A review by notoriousesr
Morality Play by Barry Unsworth

adventurous dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Nicholas Barber is a wandering priest. Having left his post in pursuit of folly, he falls in with a group of players. When they stop in a town to bury a dead troupe member, the leader decides they should do something radical: make a play about the recent murder of a 12-year-old boy.

I gotta say it--I love a messed up little monk. I love a tonsure. I love a holy man who’s bad at being a monk. And I love a class solidarity moment! So I was pretty pleased with this book in general. I found the characters well-drawn and the setting was alive and well-researched without being pedantic or sanitized (like yeah, the revolutionary weaver probably would’ve hated Jews). There isn’t too much rumination, which is a trap that many authors who write “observer” characters like Nicholas easily fall in to. I’m no great lover of the mystery genre, and this book’s mystery wasn’t particularly twisty-turny (once they dropped the detail of five boys mysteriously disappearing I had a pretty good idea of what happened). I was disappointed by the deus ex machina of the Justice, and the ending felt way too tidy. However, I loved learning about Medieval drama and Nicholas’s character journey was very satisfying. 3.5 out of 5 theatrical masks.