I feel sure John Boyne's latest novel A Traveller At The Gates of  Wisdom will be one that draws mixed reviews.   It won't surprise me if it splits readers into two camps - those who love the genius of it and those who just don't get it.   Alas I found myself in the latter category, stubbornly determined to finish it because, after all it was John Boyne, but flailing and not exactly enjoying it.    In this respect it reminded me of Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders.     Reviewers either loved or loathed that one and I suspect this will be a bit the same.     Make no mistake, the writing was clever but too avant-garde for my liking. 

This story spans 2000 or so years and each chapter is set in a different country and is populated by different characters.     I made copious notes and initially they were all about one of two things.    Either they were about how confused I was by the changing names and places but seemingly similar/continuing storyline.   Or they were notes about the real characters extracted from the pages of history.    Some of the big names from the past couple of milleniums, and many of the lesser known ones, were incorporated as bit characters in an ever changing but never changing story.   In that way this book was like a Where's Wally for History buffs.

If there was a message to be taken from the novel, and I'm pretty certain there was, I'd have to say it was about the universality of stuff - all the things that go on in families and communities - they seem not to change regardless of time and place.  It was a whole book of same, same but different.    Same prejudices and phobias (thinking here of sexism and homophobia).   Same way religious beliefs guided behaviours even though the religious beliefs themselves were many and varied.    Same human imperfections  on display -  narcissism and vengeance to name just a couple.  
 

When I'm reading I love to acquaint myself with a character and to engage myself in their story.  I shall never forget Cyril Avery nor Maurice Swift, a couple of beloved/despised Boyne characters from other books.     Alas I couldn't tell you the name of a single character from this novel.    To enable me to finish the book I found a reading strategy I've never previously employed (and hope not to again lol).   This was to completely disregard names, and places and dates and just pretend I was reading one mans story.           It worked in a fashion and allowed me to go with the flow but it was challenging and not my favourite way of reading.     Which is not to say it wont work for you,    I encourage you to try it for yourself.   Personally  I'll be eager to see how other readers enjoy this title.

My thanks to the publisher Transworld and Netgalley for offering me the opportunity of reading this novel by a much loved author.    I may not have loved this particular title but am 100% certain it will not be my last John Boyne novel.

A Traveller at the gates of wisdom by John Boyne is an epic tale through time, places, and space about a man, is brother and his sister and parents. Each chapter is a different time and place. The same family but their names have been changed to go with the scene each chapter is set. The main protagonist is also the narrator who tells us of his life from one continent to the other. Telling us about his adventures and who he meets along the way. The time frame of this story is from AD until 2080.
This is the first book of John Boyne that I have read, and I have seen the rave reviews for his other books I had to request this. I so glad I did. This book is beautifully written, and I thought very cleverly written too. Although at first, it took me a while to realise what was going on but when it did it flowed beautifully from one chapter to another. I really enjoyed this novel but was just disappointed at the last few chapters, when it talked about Donald Trump becoming the President.
I thank NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book. After reading this I am sure to look out for the other books from this author

I loved John Boyne's "History of Loneliness" so started into this book without reading a review or description about it. So I was confused when Floriana became Flavius in the next chapter and started to realise that the story had jumped a few years and to a new location (so adapted names). I think that John Boyne is a great writer but I found the pace of change in this book a bit too hectic for me, I'd just be getting used to the story continuing in say, an ancient Irish monastery, when it would jump to a Tibetan one after only a few pages and then to perhaps, Iceland or Indonesia. I started to find this structure quite irritating, the pace of the core story also started to slow about halfway in and I found myself not caring anymore whether the protagonist caught up with his nemisis. I like the premise if "everything changes, everything stays the same" through time but I'd like to have lingered a bit longer in most locations and time periods before a jump.

