Friday reads

   

    "The sun was two fingers of the brink of the world when they rode out of Heytesbury, Laurence Haket, the lady Bernadine, Thomas, Will and Madlen. Drops of dew lay on every leaf and mist stood thick as milk in the hollows. Sheep's fleeces glew gold of the morning and the cattle stinted to graze and beheld the riders going by as if the days of Adam's kind were long gone and they hadn't never seen no man before. The riders went by hollow ways through dim woods where the birds sang loud as children achatter in the church, and by fields of ripening corn that hadn't been weeded a week, bright with red, yellow and blue blossoms. They came of their horses and led them on foot down the steep road into the dean of the Wylye, between still, sleeping towns without no smoke nor bells, and up a wild road on the far side onto high green downs, nearer to the sun, thick with bees and butterflies, where the grass grew so rich the horses trod without no sound. By mid-morning they came to the top of a hill that looked down on Mere, with its mighty castle, and beyond the town a great wold glimmered with the water of the Stour, and beyond that, blue and far, the downs of Dorset, so Thomas said."

    I'm reading To Calais, In Ordinary Time by James Meek, out soon and sure to get a lot of attention. It's set in England in 1348 and tells of a gentlewoman, a Scottish proctor (or representative of the clergy) and a young ploughman joining a company of archers on the road to Calais, while coming towards them is the qualm or plague, the Black Death to which half of the population of Northern Europe was to succumb. What is remarkable about the book is James Meek's use of language or idiom. I won't go into it here, but I will quote Hilary Mantel who says "fans of intelligent historical fiction will be enthralled by a story so original and so fully imagined. Meek show the era as alien, and doesn't falsify it by assimilating it to ours. But his characters are recognisably warm and human." It's an impressive piece.

    Anyone else reading something particularly good?

Comments

[Jane from Dorset]

I shall look forward to reading this. Heytesbury, Mere and the Wylye Valley are all local to me.

[Dark Puss]

I finished this week another amazing book by Haruki Murakami. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is quite unusual in that it is split in alternating chapters between two parallel narratives. It has elements (homages) to both Raymond Chandler and to Franz Kafka. I really enjoyed this!

[Cornflower]

Always good to read books set in a familiar part of the country.

[Cornflower]

Good!
(I've still not read any of his.)

[Dark Puss]

If I thought you would read his work there would be a Murakami novel in the post on Monday!

Not this one which I suspect is not the best one for you to start with, though I think it may be the author's favourite.

[LizF]

Oh this sounds very good - I love historical novels which really have a spirit of time and place.
I don't know if you have read Minette Walters' two books set during the period of the Black Death (The Last Hours and The Turn of Midnight). Not quite the same use of language but very enjoyable.

[Cornflower]

I'll add them to my list, Liz; thank you.