A Stolen Tongue

The first commandment of historical fiction is: Make it real. Make it seem like the reader is there in that time period, and this Sheri Holman does exceedingly well with her first novel. In 1483 a friar travels from Germany to the Sinai desert on a pilgrimage. The clothes, the modes of travel, the smells and tastes are drawn well enough to bring the reader into the time period, but here also the author has created the mental landscape, the beliefs, misconceptions, fictions, prayers and foundations of medieval knowledge that seem so wrong and at times humorous to us. Then there is the mystery, who to trust, people getting killed; pursuit abandon despair and heroics all rolled into a well told story. A must for anyone with an interest in the time period. It works on many levels.

I've read some wonderful books this year, but the one which sticks in my mind is The Stolen Tongue. Friar Felix is one of the most finely etched characters in historical fiction. And wow!--what a journey he goes on. Felix is on a pilgrimage to the Sinai desert to meet with his spiritual wife, Saint Katherine. Along the way, we have relics, lots of relics, lice, mad men and women, devotion, love, prayer, and of course, death-- all written in fine detailed language! It's one journey I won't easily forget and Sheri Holman writes it with great skill. She is easily one of the best writers I have read. Don't miss this book. It's a great story.

A STOLEN TONGUE is a brilliant first novel. The complexity of character, motive, setting, and intrigue is technically magnificent, and the rich historical fabric and the philosophical/theological asides are nothing short of ingenious. The emotional involvement of Friar Felix with an idealized St. Katherine and her demented avatar, The Tongue, compel the reader into the novel's underlying sense of spirituality, while the matter-of-fact descriptions of everyday fifteenth century hardship ground that spiritual mood in a real and very difficult world.I read this novel after THE DRESS LODGER and was immensely pleased at the differences in narration, setting, and overall mood between the two books. Ms. Holman is a very talented author.

If you think "A Stolen Tongue" is going to dish up some musty old history of the Middle Ages, with chanting monks, swooning princesses and gallant young men on prancing steeds, you've got it all wrong. The main character, Felix Fabri, starts out by overseeing a group of galley slaves who fish a bloated, drowned German guy out of a harbor and parade him through the streets of town to his burial site. Later on, he helps a cohort slice open another dead guy and pull out his intestines. And all through this book there is plenty of vomit, rotten things, people burned alive, human waste, worm-infested water, decaying bodies, hacked-off limbs, pus-filled wounds -- and there's Fabri's beloved Saint Katherine, whose decapitated body shoots out milk instead of blood. Oh, and Fabri carries a dried human tongue around in a pouch that he wears around his neck. Not that I choose books by their gore-index mind you. I simply say all this to drive home the point that the events Holman describes are vividly corporeal. The reader is drawn close to the action and really sees, hears, smells (usually gross smells, by the way), tastes (also often nasty) and touches the things the characters encounter. I love to read about life in other eras, and this book, along with being a great read, put me right into the center of the action. And lo and behold if I didn't learn more than a few interesting facts about medieval life, too!

The path of the pilgrim, in historical and fictional treatments, has been marked by guideposts of greed, of lust, of avarice -- any number of deadly sins. Yet Sheri Holman's Felix Fabri, a holy man of mortal fallabilities, clings tightly to a fierce brand of faith on his pilgrimage to Mount Sinai. Holman has endowed Felix with a spiritual desire so strong, and a sense of humanity so true, that we are swept up in the journey to face the mysteries and horrors when the sacred and profane collide. Holman's research and remarkable eye for detail -- historical, religious, and personal -- never fail. A very strong debut by a new voice in historical fiction. This is one "Tongue" that must be bitten.