The Fencing Master

Rating:
Summary: Predates his much better other books
Review: Although this is the fourth of Pérez-Reverte's book to appear in English, it actually predates The Flanders Panel, The Club Dumas, and The Seville Communion. Originally published in 1988, this earlier book is an entirely historical thriller set in Madrid in 1868 amidst Spain's September Revolution, which apparently heralds the end of the monarchy as plots abound and the Bourbon Queen Isabella II is rapidly losing control and influence. One of the novel's flaws is that this period of turmoil is so chaotic and confusing that, although the reader knows the political machinations and plots will somehow prove integral, it's presented rather tediously and is hard to follow. On the whole, the prose is not nearly as rich and accomplished as in his other books.

The story follows an aging fencing instructor, Don Jamie, whose personal code of honor defines him as he attempts to live outside the "real" world around him. He is a rigid and exacting "maestro" to the few remaining pupils he has (guns have all but supplanted swords), and an amusingly old-fashioned expert to the wealthy nobleman he spars with every day. His only other human contact is with a group of yammering men who gather every day in a café to argue politics-and whose main function is to deliver the political background the reader requires to understand the rest of the story (although as indicated above, their arguments are not very effective in this).

Don Jamie is a portrait of a faded gentleman, with all his best experiences behind him, he almost revels in his self-constructed persona of a man of honor (and little else). When a beautiful woman comes to his door and demands instruction in the male-only art of fencing, it catapults him into a dark intrigue. It's another flaw of this early Pérez-Reverte work that readers will see what's coming almost from the moment she first steps onto the page, and only the details need to be revealed. Indeed, those who have reader his intricately plotted other books, will likely be disappointed by the relative simplicity of the story. What is perhaps more intriguing are the timeless questions raised about honor and its role in a world where honor means little. Don Jamie's disengagement from the world around him has tragic consequences, so is he a failure for clinging to tattered ideals, or should he be lauded for his commitment? In that sense, this book has a more moral center than any of Pérez-Reverte's others.

One other minor flaw is the lack of a fencing glossary or any diagrams. The terminology of fencing and its maneuvers are so integral to the story and so arcane to most modern readers that the publisher does both the book and the reader a major disservice by not providing any supplementary material. For those with access to a video store with a good selection of international titles, the book was made into a film in Spain called El Maestro de Escgrima.

Rating:
Summary: Top-flight adventure
Review: The antiquarian book trade, chess, art restoration, and an audacious hacker in the Pope's personal computer have all served as jumping-off points for Arturo Perez-Reverte's unusual intellectual thrillers. Earlier books by the Spanish journalist made the past part of the present, but with The Fencing Master, he enters the realm of historical suspense. Don Jaime Astarloa teaches fencing, a skill which is already quite outdated by the book's 1868 setting. He makes a modest living from a few dedicated clients, and plans on a quiet retirement in the near future. These plans take a turn when a beautiful young woman asks him to teach her the killing thrust for which he is known across Europe, and which he has taught to only a few favored pupils. Like many European writers, Perez-Reverte assumes a certain level of education among his readers. In this case, he stirs Don Jaime's dilemma in with the threatened overthrow of Queen Isabel, coffeehouse plotters and bigmouths, and the possible takeover of Madrid by revolutionaries. These unfamiliar historical events are handled with great clarity, as are the fencing terms and thrusts which are the fencing master's art. Perhaps because of the weight of the historical setting, The Fencing Master is a much less convoluted book than the earlier Seville Communion or The Club Dumas, with a less Dickensian cast of characters and fewer tricky twists and turns. This is a more character-driven book, but don't imagine you'll be disappointed-the ending is spectacular. (A film version of The Club Dumas is due to be released soon. It will be interesting to see what Hollywood makes out of a story that revolves around a manuscript by a 19th century writer of massive adventure stories!)

Rating:
Summary: Perez-Reverte's Mysterious, Beautiful and Evil Woman
Review: I have only read a couple of books by Arturo Perez-Reverte and have enjoyed them all, but have noticed that he has a fascination with the mysterious, demonically beautiful and evil woman.
I'm not providing a summary because it will spoil the story. Let the story unfold and let the author whisk you off your feet if you like murder mysteries with a period setting with perhaps a hint of the supernatural.

Rating:
Summary: Perez-Reverte Redux
Review: This novel by Arturo Perez-Reverte is something of a departure from his other books. Instead of a book set in modern times where the story connects to the past, this story actually takes place in the past, back in 1868 when the Spanish monarchy was on its last wobbly legs. The protagonist and title character is Don Jaime, a fencing master in Madrid who has had most of his life defined by the art (he insists on calling it that rather than a sport) and by his conception of honor, which was probably old-fashioned when he was a young man, and is now sadly outdated. He has killed men in fencing duels, and had to flee Spain as a result, living for years in exile in France (there's no explanation in the plot, at least as far as I could see, for his rehabilitation so that he could live in Spain again) and learning from a master fencer there.

