The Leper's Companions: A Novel (Vintage International) - Softcover

Blackburn, Julia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679758380 ISBN 13: 9780679758389

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2000

Synopsis

In this fascinatingly imaginative novel, Julia Blackburn has decimated all the rules, creating a magical tale that is part fable, part allegory, part present, part past, and wholly genuine and poetic.

The unnamed protagonist has recently lost someone she loved, and her solution is to abandon the present, and the overwhelming pain. The seamless narrative lands her in a medieval seaside village where mermaids wash ashore, devils haunt in packs, a child is born with the head of a fish, and where one day, quite out of nowhere, there emerges a sage and wandering leper. The leper leads a small group of the villagers, including the protagonist, on a journey to Jerusalem, a harrowing pilgrimage that compels all the travelers to confront their deepest selves.

Exquisite and lyrical, The Lepers Companions is a heart-rending tale by one of our most fiercely original storytellers.

About this title

Review:

In this quiet allegory of love, loss and the healing powers of imagination, an unnamed narrator loses someone she loves--"It does not matter who that person was or what sort of love it had been"--and needs time to recover. She yearns to travel to a foreign country but can't. Yet her need for escape is such that, during a restless evening walk to a local village, she finds herself whisked back in time to the early 1400s.

Through her, we're drawn into the villagers' lives, loves and deaths. The woman who sees devils. Sally, aged 14, pregnant and married to the man who finds the beached mermaid. The shoemaker and his wife, whose passion sparks the moment they meet, and endures beyond death. The priest and the leper.

Following a series of events that seem extraordinary to the modern eye, but unexceptional to the villagers--miraculous cures, a monstrous birth, the mermaid's brief appearance-- a small party sets out on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Julia Blackburn--whose previous novel The Book of Colour was shortlisted for the Orange Prize-- weaves her intricate four-dimensional tapestry from the simplest of threads. Her lucid and absorbing tale highlights both the otherness and the warm familiarity of the past, and unfolds the processes of grief and recuperation to show how life can grow out of loss. --Lisa Gee

Review:

"This slim book possesses a remarkable intensity.... [A] hypnotic vision of the worlds horror and beauty, banality and sacredness--and of the frailty and splendor of the human mind."--The New York Times Book Review

"Profound...dreamy.... Blackburn [has] made something deep and poetic."--Minneapolis Star Tribune

"In the end, there is a sense not merely of satisfaction, but almost of exhilaration."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0679758380
• ISBN 13: 9780679758389
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208