I recently finished reading a book entitled 'The Black Death: The Intimate Story of a Village in Crisis', which I realise does not sound like the most cheerful, nor the most riveting book ever published. And it isn't! Being about the medieval plague it lives up to expectations of a time of great fear, anxiety, pain, misery and death.
However, one of the main reasons I picked this book up is in light of what the author (A chap called John Hatcher) was trying to achieve with it. In essence he has to taken historical knowledge and academic scholarship and spun that into a fictional exposition of a real Suffolk village called Walsham. I find this interesting essentially as its an attempt to help turn the often bland, dry, seemingly irrelevant history of academia into a more readily enjoyable format. So, how did he do?
Well, i'll start with that blend of history and fiction. Historians are good writers, simply because to be a historian requires considerable levels of writing and reading. When you are churning out essays, journal articles and theses, a ability to write well is an inevitable by-product. However, being a good writer does not necessarily translate into being a good fiction writer, and I think this shows in 'The Black Death'. I don't mean this in an over-critical sense as I am by no means a good writer of fiction (and at the moment don't seem to have the general organisation to write history). Still, Hatcher's book is exceptionally dry as far as story telling goes. The characters of the village have no personality, no quirks, no flair (perhaps not unsurprising given they are living out their historically fictional lives in the midst of a mini-apocalypse), rather seeming to fulfill the sole purpose of being case studies for the historical examples we have of the time period. Thus it is that this book becomes a poor fictional novel.
Unfortunately, in pursuing the fictional element this book also falls down in the historical sense. One of the central problems is that the book is telling the story of a single village. The premise is good, not least as its based on a number of remarkable sources from the period of the Black Death about the village of Walsham. Thus the names of the villagers, and to an extent the narrative of the Black Death in the village, are real. However, that information only goes so far, and thus the author must fill in the gaps by taking other sources of information from the same time period. This is not an unusual practice in studying history. Generally information on a certain period or event is so scant that it is a necessity to take multiple sources and try and produce a generalisation. However, most of the time a good historian will make that plain - ie, this is a story about 'people A' in 'place A' but to tell that story i've used information from 'place D' and 'people C' and thus the final conclusion is mere supposition.
In the case of 'The Black Death' though, it becomes hard to do that (in his defence, I do think John Hatcher attempts to explain the diverse nature of his source material and the problems of that diversity) not least because the narrative of the village places extra emphasis on this being a real story, or real people. Yet, it clearly isn't a real account of what happened and is based upon accounts from all over Britain and Europe. Thus the dividing line of fiction and reality becomes blurred and the real history and its original context is utterly lost. We really don't know how people in Walsham or many English villages responded and reacted to the Black Death, but this book portrays the slim evidence as a compelling account of the truth, confused by the fact that the names and dates in that place are real. What you end up with then is a dry and quite boring novel and a compromised history book.
I do admire Hatcher's attempt though. I think he tried to do something that is very difficult to achieve and his result is perhaps an inevitable consequence of trying to balance out reader interest with good scholarship. And, given that one of the main issues in history at the moment seems to be that of helping people to see why on earth the subject is relevant at all to society, its good that people are trying to break from the mold of dry, dull history textbooks.
As for the history in the book, well the Black Death is a very bleak topic in history. Death, misery, pain all feature highly, and I didn't necessarily enjoy the book for that reason. It is remarkable, and terrifying, to even consider the events and times that the people of medieval Europe and Asia lived through. Knowing that this wave of death was sweeping towards you, striking every class and creed must have been terrifying. When it did arrive, within months half of your village, your community and friends, family, where all gone. The social change was exceptional, the sorrow staggering.
One of the more difficult things for me to read in the book was that of the issue of faith. Faced with a bold and striking understanding of their own mortality and the shortness of life, people were consumed with a desire to know and love God, to seek salvation and redemption. In a way that (if true) is heartbraking though, many (misled by the Church and society) sought that salvation in the Virgin Mary, not Christ. Others where consumed with the reality that they would only be saved if they had sufficient money or if they were buried with the right form of service, only to find that failed harvests (because of a lack of labourers owing to those who had already died) and a total breakdown in regular society meant that people neither had the money, nor the people to help perform said services. Thus the means to salvation that was being taught failed, and despair consumed those hungry to know God.
Its hard to know what the reality was for many people seeking God in the middle ages, and especially in the Black Death, predominantly because source material is so limited and examples can't be assumed to be accurate, but if there is any truth in those tales at all its so sad to think of all those people hungry for faith and being misled.
I am thankful that my salvation is guaranteed because I have a living and real faith in Christ, not dependant on works or acts of ceremony, but by grace alone. Awesome.
As for the book, then its ok. Not bad certainly, but not great.
I finished a great book the other day - 'Carry on, Jeeves' by P.G. Wodehouse. The basic premise (if you have never come across Jeeves and Wooster) is that you follow the life of a man named Bertie Wooster who is a young aristocrat living in the inter-war period (I think late 1920s) and the ridiculous situations he finds himself in. Jeeves is his butler/servant, ever faithful and frequently to the rescue with his superior wisdom and skills. Its silly stuff, lots of ridiculous language (posh 1920s English), crazy situations and I love it. It frequently had me lauging out-loud and I devoured all the stories - this book is a collection of various calamities - very quickly indeed.