In Madrid, he teaches fencing mostly to young boys whose parents are wealthy, well-born, and spoiled. He has several adult students, however, and one in particular, a dissolute libertine of a nobleman who enjoys the passtime of fencing. Don Jaime's only other social contacts consist of an unofficial social club who meet daily at a local restaurant and argue about politics, society, and so forth. These arguments provide (as one of the other reviewers pointed out) exposition for the political turmoil of 1868 Spain, which would otherwise be obscure to most.

Into Don Jaime's fading world of honor and dignity steps a woman. She is (of course) gorgeous and turns out to be intelligent and (naturally) a wonderful fencer also. Don Jaime takes her on as a pupil, at first reluctantly, and begins to simultaneously fall in love with her. But things go awry, the bodies begin to pile up, and Don Jaime, in the middle of things, is in some trouble because while he's very skilled with a foil, he's basically a babe in the woods when it comes to political intrigue.

This is a very good novel, full of layers and textures, as all of Perez-Reverte's novels are and do. The plot is a bit more obvious than in some of his other books, and has bits and pieces of plots from other detective novelist, borrowing from Agatha Christie and Mickey Spillane with no compunctions. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it

Rating:
Summary: It's ok...
Review: I read this book primarily because I am a fencing student and wanted to read something with a fencing theme. I have to say that I was never hooked and the plot was very predictable. Maybe mysteries are not my kind of genre. I thought the story took a long time to build up to the climax, and there was only one plot, weak at that. I am not sure why so many people gave it five stars. However, I will say that the main character was a real likeable old-fashioned type of guy and the end does pick up in pace. It ends with a bang, a predictable bang, but no less a bang.

Rating:
Summary: Hollywood - don't even think about messing this one up!
Review: Bear with me: I haven't even read this book, but I'm checking it out at my local library this week and can't wait to get started, it sounds great. How I wish I could read Spanish! (I'm praying it doesn't read silly in English). I only learned of Reverte today after finding out that Viggo Mortensen's next film will be "Captain Alatriste", another Reverte novel in pre-production in Spain and scheduled to start shooting late 2004 early 2005. I'm European, but have lived in the US for over a decade and I confess I had never heard of "Spain's most popular writer" - I'm truly embarassed! And I didn't even know that "The Ninth Gate" with Johnnie Depp is based on Reverte's novel "Club Dumas". I was also very surprised to learn that several of his books have been translated into English. Some of his titles do sound like they are of the "Name of the Rose"/"The Da Vinci Code" genre, but nothing wrong with that I suppose. However, I picked "The Fencing Master" because it sounds more character driven that plot driven - the others sound like the characters are fairly one or two dimensional. "The Fencing Master" sounds like it would make a fantastic film, but not the Hollywood kind! Hopefully someone in Spain will adapt it. Viggo Mortensen speaks fluent Spanish due to his childhood spent in Argentina with his Danish father and American mother and two brothers. How cool is that?
Oh, and maybe I have a one-track mind, but "the unstoppable thrust" sounds like a double entendre. Fencing is very sexy. Now that the divine Penelope Cruz has wised up and gotten tired of Tom Cruise, she could head back to her native Spain and play the fencing student in "The Fencing Master". And Spain have loads of superb actors who can play the Master himself. Of course, we could have Pedro Almadovar (did I mess up on the spelling there?) do his take on it and have the student and master be two gay men - that would be very cool!

Rating:
Summary: Another great one from Perez-Reverte
Review: I already had The Fencing Master on my shelf after having loved Pérez-Reverte's The Club Dumas (which is about antiquarian book dealers, and is much better than The Ninth Gate, its film adaptation--despite the presence of Johnny Depp). So, after finishing The Orchid Thief, I picked it up to read as well. It's a story of mystery and intrigue involving Don Jaime Astarloa, the local fencing master, who lives in a reclusive mansion and concerns himself with little other than his chosen occupation.

That is, until a mysterious woman--Doña Adele de Otero--asks him to teach her his secret, unstoppable fencing thrust. Don Jaime is distraught. Teach a woman a gentleman's sport? Never! But she turns out to be quite proficient and he gives in, but not before he falls in love with her.

This sets into action a chain of events that will end up with at least two people dead before it is all worked out. Pérez-Reverte is excellent at this sort of intrigue and I was glued to every page, even as I was absorbing the art of fencing.

Now, due to reading The Fencing Master, I want to learn how to fence.

Rating:
Summary: Really good read
Review: Although I am late to the party, this book has already been well reviewed many times, I still wanted to put in my two cents. It is a great little book. The two principle characters are fascinating, there is only one really large suspension of disbelief, and, at the end you care about what has happened. It is helpful to know something of fencing, after all that word in the title is why I bought the book, but not essential. The book is a character study in the finest sense of the phrase, not a fencing manual.

