Customer Reviews

Company of Liars

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(34)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A lot has been made of this book being a re-telling of The Canterbury Tales. It isn't. There are some superficial similarities, but that is all. This is however a very wonderful character-driven book and I enjoyed it thoroughly, much more so than I ever did Chaucer. This book follows a group of people as they slowly accrete around the narrator, the "Camelot" who is an itinerant peddler of bogus religous artifacts. The time is 1348 and the Black Death has made its way to England's shores. The Camelot decides to make his way north and inland to try and get as far away as possible from the Southern ports where the plague first appears.

Along the way the Camelot picks up a rag-tag bunch of company; a misanthropic magician with his malformed fetus display, to a master and apprentice musician, an eerie young fortune-teller, a healer, a story-teller, and an artisan and his wife. The plague dogs their heels as the group face incessant rain, privation and starvation as they try, in wretched circumstances, to stay beyond the curtain of death sweeping England. The book powerfully conveys what England was like at this time, the prejudices, the fears, the strange beliefs, the greediness of the priests, the squalor, the filth and the terror and horror of the Black Death.

Despite this grim backdrop, the tale is powerfully compelling as the story focuses not upon these grim external conditions, but upon the goodness and hopes of the characters themselves. None of the characters are quite who they claim to be and all have secrets they desperately wish to keep. Over the months they travel together, eat and sleep together, face misfortune and disaster together they learn more about their companions until all the secrets are fully revealed in turn, often with dire consequences. What makes this book so powerful is the beautifully rendered characters. They are exquisitely drawn, full of humanity and the range of human hopes and fears, and you will feel compassion and empathy for them as the story unfolds. This book is well worth the reading and will stick with you for long after you've closed the pages.

Company of Liars is, for most of the book's roughly 500 pages an engrossing, entertaining, and even educational read. A historical novel combining a Canterbury-Tales like structure (it's slight and shallow but there) and a medieval-mystery like plot, it entertains while the motley group of Chauceresque pilgrims gather by ones and twos into a single group (some more willingly than others), it educates while this group troops through the muck and death of 14th century plague-ridden England, and it engrosses while its members are knocked off one by one. Unfortunately, while it still garners a recommend, it doesn't sustain any of these three aspects through the whole of the book.
It's narrated by Camelot (or "a" camelot since the name is also a general descriptor of those who sell holy relics), whose voice is pleasant and endearing enough to happily carry us through the novel, though at times it felt like the voice wasn't wholly of the 14th century. Camelot introduces himself and his profession, then the arrival of the plague, which is the impetus for Camelot's decision to head north and inland in order to find a place to escape the plague until the oncoming winter kills it off (ahh, the optimism). Soon enough Camelot is successively joined by a pair of musicians--a master and apprentice--, a deformed storyteller, a traveling conjuror, a pregnant woman and her lover, a healer, and a strange 12-year-old girl who reads the runes and tells the future.
The travelers are all trying to escape the plague but they have other reasons for flight as well, reasons that will remain their own for some time. Meanwhile, not all are happy about their forced accompaniment and there is a lot of tension, strive, and even violence between the various members of the band. It doesn't help that at least one is a fugitive or that they are seemingly being stalked by a lone wolf that howls outside their camp almost nightly no matter how long or how far they travel.
The book maintains a good sense of tension as the characters come together and as they trudge through the countryside trying to outrace the certain death that follows. Time and again they seem to find a potential shelter only to be forced onward again. The tension heightens as their personal quarrels start flaring into violence, the wolf continues to stalk them, and the plague starts to hem them in at all sides and it reaches its apex with the first death among them. The historical background is well-done throughout, conveying the sense of fear and superstition. And the stories that each tells along the way (in another nod to Chaucer) are interesting enough fabulist tales, if not particularly original.
Problems start to arise about two-thirds of the way in though. One is that the constant bickering among them starts to get a bit wearing. Another is that the lies/secrets that each is carrying aren't particularly surprising by the time they're revealed. If anything, the revelations are a bit anti-climactic. The same is true about several of the killings. And the big finale has several problems of its own, which I won't go into for fear of spoiling it.
One can't help but be disappointed by the payoff, which always makes for a hard call on a recommendation. The first two-thirds I'd say are a solid if not inspiring 4, but the final third is a disappointing 2. In the end, I come down on recommending Company because I can't say I'm sorry I read it, though it disappoints in the end. Though perhaps that's appropriate that in a book that follows a group of travelers, the best part is that segment of the journey where the road is still open and mysterious. Recommended with qualifiers.

