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A review by nigellicus
The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart by Jesse Bullington
5.0
For the dark, cold, unceasingly wet and utterly miserable winter that’s in it, here’s a little something that’ll brighten up your day, albeit by reassuring you that if you think YOU’VE got it bad, better think again. Hegel and Manfried, the brothers of the title are a despicable pair of medieval European rednecks, narcissistically convinced of their own righteousness, who make their dubious living by robbing graves. After taking revenge on an old neighbour by murdering his family and burning his house, the brothers flee south, headed or the fabulous tombs and riches of Egypt with a lynch mob baying at their heels. Doggedly determined, cunningly violent and utterly ruthless, they carve their way across the heart of Europe encountering monsters, witches, priests, innocents, charlatans, plague and soul crushing poverty, all the while expounding their own idiosyncratic views on life and religion.
There is a great deal of nastiness in this book, as well as horrorness and disgustingness, but that doesn’t stop it from being wildly entertaining and blackly, bleakly hilarious. It’s also an effective portrait of life in 1346, grimy, grim and ugly, full of religious awe and superstition and likely to be cut short with little notice by violence, pestilence, starvation or pure random bad luck. Bad and all as the Brothers Grossbart are, there are things lurking in the mountains and valleys and forests that make them look cuddly by comparison. Well, not really,
This is one for those with a strong stomach and a wicked humour, but it is well written and hugely enjoyable, and boasts one of the best covers for years; a clever, insanely detailed optical illusion-woodcut by Istvan Oros, and while you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, this amazing image was what caught my eye initially. What I ended up with was a gleeful sort of mash up of Umberto Eco and Cormac McCarthy as written by Stephen King. So delve, if you dare, into the blasphemous, bloody, foul-mouthed world of the Brothers Grossbart. And their beards.
There is a great deal of nastiness in this book, as well as horrorness and disgustingness, but that doesn’t stop it from being wildly entertaining and blackly, bleakly hilarious. It’s also an effective portrait of life in 1346, grimy, grim and ugly, full of religious awe and superstition and likely to be cut short with little notice by violence, pestilence, starvation or pure random bad luck. Bad and all as the Brothers Grossbart are, there are things lurking in the mountains and valleys and forests that make them look cuddly by comparison. Well, not really,
This is one for those with a strong stomach and a wicked humour, but it is well written and hugely enjoyable, and boasts one of the best covers for years; a clever, insanely detailed optical illusion-woodcut by Istvan Oros, and while you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, this amazing image was what caught my eye initially. What I ended up with was a gleeful sort of mash up of Umberto Eco and Cormac McCarthy as written by Stephen King. So delve, if you dare, into the blasphemous, bloody, foul-mouthed world of the Brothers Grossbart. And their beards.