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Saturday 10 April 2010

New Title and 'The Owl Killers' by Karen Maitland

Firstly I've changed the title, I decided that my title didn't really mean anything, granted this one's roughly the same, but it's slightly less ponderous and pretentious (I hope) with it.


I finished reading The Owl Killers by Karen Maitland at some unnatural hour last time and thought it was about time that I wrote another book review. Like her previous book Company of Liars this took a while to get into, but once I had I really enjoyed it. Starting in England in 1321 it tells of a village, and the fight between current superstitions and Christianity. A group of religious women have recently moved from Brussels to bring their religion to the British but rather than taking their hope the village priest takes against them and fights them every step of the way.
The story is told by several people, a daughter of the local lord who he banishes from his home, the leader of the religious women, one of the other women, a child from the village and the village priest. Each chapter titled by whoever will be 'speaking' for that chapter.
The story is very enjoyable, but it does occasionally seem to jump without any real explanation, one chapter will end with the expectation of an event and the next chapter will start after it happens so you occasionally feel like you're missing out on information and events.
The voices of all the different characters are clear, and even without the name at the beginning of each chapter, you could probably tell who was talking, and it's very interesting to see everything happen from different points of view, and despite the fact that personally, I have no interest in religion, it was interesting to see the Lord of the manor's daughter find her own theories about religion and peoples faith.

Overall, I'd recommend this is a borrower, having read it I probably wouldn't read it again, but it was enjoyable to read once.

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