I was fully prepared not to like this book given my distaste for marketing tricks like the one used by the publishing house to compare Company of Liars to Chaucer's CT. So imagine my surprise when I read the first page, then the second, then third, and didn't stop reading until I had finished the novel in two sittings. If you want to know what life was like in the fourteenth century, you'd do well to read this book. It requires its fair share of suspending disbelief, given that one of the protagonists reads runes and makes accurate predictions throughout the novel, but aside from that this is the real thing. I felt like I was joining the characters on their daily struggle to find adequate food and shelter. And when members of the party die, I really felt for them, which to me is the sign of a great book. Five very solid stars.

There's not a better way to end the year of great reads in 2008 than to end it with Karen Maitland's first book, Company of Liars. This book has everything: love, death, friendship, witchcraft, deception...it's a little historical fiction mixed with a little fantasy rolled in to one yummy nugget of a novel.

The plot was excellent, the storytelling was just amazing and the characters are ones you are not soon to forget. This is one of those that stay with you a while. I find myself missing Camelot the most.

My favorite quote: "Home is the place you return to when you have finally lost your soul. Home is the place where life is born, not the place of your birth, but the place where you seek rebirth". - Camelot

I recommend Company of Liars to anyone who appreciates good storytelling.

Amy Says: 5 / 5

Nine hapless, homeless people grudgingly band together in their quest to outrun the "pestilence" as well as their pasts. Mix in disfigurement, fear, hidden truths, famine, and a heavy dose of superstition, and you've got a novel that is part historical novel and part mystery. Author Maitland, writing of course for the modern reader, does a creditable job injecting accuracy in detail and ambiance, and her characters fairly jump off the page. Nine different motives, some soothsaying, and a series of ominous deaths keep the pages turning, and Xanthus the spunky horse provides some relief in this dark tale.
Recommended to those who enjoy an intelligently written story set in medieval times.

First-- this is Maitland's own novel about plague times in Britain. This is NOT anything remotely resembling the Canterbury Tales. Knock off a star for the publisher promoting this novel as such. The tales told (in different, bold type) are stories of the characters by the characters, and not told for the amusement of the rest of the party. The stories are rarely given willingly.

Second-- I was a bit disappointed with the language of the novel. I had expected a bit more Middle English-- vocabulary anyway, and not current dialects. Also, applying Yiddish terms to a Jewish community in Venice is not accurate or appropriate, very disappointing, especially for an author whose academic background is linguistics. Knock off another star for this.

The story itself is of haunted people wandering through a haunted landscape. I did feel the great plague should have been given a more prominent place, or the apparent malevolent presence in the party been given more development. The author's skirting around the apparent presence of the old gods in the travels is interesting, but, I feel, would not have been tolerated much in this particular time. A chapter in the fey teen's voice at the end would have been a good addition to the story.

It seems to me that Narigorm (at age twelve) is too old for how she is treated by the company. Back in that time, a twelve year old girl would have had more duties, would not have been seen as merely a child, and should have had many more responsibilities in the group as a young woman of almost marriagable age. Make her 8 or 9, and its more believable (and is how I read the story). The anagram of her name is rather obvious, and we never know if the old gods walked the land or if this was just an evil plan throughout.

An engaging story, just not related at all to Chaucer.

OVERVIEW: Here we have a unique meshing of mild fantasy and historic fictional literature. This 458-page novel is set in 1348 C.E. England, a period and place where thousands were fated to endure an excruciating death from the Black (Bubonic and/or Pneumonic) Plague. This work is written in first person, a difficult approach for any author, but in this case quite an effective technique.

DESCRIPTIVE SUMMARY: The chief protagonist, Camelot, through a comedy of errors, picks up a number of "strays" during his travels from southwestern England and on toward the northeastern quadrant of that country until the company totals nine in number. These entrepreneurial opportunists grudgingly support one another through various privations and impedimenta including illness (non-plague); starvation; threats and assaults; a continual lack of adequate shelter, and; the burden of pregnancy on the road.

