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3.33 AVERAGE
3.33 AVERAGE
Would have made for a very interesting long magazine article - unfortunately, not enough there to build a 300-page book around. The writer also says his narrator should be seen to be someone writing at around the same time, which takes away the chance to answer obvious questions we must surely now have an opinion on, e.g. Did the social changes lead in a straight line to the Magna Carta? Why did some people get the plague while others didn't?
An interesting, often difficult, important book about the scant few months in which the black death took peasant and lord alike. I was shocked to discover that in the wake of half of the country's death, a law was passed to prevent common people from asking for wages higher than what they had been before plague passed through the land!
England has always squished the poor common folk and this book does a really good job at showing what happened.
England has always squished the poor common folk and this book does a really good job at showing what happened.
The book is a blend of fiction and nonfiction that is a little short on details for the nonfiction crowd (though quite a lot can be found in the endnotes), and lacking the narrative the fiction audience might want. I think I would have preferred that it lean a bit harder in either direction.
I did like that each chapter (arranged chronologically from the before to the after) begins with the nonfiction narrator giving some context for what is to follow. Then, the fiction part will follow a character as they experience some aspect of what was going on.
The real strength of this book is in giving a sense of what the plague would have felt like for those living through it. There are humanizing anecdotes that help to flesh out village life in turmoil.
I particularly liked that the author chose scenes that would best illustrate the point. The book opens with a "good death", someone dying at they are supposed to - old, and in the presence of a priest and family. It worked well to contrast with the pandemonium that followed.
Overall, this wasn't a bad book, by any means. But I would have appreciated some stronger writing in the fictional portions.
I did like that each chapter (arranged chronologically from the before to the after) begins with the nonfiction narrator giving some context for what is to follow. Then, the fiction part will follow a character as they experience some aspect of what was going on.
The real strength of this book is in giving a sense of what the plague would have felt like for those living through it. There are humanizing anecdotes that help to flesh out village life in turmoil.
I particularly liked that the author chose scenes that would best illustrate the point. The book opens with a "good death", someone dying at they are supposed to - old, and in the presence of a priest and family. It worked well to contrast with the pandemonium that followed.
Overall, this wasn't a bad book, by any means. But I would have appreciated some stronger writing in the fictional portions.
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Whilst this book gave me a great deal of knowledge about the Black Death, the writing was very dry and the storyline dull.
As a literature student, my academic interests have recently tended towards contemporary fiction and particularly what gets called "historiographical metafiction": fictional works that blur the line between history and fiction, and ultimately force the question of how all of what we "know" about the past is constructed.
So I was intrigued to find a history book, by a well-respected historian, that seems to be participating in similar kinds of modes as some of the ficitonal works I've been studying.
In The Black Death John Hatcher sets out to give us an "insider's view" of the devastating plague that swept through Europe in the mid-fourteenth century. He does this by focusing on one small Sussex village, and recounting the events as they unfold. But, although the records for Walsham and the surrounding area are particularly good, Hatcher is upfront about the things they couldn't tell him: how exactly individuals behaved in the face of the crisis, what they felt, said and did, or even the name of the parish priest. So, in order to get his reader "inside" the history of the times he decides to make (presumably extremely well) educated guesses and narrate from the position of a clergyman writing several decades after the events of the book, whilst he, the objective historian, opens each chapter with an italicised introduction, which gives context, explanation etc.
So this isn't going to be a book for the historical purists out there, but I found Hatcher's attempts very compelling. The balance between historical fact and narrative drama is competently handled and I sped through reading this in a day: for me, even though I knew what would happen (i.e: the plague would arrive in Britain, a lot of people would die) I nevertheless found this a page-turner. Which is surely a testament to Hatcher's writing style and presentation of events. Hatcher also builds a picture of the late medieval world without being overtly expository. Telling details abound to build up a picture of life for every day people - although I would be interested to know if this struck readers without a prior familiarity with the period. He also transformed actual historical figures (the lords and ladies of the local manners, for example) into compelling characters, reading human motivations into the dry court rolls.
My only real criticism of this book is that it refused to play with the uncertainty of its genre: Hatcher seemed ultimately concerned with writing history, at finding a greater "truth" through his unorthodox method, which appeared to me to be essentially futile. The ambiguity could have been exploited much more fully (as in with the narrator - who was he? why would he be writing this account) but perhaps that's just my literature student background betraying me.
Overall, a very enjoyable read, and much more entertaining than many history books you might read on this subjet.
So I was intrigued to find a history book, by a well-respected historian, that seems to be participating in similar kinds of modes as some of the ficitonal works I've been studying.
In The Black Death John Hatcher sets out to give us an "insider's view" of the devastating plague that swept through Europe in the mid-fourteenth century. He does this by focusing on one small Sussex village, and recounting the events as they unfold. But, although the records for Walsham and the surrounding area are particularly good, Hatcher is upfront about the things they couldn't tell him: how exactly individuals behaved in the face of the crisis, what they felt, said and did, or even the name of the parish priest. So, in order to get his reader "inside" the history of the times he decides to make (presumably extremely well) educated guesses and narrate from the position of a clergyman writing several decades after the events of the book, whilst he, the objective historian, opens each chapter with an italicised introduction, which gives context, explanation etc.
So this isn't going to be a book for the historical purists out there, but I found Hatcher's attempts very compelling. The balance between historical fact and narrative drama is competently handled and I sped through reading this in a day: for me, even though I knew what would happen (i.e: the plague would arrive in Britain, a lot of people would die) I nevertheless found this a page-turner. Which is surely a testament to Hatcher's writing style and presentation of events. Hatcher also builds a picture of the late medieval world without being overtly expository. Telling details abound to build up a picture of life for every day people - although I would be interested to know if this struck readers without a prior familiarity with the period. He also transformed actual historical figures (the lords and ladies of the local manners, for example) into compelling characters, reading human motivations into the dry court rolls.
My only real criticism of this book is that it refused to play with the uncertainty of its genre: Hatcher seemed ultimately concerned with writing history, at finding a greater "truth" through his unorthodox method, which appeared to me to be essentially futile. The ambiguity could have been exploited much more fully (as in with the narrator - who was he? why would he be writing this account) but perhaps that's just my literature student background betraying me.
Overall, a very enjoyable read, and much more entertaining than many history books you might read on this subjet.
informative
medium-paced
Really informative and thoroughly researched book
I found this book both impressive and engaging. Hatcher (an eminent medieval historian) himself describes the genre of this unusual book as resembling a "docudrama," which is probably the best way of encapsulating it. It's likely to appeal to the interested layperson, but could also be useful for classroom use by history instructors. Hatcher uses the surviving records of an English village (reaching beyond it to nearby towns and manors, and, where relevant, to continental Europe.) He then reconstructs/imagines the experience of this community not only during the first outbreak of the Black Death, but during the years immediately preceding and following it. This enriches considerably its potential usefulness, in my view, as well as its interest. Hatcher, while inventing conversations and motives, keeps remarkably close to his documents, and explains how they survive and are used by historians. Impressively, Hatcher covers not only economy (prices and landholding,) and social status, but also how the plague affected governance, ecclesiastical administration, popular piety, and, not least, the roles of women in agricultural society. His protagonists include a cleric, members of the nobility and gentry, manor officials, a monk, and a diverse group of peasants, It's a meticulously crafted and a fascinating work.
This was really interesting, but honestly, there wasn't quite as much graphic death and destruction as I was hoping for. I wasn't quite as engaged as I expected to be. It was definitely a cool concept, though, and well-executed.