The Good Men

The best historical novels transport us to a world we've never known and teach us something important about the world we live in presently. This beautiful, resonant book does just that. As I read, I felt immersed in the richness of medieval times. The many aspects of life and land are vividly described. Perhaps more importantly, this book enriched my life by furthering my experience. I felt as if I had lived with its characters, and their experiences became mine. The Good Men transcends the genre of historical fiction. It is a classic that I will return to with gratitude and pleasure.

Charmaine Craig's The Good Men is at the top of my most cherished books list, and I can't recommend it more highly. I have not submitted an online review before, but I loved this book so much, I felt compelled to comment. The novel entirely drew me in from beginning to end, and I couldn't put it down once I started. I still find myself reflecting on the three generations of characters, feeling for them as if they were real to me. In particular, I was struck by the author's most honest portrayal of the human condition. Her characters were true to life -- complicated and imperfect, wanting goodness, but invariably stumbling along their interconnected paths. Through their struggles and triumphs, Craig cut straight to the core of what it means to be human, in all its pain and beauty. Though the story takes place in medieval France, its essence is absolutely timeless, and just as relevant today as ever. I am in awe of this talented, first time novelist, and can't wait to see what's next on her horizon.

I finished reading The Good Men two weeks ago and I can't get it out of my head, so I have to add my praise to the long list of glowing remarks already posted by other admirers of this beautiful book. I won't be surprised if this novel garners lots of awards. Ms. Craig's masterly prose, her eye for detail, and her ability to find emotional nuance in scene after scene, transported me to another place and time, where her characters struggle, each in their own way, with how to live life. Like in all great works of literature, the characters are often flawed, but through Craig's compassionate telling, each takes on a kind of dignity and human grace, right down to the fallen priest, Pierre Clergue, whose final act (which I won't give away) is so right and momentous, that it gives reason and meaning to his life in its very last seconds. My book club loved this book too, and I've been recommending it to everyone.

Charmaine Craig has recreated the world of medieval France, a time when a peasant's perception of theology could end him up to his chin in flaming cordwood. What is especially subtle and honest about the book is that it admits that spiritual doubt is not always beneficial--contrary to our contemporary values--nor is heresy necessarily more attractive than orthodoxy. In a Spielberg version, the heretics would be good and right, unfairly persecuted, and the Church presented as bad, corrupt and doctrinally reprehensible. But in the case of the Good Men, as presented in this meticulously researched novel, the heretics are even worse than the church, which at least holds that God created the world and that life and creation are good. Yet who can stop them, but the inquisition? Religion, power politics and personal vengeance all play a part in the outcome. The central character of the book, the village priest, is drawn with a similar complexity and realism. A man both capable of deep love and shocking heartlessness, spiritual longing and the basest betrayal, his conflicts form the axes upon which the book turns. I believed the world of The Good Men in way I would not have a more simplistic treatment of the same period. Anyone who thinks that the lives of common country people were better, safer or more peaceful in the past should read Craig's elegant, suspenseful novel.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK!!! This is one of the best novels I've read in the last five years, without question. The Time Magazine review called Ms. Craig the real deal, and it wasn't kidding. From the very first page, I was hooked, and I had to put my life on hold for two days to finish the book. This isn't an ordinary historical novel---this is literature, at the level of Flaubert, Hugo, Tolstoy. All the characters are complex and flawed and striving---just like people are in real life, and Craig writes about them with empathy and compassion. But what I loved the most about this novel was the wisdom it offers on life, and how Craig isn't afraid to probe the deeper questions about what it means to be alive and to try to live a moral life while still living in the material world. And the last part of the book had me crying all over the pages. I won't give it away, but the ending was transcendant.