A very enjoyable read.
I loved the long ponderous sentences and long never-ending lists, often ending with something/someone obscure.
Written in a very tongue in cheek style but with the underlying serious problem of the many waring religions and committing one’s life to Christ.
Aunt Dot, who was looking for a home for what she called "all those poor young unmarried fathers, ruined by maintenance," p11
Of course from one point of view she was right about the church, which grew so far, almost it once, from anything which can have been intended, and became so blood-stained and persecuting and cruel and war-like and made a small and trivial things so important, and tried to exclude everything not done in a certain way and by a certain people and stamped out heresies was such cruelty and rage. … p196 ( )

I don't want to put anyone off, but I think that readers will miss some of the humour in The Towers of Trebizond if they don't have enough background knowledge. Let me try to explain, with the help of Wikipedia (lightly edited as usual to remove unnecessary links).

Dame Emilie Rose Macaulay, DBE (1 August 1881 – 30 October 1958) was an English writer, most noted for her award-winning novel The Towers of Trebizond, about a small Anglo-Catholic group crossing Turkey by camel. The story is seen as a spiritual autobiography, reflecting her own changing and conflicting beliefs.

Well, yes it is, but that description (apart from the camel) makes it sound earnest and boring. The truth is that most of the time Macaulay is poking fun at religion in general and at hers in particular. It is often laugh-out-loud funny, but as I can see from reviews at Goodreads not everyone gets the joke.

Some will be put off by the beginning. It starts with her faux-naïve narrator's drollery about how her family navigated centuries of the fraught history of the church in England — and that relies on having some knowledge of British kings and queens and their hangers on and how they bumped each other off to suit the religious beliefs prevailing in their era; and on knowing something about church politics. Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall Trilogy would help with some but not all of this.

I knew about enough about English church politics because I have read Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire (1855-1867)...

... and I have also read Susan Howatch's Starbridge series (1987-1994) which is a family saga that traces the history of the Church of England... but it's also (more interestingly) about the same kind of ambitious shenanigans and scandals and human greed and theological argy-bargy that you find in Trollope. Both of these series are excellent reading, but... well, not a lot of people read the classics these days and my guess is that the appeal of the once best-selling Howatch series has faded.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/06/26/the-towers-of-trebizond-1956-by-rose-macaule... ( )

Some of this was entertaining, some was exhausting (all the discourse about the church), and the story with Vere and the ending felt tacked on, like she couldn't quite figure out how to shape the travelogue into a novel. Also, is Laurie a man or a woman? Parts of the story didn't really work if Laurie was male, while other parts didn't really work if Laurie was female. ( )

I wanted to love this book. The first 100 pages or so were uproarious and charming, and the Anglo-Catholic humor was amusing, but once I was left alone with Laurie, much of the appeal was sucked out of the narrative for me, even the actual travel bits. His stream-of-consciousness religious musings grew tiresome quickly. (Obviously I'm reading Laurie as a man. I thought he was Dot's niece for the first half of the book, then was disconcerted to realize I'd probably been getting that wrong for chapters.) ( )

So many people have professed their love for The Towers of Trebizond that I couldn’t help but choose it over several other 1956 books, despite having already read three other Rose Macaulay novels this year. Known by many people simply for its fabulous opening line:

“Take my camel, dear,’ said my aunt Dot, climbing down from that animal on her return from high Mass.”

Well, if that isn’t enough to make you smile and to wish to carry on reading, I don’t what is. Macaulay is frequently wry as she sets about observing people in their various, sometimes ludicrous pursuits.

“Everyone had had the idea of starting for home early, so as to miss the crawl, but, since everyone had had the idea, no one missed the crawl.”

The novel follows the progress of a group of characters as they embark upon a journey from Istanbul to Trebizond. They are, Laurie – our narrator, her Aunt Dot (Dorothea Ffoulkes Corbett) and Dorothea’s friend, high Anglican priest Father Hugh Chantry-Pigg. Oh, and then there’s the camel. They are befriended by a Turkish woman doctor; Dr Halide, an ardent feminist with an interest in Anglicanism. Aunt Dot is set on converting and liberating the Turkish women she meets with Christianity and introduce them to the bathing hat.

This novel is a mix of things, part novel, part autobiographical travelogue and an exploration of religion. While Father Chantry-Pigg carries sacred relics around with him, Laurie muses on the complications of her love life. Along the way the trio meet British travel writers and witness the progress of Billy Graham on tour with the BBC. Macaulay does employ some typical British colonial stereotypes – though these things are put into the mouths of her characters and are fairly mild. Her characters are upper class English idiots – harmless enough and of a type – and I think she was poking gentle fun at them. Macaulay is a good observer of the Englishman/woman abroad – and here she is superb at portraying the noise and clamour of a Turkish harbour.

“The boats were filled mostly with steerage passengers who lived in Trebizond or were visiting relations there, and the women carried great bundles and sacks full of things, but the men carried suit-cases with sharp, square corners, which helped them very much in the struggle to get on and stay on the boats, for this was very violent and intense. More than one woman got shoved overboard into the sea during the struggle, and had to be dragged out by husbands and acquaintances, but one sank too deep and had to be left, for the boat-hooks could not reach her; all we saw were the apples out of her basket bobbing on the waves. I thought that women would not stand much chance in a shipwreck, and in the struggle for the boats many might fall in the sea and be forgotten, but the children would be saved all right, for Turks love their children, even the girls.”

Suddenly, Aunt Dot and Father Chantry-Pigg disappear over the border into Russia – a task so impossible during these cold war days, that it is assumed they must have had help of a fairly sinister nature, and are declared spies, by almost everyone. A little anxious, though not unduly concerned Laurie is left alone in charge of the camel – on which she continues to travel.

She meets up briefly with her lover, enters into a wrangle over a manuscript with one of the British travel writers; David who has a habit of popping up every now and then, but at least can be relied on to buy dinner. She experiences a hallucinatory draught that she is given in exchange for food, sells camel rides along the road, encounters difficulty getting into Israel and then later meets her estranged mother in Jerusalem. It’s all wonderfully bonkers.

After all that travelling, eventually Laurie heads back to England, with an ape that she has picked up (as you do). Here, as settles back into normal English life, she is forever wrestling her Christian faith with her adulterous relationship with a married man. The camel and the ape suitably ensconced at the zoo but Laurie wonders whether or not she will ever see Aunt Dot and her priest ever again.

Overall, a really good read – my favourite Macaulay is still The World my Wilderness, but I loved the sense of place in this, the bizarre quirkiness of Macaulay’s story and her characters – make for a memorable novel. There is also a fabulously unexpected bit of drama at the end of the novel – which I won’t spoil for you – I do enjoy being taken by surprise. ( )