Estela Gutiérrez Torres’s El rumor del agua is a really fun spy novel set in 1720 in an alternate timeline where William the Conqueror — now only known as “William the Bastard” — drowned in 1064 during his invasion of Brittany, resulting in a markedly different eighteenth-century political landscape, one where the Duchy of Brittany (which includes the western coastal regions of the former Duchy of Normandy, from Cherbourg down to Avranches) has retained its sovereignty, though the Duke is still nominally a vassal of the King of France.
there are a lot of things I really like here. first and foremost, this is a novel that treats Brittany not as a misty, otherworldly realm of wild, emotional poets — as it was characterized in the 1840s by Ernest Renan — but as a real place with real history and a politics of its own. its treatment of the people of Brittany is a refreshing change of pace from the characterization of “Celtic” regions in fantasy (and science fiction) writ large: the Bretons here are just people, neither especially poetic nor particularly magical. in fact, while this is certainly a work of speculative fiction, there is, in fact, no magic involved at all: apart from its althistorical setting this is a realist eighteenth-century spy novel. what there is is a representation of the real linguistic diversity of Brittany, encompassing both Breton — the Celtic language of Lower Brittany, in the west — and, excitingly, Gallo, the Romance language spoken in Upper Brittany, in the east (here also encompassing the former Norman territories, where the bulk of the novel is set), which Gutiérrez Torres consistently explicitly distinguishes from French. each of the novel’s three sections (plus the epilogue) is headed by a Gallo proverb as an epigraph, and Breton words and phrases appear throughout the text when the (Gallo-speaking) protagonist interacts with Breton-speakers. this attention to the real cultures of Brittany — rather than an imagined “Celtic” culture — was delightful, and the book would be worth a look for this aspect of it alone.
on top of that, however, it’s also just a really fun book! it’s narrated in a strong, first-person voice by Tomâs Mesniger, a spy with a prodigious memory that enables him to work as a triple agent, feeding both France and Prussia — currently at war — information in the service of Brittany. after a mission gone dramatically awry, Tomâs is given a new, unusual assignment: to return to his hometown and wait. a high-ranking agent will be in the area; if they need help, they will ask him for it, and he is to obey their orders without question. of course, they do need help: the agent turns out to be an enigmatic young woman named Gwenvred — Bredig to her friends, of whom Tomâs is, at least at first, definitively not one — who quickly entangles Tomâs in several layers of conspiracy, leading to the murder of one of his cousins, an escalating series of dangerous missions, frustrated investigations, a torrid (but seemingly genuinely affectionate) affair, and a final dramatic showdown after Tomâs learns Gwenvred/Bredig’s true identity.
Tomâs is an archetypal rogue (I feel I should clarify that I mean this neutrally, not as an invocation of the Dungeons & Dragons class); when asked why he does what he does, Tomâs can only answer honestly that he likes making up stories and manipulating people, and getting paid to do it in service of his country is just a nice bonus. “rakish” is probably the appropriate adjective: before Gwenvred/Bredig arrives he has a lover in his hometown and another one in the larger nearby town of Granvile and a reputation as a ladies’ man — indeed, the first words he says when he meets Gwenvred for the first time, unaware of her status, are a pickup line. he likes to drink, to flirt, and to see how far he can push a lie. the book compensates for what could be a very unpleasant narrator in two ways. first, Tomâs’s narration is simply so personable that it’s easy to let things slide — it helps that he’s aware of his own faults and cynical about them/himself, even as he also does think he’s the greatest person in the world. secondly and more importantly, though, everyone around Tomâs thinks he’s kind of a loser, and they’re right. he’s constantly getting wrecked by people: Bredig, first and foremost, but also his brother and other relatives. the result is a very funny book, even as it doesn’t hold back on the violence of eighteenth-century espionage.
the plot itself is well-constructed, though there’s one clue I found fairly glaring early in the novel that Tomâs doesn’t notice. this seemed so out of character — he is generally competent, if rather impulsive, and that comes through in the rest of the book — that for a while I thought it must have been accidental on Gutiérrez Torres’s part, but it turned out it was a clue and Tomâs just didn’t notice. apart from this, though, the story is gripping and well-paced, with a good balance of tense field missions, relaxation, and waiting. the fact that it spends so much time on Tomâs’s other interpersonal relationships — especially with his (fraternal) twin brother, Eric, and with Bredig, but also with fellow spies and other people in his hometown — means that even when the espionage plot is on hold there’s always something else to occupy the narration. the portrayal of a small town is charming without falling into the traps of quaintness or romanticizing things — Tomâs loves his home, but he also likes to be able to get away from the people who have known him since he was born.
the book is very heterosexual — and Tomâs is a straight man, with everything that entails (something Gutiérrez Torres is aware of and I think intentionally foregrounds by way of flaws) but I was so engaged by the narration that I didn’t mind it. it helps that there’s an explicit invocation of queerness, one I thought was well-executed, neither simply writing off the past as altogether violently homophobic nor projecting twenty-first-century sexual politics onto the 1720s. it’s not a focus of the novel, but I was pleased that this moment, at least, was there: it reinforces my sense that Gutiérrez Torres consciously chose to write Tomâs as a somewhat obnoxious straight man, rather than simply falling into that characterization by default.
there are, of course, other things I might have liked to see — in particular, a broader view of global politics without the Norman conquest of England. did colonialism happen? if so, how? what’s Spain looking like? are there Protestants? did chattel slavery develop in anything like the form it took in our primary world? (racial diversity is one marked silence here.) I didn’t see any indications of American crops, which in itself was an interesting choice and makes me wonder if the answer is that, no, colonialism didn’t happen, or unfolded differently. I think the novel stands solidly as it is, however — these are for the most part reflections of my curiosity rather than things that necessarily needed to be addressed.
all in all, I had a blast with this book. engaging mystery, fun character writing and narration, good use of its althistorical setting (even if I also wanted to see more of the timeline). definitely recommend.
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