Michelle Butler Hallett

The main action of Michelle Butler Hallett’s complex, absorbing historical thriller Constant Nobody takes place in 1937, primarily in Moscow, capital of the Soviet Union. Joseph Stalin maintains an iron grip on power. His paranoid and ruthless regime does not tolerate opposition, and the country is approaching the convulsive zenith of what became known in the West as The Great Purge: a campaign of official terror and repression that from 1936 to 1938 claimed, by some counts, more than a million victims. Politics aside, however, Constant Nobody is also a moving tale of love in a dangerous time. Michelle Butler Hallett begins the narrative in the Basque Country of Spain, where the Civil War is raging. Temerity West is a young British agent posing as a nurse. Kostya Nikto (whose last name literally means nobody), operating undercover as a journalist, is a NKVD (Soviet Secret Police) agent who has been dispatched to Spain to liquidate members of a communist political organization that opposes Stalinism. Kostya and Temerity encounter one another in a war zone: under the most terrifying circumstances imaginable. Kostya, after carrying out the assassination as instructed, and knowing that protocol demands Temerity be killed as well, instead, for reasons he can’t explain, spares her. A few weeks later, Kostya is back in Moscow reeling from physical and psychological wounds suffered in Spain and working out of NKVD headquarters, where everyone is stressed and fearful as the purge continues unabated with even long-time Stalin loyalists falling out of favour. Temerity is also in Moscow on a new assignment, posing as a language instructor named Margaret Bush working for Comintern (Communist International was a global organization that promoted communist ideologies). A seasoned agent, she is cautious, watchful and discreet. But this is Moscow in 1937, and nobody is safe, least of all an attractive young woman alone on the street. When Kostya and Temerity encounter one another again, it is under very different if equally perilous circumstances. Temerity is rescued only because Kostya recognizes her and understands the fate that awaits her. Driven to act on her behalf for a second time, he manages by subterfuge to extricate her from a situation that he realizes will leave her physically and emotionally shattered. Then, with limited options, understanding the risk, he smuggles her into his apartment. Much of the remainder of the novel is devoted to Kostya and Temerity’s tempestuous summer of 1937: Temerity is confined, a virtual prisoner, to Kostya’s cramped flat. But she is not the only prisoner: both of them are walking a thin line, hemmed in by a political climate that shifts without warning, trapped in a world where allegiances are often illusory, trust is impossible and danger lurks around every corner. Under these conditions the ebb and flow of raw emotion takes a toll. Inevitably they clash. However, they also look to each other for solace and eventually reach a sort of détente. Though this too has its drawbacks: the tentative and brittle state of devotion and mutual dependence that binds them together may provide physical and emotional gratification, but it also leaves them feeling even more exposed and vulnerable. Their romance builds during a pressure-cooker of sweltering summer months, while the shadow of suspicion spreads over the city and darkens the halls of power. Finally, with former allies turning into enemies and Kostya’s NKVD defenders falling by the wayside, they are forced to act, and their lives are altered forever.

The unrelenting psychological tension and occasional brutality in these pages allow few opportunities for the reader to catch his breath. Some familiarity with Soviet history is helpful, perhaps essential, to making sense of the motivations of the many characters. As we have seen in her previous books, nothing falls outside the scope of Michelle Butler Hallett’s huge talent. In this novel she explores the psychology of fear as few are able and does so with absolute confidence. Temerity West and Kostya Nikto emerge into the reader’s mind fully formed: enduring, breathing, anguished individuals with richly contradictory, troubled inner lives. Without a doubt, Constant Nobody is a difficult, sprawling, challenging novel, but its power is undeniable. It represents a clear triumph of the imagination. The sheer artistry that has gone into shaping and writing this story is nothing short of spectacular.… (more)

Christopher Marlowe's story begins and ends with a brawl, in the hands of Michelle Butler Hallett.

This Marlowe focuses on the final months of the playwright's life, with his death registered as May 30, 1593.

His patron, Thomas Walsingham, openly supported his plays and verses, but they were indeed controversial, in an age characterized by tensions between church and state.

"--Violence, degradation, deceit: thou dost write them well. Doth this cause thee no shame?"

While accusations and suspicions simmered beneath the surface, violence and conflict erupted on- and off-stage, even though the theatres were closed in the wake of the plague.

"--I write what I see. History is no window but a mirror."

Snippets of lines which Marlowe penned are scattered throughout This Marlowe, along with references to the works of Thomas Kyd, a scrivener whose bed Marlowe shares in Michelle Butler Hallett's novel.

