Drawn to Mysteriousness

"What is his name?" asked Syme
"You would not know it," answered Gregory. "That is his greatness. Caesar and Napoleon put all their genius into being heard of, and they were heard of. He puts all his genius into not being heard of, and he is not heard of. But you cannot be for five minutes in the room with him without feeling that Caesar and Napoleon would have been children in his hands."
- from The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton

I have come to appreciate good stories so much, that I tend to re-read them with an insatiable appetite. As I read, I know I am stepping into such a marvelous mind of the author, who has created this imaginative story with a depth and mystery.

The Man Who Was Thursday is one of such favourites, and I am reading it again. This is the kind of book that doesn't get old. The mysteriousness is intriguing even when I know what is going to happen, and because there is such a depth to it (meaning behind meanings), I realize something else each time I read it. The viewpoint of the story leaves so many questions but as the paradoxical situations are revealed, they manage to unravel themselves in due time to another question. The characters are vibrant, yet elusive. The adventure is full of dark passages, weather, and running through the streets of London. 

The story begins in Saffron Park, London, where two poets have a debate about revolutionizing society. One is an anarchic poet, the other, a poet of law, order, and respectability. Not one sentence in this debate is fully serious, or is it all serious? When Syme, the order-driven poet, makes Gregory mad when he says is not serious in his anarchist theory, he seeks to prove to Syme that he is very serious, so he takes him on a bit of an adventure underground (by way of a pub) to a secret meeting location lined with weapons and bombs; a series of passages that lead to a meeting room where the Central Anarchist Council was about to meet to elect a new member to the board of men, who were all named after days of the week. There was a vacancy for the man "Thursday". In a twist of fate, our friend Syme is elected as the new Thursday, after the reader has just learned that he is also a detective. So, we have an undercover detective in the midst of anarchists, and that is just where the story gets even more mysterious and full of adventure around London. What Syme thinks is true, might not be. Who he thinks is an enemy, might be a friend. 

I love the mysteriousness of the story. I love when I find myself thinking deeply as I read, and when the story lingers in my mind long after I set the book down. Chesterton tends to have that affect on me. If I can manage to have a Chesterton book in my book stack at all times, that's a good scheme. This book is at the top of the stack.