Minette Walters: The Last Hours (Book Review)

[selenak]

Well, that was a let down. Years ago, I had enjoyed some of Minette Walters‘ mystery novels, and so when I saw she‘d written a historical novel, I looked forward to reading it. It‘s set in 1348, Dorsetshire, the Black Plague strikes, and our heroine, Lady Anne, manages to save the villagers and herself by isolating themselves... for now. So, a lot of potential in this set up, and Minette Walters is the type to do her research.

What this story made me realize: when I read plague stories, I have a certain set of expectations, and they were not met. Oh, not in terms of the illness - Walters certainly did her research there. But good lord, the clichés abound, a long with the black and white charactersation. Aristocrats and priests as well as anyone of Norman origin are evil, greedy, selfish. The one good aristocrat is Anne, and she, we are assured, is a Saxon and only half an aristocrat anyway. Whereas not every single serf is noble, brave and a Saxon, but 98o% of them are.

Anne is not only well educated (thanks to a nunnery with a progressive abbess, who, however, had to do her educating in secret) but clear on hygenie and its meaning for survival, she‘s shared her literacy with the serfs since years behind the back of her evil (Norman) aristocratic husband (who dies early on of the plague), she rejects the Church’s superstition, she doesn‘t believe in social differences and her sensibilities when it comes to relationships between the sexes are equally modern: „I question why a man of your age would find my fourteen-year-old daughter so interesting,” Anne says to her husband‘s soon to be disposed by her steward (Norman, of course), never mind she lives in a world where marrying 14 years olds off is usual. The daughter, by the way, is an evil, stupid and ungrateful brat, who continues to be one throughout the book, despite Anne having the patience of a saint until she finally does something about Eleanor‘s evilness, but even then, she delivers rational explanations. In short, Anne does not hold a single view objectionable to modern sensibilities, she never puts a foot wrong.

The novel‘s hero is Thaddeus, born a bastard, and his mother and stepfather are the two sole not noble serfs, being selfish and abusive respectively. Now, Thaddeus and the other villagers provide most of the perspectives in the novel, and they, too, don‘t hold any views one might object to. Bigotry and bias is reserved for venal Father Anselm, the drunken, voyeuristic and no good village priest, and the various Normans (both aristocratic and foot soldiers) in the book. I had at one point the hope that Hugh, the original steward who then gets replaced in the job by Thaddeus (who is Anne‘s protege), might be the one character who actually learns something in the book and crosses over into ambiguity or good guy-dom, but no such luck. And there you have my main problem, and realisation: when I read a plague novel, and the summary on the backside promises a breaking down of social boundaries, I, it turns out, expect the horror of the plague to bring out unexpected strengths in characters as well as failures, and radically changes some of them. But that doesn‘t happen here. Those who start out as good only become more so, those who are bad only get worse. Yes, it‘s absolutely plausible that someone who is selfish will become only more so in a time of lethal danger. But if this happens every single time, it just doesn‘t make for interesting storytelling.

Point of comparison: Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor, more than half a century older than this novel. The title character, who lives during the Restoration, is as selfish and survival-oriented as they come. But one of the most memorable passages of the novel is the Great Plague, and not just for the gruesome illness but because Amber the selfish actually risks it all when the man she loves gets infected, and stays instead of hightailing it out of there. (This being a cynical novel, he does survive but leaves her anyway.)

As for the breaking of social boundaries: since Anne already holds egalitarian views at the start of the novel, it‘s not much of a surprise that she displays them later. And while Thaddeus gains some confidence, he didn‘t start out believing the aristocracy to be superior, either, so it‘s not like his world view gets shattered. Now, if Anne had been allowed a single not-modern attitude, it would have benefitted the novel to no end, imo. Maybe she loses her patience with Eleanor earlier on and as a child of the 14th century orders some physical beatings, which would not only be likely but would make Eleanor‘s resentment of her a bit less unfounded and one sided. Or: her determination to save the villagers remains firm and noble, but is bound to a strong idea of them being her people, whom she sees as in need of protection, yes, but like children, not on an equal level with her, and when some of them disagree (maybe with valid points instead of wrong ones), this is a shock because her privileged position is so self evident to her. Basically: provide Anne with a chance for character development, letting her learn something, instead of letting her already start out as a perfectly modern woman in medieval garb.

To be fair: in the last third of the novel, some characters actually do some growth that wasn‘t there from the outset - a couple of teenage boys Thaddeus takes under his wing. (Meanwhile, Eleanor keeps having the same conversation with her mother and everyone else and never learns anything.) But at that point it was too litlte, too late for me.

Oh, and yes, cats had a bad image for centuries, but the idea that the church „teaches“ their evilness and that Anne‘s secretly progressive abbess (the sole not evil member of the clergy in the novel, and she‘s dead and only exists in the backstory) had to equally secretly keep a cat in the nunnery made me roll my eyes. For historical reasons - you may or may not have seen a scan of that vellum where the paws of a cat left an imprint on a book page and a monk scribbles his complaints about that next to said imprints -, but also because of cat reasons. Because if a cat resides somewhere, it does not do so in secret. Trust me on this. If there was a cat in the nunnery, every single nun would have known (and probably ended up serving it one way or the other, for such is the way of cats.)

In conclusion: I had expected much better from this author. Very much not reccommended.

Comments

[andraste]

That does sound disappointing - I've enjoyed several of Walters' mysteries, especially The Sculptress, but I'll remember to give this one a miss.

I am most boggled by the cat part. The clergy did not shun cats! Sometimes they cursed them for doing annoying cat things - like anyone else enslaved to a feline - but they did not shun them. I mean, never mind the pawprints, there's this other famous monkish remark on a page otherwise left blank:

Here is nothing missing, but a cat urinated on this during a certain night. Cursed be the pesty cat that urinated over this book during the night in Deventer and because of it many others too. And beware well not to leave open books at night where cats can come.

... which just goes to show that cats have not changed very much in the intervening centuries. Since Medieval books were at serious risk of being eaten by rats and mice, though, I'd say the monks ultimately came out ahead no matter how often they knocked over the ink or used the vellum as a litterbox.

[genarti]

Ugh! What a frustrating book, from the sound of it. "Everyone sympathetic holds totally modern views, which evil superstitious jerks insult or oppress them for" is my least favorite approach to a historical novel, even when not compounded by the tired "all Normans are evil, all Saxons are virtuous, all sympathetic Normans are actually part Saxon" trope.

[m_nivalis]

Thanks for the warning!

[monanotlisa]

It doesn't sound like the book is sufficiently self-aware. Too bad -- but I'm impressed that you finished it.

[trobadora]

That sounds so disappointing. :(

[watervole]

Have you read Doomsday Book by Connie Willis?
An excellent Plague novel, though very emotionally draining.

The Priest is ill-educated, knows nothing of hygiene, etc. But, and it's a big but, he has compassion in buckets. He believes in his god, and the god he believes in cares about people.

Sometimes, all he can do is to toll the bell after they die. But for every man, woman and child, he can't save, he will do that for them, even when he is drained beyond measure.

Most of us would believe that ringing the bell makes no difference, but to him it matters, and he believes it is important to those who have died.