ancientreader's Reviews > To Calais, in Ordinary Time

I'm so far behind on reading and reviewing ARCs that I won't take the time to write a full review of this. Just a few points:

1. Extraordinary handling of the characters' linguistic registers: the peasants' English; the nobles' Frenchified English; the cleric's (yes, cleric singular) English, swamped by Latinisms, circumlocutory and awkward.

2. Of these, the peasants' English, whose vocabulary and sentence structure are least familiar to a 21st-century reader, will probably give trouble; I had to pause often, even though I studied medieval English literature in college. A word to the wise: it's worth every bit of that trouble.

3. I read and re-read and re-re-read so many passages for their sheer beauty.

4. No one is morally pure here, but I nevertheless loved Hab/Madlen and Will with all my heart.

5. It's 14th-century England, violence of all kinds, against women, men, and animals, is frequent, and the plague is heading your way. Brace yourself.

6. Heartbreaking and beautiful and instantly one of the books I love best in all my life. I shlepped a hardcover copy to Europe and back and would not have left it behind for anything. I owe @Mab a debt of thanks for drawing my attention to it in her review of another book.