What an amazing book! At first I was a little confused but within the first few chapters I realised what the author was doing and from then on I was excited to find out how he was going to deal with moving through time and places. It is done brilliantly and I love the way it is intermingled with history. I was disappointed that the last few chapters jumped from 1961 to 2016 and then to the future in 2080. It was almost as though the author had run out of ideas and was wanting to relate to his own political and social views. His picture of Donald Trump was so accurate – but I must admit to holding much the same views as the author on that particular person.

The whole concept of the book was interesting and very cleverly worked through and I really enjoyed reading it. It has awakened my joy in reading which I seemed to have lost over the past year.

I would certainly recommend this book so much that I think I will buy it for my brother’s significant birthday this year. As a former political journalist I am sure he will enjoy it.

'Do your memories never surprise you? Do you not dream of the past and the future and recognise both with equal clarity?'

John Boyne's new novel is a sweeping epic, taking what is basically a simple story line and setting it across time and space with astonishing ambition. It is one man's story, starting with his birth in AD1 and ending with his time on a space station in the year 2080. In essence it is a revenge story, a pursuit driven by loss and anguish, but with each chapter the story moves forward in time, the characters' names change, and incidents from previous chapters are slightly re-written. It is bold and literate and it works.

While the names change, they always start with the same letter; each moment in time that we drop in to is set against real events and often populated by 'real' people - Attila the Hun, Michelangelo, William Shakespeare and, yes, Donald Trump, for example. Other characters re-appear under different guises, one of the most important being the blind woman, in one chapter called Tiresia, who says to our (unnamed) narrator at one point: 'There are many lives ahead of you yet, son of Manray. I see them all. One day, you will live among the stars.' There is a sense of destiny, of fate - and, again, this focus on the stars keeps recurring in the book.

Our narrator is one man, and many men; he is an Everyman, whose story is played out again and again throughout human history. Once you get into the flow of the book, and ably guided by Boyne's wonderful prose, this will beguile you and challenge you. You have to pay attention to small details, motifs and names that repeat like a musical score (Spearthrower Owl, for example, is a central concept), but just go with it and enjoy the journey. The 'revenge' story actually ends some time before the end of the book, which then moves into the present and future (with Boyne merrily taking swipes at book critics and the aforementioned Donald J. Trump) and ends with a sort of eco-warning. Whilst it didn't detract from the overall power of the book, I'm not sure these last 80 pages or so had quite the same impact, the same sense of immediacy and humanity, than what had come before.

Ambitious is scope, this could easily have been a muddle, but Boyne keeps control of his narrative with mastery and skill. It is similar in feel to a David Mitchell novel, perhaps, and should appeal to fans of his. But it truly stands on its own, and its sweeping story arc is truly a feat of modern storytelling. Epic and human, this will definitely be one of my top books of 2020.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

It took me a couple of very confusing chapters to understand what was going on. It's the story of a man, his brother and sister, and parents starting back in AD1 where his parents are named Martinis and Floriana. In the second chapter you have moved to Turkey in AD41 where is parents are now called Merek and Folami. As you move through each chapter you move from country to country and forward in time until you travel through present day and to the future. Each time the names change in keeping with the time and country but keeping the same initial letter. When you have understood this, the writing is brilliant, taking you through a story with slight changes as befit the time and place, but with a common thread.

The narrator is an artist, and stays with his family, whilst his brother is more bloodthirsty and leaves home to follow adventures. The artistry changes again dependant on the time and place - carving statues, painting, woodwork, book binding to name but a few, however some terrible things happen to him, and he feels he has to avenge these.

This would have had an easy 5 stars except for the fact that I really hated the last few chapters. The more current days, and the future. I felt these were self indulgent politicising and completely unnecessary - spoiling my enjoyment of the whole book. The final chapter was a huge disappointment and an author of his standing could have done so much better to pull the book together at the end. A real shame.

