The Anchoress

Cadwallader, Robyn

ISBN 10: 0571313329 / ISBN 13: 9780571313327

Published by Faber & Faber, 2015

About this Item

Most items will be dispatched the same or the next working day. A copy that has been read but remains in clean condition. All of the pages are intact and the cover is intact and the spine may show signs of wear. The book may have minor markings which are not specifically mentioned. Ex library copy with usual stamps & stickers. Seller Inventory # wbb0024107173

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Anchoress

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Publication Date: 2015

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis:

'So beautiful, so rich, so strange, unexpected and thoughtful ... I loved this book.' Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

England, 1255: Sarah is 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...

Robyn Cadwallader's powerful debut novel tells an absorbing story of faith, desire, shame, fear and the very human need for connection and touch. With a poetic intelligence, Cadwallader explores the relationship between the mind, body and spirit in Medieval England in a story that will hold the reader in a spell until the very last page.

Review:

So beautiful, so rich, so strange, unexpected and thoughtful ... I loved this book. (Elizabeth Gilbert)

Cadwallader conjures ... a vivid, poetic picture of [a] world that was so dangerous for females. (Kate Saunders The Times)

This is an ambitious debut ... the prose is contemporary and clean without a shadow of medievalism ... The small scale of Sarah's world allows an exact literary appreciation of detail, often through sound and smell because Sarah can hardly see out: the sounds of a thatched roof, the smell of rain ... The classic early-modern poetic comparisons between the room, the womb and tomb are lightly carried and masterfully used at what is probably the gentle climax of the story. (Sarah Moss Guardian)

Cadwallader's debut novel is an elegant and eloquent piece of ventriloquism, her feminist speaking to us from the claustrophobia of her cold dungeon about issues that matter to us still. (Mail on Sunday)

[A] perceptive and arresting debut, which illuminates the medieval attitude towards women, and marks Australian Cadwallader as a writer to watch. (Editor's Choice The Bookseller)