Review of The Golden Manuscripts: A Novel

Lisa Marie B · Post by **Lisa Marie B** » 13 Feb 2024, 06:03

[Following is a volunteer review of "The Golden Manuscripts: A Novel" by Evy Journey.]

3 out of 5 stars

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Choosing to read The Golden Manuscripts by Evy Journey was quite honestly a no-brainer for me, since I am always interested in a well told story placed within an academic context.
Overall, this book does a good job at describing the search for truth when it comes to a certain set of illuminated manuscripts, an art form I have never thought about before. This brings me to my first positive point regarding this novel, Journey explains in detail how these manuscripts were made and why they have significance. Learning while reading an entertaining book remains one of my favorite things to do.

In the novel, a grad student named Clarissa sets out to find a topic for her thesis and settles on illuminated manuscripts after finding out that new ones have been discovered and are now set to be sold. Together with a former acquaintance, Nathan who is working in the art field, she tries to uncover if the manuscripts were stolen while simultaneously questioning the value of art. On the other hand, Clarissa is desperately trying to find her own place of belonging after feeling maybe just as displaced in this world as the manuscripts, especially being a biracial woman who traveled the globe in her childhood.

Giving this book 3 out of 5 will make sense once I will dive into the more detailed review. There are many things I loved while reading it but sadly also some parts I think could have been done better. Since I still have a positive impression of this novel, I will start with the things I adored.

Journey has a good way with words, throughout the book I was able to imagine the scenery quite well. For me, this is an important point to understand how scenes play out. It never felt overly detailed but she still made it easy for me to see the places inside my head, which contributed greatly to how I experienced the book. The descriptions in this book generally feel natural, especially coming from Clarissa’s perspective. There is a part in which someone’s eyebrows are described in detail and it felt wonderfully quirky and unique but also natural that a person might focus on this.

The story is told from two different points of view and I liked that. I usually really do not enjoy reading in the present tense but, what came as a surprise to me, Journey’s way of telling the story made me realize that Clarissa’s POV has to be set in the present. On the other hand, the parts that describe the past are written in past tense. This distinction made it easy to follow the story and understand why things happened the way they did.

Telling this story from the perspective of a young woman, mostly concerning herself with her studies, made it clear how she might see the world in a different light from others and how receiving an education in her field influences her thinking. I really loved one part of the book in which she challenges the perception of sexism within her family. In my opinion, Journey did an amazing job of putting the discussion into a realistic setting. It was not overly dramatic or almost fairytale like and I really appreciated that. There is also an instance in which homosexuality is discussed and I love how it was handled, overall, I really appreciate the author’s realistic depiction of topics that are so important in today’s world. On the other hand, soldiers’ behavior after coming home from one of the biggest wars in our world’s history is another topic in the course of the novel. I appreciated the realistic and, truthfully, sad portrayal of that. It is important to not forget about how events like this will change someone’s psyche.

While having the search for truth and belonging as the main topic of this novel, there is also some space for romance. I was expecting it after a few chapters and after at first being scared that it might not fit into the story, I was pleasantly surprised by how invested I got. Romance is slowly worked into the novel, most of the instances feel organic and very realistic which makes it easy to follow what is happening.

After having listed the things I really liked about The Golden Manuscripts, I will now shed light on what I think could have been done better. This is in no way to say that I did not enjoy the book, which I did. There are just a few things I did not particularly care for.

While I generally got along well with the writing style, I sometimes felt as if some of it was too wordy. In some sentences, words were repeated too many times, in one instance the word ‘backpack’ was mentioned three times in one sentence and it felt redundant. Apart from that and me appreciating the general way in which Journey describes things in her novel, I also noticed that her writing style tends to change a lot between fairly easy prose and weirdly stilted passages. Coming from academics myself, it felt as if those words were picked from a thesaurus to make the descriptions sound smarter. Which this book does not need, rest assured. Reading and then suddenly stumbling over words like rapacious or vacillated sometimes stopped me in my tracks to look up the meaning and this can definitely disturb the flow of reading.

The time jumps between the past and present make perfect sense in the story but there are also weird jumps between events in the present. I completely understand that a book would be very long if someone were to describe everything that happens between occasions but it sometimes felt rushed and a little random.

These jumps bring me to the thing that made me give the book 3 stars out of 5. As mentioned above, I enjoyed this book. I was invested. I wanted to know more and also find out more about what happened with the manuscripts. Which is why I was left disappointed and frustrated by what is happening at the end of the book. There is a massive time jump that, at least for me, skims over questions I still wanted answers to. The jump covers around 9 years and while being dumbfounded by the sudden time change, I was also surprised by some of the things that happened to the main character. I can understand why Journey chose to do it like that but a lot of things that are explained felt out of character to me and it overall made the ending feel rushed. Suddenly everything, expectations and happenings, was tied up with a nice bow which made me feel almost blindsided after following the story throughout the book.

Just one more thing, there is an extra chapter at the end, written from Nathan’s perspective. While I had a good impression of him for most of the story, this chapter made something shift. It is written as if someone looked up how men write women (in a negative way), something I would not have expected by this author. The way Nathan describes things made me respect him less which probably was not the intention behind writing this chapter. In my opinion, it would have been a better idea to leave this out.

This is why, I had to subtract 2 stars. I would still recommend this book. If you are interested in literary and art history, as well as a, mostly, naturally unfolding romance that does not take the main plot, this is perfect for you. I learned a lot, I almost cried at some points and I was constantly rooting for the main character. Overall, Journey wrote an engaging and entertaining book that can be appreciated by many.

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The Golden Manuscripts: A Novel
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