Scan barcode
A review by sawyerbell
To Calais, in Ordinary Time by James Meek
4.0
I find it difficult to review To Calais, in Ordinary Time. I admired so much about it: the author's use of archaic Latinate, Norman French and Saxon vocabulary to flesh out the characters and setting, the laugh-out-loud bits of dialog, the almost Shakespearean nature of the plot, the almost cinematic nature of the prose, the experience of reading about the characters' fear of the plague while quarantined myself, nervously checking my temperature over and over to see if our modern day plague has infected me.
And yet, and yet. There were so many boring sections, so many places where the archaic vocabulary dragged me out of the story, so many sentences that were almost incomprehensible. For a relatively short book, it seemed to take an aeon to get through.
My final verdict is this: To Calais, in Ordinary Time would make an excellent movie or mini-series. A director would slash away the excessive use of archaic language that slows the story down and would be able to compress the boring bits. 3.5 stars; mildly recommended for the patient reader.
And yet, and yet. There were so many boring sections, so many places where the archaic vocabulary dragged me out of the story, so many sentences that were almost incomprehensible. For a relatively short book, it seemed to take an aeon to get through.
My final verdict is this: To Calais, in Ordinary Time would make an excellent movie or mini-series. A director would slash away the excessive use of archaic language that slows the story down and would be able to compress the boring bits. 3.5 stars; mildly recommended for the patient reader.