Lion Heart by Justin Cartwright – review

Justin Cartwright is famously a fan of John Updike — and here he seems to owe a definite debt to one of his hero’s lesser known novels. In Memories of the Ford Administration, Updike interwove the sexual adventures of a 1970s history professor with substantial chunks from the professor’s notes on President James Buchanan, a man whose life Updike had earlier researched for his only play. In Lion Heart, Richard Cathar, an Oxford postgraduate and somewhat solemn philanderer, provides similarly lengthy extracts from his investigations into Richard I and the fate of the True Cross — which were also the subjects of a 2001 TV documentary by Justin Cartwright.

As for the philandering, Richie starts off enjoying the ‘sexual avidity’ of his girlfriend Emily, although not her conversation. Then, once his work takes him to Jerusalem, he’s soon having ‘gracious and unhurried’ sex with Noor, a gorgeous Palestinian journalist who’s later kidnapped, causing Richie to have a brief nervous breakdown — and, as a result, a fling with his psychiatrist. Next, with his quest for the True Cross making surprisingly good progress, he pitches up in France where the local expert is a young blonde widow…

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For some novelists, these elements might be enough for one book. Cartwright, however, confirms his reputation for literary generosity by also supplying — among other things — a Middle-East travelogue, a touching portrait of male friendship and plenty of thoughts on the persistence of history, with particular reference to Muslim-Christian relations. There is, too, a huge and unrevealable plot twist that at first startles and then rather mysteriously fades away.

Taken individually, most of these elements work perfectly well. Yet, the puzzling question of what they’re all doing in the same novel becomes increasingly hard to ignore — even for the author.