The Oracle by Valerio Manfredi
October 24th 2006 02:08
Valerio Manfredi's The Oracle
Valerio Manfredi came into prominence with his Alexander novels which, for me at least, were unreadable. There's something with Alexander though; even Mary Renault foundered on him. So, Manfredi has joined the new thriller bandwagon and produced The Oracle.
The action starts in Greece when the military is taking over the universities. Heleni is the outspoken student leader who is in love with Claudio and they are part of a group of friends including Norman and Michel. When Heleni is killed and the friends betray her, you know you're being set up for I know what you did last summer kind of thing. Their fate is also tied up with a mysterious Mycenaean find which supposedly depicts the last voyage of Ulysses.
Flash forward to 10 years when Michel is a professor in the university. One by one the old players are being killed in a way that suggests a connection to mystic Greek rite. Michel and Norman, newly reunited, have to solve the mystery before they are made targets of vengeance too.
Like all the novels of its kind, it is sporadically interesting only when it talks about bygone eras and exotic rituals. Manfredi, fortunately, is a scholar in ancient Greece and what he has to offer is make for a good reading. Otherwise, plotting is slipshod and writing even worse.
Or maybe because I have read so many of these kind of novels in the last two months that I am so cruel with this one. Like The Geographer's Library, Labyrinth and their ilk, this one too has at its centre the issue of immortality. Only the immortal here is Ulysses who has survived the tortures Homer had planned for him in The Odyssey and here has become the punisher.
And Manfredi uses this immortal punisher, with just the right touch of violence (neither less nor more), to punish all those evil military colonels and foreign diplomats (for once just British not American) who had stopped the glorious revolution in the university, in its tracks.
| 61 |
| Vote |