If you have a three hour plane ride - this is a perfect companion, unless you read slowly and find that you missed your stop.

Rating:
Summary: Don Jaime, where are you now?
Review: Arturo Perez-Reverte makes me wish I could read Spanish. That is - possibly - the only way his works could get any better. I've read all of his novels that have been translated into English, and "The Fencing Master" is the one that grabbed me by the lapels, so to speak, and dragged me into 19th-century Madrid. I must say I was not inclined to put up much resistance.

The story centers around Don Jaime, an antiquated fencing master, one of the last of a dying breed in an age where the pistol is gaining popularity as the means civilized men use to kill each other. Don Jaime lives his life according to a personal sense of reality, one that revolves entirely around the concept of honor. He realizes that he is a fossil, and that others may look at him as an aging dandy, but he does not mind. In fact, he hardly notices the outside world at all.

Until one day he is summoned to the house of a beautiful young woman, who demands to know the secret of the unstoppable thrust (Don Jaime's personal invention). And nothing in the fencing master's world is ever the same again. To give the story away would be criminal, but rest assured intrigue, politics, and mystery abound.

Mr. Perez-Reverte has done his usual prodigious amount of homework, and Madrid in the late 1860's springs to life from the page. I probably know even less about fencing than the average person (my information comes solely from period-piece movies), and the sword fights described kept me awake long into the night. Even week nights. The final bout is a masterpiece of suspense and beauty, an illustration of the age-old struggle between good and evil, hope and despair. My only niggling question is, how did the beautiful young woman acquire that enigmatic little scar at the corner of her mouth?

In short, a fantastic read.

Rating:
Summary: Fencing for Passion and Honor
Review: Here is a tale of an aging fencing master in mid-19th century Spain, a man out of sync with his times, barely aware of the political turmoil swirling around him or of the changing fashions and world in which he lives. Devoted to his arcane medieval art of swordsmanship, in an age of pistols and crass commerce, he lives in a museum-like apartment, sustaining himself by teaching fencing to a few less-than-promising students, the sons of the lesser nobility. Himself a commoner, he is the picture of the faded gentleman, a man more suited to the nobility than many of those who are his social superiors and to whom he must defer.

Without family or real friends (excluding a few local cafe acquaintances with whom he has little in common save loneliness and a sense of marginalization), the fencing master observes his own slow physical decline and is acutely aware that his best years are behind him . . . his future but one thing: the inevitable loss of bodily strength and skill with the blade (which, alone, sustains him materially and spiritually). At the end of his lonely trail lies a sojourn in a hostel for the aged, attended by the nuns, until he breathes his last.

Forseeing his own inevitable decline, he is no less aware that the art he espouses, no longer esteemed in the society in which he lives, will fade, like him, to a shadow of its former self, the more so as men of his ilk pass inexorably from the scene. And so, the old "maestro" devotes himself, in these fading days, to a book he is composing, a master work on the art he loves, and to developing the one thing that will, in his estimation, leave a real mark and make that work worthwhile, setting it apart from hundreds of other fencing treatises: the description of his hoped for grail, the "unstoppable thrust". But this, the ultimate fencing technique he longs to discover and document, eludes him, as it has throughout the preceding 30 years of his life.

One day, as he struggles with his few students and his manuscript, a mysterious young woman, new to Madrid, summmons him to her apartments and presents an unorthodox request . . . that the maestro take her, a woman, on as his student. Astonished and confused, as much by the alluring charm of his petitioner as by the inappropriateness of her request in a still conservative Spain, the maestro wavers . . . drawn to a youthful and mysterious beauty that awakens in him old dreams and remembrances. And yet he bridles at this proposed violation of those venerable traditions that are the one consoling constant in his life.

But the lady isn't quite what she seems and her purpose in soliciting the special lessons is hidden from him because of the confusion her raven black hair, smooth skin and brightly blue eyes stir in his heart. And so he is charmed enough to entertain the idea . . . a step that will have seismic repercussions on the small and carefully ordered world of his life.

This tale, of a noble soul on the edge of that abyss which awaits us all, is moving and perceptive. As the old maestro succumbs to a brief revival of his youthful spirit, he is sucked into a vortex of intrigue and murder and will face what will prove to be the most dangerous duel of his professional life. In this he loses and finds himself again.

Although the second half of the book bogged down a bit with the details of a somewhat cryptic correspondence, the power of the book's insight into a man's final and most deadly challenge more than offset this apparent loss of dramatic focus. I have read few books as good as this one. I almost feel honor bound, myself, to move a whole slew of other books I have reviewed here down a notch in my estimation just to make room for this one.

SWM