Most of these strange bedfellows exist by marketable trades: Camelot deals in the relics (bones) of saints; Zophiel runs a traveling freak show of sorts, featuring a diminutive stuffed mermaid; Rodrigo (the Master) and Jofre (his apprentice) are Italian minstrels; Narigorm, a young but not concupiscent street urchin of a girl, casts the runes and foretells the future; Pleasance heals the sick with herbs; Cygnus, "The Swan Boy," spins compelling yarns as a storyteller, and; Osmond and Adela are clearly on the lam, the latter being pregnant. Osmond could have been working as a journeyman artist of church paintings were it not for the fact that he was forced to escape from his home region before his master could (or would) issue his professional credentials -- absent these papers, he is effectively rendered skill-less. A final significant member of this motley band is Xanthus, Zophiel's cantankerous horse which pulls his exhibitor's wagon.

This curious aggregation of souls attains some level of safety in their numbers, even though they fuss and argue among themselves at every bend of the road. Their isolation from the plague seems to degrade on a growing scale until ultimately, at one particular village, they finally encounter the lethal "le morte bleu" - they pass this ill-fated hamlet as swiftly as they had arrived.

The nine make their respective livings primarily at street fairs, festivals, and shrines so the expeditious travel results in a conduit to their collective financial destitution. But the burdensome dark secrets which each of them bears is sufficient to keep them moving along, enduring the endless rain of an uncommonly cold summer, and ever-aware of the great pestilence which nips at their tracks.

And then one night yet another extremely ominous peril tags on to their trail. A wolf? A werewolf? In either case, the subsequent angst and anguish begins to take its toll... and then the first death occurs.

Here's a representative quotation from page 446:

"The roads were full of people on the move now, some travelling [English spelling] alone, their families dead or abandoned, some in groups making for the towns where there might be a hope of food or work. Some were mad with horror and grief; others were hardened to the point where they would cut a man's throat for a handful of dried beans. And if they did, no one lifted a finger to stop them, for there were no courts left to try a man and no executioners alive to hang him. Sometimes I wondered if God too had died up there in His heaven, if heaven, too, stood silent and boarded up, the angels left rotting on pavements of gold."

EVALUATIVE SUMMARY: Maitland wields a remarkably shrewd pen. This is some of the finest historical fiction to come along in many years, far and above the more common prose that we've unfortunately begun to find acceptable. I would not be in the slightest surprised to begin seeing little cult websites springing up here and there in the cyber-world, devoted to the discussion of this book. As I read on, I was reminded of yet another fine historical novel (mystery) of similar quality, albeit its overall content and context is of a different aspect: The Daughter of Time.

One of the more intriguing aspects of Maitland's work impacts the reader as s/he cannot decide whether or not this is a novel of fantasy. When one encounters the old Brothers Grimm fairy tale of "The Six Swans" (The Complete Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales, Deluxe Edition (Literary Classics (Gramercy Books))) playing out here as a facet of the account, the book seems to begin taking on a surreal, mystical flavor; however, in retrospect, just a little further along, the notion of a young man with an odd birth defect seems instead to merge with life's more incongruent realities.

Perhaps the most dramatic facet of the work is its core primal terror and creepiness. Ultimately, this is a really scary book... "disturbing" might also help to adequately describe it. And perhaps this book is so scary because there have been so very many factual, historically-based activities woven into the text. Maitland's expertise in psycholinguistics (she's a PhD) shines through in her depiction of various incidents and events: Catholicism "with a wink and a nod" (this story is dated long prior to Henry VIII's Church of England); the expulsion of all the Jews from England (which occurred in 1290 C.E.); the radical deterioration of England's mild climate (a phenomenon of the period including 1290-1348); a "cripples' wedding"... and numerous other intriguing episodes. Having formally and casually studied this period of England's history myself for many years, these notable (but little heard of) occurrences generated a significant amount of reading joy for me.

Maitland's writing is quite fluid and comprehensible - she maintains a marvelous continuity and her dialogue is both natural and compelling, a difficult blend to achieve. Given her quasi-Faulknerish approach to depiction, one is kept guessing in discerning whether certain incidents are "magical" or simply "trickery". Finally, the story definitely does not lack for big surprises - the book's conclusion simply cannot be deduced from any point in this fascinating tale. Maitland has also supplemented her fine novel at the end with a useful seven-page glossary of archaic English terms ("kirtle," "palfrey," "deodand," etc.)

I re-scanned my "reading notes" (I make copious notes on every book I read, usually three books per week), and my couple of obscure criticisms of this first-rate novel seemed to pale in the face of its overwhelming and multi-dimensional attributes... I felt compelled to just abandon these paltry comments. And thus I have done so!

