"I hadn’t thought suffering would be like
this, so ordinary, so dull, and so endless."
Title: The Anchoress
Expected publication: out now
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Book Description:
Set in the twelfth century, The Anchoress
tells the story of Sarah, only seventeen when she chooses to become an
anchoress, a holy woman shut away in a small cell, measuring seven paces by
nine, at the side of the village church. Fleeing the grief of losing a
much-loved sister in childbirth and the pressure to marry, she decides to
renounce the world, with all its dangers, desires and temptations, and to
commit herself to a life of prayer and service to God. But as she slowly begins
to understand, even the thick, unforgiving walls of her cell cannot keep the
outside world away, and it is soon clear that Sarah's body and soul are still
in great danger...
Sometimes freedom means locking yourself away ...
Sometimes freedom means locking yourself away ...
My musings:
After Robyn Cadwallader impressed me so
much with her Book of Colours, I absolutely had to read one of her other
novels. I admit I knew very little about anchorites when I started this book,
but the author’s rich descriptions soon swept me up like a time machine and deposited me smack-bang into the Middle Ages. The premise of the story is
truly fascinating and – to someone who struggles with being indoors for too
long – also slightly frightening. Sarah, a young woman from a wealthy family,
decides against marriage and instead chooses the path of an anchoress, not only
giving her life to God as a nun but also allowing herself to be “buried alive”
in a small cell attached to the village’s church for the rest of her life. This
“living death” presented the ultimate sacrifice to God, vowing to lead a lonely
existence devoted to prayer and worship. Why would anyone choose such a
terrible fate of their own free will? We soon learn that Sarah’s sister had
tragically died in childbirth shortly before Sarah’s decision to become a nun,
her only way to escape being forced into marriage and suffer a similar fate.
With her extensive knowledge of the era and
her flair of reconstructing the past by skillfully weaving together fact and
fiction, Cadwallader again tells a fascinating and moving tale that had me
totally enthralled. Finding it difficult to imagine being confined to a small
dark cell for a day, let alone the rest of my life, I had no trouble imagining
Sarah’s descend into a kind of madness as darkness closed in and hallucinations
fuelled by fasting and lack of human contact became part of her daily life. As
a health professional, I also pondered how long it would take until inactivity
and lack of sunlight would have serious health implications for Sarah – which
the author duly addresses in her story
through one of her other characters, who is a local midwife and a healer and comes to Sarah's aid. As Sarah moves
through various stages of reflecting on past, present and future, we get to
know her background and some of the motivations behind her decision to forsake
her life in order to become a living saint. I applaud the author for being able
to spin a rich tale out of such a difficult situation – a single woman confined
to a cell doesn’t exactly make for heart-pounding action, but Cadwallader enriches it with stories from the lives of the villagers who come to tend to Sarah or seek
the holy woman’s advice, spinning an irresistible tale.
This was such a rich, fascinating story
that entertained as much as it educated, and I devoured it in one sitting on my
flight from Venice to Perth. Highly recommended to lovers of historical fiction, especially anyone interested in the Middle Ages.
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