My Weekly Book

This is a very difficult journal entry to write, because this is a very difficult book to take seriously, and yet… I managed to keep reading, to get to the end and I would even say that I enjoyed it - by taking it on my terms, rather than its own. (From here onwards there might well be spoilers, so you might want to skim it if you care about details being revealed.) It tells the true(!) story of a series of researches into past-life experience carried out by Barbara Lynne Devlin (now, incidentally renamed Mary Devlin, and all over the Internet if you care to look for her) on America's west coast in the 1970s, with all that implies.

Now I'm going to spell out what she claims to believe about her past lives. When you have read this, the chances are you will avail yourself of that unique opportunity provided by the Internet of clicking on the little cross-shaped button up in the top right-hand corner. And possibly throwing the book away too, if I decide to release it, and you find it. I'm asking you to please read on, whatever you may think of the next paragraph, because I want to go on to make a point about reading in general and Bookcrossing in particular which is a lot less stupid than the plot of this book. So please have patience.

As far as I can work out, Barbara/Mary claims that she first came to the earth around 72 million years ago as one of a band of 'higher beings' that seem to have been sent here to facilitate the evolution of the human race. She claims to have accessed her pre-Earth incarnation through past-life regression. She further claims to have been reincarnated as a member of the civilization of Atlantis, as a Palestinian woman who met Christ (one of the more convincing stories), as a member of Robin Hood's band of outlaws (a young minstrel called Thomasina), as the mistress of one of the youthful Princes in the Tower, as Mary Shelley and as a pioneer woman who went west in the middle of the 19th Century to a new life in New Mexico. She further claims that the other members of the same band of extra-terrestrials who were sent to earth with her shared all those incarnations. So the beings that we know as the Romantic poets Byron and Shelley were (if I have this right) Will Scarlet and Allan a Dale respectively, and also the Princes in the Tower as well as having some kind of Atlantean existence.

Now, I am prepared to accept that there is some compelling evidence for past-life experience. But I don't accept this. It is plainly nonsense, and an alarming demonstration of what self-delusion humanity is capable of, at that. The most shocking thing about it is the way that the group working on these regressions applies no rigour, and demands no reasonable standard of proof of its conclusions. If that's what someone thinks, and the key group members find it reasonable, then it stands, simple as that.

I picked up this book at the excellent Julian Graves OBCZ in Norwich on what was, frankly, a quiet day. There was not much in, to say the very least. But it did occur to me that had there been a volume of science fiction, or fantasy, something by Terry Pratchett or Ursula le Guin, I would have grabbed it happily and read it at once.

I'll swallow six impossible things before breakfast if they are flagged up as fiction or fantasy, so why not this? Read as a fictional narrative, which has fallen into my hands through the serendipity of Bookcrossing, it is a rollicking good tale, with the lives of the Romantic Poets, of Robin Hood's Sherwood and of Royal politics in Tudor England brought realistically to life. It does not surprise me one bit to learn Ms Devlin has gone on to write historical novels. Equally, the arrival on Earth and Atlantean sections make convincing sci-fi.

And, for bibliophiles, the book is in a lovely edition - one of those late-70s paperbacks with a swirly font and the edges of the pages coloured yellow. What I am saying is that with a bit of open-mindedness (if not necessarily of the sort recommended by the author) you can find something here for you.

Only I might put this in my permanent collection because 1) The subject of past-life regression does interest me; 2) because I'd have a job ever finding this again if I wanted to re-read it and 3) I doubt the reactions of other Bookcrossers to it. I haven't decided yet. Let's see what happens.

Read the Bookcrossing journal entry for this book

Mary (Barbara Lynne) Devlin links:

• The Romance Club
• Authors’ Den
• Article: Female Mystics and the New Millennium

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 22nd, 2004 at 4:00 pm and is filed under 2004 - Books read. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.