The Castle of Whispers

February 17, 2014
In her second novel, Martinez (The Threads of the Heart) illuminates a poetic, enigmatic and exhilarating tale, challenging the boundaries between reality and mystery; between society and gender; and between choice and fate. The year is 1187. After outraging the court by refusing her betrothed on her wedding day, the beautiful and brave 15-year-old Esclarmonde resolves to live "confined until her death little sealed cell" attached to a chapel on a cliff. Locked in the darkness of her tomb forevermore, she discovers a "crossroads where the living and the dead meet" and she begins her life as the Virgin of Whispers, the mystical imprisoned damsel who speaks from the Castle of Whispers. Destined for solitude, Esclarmonde, who unbeknownst to the kingdom is pregnant, gives birth to a son, who, like his mother, becomes renowned across the land. The destiny of anchoress in the castle is further complicated as she, with the help of her prophetic son, begins to advise her father to wage war on the holy land. Through mystical and miraculous turns, Martinez engrosses readers into a story of transcendence, redemption and survival.

December 15, 2013
Rather than marry a brute, a 12th-century damsel opts for the life of an anchoress, walled up in a cell, in this mystical French story infused with fairy tale and feminism. On a cliff overlooking the Loue River, the ruined Castle of Whispers is given voice by its virgin, Esclarmonde, the beautiful daughter of a minor lord but great knight, who in 1187 evades the powerlessness of most of her gender by refusing the hand of a rough nobleman, choosing faith instead and a life bricked up inside a cell attached to a chapel forevermore. Her only access to the world is a barred window outside which visitors and pilgrims begin to gather. However, just prior to her entombment, Esclarmonde was raped, and although able to conceal her pregnancy from attendants and believers, she can't conceal the resultant baby, a son, Elzear. Deftly blurring the line between reality and mystery, Martinez (The Threads of the Heart, 2012) keeps the reader guessing about the story's miraculous events and its characters' powers, including Elzear's--the son who may be capable of delivering powerful visions, allowing his mother to glimpse the terrible suffering of her father's army, which is heading to the Crusades. This and other tragedies intensify Esclarmonde's fate, leading to a cataclysmic yet transcendent conclusion. Transient in impact, but a powerfully visualized magic-realist fable.

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