Because few records exist, the author has room to play in her depiction of these Elizabethan writers. Whether or not there is evidence of an intimate relationship historically, between Kyd and Marlowe, it is at the heart of this contemporary work.

Marlowe is not easy company. "He stopped outside another tavern, small and dark, called Cry of the Kite and, recognizing no one, drank alone, drank enough to trick out a sense of confidence and calm, not quite enough to make him obnoxious – a fine line, he knew."

Nonetheless, he is as often charismatic as he is obnoxious, and this quality pulls readers into the story, but it is Tom's character who invites readers to invest in the outcome.

His love for Marlowe makes him vulnerable, not only on the pages of fiction but of history. The historical record reveals that he was questioned about writings deemed heretical, which were found in his lodgings and attributed to Marlowe.

Michelle Butler Hallett is not alone in believing that this statement was elicited under torture, and her depiction of these events is visceral and raw. Elizabethan England in This Marlowe is as bloody as it is tapestried, as fragmented as it is luxurious.

Authorship in this time is a slippery concept. Plays were not typically printed, only a few in quarto editions. Playwrights often officially collaborated (partly because writers were paid intermittently and sometimes unpredictably) and sometimes unofficially, by "borrowing" or "elaborating upon" successful and popular works. With few written documents as evidence, scholars in recent years have continued to debate which plays are attributed to individual authors. Echoes abound, even between works currently attributed to different authors.

Loyalty, too, is complicated, and conversations amongst a large number of secondary characters seem to echo as frequently as the allusions and tributes.

At times, the deceptions blur and the distrust swells: readers unfamiliar with the era might temporarily lose their footing on the details, and there is no overarching authorial voice to lean on (which leaves readers free to respond on a personal level).

The depiction of the time and place are vibrant and consistent; although the central characters are literary giants, the setting offers readers a broader understanding of sixteenth-century life.

Michelle Butler Hallett's use of language allows the contemporary reader to feel the flourishes of the Elizabethan era (just a sprinkling of 'thee's, for instance) without a burdensome, trying-too-hard reproduction. The modern reader feels appropriately displaced but not overwhelmed by the weight of the centuries between.

"--Whores in the pillory? Slow patch, is it?
--We all got our quotas. See you Thursday."

Ultimately, the overarching questions have endured. The death of one man: is it an assassination or a tragedy at the hands of one misguided assailant? What might a government sanction in the pursuit of truth or in the desire to quell dissent? What power truly exists in the capacity to shape words in the posting of bills and the telling of tales?

This Marlowe by Michelle Butler Hallett is a quietly mesmerizing tale, which rewards a patient and attentive reader.

This review was first posted at BuriedInPrint.… (more)

This Marlowe by Michelle Butler Hallett is a spellbinding account of the last months of the life of English playwright Christopher Marlowe, who was murdered brutally under mysterious circumstances at the age of twenty-nine on May 30, 1593. The historical record suggests that Marlowe was an agent working for the English government who took on assignments on the European mainland, where tensions had arisen between Protestant and Catholic factions. The novel accepts Marlowe’s role in international espionage as fact and fleshes out the scant official record with sufficient incident and dialogue to make for high drama. In 1593 Queen Elizabeth, at age sixty, had no heirs, and there was no apparent successor to the throne. The lack of an heir was causing unrest at her court, and behind her back a struggle was underway to gain control of how events would unfold after her death. Central to the action is the scheme hatched by Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, to discredit his main rival, Robert Cecil, Elizabeth’s Secretary of State and Marlowe’s employer, by implicating Marlowe in an incident that became known as the "Dutch church libel." Notices were posted around the City of London threatening Protestant refugees with violence while making overt reference to Marlowe’s plays. Butler Hallett slowly builds a story in which much whispering takes place behind closed doors, innocent bystanders fall victim to a byzantine political mechanism, and where everyone has an agenda. The author’s Elizabethan London is a damp, filthy place where concepts of innocence and guilt are malleable and even those who have done nothing wrong have reason to fear a knock on the door in the middle of the night. But Marlowe himself is the main attraction, a man with a conflicted and contradictory nature, whose self-destructive tendencies in the end spell his doom. Openly homosexual and ungodly in an age when being just one or the other would be enough to place him at odds with prevailing morals and civil and religious authorities, he does not bother to conceal his defiance and often baits and provokes those in a position to do him harm. This Marlowe asks a lot of the reader. It deploys a sizable cast of characters whose motivations are sometimes hazy, and it speaks in a voice that will sound alien to our modern ears. But this is a marvelous and masterful novel. Taking up the challenge it presents is more than worth the effort. (This excerpt is taken from a longer review to appear in Galleon issue V.)… (more)