ROGER NORMAN
Roger
Norman
(born 1948) is an English novelist living in Turkey. He was educated at
Sherborne
School and Cambridge University. He founded Booklore, The Sherborne
Bookshop,
and in the course of his life he has lived and worked in Greece as an
olive
farmer, been features Editor of the English-language Turkish Daily News
in Ankara,
taught in several universities, and served as a consultant on missions
for
several United Nations agencies examining agriculture and economic
development.
His fiction continues the English tradition begun by John Masefield and
John
Cowper Powys, in which an undercurrent of supernatural fantasy or even
mildly occult
events interacts with characters in a modern British setting.
(Visit
Roger
Norman's website here).
October 2012:
Publication
of SHADOWBORNE and paperback editions of ALBION'S DREAM and RED DIE.
In
the library of Sherborne School is a 16th century manuscript, The Book Of Shadowborne, giving a
history of Sherborne which suggests an alternative origin for the
town’s name, a
different reason for Aldhelm’s appointment as bishop and a new
explanation for
the siting of the Bishop’s palace. Grindlay, the school librarian, is
impressed
by age of  the ms. and by its apparent
author, the Abbess of
Shaftesbury. He
believes the signature to be false – the ideas are hardly those of the
Head of
a powerful religious house – but is struck by a curious intelligence in
the
writing.
Among
Grindlay’s colleagues is Austin Kelynack, member of the X-Club, where
he rubs
shoulders with Huxley and Wallace and other leading lights of the new
agnosticism. Kelynack’s ambition is an Oxford fellowship and the book
he thinks
will win it for him is a new History of
England, without the church. In Kelynack’s
version, the church
represents a distraction to the real source of the nation’s greatness,
a Darwinian
aristocracy of talent, whose origins he traces to the Indo-European
tribes who
brought to the island bronze weapons and iron implements and whose
presence is
indicated by the amber in their burial mounds. According
to local legend, such a mound was
flattened by the builders of the Bishop’s palace and Kelynack decides
on an
excavation beneath the ruined keep.
The
party of excavators includes Timmins, ex-pugilist, a gifted Sherborne
boy
called Louis Yeoman, the former wife of the Headmaster, Isadora
Magdalensky, an
elegant and unpredictable Russian woman, and her maid Françoise. A
house is
rented in Castleton, local labourers are hired to dig, and on the first
day,
the burnt remnants of a young woman are found. Medieval, says Kelynack,
but why
there, under the Tower Keep? The deeper they dig, the more surprising
the finds
… and the more tense the relations between the excavators.
The
Book Of Shadowborne contains an oddly
coherent explanation for these matters
and a sinister premonition of the events that follow, but the Sherborne
Constable has an alternative version which, if true, would send Isadora
to the
gallows.
Shadowborne
full jacket layout.
Price: £14.99 |
Hardback | ISBN-13: 978-1-908274-18-2
| Page
Extent: 272 | Publication Date: 22 October 2012
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Read a review of SHADOWBORNE by Simon Rawlence at the bottom of this page
Roger
Norman ALBION'S DREAM
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| Listen to Chapter One of SHADOWBORNE by Roger Norman (Please click on the second button on the left at the bottom; to pause or stop the recording click the same button.) | |
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ALBION'S
DREAM
Edward
Yeoman and
his cousin John Hadley begin to play an ancient, handmade game called
Albion's
Dream without realizing, at first, that events they set in motion on
the board
are also transpiring, in parallel, in real life. The first clue comes
when
Edward notices that faces on the game cards resemble actual people,
particularly his tyrannical headmaster, Tyson. Still, both boys feel
compelled
to play on. When the game falls into the hands of Tyson and the
unfortunately
named Dr. Fell, the boys are accused of occult practices and threatened
with
expulsion. In a riveting denouement, Edward is proven innocent and
Tyson is
replaced--exactly the outcome for which the boys had played. Although
the
author clearly sets forth the struggle between good and evil, his best
storytelling is in the gray areas between such extremes: Edward's
capacity for
the dark arises from ordinary boyish wishes. Moving handily between
board
action and school scenes, Norman masterfully manipulates a large number
of
characters, locations, and ideas.
Price:
£9.99 | Paperback | ISBN-13: 978-1-908274-19-9
| Page Extent: 240 | Publication Date: 19 October 2012
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ALBION'S DREAM
by ROGER NORMAN |
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 RED
DIE
In
October 1916,
Lance-Corporal Jack Yeoman arrives back in England from the trenches of
the
Western Front. Guided in his movements by a pair of unusual dice he
carries
with him, he returns to his home in deepest Dorset and arranges a
secret
rendezvous with his adoptive sister Maggie at a village pub. But his
recklessness in word and deed soon land him in trouble and he finds
himself a
hunted man. His war-wounded brother, an embittered stone-builder, the
vindictive local squire, and a sinister priest – all have their reasons
for
pursuing Jack as he flees deeper into the heart of his native land and
deeper
into the mystery that envelops him.
