The Clerkenwell Tales

From Publishers Weekly
Ackroyd (The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde; Hawksmoor; etc.) brings late medieval London to life in this latest of his fascinating historical novels. Working with a cast of characters drawn from The Canterbury Tales, Ackroyd deploys his usual meticulous research to reconstruct the background of Chaucer's England in a prose idiom congenial to modern readers. The thriller plot concerns a visionary nun, a sect of violent religious heretics and a shadowy group of power brokers trying to orchestrate the ouster of King Richard II by Henry Bolingbroke. But the rather creaky conspiracy narrative, supposedly based in fact, is just a peg on which to hang a panorama of 14th-century life that takes in the cathedrals, cloisters, brothels, taverns and law courts while instructing readers on all things medieval, from medicine (dove droppings applied to the feet is the recommended cure for insomnia) to fast food (at street stands, roast finches can be had two for a penny). It's a society where elaborate courtesy balances gross indecency, pious ritual shades into sadomasochistic fetish, reflexive orthodoxy is troubled by new philosophies from the universities, corrupt and worldly churchmen contend with anti-clerical revolutionaries and science struggles to be born from a morass of superstition, alchemy and astrology. The characters seem both secure within and frustrated by the confines and mysteries of their narrow worldview and are badly in need of a renaissance. Ackroyd's brilliant evocation of their ideology and psychology lets us recognize the traces of our own time in this archaic past. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
London in 1399 is rife with suspense and intrigue. Richard II is about to lose the crown to Henry Bolingbroke, duke of Lancaster. In the House of Mary in Clerkenwell, the prioress has her aristocratic hands full, literally of her pet monkey, figuratively of 18-year-old Sister Clarice, who is having visions and concocting veiled prophecies. Meanwhile, friar William Exmewe guides a cabal of heretics--all commoners--in a series of terrorizing explosions in church precincts, which he reports on to Dominus, a cabal of atheist materialists--all aristocrats--avid to be powers behind the throne of the prospective Henry IV. And closely related bystanders notice Clarice's tete-a-tete with Exmewe, among other odd encounters. Most of Ackroyd's characters have the same occupations, but not the same personalities, as those of their contemporaries, the storytellers of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The thrillerlike scenario through which they career, and in which some of them fatally crash, should enthrall history buffs far more than fiction readers who prize deep characterization. Make sure said buffs don't miss it. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review

FROM THE PUBLISHER

From a master historian -- a brilliantly original historical novel set in late-14th century London.

"I am sister to the day and night. I am sister to the woods." Sister Clarisse, a nun in the House of St. Mary at Clerkenwell, experiences visions. She dreams of the English King. Are her prophesies the babblings of the crazed? Or can she "see" a future in which Henry Bolingbroke overthrows Richard II?

This clever and colourful novel begins with The Nun's Tale, and continues with The Friar's Tale, The Merchant's Tale and The Clerk's Tale. Thus, story by story, Peter Ackroyd builds his portrait of medieval London. The people are disenchanted with the Church, with its wealth and corruption, its Pope in Rome and its Pope in Avignon. But heresy is dangerous -- almost as dangerous as rebellion. This is a novel about spies and counterspies, radicals and idealists, murderers and arsonists, sects and secret societies. It is a tale richly atmospheric and satisfying in its historical detail.

FROM THE CRITICS

Michael Pye - The New York Times

The result is shamelessly Gothic, all secret covens and awful plots and innocent victims, not to mention heavy (and lecherous) traffic on underground passages between a convent and a priory. There is a new version of the secret masters of the universe, this time called Dominus. A footnote tells us what they did after the story ends, which includes the Oxford Movement in theology and the troubles in Northern Ireland. Ackroyd, obviously, is having enormous fun.

Publishers Weekly