carolhoggart's review
4.0
Feast of All Souls traces the onslaught of the Black Death on Italy in the mid-fourteenth century. In 1346, the Mongols laid siege to the Genoese Black Sea port of Kaffa. Instead of military conquest, they brought it and themselves low by means of the bubonic plague. Ships fleeing dying Kaffa then brought the plague speeding towards Italy, and Lunn has his fictional hero-thief Jacopo (+ cat) sail upon one such ship.
But Jacopo is by no means the obvious protagonist of this tale. Different chapters explore other characters' experiences - rich merchant Tuccio, his two daughters, Tuccio's rebellious wool workers, a black slave girl, a pampered cardinal, a wolfish German mercenary, and an unhinged friar who fancies himself the 'Pestilential King' and emissary of Satan. It is a rich cast of characters, each vividly portrayed, but there is a pervasive feeling of plotlessness to both characters and novel as a whole. The Cardinal, who appears so crucial to events at the outset, simply disappears from the tale without explanation. Nor is it clear why Corvo the Satanic friar felt the need to prompt the cardinal's hallucinogenic dreams. And why does the cardinal set the German mercenaries upon Tuccio's town?
Feast of All Souls is exquisitely written and exhaustively researched. Its language is often stunningly poetic. However, its characters lack purpose and I can't help wondering what purpose the novel and its trajectory overall serves. Or maybe that is the point - a drifting, poetic and horrifying evocation of an apocalyptic period in European history ...
But Jacopo is by no means the obvious protagonist of this tale. Different chapters explore other characters' experiences - rich merchant Tuccio, his two daughters, Tuccio's rebellious wool workers, a black slave girl, a pampered cardinal, a wolfish German mercenary, and an unhinged friar who fancies himself the 'Pestilential King' and emissary of Satan. It is a rich cast of characters, each vividly portrayed, but there is a pervasive feeling of plotlessness to both characters and novel as a whole. The Cardinal, who appears so crucial to events at the outset, simply disappears from the tale without explanation. Nor is it clear why Corvo the Satanic friar felt the need to prompt the cardinal's hallucinogenic dreams. And why does the cardinal set the German mercenaries upon Tuccio's town?
Feast of All Souls is exquisitely written and exhaustively researched. Its language is often stunningly poetic. However, its characters lack purpose and I can't help wondering what purpose the novel and its trajectory overall serves. Or maybe that is the point - a drifting, poetic and horrifying evocation of an apocalyptic period in European history ...
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