This was a fascinating read. Each chapter progresses a little further in time, yet still continues the thread of the story. The author died this by picking up universal themes, like sibling tensions, parents being disappointed in a sons career, women being forced into marriage, slavery, art and more. Each chapter moves to a completely different place on earth, and the character names change slightly, but the writing is skillful and I didn't get lost! To begin with, it seems that the stories are coincidental and the characters unrelated, but then it is implied that the same person is being reincarnated, and he begins to remember his past lives through his art. I thoroughly enjoyed it, up until the very last two chapters, set in 2016 and 2080, which seemed stereotypical and unbelievable.

3.5 stars. John Boyne has written an ambitious novel, starting in AD1 and ending in 2080, set in approximately 50 different countries, and focusing on a character and his family who are reincarnated in these diverse times and places. Their fates seem to be predetermined and because society does not change much over the years, the first half of the book felt a bit repetitive.

As always, John Boyne’s writing is amazing, and I started feeling more connected as we moved to times and events more familiar to me. At the same time the story line became more focused and I really started enjoying the experience. I especially loved the spotlight on art throughout history in all its different forms. The main character’s flashbacks reminded me a bit of Carl Jung’s theory of collective unconsciousness.

Unfortunately, the last few chapters felt disconnected to the rest of the book, more like the author wanted to share his opinions about 1) authors being judged as appropriating other people’s experiences, 2) Donald Trump and the people that voted for him and 3) gender roles, none of which I have an issue with, but not a natural fit with the rest of the book.

In summary, I enjoyed this novel and if you are a fan of this author’s writing I definitely recommend it, but if you’ve not read anything by him before rather start with The Heart's Invisible Furies, one of the best books I’ve read.

I started reading this novel without having read the blurb. I got startled from the very beginning, thinking it’d be a Jesus/Christian parable, reinterpretation etc. , soon to realise that it wasn’t. Phew. It was slightly confusing in the beginning, but I soon got the gist of it. Our unnamed hero traverses time and countries, the novel spans over two millennia. I was pleasantly surprised to see a chapter on Romania, with accurate names and historical context for that era. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to charm me and keep me engaged. I found myself avoiding getting back to it, never a good sign. I can imagine that Boyne used this device to show that people are the same, they have similar struggles, aspirations for love, safety, health, happiness etc. Jumping through time, we also get to see how society progresses, painfully slow, when it comes to many aspects such as women’s rights, war, tribalism etc. Certain well known historical figures make an appearance. <I>A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom</I> reminded me of Matt Haig’s <I>How to Stop Time</i>. Unfortunately, while it preached to my convictions, I wasn’t charmed by this novel, it was a bit too obvious for my liking and I could feel Boyne’s presence throughout, which prevented my full immersion into the text, so I’m sorry to say, I ended up just going with the flow, without actually caring for our main character.

While this novel wasn’t my cup of coffee, I’m looking forward to reading Boyne’s next project.

This book took me longer than usual to read and, for a long time, I thought that was a good thing. I was really into it. I was taking my time, absorbing it, making notes, researching things that piqued my interest. As a huge 5-star-level fan of Boyne's The Heart's Invisible Furies and A Ladder to the Sky, I had been so excited for A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom. But, somewhere in the later chapters, it lost me.

As others will tell you, it starts out a little confusing, but it very quickly begins to make sense. I can help you out spoiler-free. The story starts in Palestine in AD 1 with King Herod's ordered infanticide and then jumps to Turkey, AD 41, and then Romania, AD 105. This is how the story progresses, moving through countries all across the world and throughout time. An unnamed narrator tells his life story, from growing up with his brothers and his father's two wives to his several marriages and a quest for revenge.

It is initially confusing because the story continues undisturbed, no time seeming to have passed even though we have skipped fifty or a hundred years and moved thousands of miles across the globe. Minor details change, such as local religions, mythologies and rulers, but much stays the same. I was really fascinated by this in the beginning. I'm really interested in world history, so I found it very compelling when we visited all this history and culture throughout the last millennium.

