Samantha HarveyThe Western Wind

What a strange, magnificent book! A priest in an almost forgotten parish in Somerset, a dead, rich man, and a village full of sorry creatures on the eve of lent. It took me some time and work, but I fell in love with Samantha Harvey’s wonderful, challenging language, which makes the world of 1491 seem just as modern as ours.

I came across mention of this book in an article suggesting books which would be perfect to read with more time on one's hands during lockdown. So I downloaded it to my Kindle.And in some ways it lives up to that recommendation. I found the writing beautiful, moving at times and it had a pace and rhythm which seemed perfectly suited to the world around us at the moment.I liked the main character and found the themes explored in the story very real and interesting too, so that's all to the good.But. I do have to say that I agree with what others have said. The device of telling the story backwards, in such a linear way was very confusing. It did make me think, which is good again, and I thought quite a bit about whether I was missing out on something by thinking in a way that was too traditional about the way a story should be told.Ultimately though, I concluded that I wasn't. The device detracted from the flow of the story, made it difficult to follow the themes, plot and characters and made the ending even more unsatisfactory for me.It's a great shame that, because I honestly think there is a lot of great writing in this book but the key process of telling the story was sold short.

There’s a tiny, isolated village in Somerset, England, separated from outsiders by a twisty river and no bridge. On Shrove Tuesday, 1491, the novel’s narrator and parish priest of Oakham, John Reve, is awakened by news that the body of the wealthiest villager, Thomas Newman, was sighted in the river’s fast moving current, before being swept away again. The only evidence of Newman is a green scrap of his clothing found in the bulrushes. Was this an accident, a murder, or a suicide?Samantha Harvey wouldn’t simply write a straightforward historical novel or mystery. She’s an unconventional (but accessible in her narrative immediacy) writer who reveals many layers of character while advancing her plot, as I learned in DEAR THIEF, a novel that centers on a woman writing to a childhood friend who stole her husband. Furthermore, THE WESTERN WIND is told backwards in time, from Shrove day 4 to Saturday, February 14th, day 1. This, to me, seals the contract of reader and writer, because the reader must actively attune and allow for the challenges that come with reverse telling. Like Reve, we want to know what happened. I experienced more than a few double takes. In the end, you will be mightily rewarded!In 1491, the Renaissance has not reached everywhere; this is the late Middle Ages in Oakham, replete with religion and superstition embracing a monumental part of everyone’s lives. Minor transgressions are confessed to John Reve, and he informs us that he has the only confession box in England, placed there to allow people slightly more privacy, but crudely built and offers minimal concealment.The priest is concerned about losing his flock, as many have been confessing privately to traveling friars. John is a complicated man, a priest with his own self-doubts and periodic crises of faith. To make matters worse, his superior, the unnamed dean, with “a nose for the nasty,” has traveled to the village to demand that the answer to Newman’s fate be concluded swiftly, offering to let whoever confesses to Reve (the dean thinks Newman was murdered) will be pardoned. The confessions that unfold are a large part of the novel.John thoughtfully examines the tragedy of Newman, who had new ideas and a plan to build a bridge that would liberate the villagers from confinement and poverty. Some other residents were indebted to Newman, or had indeterminate ties to him. Additionally, Reve is praying for a western wind to blow away the evil spirits. He worries that the prevailing eastern winds would give Oakham more to tremble about and suffer.Although told in first person, Reve is privy to most secrets, providing us with a window into everyone’s lives, an omniscience of sorts. However, there’s nobody but John to tell us about John.As character development goes, John Reve is the most rich and compelling. Although he is the most known to us, he is paradoxically the most ambiguous. Contemplative, witty, flawed, and compassionate, he knows all the secrets and how best to help others. But whom can he confess to? Is he a reliable narrator? Time reversed will reveal the facts and the author’s brilliance of swiveling time to get to the truth.And don’t worry that the prose will be medieval and stilted. Harvey evokes time and place in more atmospheric and indelible, visual ways, such as sights, smells, and sounds. Ball is played with a pig’s bladder and a drum out of goat hide. While the language is easily accessible, there is no question that you are in ancient times, with its textured period detail.“My heart beat, and beat again, and I thought: one day it will beat and not beat again. Then what’s in store for me? And the light undid itself, separating out the grain of the stone into a dull, disparate yellowish-grey, the texture of cloth before fulling. I’d forgotten to eat and was hungry.”

très bon intrigue, plein humour, et bien écrit

John Reve is the priest in a small, dismal English town during the Middle Ages. When, on the day before Lent, the town's most prosperous and worldly resident is drowned without having confessed his sins, Reve invites his dean to investigate the death. The book provides an engaging portrait of rural life in the Middle Ages.The author utilized some unusual techniques in this book. First, we learn about the town and it's people from their confessions to Reve in the confessional. Second, the author starts the book four days after the drowning occurred and then moves backward in time to the day the drowning occurred. The problem with this approach is that once events are revealed at the end of the book, numerous threads are left dangling that would normally be addressed after the time point that the book begins. As a result of these dangling threads, I found the book to be disappointing. An epilogue set one year later would have addressed this problem.