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bookhobbitIt's called While Sumer Ilast and it's about queer longing and community-building in the wake of the plague.
I promised a post about this because I wanted to ramble, but now I'm rather hard put to figure out what to say!
Uhhhhhhhhh let's see. It's set in 1350s Lancashire (somewhere in the forest of Bowland). A small and not-very-important manor village with a increasingly tiny population thanks to recent decimations caused by the plague. The concept of the book when it started out was "bright young things except it's after the plague instead of after the great war", but it's nowhere near frantic enough, though it is desolate enough. It's a novel that brightens and warms as it goes: you start in January and everything is cold and dark and sad, and everyone feels that the world has ended, and then, slowly, they rebuild it, and it ends in December at a Christmas party for the whole community.
In a very real sense it's postapocalyptic, except it's historical fiction. So the world doesn't get to actually end, because it can't, because, of course, England is still inhabited (though you get the sense that in 100 years this village won't be, though the present residents' descendants will probably live on happily elsewhere).
What I really, really love about this novel is that it riffs on exactly the same types of themes as your standard literary fiction (Home Is Not Home, Man Angry At God, Marital Discord, Dead Kid Tragedy) in the gayest and weirdest way possible. And also that it translates the characters' medieval dialogue almost fully to modern speech, without being jarring.
The cast of characters includes:
John Atwell, The Only Emotionally Stable Man In The Village, recently returned from his apprenticeship in Lancaster
William Savil, the new lord of the manor his father having died in the plague; extremely depressed and not too well physically due to being severely weakened by his own barely-survived bout of plague
Mary Beckett, trans woman and stonemason from York, The Stranger who helps rebuild the community, while the community in turn helps rebuild her
Tiiffany, textile worker, a general Granny Weatherwax type, estranged from her husband because they're both having a tough time dealing with the grief of losing three chidlren
Thomas, the husband, farrier, very religiously intense but in a loving and gentle way, barely keeping himself alive because he just cannot deal with the fact that his three kids are dead AND his wife isn't talking to him because they're processing their grief in exactly opposite and mutually incompatible ways
Gilbert, the village priest, was never actually a very good priest at all and now is having to confront it seriously because there's nothing to distract him from it now that 30% of the village is dead and another 50% are too angry and exhausted from tragedy to come to church
There are twelve chapters, one per month, and each chapter revolves around one of the three pairs (John-William, Mary-Tiffany, Gilbert-Thomas) with the POV character being the first of each of those pairs. Four chapters per character/pair.
In all three cases there's some sort of Significant Relationship, but this is not necessarily the only thing making the drama run.
John and William had baby crushes on each other childhood but haven't seen each other since they were children (when the class divide seemed to matter a lot less). But also, William is dealing with the pressure of his social role (his cousin wants him to be a much lordlier lord than he actually is) and he's severely depressed because uhhhhhhhh he had the plague and also his entire family died.
Mary and Tiffany are both recently estranged from their respective spouses (Mary because she ran away in order to be out as a woman, but her wife wasn't exactly the most supportive person anyway; Tiffany bc she just Could Not do her relationship with Thomas anymore because of aforementioned loss.) When Mary comes to town, Gilbert puts her up with Tiffany because Tiffany has the space, but also, because he's an annoyingly knowing and interfering bastard, probably because he thinks she needs someone to run interference between her and her own brain. Which she does. Anyway, Mary is learning to Be A Person after an extremely manipulative marriage, and Tiffany is trying to get over her own sense of loss, and then they sort of...fall together gently.
Gilbert and Thomas are a lot less clear-cut than either because Gilbert is aro and extremely uninterested in having anything that could be described as a romantic relationship with anyone. Thomas has had a sort of guilty crush on him for like....twelve years, and Gilbert has found him attractive for about four, so they have Chemistry, but their current relationship is also very important to them. Partly because of this, they don't actually resolve themselves within the span of the book. You get the sense that they're heading towards some sort of change, but at their own pace. The main arc of this chapter is about Gilbert taking care of Thomas and also having an entire crisis of faith.
