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The Griffin in the Griffin’s Wood by Stephen Scobie (Ekstasis Editions $29.95)
Wikipedia will tell you, a griffin is a mythical creature with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion. It is typically depicted with pointed ears and with the eagle's legs taking the place of the forelegs.
In northern Germany, on the shores of the Baltic, Greifswald is a university town named after a legendary Griffin who lived in a tree in the town, seizing and devouring children and eventually chased away centuries ago by monks.
Hence Greifswald in English means Griffin's Wood.
In that town lives Helga Brandt, a university employee and informer for the Ministry for State Security in East Germany. She believes the Griffin has returned to devour the next generation-only it has resurfaced under the guise of a dicey nuclear reactor in nearby Lubmin.
In Stephen Scobie's 'spy fantasy,' The Griffin in the Griffin's Wood, the fate of Europe, and perhaps even humanity, hinges on events arising from that modern, technological griffin. It's 1989. The Berlin Wall is coming down. There is confusion and intrigue in the two Germanys.
Frank Carpenter, spy, is a relatively new Canadian intelligence officer based in West Germany who has recently been assigned to Group 7, a bungling attempt to coordinate intelligence operations along the Baltic Coast for France, the USA, Western Germany, Britain and Canada. No one takes Canada's role seriously, including its young agent.
The tale begins on a dark and stormy night in Lübeck as a captured western agent named Peter Felsen is about to be released from the eastern side of the infamous border. Group 7 has gathered to receive him. Shots ring out.
It appears Peter Felsen has been killed. But who fired the shots and why? It becomes the inexperienced Carpenter's job to go under cover into East Germany to find the answers. But before he gets there, he falls in love, survives an attempt on his life, is betrayed and disregards orders.
Ultimately Carpenter will meet up with a family member whose shadow has always loomed large in his life.
This novel is dark, funny, and-at times-intentionally predictable. Scobie skillfully empowers the reader with information the characters don't have. (We know the history of the Berlin Wall; they don't.)
Mostly I enjoyed being immersed in a realistic sense of place. Greifswald, where Carpenter spends much of his mission, is portrayed with precision and empathy. That's partly because Scobie visited Germany several times in the 1980s and '90s as a poet/lecturer and guest professor of Canadian literature.
"At first, these visits were mostly to Kiel,"; he says, "but later concentrated on Greifswald. And I have been to Lübeck, and to the border site, which is the setting for the first and last chapters of the book. I was also in Lübeck for a weekend just two weeks after the Wall came down.";
Scobie has returned several times since. "Both Kiel and Greifswald are cities very dear to my heart-due perhaps to their proximity to the sea, and the cleansing effect of the Baltic winds.";
Stephen Scobie has been invited to speak abroad because he is diversely talented as a critic, scholar and poet who won the Governor General's Award for Poetry in 1980. He has also written critical studies on Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.
Scobie is not known primarily as a novelist. Tense and wisely drawn, The Griffin in the Griffin's Wood is his first and probably only novel, he says.
That would be a shame.
978-1-77171-105-0
Cherie Thiessen reviews fiction from Pender Island.
In northern Germany, on the shores of the Baltic, Greifswald is a university town named after a legendary Griffin who lived in a tree in the town, seizing and devouring children and eventually chased away centuries ago by monks.
Hence Greifswald in English means Griffin's Wood.
In that town lives Helga Brandt, a university employee and informer for the Ministry for State Security in East Germany. She believes the Griffin has returned to devour the next generation-only it has resurfaced under the guise of a dicey nuclear reactor in nearby Lubmin.
In Stephen Scobie's 'spy fantasy,' The Griffin in the Griffin's Wood, the fate of Europe, and perhaps even humanity, hinges on events arising from that modern, technological griffin. It's 1989. The Berlin Wall is coming down. There is confusion and intrigue in the two Germanys.
Frank Carpenter, spy, is a relatively new Canadian intelligence officer based in West Germany who has recently been assigned to Group 7, a bungling attempt to coordinate intelligence operations along the Baltic Coast for France, the USA, Western Germany, Britain and Canada. No one takes Canada's role seriously, including its young agent.
The tale begins on a dark and stormy night in Lübeck as a captured western agent named Peter Felsen is about to be released from the eastern side of the infamous border. Group 7 has gathered to receive him. Shots ring out.
It appears Peter Felsen has been killed. But who fired the shots and why? It becomes the inexperienced Carpenter's job to go under cover into East Germany to find the answers. But before he gets there, he falls in love, survives an attempt on his life, is betrayed and disregards orders.
Ultimately Carpenter will meet up with a family member whose shadow has always loomed large in his life.
This novel is dark, funny, and-at times-intentionally predictable. Scobie skillfully empowers the reader with information the characters don't have. (We know the history of the Berlin Wall; they don't.)
Mostly I enjoyed being immersed in a realistic sense of place. Greifswald, where Carpenter spends much of his mission, is portrayed with precision and empathy. That's partly because Scobie visited Germany several times in the 1980s and '90s as a poet/lecturer and guest professor of Canadian literature.
"At first, these visits were mostly to Kiel,"; he says, "but later concentrated on Greifswald. And I have been to Lübeck, and to the border site, which is the setting for the first and last chapters of the book. I was also in Lübeck for a weekend just two weeks after the Wall came down.";
Scobie has returned several times since. "Both Kiel and Greifswald are cities very dear to my heart-due perhaps to their proximity to the sea, and the cleansing effect of the Baltic winds.";
Stephen Scobie has been invited to speak abroad because he is diversely talented as a critic, scholar and poet who won the Governor General's Award for Poetry in 1980. He has also written critical studies on Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.
Scobie is not known primarily as a novelist. Tense and wisely drawn, The Griffin in the Griffin's Wood is his first and probably only novel, he says.
That would be a shame.
978-1-77171-105-0
Cherie Thiessen reviews fiction from Pender Island.
Submitted on March 14, 2017 in By David.
