The Black Death - John Hatcher

"The thousands of ordinary
parish priests who ministered
to their flocks in fourteenth-
century England have left
scarcely a trace of their lives in
any surviving records."

Rated 6.8/10  (a good read)

In this fresh approach to the history of the Black Death, John Hatcher, a world-renowned scholar of the Middle Ages, recreates everyday life in a mid-fourteenth century rural English village. By focusing on the experiences of ordinary villagers as they lived - and died - during the Black Death (1345 - 50 AD), Hatcher vividly places the reader directly into those tumultuous years and describes in fascinating detail the day-to-day existence of people struggling with the tragic effects of the plague. Dramatic scenes portray how contemporaries must have experienced and thought about the momentous events - and how they tried to make sense of it all.

My Thoughts: I was drawn to this book for the simple reason that I wanted  to broaden my knowledge a little. I mostly read fiction as an escape method, but this book looked like it would both let me escape and also teach me a bit along the way. It managed to succeed at both of these things. 

The Black Death did lose my interest a little in places and wasn't quite as gritty with the detail as I had expected. There was a lot of focus on religion, which I wasn't so keen on, and I would have enjoyed a peasant farmer as the main character of the book, rather than a parish priest. Obviously, religion was the main focus of society in the 1300s, and so the choice of character was fitting, but maybe a bit more narration from different people's daily lives could have been added.

There were times towards the end of the book, when Hatcher was going through lists of names and families by way of Blakey and other similar characters speaking out to a court to resolve heritage and land issues. I think that much of this could have been summarised to keep my mind from straying. There are only so many Williams and Agnes's that I can read about before I lose all care for how much land each one is inheriting, or not as the case may be.

Having said all of this, although I knew what was coming, I still found myself glued to the pages. This is a really clever way of making history a pleasure to read. I won't read it again, but I am glad that I picked it up.

Theme: 5/5
Historical metafiction (or 'historic faction' as my manager likes to call it), is definitely the best way to tumble back a couple of hundred years.

Plot: 5/5
You can't really argue with someone explaining away one of the biggest events in world history.

Characters: 1/5
I wanted the characters to be a lot more in depth. I wanted to know what they wore, what their houses were really like, and how actual day to day living changed due to the plague. And I know that a lot of forenames were repeated in the 1300s, but there were too many Williams and Agnes's and Johns to keep track of.

Setting: 3/5 
A busy little village - not much to say positively or negatively here.

Style: 3/5
Kept me reading and was very interesting, but could have been more in depth and a little less religiously focussed.

Overall: 6.8/10

Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway

"Robert Cohn was once middleweight
boxing champion of Princeton."

Rated 5.2/10  (not bad)

Paris in the twenties: Pernod, parties and expatriate Americans, loose-living on money from home. Jake is wildly in love with Brett Ashley, aristocratic and irresistibly beautiful, but with an abandoned, sensuous nature that she cannot change.

My Thoughts: I appreciate Hemingway's style but I'm not sure that I really understood this book. I thought that Robert Cohn was treated really quite badly; I didn't like Brett one bit; and Mike was a bit of a monster too. It read, to me, like a lot of pretentious Americans without any compassion. Nothing much happened. Nothing much was said. And I didn't see the relationship between Brett and Jake at all. I think maybe I missed something here.

I've read a lot of reviews that suggest something different might come of this novel from a second reading - maybe even a third. I struggled through this and only just made it to the end (and I did find myself skipping a few pages after the fiesta too). I won't be reading it again to find out if they are right.

That said, I did like the atmosphere of the fiesta. I couldn't quite pinpoint as to why, but I found myself drawn into the book at that point; I think possibly Hemingway's stark writing style with no real description left my imagination to fill in the gaps. It was really quite wonderful, but there just wasn't enough of this atmosphere throughout to keep me interested. It took far too long to kick off.

I loved A Moveable Feast, but this one didn't really do it for me.

Theme: 3/5
I liked the idea of the fiesta and everything building up to a climax in Spain.

Plot: 1/5
The relationships and character's feelings were perhaps too subtle for me, and I didn't click on to the romance that was supposedly lacing the book.

Characters: 1/5 
I didn't like them. I didn't connect to any of them.

Setting: 4/5
Some brilliant settings. All the littlest details weren't filled in, which let me colour in the gaps.

Style: 4/5
I still like Hemingway's style and think that he is one of the great classic American authors.

Overall: 5.2/10