There are also other relationships in play, so John and Mary have a kind of casual sex thing going on and also obviously Thomas and Tiffany have a past history. They are an interesting relationship because they married on account of assuming no one else would marry them (they're both mostly into their same genders) but they did grow very emotionally close and loved each other very much. Also they were best friends since they were children. So the loss of that has been extremely painful especially to Thomas (Tiffany is dealing with it by shutting all her emotions down so she's like "everything is fine! i'm good alone!!!!!" for quite some time)
I'm wildly compromised by Gilbert and Thomas because a) I'm aro and b) Bowman cheated and based a bunch of his Religious Things off mine and c) I have a known weakness for bitter assholes (see my Norrell thing). Also d) they have this whole Forbidden Thing going on because priest, but that gets less relevant towards the book, because part of Gilbert's arc is about giving up his career as a priest and Thomas taking up the religious duties for the town. Which to be fair is Pretty Unsanctified under Catholicism, but Thomas's role is unofficial and I suspect Gilbert is going to fake his own death if any of the actual bishops come inquiring, because probably no one any higher in the church actually knows him by sight at this point.
Anyway. I haven't gotten across how GOOD it is I feel, or why it's gripped me by the intestines and become a special interest. I can't really explain that either, except to say that the prose is beautiful, and the writing is visual, and the emotions are fraught and tender and loving, and it's a book where everyone cares about each other. It's a book ABOUT caring and about how it's hard but important. Even Gilbert, who is probably the worst person in the book, cares desperately, and is Doing His Best. It's that sense, of a world where bad things are happening but people love each other the whole time, and of exploring the ways that that can hurt, and the conflicts that can arise, and where people continue to love each other and find ways to fit with each other, which is so wonderful.
Ahhhgghghg.
Anyway, I'm going to post a picture I drew of the cast because there's no official illustrations. Sorry about exposing you all to my art, but you must see them because I love them.
Left to right: William, John, Mary, Tiffany, Thomas, Gilbert.
I promised a post about this because I wanted to ramble, but now I'm rather hard put to figure out what to say!
Uhhhhhhhhh let's see. It's set in 1350s Lancashire (somewhere in the forest of Bowland). A small and not-very-important manor village with a increasingly tiny population thanks to recent decimations caused by the plague. The concept of the book when it started out was "bright young things except it's after the plague instead of after the great war", but it's nowhere near frantic enough, though it is desolate enough. It's a novel that brightens and warms as it goes: you start in January and everything is cold and dark and sad, and everyone feels that the world has ended, and then, slowly, they rebuild it, and it ends in December at a Christmas party for the whole community.
In a very real sense it's postapocalyptic, except it's historical fiction. So the world doesn't get to actually end, because it can't, because, of course, England is still inhabited (though you get the sense that in 100 years this village won't be, though the present residents' descendants will probably live on happily elsewhere).
What I really, really love about this novel is that it riffs on exactly the same types of themes as your standard literary fiction (Home Is Not Home, Man Angry At God, Marital Discord, Dead Kid Tragedy) in the gayest and weirdest way possible. And also that it translates the characters' medieval dialogue almost fully to modern speech, without being jarring.
The cast of characters includes:
John Atwell, The Only Emotionally Stable Man In The Village, recently returned from his apprenticeship in Lancaster
William Savil, the new lord of the manor his father having died in the plague; extremely depressed and not too well physically due to being severely weakened by his own barely-survived bout of plague
Mary Beckett, trans woman and stonemason from York, The Stranger who helps rebuild the community, while the community in turn helps rebuild her
Tiiffany, textile worker, a general Granny Weatherwax type, estranged from her husband because they're both having a tough time dealing with the grief of losing three chidlren
Thomas, the husband, farrier, very religiously intense but in a loving and gentle way, barely keeping himself alive because he just cannot deal with the fact that his three kids are dead AND his wife isn't talking to him because they're processing their grief in exactly opposite and mutually incompatible ways
Gilbert, the village priest, was never actually a very good priest at all and now is having to confront it seriously because there's nothing to distract him from it now that 30% of the village is dead and another 50% are too angry and exhausted from tragedy to come to church
There are twelve chapters, one per month, and each chapter revolves around one of the three pairs (John-William, Mary-Tiffany, Gilbert-Thomas) with the POV character being the first of each of those pairs. Four chapters per character/pair.
