Christine Jordan

Making a short trip to Gloucester, I wanted, as is my usual habit, to read a novel set in the city, and the choice was extremely limited - basically this historical novel set at the end of the fifteen century was it. I also saw the novel stocked in various places like museum bookshops, alongside non-fiction books on the city, including one or two by the same author. Christine Jordan obviously knows and loves her city and it was good to be able to cement my knowledge of some of the geography and history of the city while there. That said, I don't think this was a particularly good novel. I didn't get a strong sense of time from it, apart from the obvious surface things like the accusations of sorcery; the dialogue felt quite modern (for example, using the word "damn" as a minor curse, not the Medieval Christian idea of damnation, a much more serious concept). The characters didn't seem to have a lot of depth to them, and were generally either good or bad with few shades of grey. The plot involved the central character, Emmelina Pauncefoot, being accused of sorcery by a local merchant, Gilbert Garlick, and the sub prior of Blackfriars Abbey, Gervaise, because they resent her influence in the city, following her inheriting her husband Humphrey's business on his death (of which she is also falsely accused). The second half of the novel was superficially a good page turner, and Emmelina is finally saved from being burned as a witch, by the combined efforts of her lover, her maidservant and the landlord of the New Inn in Northgate, and the villainous Garlick and Gervaise receive their comeuppance, though the resolution of the plot device that led to this struck me as rather sudden and unrealistic in the circumstances of Emmelina's being powerless and at death's door at the time. Finally, there were quite a lot of errors in the text, misplaced apostrophes and other typos, that I'm afraid tend to stick out like a sore thumb for me, especially when the novel is also flawed in other ways. Still I'm glad I read it for the connection to Gloucester, a city we liked a lot and to which we will be returning. 3/5… (mehr)