Review: The Cleaving by Juliet E McKenna
I loved the Arthurian legends as a child, noble knights rescuing fair maidens, you could spot the baddies, and impressive magic. I mean, every time Arthur holds a feast, you know someone will ride in full of magic and menace and start things rolling. I think I read a great many in that proof of middle-class 70s childhood, Look and Learn.
The Cleaving is a story starting before Arthur’s birth and finishing after his death – it is a Matter of Britain for our own age. First it looks behind the façade of chivalry and shows what it means for the maiden, the crone, the marriageable princess, or the common soldier or farmer. I also take it as a story which without preaching, asks where the great Arthur myth has led us.
Nimue is of the hidden people, who need to keep their existence and magic from mortal view. This is a sympathetic portrait of one careful about her power, kind in her instincts, and courageous in her actions.
In this godless world, the ‘crucified god’ has great power only because mortals believe their priests. Magic is powerful, dangerous, and mysterious.
Merlin openly uses magic to advance his plans to unite Logres around a single High King, who he helps create – literally, engineering his birth, his entry to public life, and the building of his regime. Nimue observes and opposes the wrongs this can involve. Magic is the superweapon which unites then divides at a terrible price.
The Cleaving also centres Arthur’s mother Ygraine, his wife Guinevere, and the mortal Morgana – who really shouldn’t know magic but does. Women in the legends are pliant and good – but dangerous if they are powerful or can best men through sex or magic or riddles. Seen through women’s eyes, the rise of Arthur is rather less wonderful.
The jolly Boys Own adventure is reframed – after all in the earlier tales Arthur is a child of rape by deception, there is incest in the family, his wife betrays him with one of his best friends – so called ‘honour killings’ political marriages, and butchery are all part of it. We are not spared this grief and danger, and it lets us question the peace the golden age of Logres, supposedly, brings.
In the end heroic sacrifice is needed to give hope.
Arthur is a British creation myth, the English take it as an English one, although its roots are many. Let the right king rule and everyone is loyal and all will be well – draw the magic sword from the stone. Things were better in the old days. Stick to your place and toil for your Lord and die if he needs you. Cornwall, Wales, Scotland are best when they bow the knee. A woman’s place is to serve and to breed. Above all, when times are hard, it is faith in the old king under the hill who can come again, we need the old stories rising to reassert their world, that will save us. The one chosen by unseen powers. Not us, the common folk, thinking new stories for ourselves.
Myths are stories whose emotional truth does not rely on their literal truth. Arthur is not one figure but many interpretations – he is interpretation all the way down.
The Cleaving is a new myth, which does not place its faith in princes. Alas, they have plenty of faith in themselves.
McKenna tells a cracking tale and Nimue in particular is a character for our times.
I received a copy of this book from the author in return for a fair and impartial review.