In all three cases there's some sort of Significant Relationship, but this is not necessarily the only thing making the drama run.
John and William had baby crushes on each other childhood but haven't seen each other since they were children (when the class divide seemed to matter a lot less). But also, William is dealing with the pressure of his social role (his cousin wants him to be a much lordlier lord than he actually is) and he's severely depressed because uhhhhhhhh he had the plague and also his entire family died.
Mary and Tiffany are both recently estranged from their respective spouses (Mary because she ran away in order to be out as a woman, but her wife wasn't exactly the most supportive person anyway; Tiffany bc she just Could Not do her relationship with Thomas anymore because of aforementioned loss.) When Mary comes to town, Gilbert puts her up with Tiffany because Tiffany has the space, but also, because he's an annoyingly knowing and interfering bastard, probably because he thinks she needs someone to run interference between her and her own brain. Which she does. Anyway, Mary is learning to Be A Person after an extremely manipulative marriage, and Tiffany is trying to get over her own sense of loss, and then they sort of...fall together gently.
Gilbert and Thomas are a lot less clear-cut than either because Gilbert is aro and extremely uninterested in having anything that could be described as a romantic relationship with anyone. Thomas has had a sort of guilty crush on him for like....twelve years, and Gilbert has found him attractive for about four, so they have Chemistry, but their current relationship is also very important to them. Partly because of this, they don't actually resolve themselves within the span of the book. You get the sense that they're heading towards some sort of change, but at their own pace. The main arc of this chapter is about Gilbert taking care of Thomas and also having an entire crisis of faith.
There are also other relationships in play, so John and Mary have a kind of casual sex thing going on and also obviously Thomas and Tiffany have a past history. They are an interesting relationship because they married on account of assuming no one else would marry them (they're both mostly into their same genders) but they did grow very emotionally close and loved each other very much. Also they were best friends since they were children. So the loss of that has been extremely painful especially to Thomas (Tiffany is dealing with it by shutting all her emotions down so she's like "everything is fine! i'm good alone!!!!!" for quite some time)
I'm wildly compromised by Gilbert and Thomas because a) I'm aro and b) Bowman cheated and based a bunch of his Religious Things off mine and c) I have a known weakness for bitter assholes (see my Norrell thing). Also d) they have this whole Forbidden Thing going on because priest, but that gets less relevant towards the book, because part of Gilbert's arc is about giving up his career as a priest and Thomas taking up the religious duties for the town. Which to be fair is Pretty Unsanctified under Catholicism, but Thomas's role is unofficial and I suspect Gilbert is going to fake his own death if any of the actual bishops come inquiring, because probably no one any higher in the church actually knows him by sight at this point.
Anyway. I haven't gotten across how GOOD it is I feel, or why it's gripped me by the intestines and become a special interest. I can't really explain that either, except to say that the prose is beautiful, and the writing is visual, and the emotions are fraught and tender and loving, and it's a book where everyone cares about each other. It's a book ABOUT caring and about how it's hard but important. Even Gilbert, who is probably the worst person in the book, cares desperately, and is Doing His Best. It's that sense, of a world where bad things are happening but people love each other the whole time, and of exploring the ways that that can hurt, and the conflicts that can arise, and where people continue to love each other and find ways to fit with each other, which is so wonderful.
Ahhhgghghg.
Anyway, I'm going to post a picture I drew of the cast because there's no official illustrations. Sorry about exposing you all to my art, but you must see them because I love them.
Left to right: William, John, Mary, Tiffany, Thomas, Gilbert.
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Date: 2019-10-04 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-05 01:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-05 01:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-05 10:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-05 05:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-05 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-05 07:16 pm (UTC)This sounds like a lot of fun! I'm glad Bowman is having fun writing it, and that you're having fun reading it -- and I'm excited for when you can share your fandom with the rest of us properly!
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Date: 2019-10-05 07:31 pm (UTC)Me too, it will probably be a while but ahhh. :D
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Date: 2019-10-05 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-05 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-07 01:06 am (UTC)