Several others are drawn into his sphere through the roll of the dice,
some of
whom are more than they seem. But there are other forces at work in
this
haunting tale of reality and illusion, of the living and the dead, a
tale of
natural potions and supernatural powers in which the threads of human
destiny unravel
and intertwine. As Jack seeks to come to terms with his conflicting
loyalties
and beliefs, with the death of his father, with his love for Maggie,
events
build to their violent climax on All Hallow's Eve on Giant Hill at
Cerne Abbas.
RED
DIE is
a haunting tale of reality and illusion, of the
living and the dead, a tale of natural potions and supernatural powers
in which
the threads of human destiny unravel and intertwine.
Price:
£9.99 | Paperback | ISBN-13: 978-1-908274-20-5
| Page Extent: 240 | Publication Date: 19 October 2012
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RED DIE
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To read more about RED DIE please click here.
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SHADOWBORNE
A review by Simon Rawlence
Roger
Norman has led an expat life in Mediterranean countries and I always imagine
him writing at a table outside in the dappled shade of a large plane tree, or a
vine-covered bower with a sun-hazed Aegean in the distance. But the landscape
of his literary imagination, as he writes in the far away sunshine, is a
beautiful and particular corner of Dorset.
He
describes his scenes well and effortlessly conjures atmosphere, suspense and
drama from the streets and buildings of a North Dorset town: “Sunday evening in
September and it was raining a cold pelting rain that made puddles under
doorways, found the chinks in old stone, streamed wantonly down window-panes
and danced wickedly on leaded roofs.“ Thus opens Shadowborne his latest novel about the earlier origins and
mysteries of Sherborne in North Dorset.
The story
is set in the mid-Victorian period in a community within a community, Sherborne
School, and the first part takes place within its bounds and observes the school
rules. The novel builds well through the characters gradually introduced into
school life; the development so measured and well constructed that the reader
is forgiven for imagining himself at some moments on the threshold of a
nineteenth century classic. Indeed, I tried to identify Sherborne in one of the
maps of West Barsetshire. It is Hardy country too.
A sample
of some of the cast:
“The
Bishop knew what meekness was, he knew its virtues, but he did not consider it
necessary for himself.”
“He had
swelled and settled like a cork stopper in a wine barrel” of Custos, the school
porter.
“There
was not an ounce of fat on his body and something in his bearing hinted that
there would never be “
This last
describes Kelynack, the new history master. Kelynack and Louis Yeoman, a sixth
former and the book’s hero, are two of the less conventional characters united
by their attraction to Isadora the beautiful Russian and ill-matched wife of
the new Headmaster. These three end up flouting all the rules.
For me it
is a Coming of Age book. Louis is a senior boy on the edge of adulthood, with
the betrayals, deceits, offers and advances that await him.
It is the
last piece in a trilogy of the Yeoman family. The original narrative was Albion’s Dream and was a delightful
adventure for 12 year olds and young at heart adults set in a Dorset
prep-school in the 1950’s. This was followed by a prequel, Red Die, set in 1916 and Shadowborne,
this latest prequel, is set in 1877.
The three
books all share a signature atmosphere that the reader easily slips into. This is
achieved successfully by the strong sense of place, the Dorset countryside, the
time/space warps around the Caer Sidhs, which are such dominant features of
that landscape, and the vortices of ancient mysticism that are there accessed.
Shadowborne delivers the
necessary accessories to the trilogy and the signature atmosphere of local myth
and a deeper and much older and richer vein of mysticism.
This vein
must necessarily be only alluded to as to concretize would be to smash the
bubble of mystery. Shadowborne is
rich in these allusions, the Darwinian debate, the work of Ibn Khaldun, the
ancient trade in amber and the Aryan lineage. For a while the reader expects
that all will be neatly revealed but the impulsive Kelynack cannot be relied on
and the thread is destroyed with him and we are left more curious.
Louis is
not the only one left disorientated by the climactic events that occur, but it
is his story and trauma that we follow. His recovery and sense of perspective
is restored through the mediation of one of those exceptional persons who have
never lost their connection to older times, Mrs Biffen:
“In her
oversize boots, Jersey-knit fisherman’s jacket and corduroy trousers, she was
not womanly, nor maidenly nor old maidish, neither spinsterish nor teacherly,
by no means elegant yet not inelegant … She belonged, Louis thought, to a
different category of women raised in different climes or in an age when there
were more women of this kind. A mate for Puck, a Queen for Oberon.”
Restored
in body and mind, Louis finds space for self-reflection and an act of generosity
and subterfuge that leads to the book ending on a gentler and more intimate
note. Louis has come of age!
May 2013
|
Roger
Norman appeared at The Eastbury Hotel as part of The
Sherborne Literary Festival on Sunday, 21
October, 12.30-2.00.
The Event SOLD OUT!
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From CORNUCOPIA Magazine:
Farewell to the Guerrilla Grandee
In this article, Roger
Norman salutes the incomparable style and spirit of the writer Patrick
Leigh
Fermor, whose masterpiece was 40 years in the making (link
will open in a
new window):
http://www.cornucopia.net/magazine/articles/farewell-to-the-guerrilla-grandee/
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