Anecdotes of Destiny & Ehrengard Book

An amusing though wildly varying in quality collection of deliberately old-fashioned stories that sometimes have tinges of magical realism.

Glancing over the other reviews, I have no doubt that some well-intentioned teacher forced many students to review one story from this version of this book, as about 90% of the reviews begin with some variation of, 'I was deeply saddened to only have the opportunity to read The Immortal Story in this book, but it was alright I guess.' Well, I suppose I applaud the teacher for trying something new to engage students and certainly everyone's opinions and reviews are valid, but when the majority of a book's reviews seem to come from people being forced to write a review based on less than a quarter of the book, it somehow seems counterproductive and I'm glad I haven't seen this in any other books here yet.

Anyway, there are two gems here. Babette's Feast is the obvious one, and the reason I read the book. It was wonderful. In it, two elderly, pious and austere Scandinavian sisters take in a refugee French cook who eventually wants to cook a feast for them and their acquaintances.

The second is the tale the aforementioned teacher assigned, The Immortal Story. A wealthy and crotchety dying businessman living in China decides to get his Jewish employee/assistant to help him recreate and make real the only story he's ever heard, which involves finding both a stud of a sailor and a beautiful woman to participate.

The Diver is also a great little story (being shorter than the above two), though the ending left a bit to be desired. It concerns a young Islamic scholar who with great enthusiasm decides he wants to fly and sets to building wings to allow him to do so, though some of the older scholars are not so keen on his plans. I didn't care for [spoiler]the talking sea creature at the end, though since that part is told as a story by the character I suppose it's possible that he could have only made it up.[end spoiler]

Both Tempests and The Ring were lacklustre. Tempests involves a travelling drama troupe in Scandinavia doing Shakespeare's The Tempest, including a girl who has a missing sailor from Scotland for a father. When an actual raging tempest intervenes their ship one night, it sets off a series of events that especially dramatically changes the girl's life. The Ring is a very short story about the dangers of a newly-married girl walking home alone one day.

Ehrengard, the novella that was tacked on to the end of the collection Anecdotes of Destiny to form this book, was good. It began slowly and I thought I wouldn't like it. It defines itself in three parts and by the middle of the second part was when I really began enjoying it. It is set in a small Germanic area that was at the time its own kingdom. The ruling family are desperate for their only son to marry and have an heir to prevent their less savoury relatives from taking over after him. They enlist the help of a trusted older artist at their royal court, and he succeeds in making a match for the boy, though everything doesn't go quite as planned. Eventually, Ehrengard enters the picture, the only daughter in a military family that includes five brothers. She is wholly trustworthy and without blemish and so is enlisted in a secondary role to help with the royal family's problems and preserve their good name. I particularly liked this quote- 'For there is a strange quality about a secret: it smells of secrecy. You may be far from getting the true nature of the secret itself, you might even, had it been told you, be highly skeptical and incredulous of it'yet you will feel certain that a secret there be.'

In book order:
The Diver- 4 stars
Babette's Feast- 5 stars
Tempests- 2 stars
The Immortal Story- 5 stars
The Ring- 2 stars
Ehrengard- 3 stars