Gutenberg's Apprentice

Gutenberg's Apprentice is a delightful little novel. The star, if you will, is young Peter Schoeffer a scribe-on-the-make (this is the fifteenth century, after all), who is devastated to be recalled from Paris to Mainz, Germany, by his foster father in order to become part of a harebrained new scheme to print books. Nothing could be more anathema to Peter's tastes and world view. Still, duty beckons and he enters into an apprenticeship with the inimitable Johann Gutenberg. The rest, as they say, is history: Gutenberg, his business partner (Johann Fust, Peter's foster father), his apprentice, and the rest of the printing team accomplish the impossible by reproducing the Bible using a printing press.

Reading this book, what most impressed me was actually the power of the Church. In twenty-first century America, it's easy to forget how all-encompassing and all-powerful the church was several centuries ago. Other books set in the approximate time period (The Midwife of Venice, for example, or Year of Wonders) certainly touch on the theme. Alix Christie hammers it home: one could do nothing - including print a book - without the explicit permission of the Church. In many respects, people's lives were not their own, a point worth remembering when thinking back on (European) history.

I would be remiss not to add that I enjoyed Christie's writing. Her characters were real, without feeling forced, and she really captured the essence of life in the Middle Ages, without belaboring the point. Often when reading fiction, I complain that the action unspools too slowly or that the author is in a hurry toward the end, but Christie committed none of those grave errors. From start to finish, Gutenberg's Apprentice was a pleasure to read. Reading the author's note and discovering how much of the book was true was the icing on the cake for me. Schoeffer, Fust, and (of course) Gutenberg not only really existed, but based on historical records, existed largely as Christie portrayed them. For a connoisseur of excelling historical fiction, there are few happier conclusions than learning that it really happened the way the author said.