celia and so we journey back in time to the story of Celia Bohun and Father Steven Marsdon.

The bulk of this story takes place 1552 and 1559, a time of huge upheaval in English history, with the succession of three monarchs, Edward I, Mary and Elizabeth I. The country goes from Protestant to Catholic and back to Protestant in that short time frame. The affect on the ‘regular’ people as well as the nobles and churches is depicted very well and I love the attention to historical detail, much better than some of the more recent historical fiction of this time period I have read. This was without doubt the best part of the book. The problem is the love story between the monk Steven and Celia, a poorer relation to Sir Anthony Browne of Cowdray castle. Celia lives here with her aunt and Steven is the house priest, living in hiding at the start of their story. For being what is the entire lynchpin of this story there was actually very little to the romance and I actually didn’t much care for the two star crossed lovers. Steven was often too sanctimonious and Celia was a selfish and foolish young girl, I felt no connection to either of them. After the ending of their story we are back to the present (1968 in the book) and the resolution of Celia and Richard’s story, which was rather abrupt and a little too perfect.

While I enjoyed the writing, I found the book a little too long, and some of the most important elements of the story seem to happen so fast and are over with in just a few paragraphs. This is not the great love story I remembered, it was just average and ultimately brings the overall rating down. So here is my advice: be careful when going back to an old well loved book, time may change your perspective and tarnish a memory.