I also took the major theme to be one of universality-- how humans in different times and places have more in common than they do not; how they all love and fear and fail. The details are different, but we are all the same. Regardless of whether you believe it or not, it's an appealing idea.

There was so much I learned from A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom, and I have several things bookmarked to research further. I should point out that this book digs into some of the nastier aspects of history, which includes rape and child abuse. It didn't feel gratuitous, but some of it does happen on-page.

The characters, including the unnamed narrator, are also strong and, unlike other books that start every chapter with a new cast of characters, this one never ran the risk of not emotionally engaging us, because Boyne really did pull off the whole "characters are different, but also the same" thing. It all felt like one long story.

And then the narrator's quest for revenge comes to an end with eight chapters to go and those eight chapters are just... messy. The tone was different, and it seemed almost like the author didn't know where he was going with the story he'd built.

For a start, the time in prison extends through four chapters and four countries, which was way too long. Boyne also got a little self-indulgent, I feel, with some of the characters' conversations here. Their commentary felt like Boyne's own response to some of the criticisms of his last YA novel My Brother's Name is Jessica (which I have not read). Such as:

‘There have been some people of late writing letters to the literary pages complaining of authors who do not share the same experiences with their characters.’
I considered this. ‘If they did,’ I said, ‘would that not be an autobiography?’
‘It would, yes, and their argument is entirely fallacious, of course. But it’s gaining some ground. Recently, another writer of my acquaintance was spat at in the street for writing about a Russian, when he himself is English.’


The 2016 chapter with the U.S. election was so strange, too. It felt completely at odds with the rest of the book. The characters embodied such OTT pro-Trump stereotypes, parroting ever more ridiculous claims about Hilary Clinton, that it all just became farcical. I was really ready for the Trump criticism, but why was it so slapstick? The rest of the book had been fairly serious.

And I'm not quite sure what the author wanted to say with the final chapter, set in AD 2080. It felt like he was making some point, though perhaps he wasn't. Either way, it was an odd and anticlimactic end. Which was probably in part due to the main climax being eight chapters and eighty pages away from the book's end. Everything after that felt like dragged out filler.

I'll still read whatever Boyne writes next, but I'm not sure about this one. It read like 360 pages of adventure through history, and then 80 pages of wandering/musing/ranting. It will be interesting to read the interpretations of it that come along when the book goes on sale.

The most original book I have read in years!!
At first I was a bit unsure of where this was all headed but after a few chapters was completely hooked! The level of detail involved as one set of central characters evolves across multiple countries and timelines was completely staggering. At the same time at its heart is a story of family, love, loss and tragedy that can resonate anywhere in the world at any time. Highly recommend!

A mind blowing and original reading experience from John Boyne here, travelling through two thousand years of human and family history, epic, multilayered and ambitious storytelling that initially I admit had me feeling anxious, worried I was not going to get into or get this novel, but like a rubik's cube, some of the pieces began to click into place one after the other, as the connections began to become more transparent. It begins in the Roman world of 1AD, and a narrator and his family, travelling through various junctures of history and world events, clearly recognisable even when the names change in time. The story takes in a multitude of nations and adventures, the terrors and horrors of man's inhumanity to man (and women) right through the ages, the never ending cycles of birth and death, and more death, when will people learn to be wiser? There is much needed hope in the concluding parts of the narrative, a hope we so sorely need as we look at the world around us now.

This is a smart, complicated and challenging novel, captivating and engaging, but one I found hard to do justice to in this review, I am also not certain that I got everything Boyne was trying to say either. However, it is timeless, insightful and thought provoking, clearly depicting the enduring, unchanging universal nature of family and human emotions through time, whilst simultaneously so eloquently speaking to us of our turbulent contemporary times. I think many will love Boyne's latest offering as much as I did. I would have loved to have been privy to his inspiration and writing process on this most imaginative of reads. Highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

John Boyne is one of my favourite authors but sadly, this one didn't work for me. It was a great story, woven with tons of details and facts but something happened in the book that I felt a little premature and it put the book on a different path. It is beautifully written and was enjoyable but not my favourite.

