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A review by cassieyorke
The Great Mortality by John Kelly
5.0
I've read more books on the Black Death than I can possibly remember, and The Great Mortality is easily my favorite. I return to it constantly, not just for the history, but for the storytelling. The Great Mortality is constantly ominous, haunting, ghostly, and terrifying.
Kelly transports you back to a 14th century a lot of non-professional historians like me (I was an undergraduate history major) have never imagined - rich, bursting with vivid detail and color. Humorous, hilarious, horrifying. Emotionally touching. Most of all, haunting. This book is one long fade-to-black on windswept grasslands, and Kelly always leaves your final thoughts lingering on ghost towns, unfinished churches, and the ghostly remains of English villages that vanished without a trace long ago.
It's probably been twelve years since I first read this book and it's hard to imagine a work that's reinvented my storytelling the way The Great Mortality has. The pages turn themselves and the eerie ambiance seeps out of the book and lays heavily upon you.
If anyone asks me for a recommendation on a book about the Black Death - or about the Late Middle Ages in general - this is the first one I show them.
Kelly transports you back to a 14th century a lot of non-professional historians like me (I was an undergraduate history major) have never imagined - rich, bursting with vivid detail and color. Humorous, hilarious, horrifying. Emotionally touching. Most of all, haunting. This book is one long fade-to-black on windswept grasslands, and Kelly always leaves your final thoughts lingering on ghost towns, unfinished churches, and the ghostly remains of English villages that vanished without a trace long ago.
It's probably been twelve years since I first read this book and it's hard to imagine a work that's reinvented my storytelling the way The Great Mortality has. The pages turn themselves and the eerie ambiance seeps out of the book and lays heavily upon you.
If anyone asks me for a recommendation on a book about the Black Death - or about the Late Middle Ages in general - this is the first one I show them.