Unsworth draws me in like no other writer in his genre. His narrator isn't himself unreliable, but his ego wreaks havoc on everyone, not least himself. And you can count on Unsworth to make you feel just how heartbreaking betrayal is.

Well put together although I had trouble with the florid language.

With his brilliant novel, Songs of the Kings, Unsworth moved into one of my three favorite contemporary writers. He has an eye for period detail in his historical novels, but his strength is the subtle context that comments vividly on 21st-century events.

For example, Songs of the Kings, when it appeared in 2003, used Odysseus to demonstrate the madness of kings, and the relative ease with which they use saga to lead individuals to their doom. Three months after its release, the Iraq War began.

In The Ruby in her Navel, Unsworth brings to life a multi-cultural, multi-religious Sicily. It is one of the great European kingdoms, but there is trouble brewing. The utter failure of the 2nd Crusade has raised suspicions against Palermo's muslim population. Latin Lombards are moving in to challenge the Norman elite. The Byzantine Empire has Sicily in its sights, too.

It makes for a lousy time for Thurstan Beauchamp to fall in love. Seeking advancement--a possible knighthood--for himself as well as his Saracen patron: his naievete about the church and the king is put to the test. When his loyalty to king isn't tested, his loyalty to two ladies is.

For the last 250 pages, I just couldn't put this book down. I enjoyed it better than Unsworth's Booker-winning Sacred Hunger--almost as well as SOTK.

It was a little too much like Halsband der Taube, so I put it down. I can only read so many far east/harem-related stories before I stop caring.

It was fun to read this book as a historian of the 12th century, but as a general reader not so much. I couldn't really tell when the plot was starting; there was so much exposition and reminiscing. It might have been a better idea to just start the book when the protagonist was a child, since the author spent more time explaining what had happened than what was happening now. Constantly, conversations between two characters were interrupted so the protagonist could spend several long paragraphs remembering/explaining events of years ago. But it wasn't terrible. I liked the protagonist Thurstan well enough and thought the plot (when it actually meandered towards happening) was interesting. But had there not been so much wandering, I would have grasped the significance of the events more readily rather than wondering whether they were just side quests.

I enjoy historical novels full of drama, romance, mystery and intrigue as much as the next person and Unsworth has provided just that. However, Thurstan Beauchamp is not the most politically savvy of lead characters and is easily led astray by a pretty face. Unsworth created a set of realistic and diverse characters in this novel and they all play their parts well. The setting and period are described and I found it easy to imagine the scenes and locations. At times I didn't always follow the logic behind the plot but I think this was more a failing on my part than on the novels (making me no better than Thurstan at understanding the political machinations). Otherwise a thoroughly enjoyable novel.

I liked this book, but I didn't love it. The descriptions of Sicily in the 1100s were fun, but I found the characters sort of boring and didn't really sympathize with the continual innocence of the narrator. Overall, the portions of the book that should have entranced me with political and court intrigue never quite worked -- I kept losing track of the characters and couldn't remember which one was motivated by what forces. In part, I think that related to the choice to tell the story through the eyes of a naive bureaucrat rather than from a more omniscient narrator.

this book did not get good until 320 pages in.

I enjoyed this a great deal. It was an experience, not just a story and a telling, but all of that and more - a world, a mindset, an exploration - and deeply satisfying all up.

The first thing that grabbed me was the strength of the first-person narrator. There's a deep and stark and involved style to his voice that helps seat the book in its time and place (more about this later) but also establishes the novel firmly as Thurstan-telling-his-story. I have endless impatience with books that a first-person without a reason - i.e. why and how is this person telling me their story? - but this one does it flat out with what appears to be bald-faced honesty, that later gains a layer of knowing extra meaning (which I love).

And through the telling, the reader comes to understand intrinsically - so much more deeply than merely being told - some aspects of the 12th-century Mediterranean that underpin the book: that abstract thought is underdeveloped, and the concept of visualising and imagining one close to magic; that this is a world in which simplicity and complexity war, or at least overlap; and that while it could be said that the Dark Ages are ending, there has never been such hate as is now welling up.

Amidst all of this, I found the entwined stories of political intrigue and Thurstan's emotional getting-of-wisdom to be deeply satisfying, in that way I like best where things reveal to have been just what I thought, but even more so and with added twists I had not seen coming. And while I had some slight distresses about the way Alicia was depicted at the end of the day, Nesrin was pretty magnificent.