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A review by apechild
John Saturnall's Feast by Lawrence Norfolk
4.0
Engrossing, detailed and living (yet slow paced) tale set in the 1600s. About cooking, about witch hunts, old pagan beliefs, the English Civil War and all the hardship that came with it - the starvation, the groups of bullies hiding under the cloak of religious extremist groups that felt they had a free reign to go about making other people's lives a misery. But the main thing has to be the food, about the flavours and experiences and how it all connects us back to the land.
John Saturnall grows up as an outsider with his mother in a little village in the vale of Buckland. Villagers are happy for his mother's help when they're ill, but when religious frenzy gets whipped up, the witch accusation is always pointed in her direction. They run away to Buccla's wood, the old original pagan who reputedly set up the orchards of the vale, to survive off the land, and John learns of the feast from his mother. He later winds up at the Fremantle's estate manor house as a kitchen boy in the years before the civil war, and works his way up to cook in the kitchen, learning his craft from Master Scovell. The civil war comes, Sir William is for the king and thus his staff are taken out to serve in the war... well, we all know how that worked out. Then the years beyond as the country struggles to settle in itself.
I feel like I've read my way through an entire life. This is such a descriptive book, and so detailed. A culinary tale of the times of the English Civil War.
John Saturnall grows up as an outsider with his mother in a little village in the vale of Buckland. Villagers are happy for his mother's help when they're ill, but when religious frenzy gets whipped up, the witch accusation is always pointed in her direction. They run away to Buccla's wood, the old original pagan who reputedly set up the orchards of the vale, to survive off the land, and John learns of the feast from his mother. He later winds up at the Fremantle's estate manor house as a kitchen boy in the years before the civil war, and works his way up to cook in the kitchen, learning his craft from Master Scovell. The civil war comes, Sir William is for the king and thus his staff are taken out to serve in the war... well, we all know how that worked out. Then the years beyond as the country struggles to settle in itself.
I feel like I've read my way through an entire life. This is such a descriptive book, and so detailed. A culinary tale of the times of the English Civil War.