A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom is a difficult book. I mean, it’s technically amazing – a genuine and audacious piece of brilliance. But the reader experience is more of a rollercoaster.

The basic set-up is the novel following the life of a man from childhood to (probably) late middle age through loves, feuds, betrayal and loyalty. He and the central characters form a continuous narrative arc, while the scene shifts wildly in geography and time – so for a while, the novel is set in Korea’ for a while it is in Brazil; for a while it is in Egypt. The characters’ names change with each progression of time to fit the local language but they always start with the same letter. Little details change – our central character is of artistic bent but in one setting he will be a stone mason, in another he will be a weaver, in another he will be a bookbinder. And the scene shifts are not part of a plot – so it’s not one character travelling in time and space; the action from one chapter in Italy might then become a parallel back story in another chapter in Namibia. It’s weird, it makes reader engagement difficult, but it is also breathtaking.

So in each chapter, the scene shifts to an important historical setting. So we might have Attila the Hun (Hello Attila), or the Buddhas of Bamiyan, or Macbeth, or Shakespeare. These little vignettes are often more dazzling than the story itself – but whether they sparkle depends on how much you can identify the various references. Some of them that were unfamiliar to me (especially the ones set in Central and South America and the Far East) felt more like barriers to be circumvented. And I guess very few readers will get every section.

At some points the story seems stronger than others. The hunt for the cousin can sometimes be quite exciting, but towards the end the plot fizzles out. It’s also at this point that the neutral observer of world history starts to feel a bit more politically pointy. The penultimate section in particular, set in the present day, seems to use the plot simply as a vehicle for some (well made) political points. The final section is just plain weird and I haven’t got much idea what it was trying to achieve – things just disappear into a mist of metaphysics.

This is a brilliant book. I’m sure it is. Parts of it are treasure and will stay with me. There may be awards in due course. But after two and a half weeks (this was not a quick or easy read) I can’t help a slight residual wondering of what on Earth it was all about.

I didn't quite know what to expect from this story, as I was a little confused after the first two, maybe three chapters. Then, all of a sudden it clicked with me and I was hooked.
The book leads us from the birth of the narrator in early Christian times right up to space age and beyond.
The narration continues seamlessly in each chapter as his reincarnated life follows on in a different era and country, merting or living in the shadow of various historical events.
I can only imagine and admire how much thought and research went on behind the scenes to decide on the names, places and events to include in the final drafts.
Overall, it was a thoroughly enjoyable and thought provoking read dealing with a myriad of human emotions, love, loss, complications of family relationships and some wry humour thrown in. It did not disappoint.

(Thank you to Net Galley and Random house for affording me the opportunity to preview this book)

Here is an author who, in my eyes, achieved virtual perfection with his “The Heart’s Invisible Furies” (2017), certainly one of my all-time favourite novels. I still have plenty of John Boyne to read, having only read three of his children’s/young adult titles and two of his adult works but I’ve experienced enough to know that his latest is a marked departure from what I’ve read before.

This Irish writer is no stranger to the historical novel but here, in a book which can truly be called epic, he has taken on the whole of world history starting from Palestine in AD1 to the present day and beyond to 2080. This has been done, and here is the conceit of this novel, with ostensibly the same main character, or different manifestations of this character throughout history. It can certainly be seen as a novel of reincarnation with the main character (never named) moving on with his life in different times and different locations. There’s an obvious spiritual element here with its implied growth towards wisdom which initially made me a little nervous as to make this too explicit often results in leaden writing I’ve found (Paolo Coehlo springing to mind). I hoped Boyne would handle this with a lightness of touch to make it work.

