Customer Reviews

Lepers Companions

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Julia Blackburn's new novel The Leper' Companions is a work of careful thought and hidden meaning. A woman who has suffered a recent loss creates for herself an imaginary, dreamlike world with roots in the 1400s. Throughout most of the book, the author is tangently present in this made-up world and only occassionaly are we reminded that this story is going on only in her mind. I recommend the book based on it's interesting character development. Many would say the end is somewhat anti-climatic, but I believe the author left it so intentionally. All in all a good afternoon's read.

When one goes through a hell of an ordeal (an indelible memory left etched on a soul) how does one cope with it's affects? This is a question that Julia Blackburn explores in The Leper's Companions.

In her story, time plays an important part of her character's dealing with the grief she's experienced. When the story opens the narrator is in the present, in a state of mourning for the loss of a loved one. Someone who has been lost to her for an indefinite amount of time. It seems only appropriate that from then on the narrator finds herself far in the past, observing the life and trials of people seemingly far removed from her experience.

It is as if, she, by focusing on their lives each in order, is some how also focusing on corresponding aspects of
her own life and grief. She does this in a such a quiet way it's almost easy to forget that she's there observing things. There is such a quietness about this process that it is if your were embarking on it with her and were seeing the people for yourself. You go on this journey with her and when she reaches the place she was going to you have to.

I think this is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. It's flow and message have left me much to ponder. It has given me much insight on how we deal with and get rid of the grief we carry inside.

I really liked Julia Blackburn's little book. It is exquisitely written in lean & learned detail, & carries the Reader off into another time & another place where our ancestors tried to make sense of what they saw, believed & felt.

This is a rare book to encounter about what it might have been like to live 800 years ago on the coast of a sparsely-settled land, where a new religion interfaces with the old, where life is so fragile before the onslaught of the weather, relationships are infused with hallucinations, & pilgrimages to the Holy Land undertaken in dire poverty & total surrender.

THE LEPER'S COMPANIONS is about a grieving woman & her travel through that hurt into healing.

A pearl of a parable that glows with authenticity, & I hope it comes into reprint so that it can thrill others as it did me. Until then go hunt up a used copy, I'm not selling mine!

The narrator slips into another world with beautiful imagery and characters. It starts in a small town in the 1400's who seem half real and half created in the narrators mind in order to escape from her life. For the second half of the book the characters follow a leper on a pilgrimage to the holy land. The feel of the book is almost magical and I loved the first half which peaks at the lives of the villagers. Towardds the end the book gets a little more sluggish and maybe just a little too anti-climatic even for this kind of book. All in all definitely worth picking up..

The novel starts in the present day, when a woman loses someone that she loved. Although she does not name the person, she explains that she needs to get away. She then creates for herself, a town in 1410. She befriends a leper, who is later cured. She, along with the other members of the town, set off on a pilgrimage to Jewrusalam, and one by one the people leave or vanish, and only two out of the expedition return. I found this novel very different from others I have read. "The Leper's Companion's" contained a "dream-like" quality, which you don't find in many books. But, this book also had a "randomness" to it which made it strange to read, as every chapter was detached from each other.

The unnamed narrator in this book has suffered a loss, although the details are not specified. In coping with her grief, she retreats to a world which she seems to have created, a 15th-century seaside village. Her presence in this world is neither welcomed nor rejected; it is simply acknowledged. She moves among the characters like a ghostly witness, observing and recording events.

Her sojourn among these people begins with the discovery of a mermaid washed ashore; the young fisherman who finds it is eventually driven to taking his boat out beyond safe waters. A leper passes through the village, leaving behind a guidebook for the Holy Land. He gives it to Sally, a young mother and wife to the fisherman. Later, he returns to lead a handful of villages and the narrator on another pilgrimage, at the end of which the narrator is ready to face her future.

The narrative is dreamlike and hazy, with the fragmented continuity and shifting perspectives of a dream. At times, the narrator disappears entirely into a third-person voice. There is a recurring image of something washed ashore and the repetition reinforces the dreamy quality of the text.

The characters are more like emblems (the priest, the shoemaker's wife, the red-haired girl) and only two or three are actually given names. They seem to represent aspects of the narrator's personality, particularly the leper who is trying to expiate a loss. These characters are dismissed or drop away until only the leper and the narrator remain.

The abstract quality of the writing may frustrate readers who prefer a more concrete plot and characters and at times, the book verges on the deliberately obscure. But readers looking for something different would do well to try this book.

Blending magical realism with Blackburn's own special brand of emotional impressionism, this novel is nothing if not lovely. The author nurses a tender sympathy with her characters, and the novel conjures up well the "otherness" of the medieval mentality, where the ordinary co-existed with the supernatural and no line existed to distinguish them. The novel feels a tad episodic and repetitive at times, true, but its tenderness, lyrical beauty, and feminine impressionism more than compensate for such petty deficiencies.

I borrowed the book from the local library without knowing anything about it and I was pleasantly surprised. Very good book... The style of writing is amazing and the story is captivating.
In brief - the narrator lost somebody she loved, she tried to escape from her reality so she entered another one - the reality of a a 15th-century seaside village. She mingled with the people, she experienced their thoughts, feelings, actions and superstitions. This place is magical even inhabited by ordinary people. The book made me think a lot about the human soul and its journey through life...
Why after all I give the book four stars not five? The second part of the book - the journey to Jerusalem was slow and not that deep and profound as the first part...

This is a terrific novel. Blackburn writes like a dream, knows her Medieval social history, and is amazingly sensitive. Whether you take it as a novel about writing a novel, as a social study, or as a psychological document, it's totally absorbing. It resembles Peter Cameron's "Andorra" and Mark Richard's "Fishboy" (also admirable novels), but the Medieval angle makes it unique and especially memorable. It's full of wonderful surprises, and has a magical quality to it (not normally a compliment in my book, but anything works if it works!). Maybe more for women, but I loved it. The Fox

I found this book disappointing. While the book deals with themes of loss, grief, and redemption, the writing seems lifeless. Even though there are plenty of imaginative scenes and situations which might, in another writers hands, evoke sadness or empathy or even horror, I was unmoved by the authors dry recounting of events. What magic is there becomes bleached by a kind of deadpan understated style. I stopped reading right in the middle of the book, a very rare thing for me to do. The book has good moments but overall it seems emotionally flat to me.