Ann lent me this after I was intrigued by her review of it earlier this year. It’s the story of the discovery of the Anglo-Saxon burial ship at Sutton Hoo in 1939 but rather than being a factual account, it’s dramatised by the author in novel form. Normally, I’m not keen on this kind of thing: I find it muddies the water, creating an alternative reality that can only be confusing. However, in this case, I not only enjoyed the book but found the gradual unfolding of events and discoveries exciting and moving, despite the fact that there’s a definite fictional element to the former.
John Preston tells the story as a series of accounts ranging from that of local archaeologist, Basil Brown, who supervised the original dig, to those of Mrs. Edith Pretty, the owner of Sutton House, and Peggy Piggott who joined the excavation after it was taken over by a senior archaeologist. These different voices lend a personal quality to the narrative that allows the reader to share in what must have been a truly extraordinary sequence of events: from Mrs. Pretty’s original decision to excavate the earth-mounds on her property, despite the fact that most such mounds were known to have been robbed centuries before, to Mr. Brown’s discovery of the bolts that indicated the possible presence of a burial ship; from the first treasure unearthed, a piece of gold jewellery in the shape of a flattened pyramid decorated with garnet and lapis lazuli, to the coroner’s hearing that determined the rightful owner of the find.
Along the way, the author plays with character and plot in such a way as to make this the literary equivalent of a page-turner, the reader being as much concerned with the feelings of the protagonists as with any plot developments. And what feelings they are! Sutton Hoo is a hotbed of repression and stiff upper lips: from Mrs. Pretty’s stilted relationship with her young son to Peggy Piggott’s sexless honeymoon with her archaeologist husband and subsequent attraction to Mrs. Pretty’s nephew, an attraction which can never be acted upon. All this is heart-rendingly sad and the fact that it comes on the eve of the Second World War only serves to strengthen the sense of a society locked in a time-capsule. Much like the ship, in fact, an irony the author plays on throughout.
The Dig is a charming, thought-provoking novel and, whatever else, it has made me determined to visit the Sutton Hoo display at the British Museum. For those who have been following, I promised to reveal the answer to my Anglo-Saxon riddle in my last post so perhaps it’s appropriate that I do so while discussing an Anglo-Saxon archaeological find (though one that dates from considerably earlier). It’s an onion.
No related posts.
Comments
3 Comments so far. Leave a comment below.I’m glad you enjoyed it Cathy. Now that you say it, I usually don’t like fictionalized accounts of historical events either- it irritates me not to know where fact stops and fiction begins. But this story felt like flipping through the really old files on an acquisition in a museum archive, but with all the wonderful personal details that such an file would leave you wondering about.
The one thing that bothered me was the way they popped the jewel into their pocket and went to the pub to discuss it. The whole sequence gave me an anxiety for object safety normally only brought on by Indiana Jones movies. Were 1930s archaeologists really so careless??
Definitely want to read thanks to your blog. Keep up the good work, please.
Thanks. Sadly, I’m leaving 26 Books to concentrate on my comic novel. Watch this space in a couple of years!