He has to a very large extent. The novel reads like a series of interlinked short stories. At one point we move from Sweden in 1133 to China in 1191 and to Greece in 1223 with the narrative thread remaining fairly constant and with easily identifiable characters having regional variations of their names so the reader can pick up from where the plot left off each time adapting to the new setting and the often subtle changes which keep the narrative appropriate. This sounds confusing but it works well and builds an involving plot. Admittedly, there were times when I was enjoying a tale so much that I felt disappointed when it shifted onwards. He really has written 52 mini-novels in one, the amount of historical research must have been phenomenal.

This shifting means Boyne can have us visiting significant places at significant times introducing us to characters such as Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Attila The Hun and Donald Trump (he’s certainly not going to like this book!) This at times does run the risk of feeling laboured, a literary version of the TV series “Quantum Leap”. I actually prefer this novel when the historical figures are in the background and the location imbues the narrative with its sense of time. There are also occasional echoes of former lives through a sense of déjà vu with the Mayan figure Spearthrower Owl periodically creating a presence.

I’ve read books with a similar epic scope in terms of time (Edward Rutherford likes to do this) but nothing as ambitious as this which is extraordinary and I’ve begun to expect nothing less from this man but as a reading experience it is not quite up there with his very best. I think it just falls short of my rarely given five star rating. If you are interested in historical fiction and can’t quite decide what era to read about this is a perfect entry into discovering whole new literary worlds.

A Traveller At The Gates Of Wisdom will be published in hardback by Doubleday on 23rd July 2020. Many thanks to the publishers for tracking me down and providing me with an advance review copy.

This novel is an absolute masterclass in storytelling from John Boyne!

This isn't time travel fiction like I had initially thought. It is a meticulously designed plot that continues to develop as we move forward through time. However, the genius is that it develops in different countries, at different points in time. We start in AD 1 and end up in AD 2080.

It truly is a very unique and creative format for a novel that challenges you to think "are humans learning from our mistakes?" The amount of research that must have gone into this is immense. Each portion of the story, set in different time period and place, had historically accurate references (in some cases well known characters) and every detail is spot on. From the behaviour, the environmental context, the political situations and even the names of the characters in each section, every detail was spot on.

The book is divided into 'parts' and I would say it took me 2 parts to really get into it. I couldn't quite see how it worked and then I got it and was hooked. Please persevere if you feel like this, it is totally worth it!

This must have taken huge amounts of patience, time and determination to write, but I think this novel could be huge in 2020. I'm already recommending it to everyone and I hope it gets the recognition that is so deserved.

Released in the UK on 23rd July 2020. Thank you to @netgalley and @penguinrandomhouse @doubledaybooks for the opportunity to review!

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Wow, this is a really unique and special novel.

The unusual narrative structure has been described more accurately by other reviewers but the way the author manages to retain the flow between each chapter along the timeline is really quite something. The character names and settings change as it moves across time and place but they are easily recognisable and it is fascinating to see what changes as each new chapter unfolds. There must have been an enormous amount of research and work involved in connect up the settings from chapter to chapter but it really does work.

I found that I moved quite slowly through the early part of the book but I became more and more interested as time went on and it moved towards the present day, and I absolutely loved the epilogue.

A book of enormous scope, intelligence and wit that once again displays John Boyne's versatility and skill.

This is an epic read, spanning millennia, families and lifetimes. And yet it all stems from one family and decision made that will have consequences for over 2,000 years. Dealing with love, death, murder, grief, revenge, the places and times change but the themes remain the same. An ambitious read but one I feel deserves to be read in one go, if possible. I was absolutely captured by it and how it reached its conclusion. One of my favourite reads of 2020 without a doubt.

This is a novel with a seemingly simple story whereas, in fact, it is a voyage of discovery for a small group of characters. It spans 1BC to 2080 which is an epic period of time during which our characters - in something like Groundhog Day - reprise major incidents in their lives amidst different cultures and in different countries. Do they acquire wisdom or do they just repeat the same mistakes? John Boyne would have us believe the answer lies in the stars. See if you agree.