I can highly recommend this work of top contemporary literature for all lovers of good fiction - but be prepared for a real harum-sacrum as you read on!

First of all, anyone referring even remotely to Chaucer and this novel should be shot on sight, or at least mocked for their complete and utter ignorance. But that's their ignorance and I won't hold that against Maitland.

This book took a while to warm up--people just drifted around with no real purpose. I could extend benefit of the doubt and say that aimlessness was part of the gestalt Maitland was going for, but when you're in the early pages of a novel, you can gestalt a reader right into another book!

The lies everyone tells, the secrets they conceal, however, are neither particularly scandalous nor shocking. Meaning that most of what the characters have to hide really wouldn't have been that uncommon back then, much less to our Jerry Springer hardened selves. As well, any reader with a moderately functioning brain has already figured out the secrets well before revelation, so when the Big Moment comes, I found myself saying, `What? That's *all*?!!'

She does create a credible and nerve-stressing vision of what it might have felt like to be alive in the first days of the Black Death, and there are some quite lyrical passages.

On the other hand, she blows all of her historical credibility when she refers to an `Anglo-Saxon text' the Havamal. Havamal is in Old Norse. Even the title, 'Havamal' is Old Norse. Which is an entirely different fish. She makes a long apologia for any slips she might have made, arguing that historical fiction should be able to bridge a gap between period and reader, which explains many of her anachronisms, but her lack of awareness of this simple language fact really made me reconsider the trust I'd placed in her research--you can learn about Havamal by hitting up Wikipedia, for heaven's sake! (To be honest, I read this book searching for something to have my college students read in the spring, and this sloppiness has made me reconsider that impulse.)

The end was also a bit of a disappointment. Without giving too much away, I will say, think bad `70s horror flick. Very cheezy. As a reader, I want a better 'payoff' for having dragged myself through this misery.

It was a good read, once I got into it, and much better than a lot of stuff on the market. It's probably about 80% authentic to medieval scholarship's current views of that era, and does cover some deep themes like the nature of home, hope and truth, which elevates it beyond your usual offering. Still, if you're looking for a gripping thriller, or anything vaguely Chaucer, or if you're a historical fiction buff who *hates* bad research, you might hold off on this one.

I have more than a passing interest in medieval England, and frankly I judged, or at least selected, this book by its cover (kudos to the designer). Alas, it's a not terribly well written hash of "historical" fiction and gothic thriller, salted with the supernatural, but with a pervasive flavor of modern sensibilities.

The narrator is a fellow horrible to behold, with a livid scar and only one eye, but apart from that he's like an actor who just can't stay in character--for one thing, he's anachronistically tolerant of an amazing variety of religious and sexual variants from the norm. His fellow travellers are an equally unconvincing lot. They're all modern personalities dressed up in medieval clothes. There's a sprinkling of "authentic" phrases ("raising the hue and cry" gets a LOT of use), but I just can't imagine any of these characters actually living in medieval England. What's more, I wouldn't care about most of them even if the setting were brilliant. 2.5 stars, I'm afraid... but I will look up her first novel, which was shortlisted for "best first novel" in the UK.

For a few examples of historical fiction done right:
Medieval England: Doctor Mirabilis, by James Blish (alas, out of print), is a fabulous work of historical fiction about Roger Bacon, the first "scientist".
Elizabethan England: Nothing Like the Sun and A Dead Man in Deptford, by Anthony Burgess, imagines Shakespeare's love life and Christopher Marlowe's short life and brutish death.
Ancient Greece: Just about anything by Mary Renault. That woman surely spent many incarnations in Hellas, Crete, and Macedonia.
Roman Empire: I, Claudius, by Robert Graves, is deservedly a classic. The DVDs are good, but not as good as the book.
Egypt, around the same time: Soldier of Sidon, by Gene Wolfe, tells the story of Latro, a mercenary soldier travelling in Egypt. The hook? Latro is brain-damaged--intelligent and aware, but completely lacking long-term memory. Each day starts a new life for him. Wolfe, an acclaimed SF writer, handles the supernatural with a deft hand.

Well, that was a digression! Sorry, but I'd say--if you're looking for a well-written historical novel, try one of those, and give Company of Liars a pass.

As a history teacher I am a sucker for good historical fiction. This was good historical fiction. It was refreshing to read a realistic look at the Middle "dark" ages that was not epic fantasy. The book had good atmosphere and setting and really showed why the European middle ages were "dark." The end of the book was interesting too.