I Read Books: Last Love In Constantinople

 

Last Love In Constantinople: A Tarot Novel For Divination

During the Napoleonic Wars there are two soldiers, each mirror images of each other. Each has absurd, dream-like adventures, in love and war and travel. Each also has family members and lovers and companions. Split into twenty two chapters, each corresponding to a card of Major Arcana, these various characters cross each other’s paths in complex ways that imply a great thread or fate.

Having said that it’s about two soldiers, it’s really about the women, and how they act as wives, or as daughters, or as mothers, or all three. Twice in the book, before the fool and before the guide to laying out cards for a reading, sections are subtitled The Key To The Great Secret For Ladies Of Both Sexes. These two sexes are solitaries and solidaries, those who live and act alone, and those join up in groups, both of which types are expanded upon in the book (see Landscape Painted With Tea for more of this theory, though there applied to men).

Unfortunately the novel does not live up to the promises. By having each chapter able to appear on it’s own, at any part of a narrative determined by a card reading, and the necessity of them containing the symbolism for divination, they each stand on their own adequately. However they do not combine in a satisfying way (perhaps they work better looking for inspiration or guidance though I did not feel that while experimenting).

Similarly disappointing are the included cards, whose designs are muddily grey-scale and are small, to fit four to a page (they can be cut out as they have backs printed on the reverse page). They are inevitably better in colour as can be seen at Pavic’s website (https://www.khazars.com/index.php/en/gallery/gallery-byzantine-tarot.html). The spindly figures and primitive depictions have a little interest, though they do not especially reflect the much richer situations in the corresponding chapters.

Read This: Fabulist absurd historical stories of love and femininity united by tarot imagery
Don’t Read This: Absolutely wacky ideas about relationships and filled with so much imagery that almost anything can be picked out for divination purposes