Heresy

Giordano Bruno,  friar, philosopher, and the protagonist of Heresy, was persecuted by the Inquisition at the end of the sixteenth century for preaching the infinity of the universe and its heliocentric model, preceding even the famous Galileo. It is said that his last speech, when he was finally captured by the Inquisition in 1600 and sentenced to death for heresy, was “Perhaps you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it”. His well-documented history serves as the basis for the making of a thriller that, despite having an interesting historical setting, fails to bring together the elements that form its various plotlines.

The story of Heresy focuses on a very specific point in the life of Giordano Bruno, telling his voyage in 1583 to Oxford, on the pretext of participating in a debate on Copernicus. Based on this event, the author S. J. Parris – the pseudonym of the English journalist Stephanie Merritt – uses as the main argument for the narrative the fact that the friar has ulterior motives: the search for a lost manuscript of the Egyptian priest, Hermes Trismegistus, while acting as a spy for the English intelligence service, seeking Catholics who might be plotting against the Protestant Queen Elizabeth. However, upon arriving in Oxford, Giordano finds himself trapped in a web of mysterious murders that he feels the urgency of solving.

By this brief synopsis, it is already possible to verify the enormous amount of goals that the protagonist has to reach and, consequently, the great number of subplots that they open. Tying to tie all these stories was probably the biggest challenge that the author had to face, and, unfortunately, that’s exactly the point where most of the novel’s shortcomings are found.

A murder plot, for example, usually begins with the murder for obvious reasons: the writers present the readers with the kind of story that they want to tell from the get-go and immediately capture their attention in just one move. However, since she takes too long to develop the historical background of the story – some references are even unnecessary, such as the vaunted presence of a Polish prince on his trip to Oxford – Paris pushes her first murder farther away from the beginning.

Therefore, when it finally happens, the notion that the story is about to become a Sherlock Holmes-style mystery causes an uncomfortable surprise to the unsuspecting reader, and irritation to the ones that already know about the book, since they apparently lost one hour of their life with something that does not matter to the story.

But it turns out that the murders also don’t become the main point of Heresy. Whilst Giordano investigates them – more out of morbid curiosity and lack of what to do in Oxford than for any particular reason – the novel spends equal time in the search for the Hermes’ manuscript and in the fomentation of conspiracy theories inside the English University. And since the switch between these subplots is seldom carried out in a more sophisticated way than casting the protagonist from one place to the other by coincidences randomly positioned in the narrative, this lack of focus brings negative consequences to the pacing of the novel, since the readers’ attention is constantly being diverted from several distinct goals, preventing them from truly caring about any of them.

However, the author succeeds in building the suspenseful atmosphere of the book, which is always eerie and claustrophobic, even if she uses some basic tricks such as the endless presence of rain and mist. Her writing style is also simple and assumes an objective tone in descriptions and dialogues – a choice that, while not harming the book in any way, also doesn’t do it any favors.

As for the characters in Heresy, the secondary ones can hardly be classified as memorable, being the caricatures typical of suspense stories that appear to be much less than they really are, like 90% of the Oxford professors. The only one who really stands out, apart from the one who could be considered the “villain,” is John Underhill, who is impacted more heavily by the events and demonstrates a touching conflict between his fragile personality and the position of power that he needs so much to maintain.

Regarding the protagonist, Giordano Bruno was a famous theologian for his theories on the universe, which can be roughly explained by focusing on two basic points: that the earth would not be the center of our galaxy, but the sun, and that the universe would be infinite, containing infinite planets, suns, and galaxies, many possibly inhabited. However, Giordano as a character in Heresy barely touches on these subjects. With the book being narrated in the first person, the author gives herself a perfect instrument to construct reflections on these theories and how the character came to them, but practically nothing is developed. Even at the debate with the dean of Oxford, so much highlighted at the beginning of the book, the author misses the mark by choosing not to describe it, with the terrible excuse of not wanting to annoy the reader with useless data.

In addition, Parris also misses the opportunity of exploring one of the most promising ironies in the story: the fact that the Giordano is going to be persecuted by the Inquisition and is, nonetheless, taking on the role of an informer who will bring people to their death for their religious convictions. This blatant contradiction might have led to an intriguing internal conflict in the character, but it is only limited to a slight mention at the end of the novel. All these wasted opportunities, therefore, inevitably end up sabotaging what could distance Giordano from other shallow protagonists of similar books.

Parris, however, fares better in exploring another element of first-person narration: ambiguity. Although the revelation of the killer’s identity is far from surprising or even exciting – actually going in the opposite direction, proving that the murders were nothing more than a subplot and a too time-consuming distraction – the book’s true climax is ultimately effective in developing both the antagonist and Giordano by giving the readers only the protagonist’s point of view, reminding them that it may not be true. In this way, and due to the serious consequences of the actions of the friar, the author opens possibilities of interpretation large enough to transform Giordano into his own tormentor and the true villain of the book.

The climax of Heresy its best part by far, delivering even some basic religious criticisms (“Your tolerance would destroy in twenty days what twenty years of suffering has only served to strengthen”) that the whole book could and should have had from the beginning. The end is also proof that it’s actually good for the reader to know the fate of Giordano beforehand, as the references to his death at the stake are all over the place.

Heresy is a historical thriller with a great, complex premise. Its problem, however, lies in its failure to unite all its subplots, which results in a story with severe problems of focus and pacing.

December 05, 2018.

Originally published in Portuguese on March 11, 2015.