Company of Liars

I was skeptical when I started this book because I don’t normally read anything set in medieval times, but I was so pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this. There are secrets revealed in every chapter, and each character absolutely comes alive in this book. If you like mystery, definitely give this one a shot.

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

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 fami

Why a tragedy in marketing? Because this is being offered as a "retelling" of the Canterbury Tales; oh how far from the truth; not even the "Company of Liars", the nine pilgrims, could present a tale so bold and shocking as this. There are commonalities of travelers and tales and time period shared with Chaucer's work, but the rest is the making, nay, the genius of writer Karen Maitland. She has written a taut and suspensful read full of fear, lies, half-truths told and untold, mystery, mayhem, murder and witchcraft; a tale of suspense and unexpected twists that can only be lauded as genius. The tale is told, with the exception of the Prologue, in first person past tense by a camelot, a seller of charms, "holy relics", and, as the camelot states it, "hope"; for hope is all that is left in the midst of the lawless times of the pestilence, the plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century. We don't learn the camelot's name until the end of the book, one of the 'shockers' that make this book so exceptional. Our story teller is simply known as Camelot. The tale told is that of a group of nine people who are running from the plague, attempting to move north and away from the sweeping curse of disease. Other forces push the pilgrims, fear of attack from a beast that haunts their path (I don't feel this is a spoiler as the wolf is clearly displayed on the cover of the book, to what extent the wolf affects the pilgrimage, and this tale, I shall leave to the reader), fear of revenge, fear of each of the nine pilgrims and the reasons for their life on the road. It is not just the plague that drives our 'company' and the lies they harbor are the meat of this brilliant tale of betrayal, lust, greed, heresy, witches, werewolves, hatred and love. Join the pilgrimage and be prepared to be shocked as each story is told, each lie revealed. There are hidden truths, those that I would not consider lies, that are even more shocking. But the book is a glimpse in to the worst part of the dark ages and the sad truth of what people will do when faced with the frighfully bold lies that all tell; when faced with death, men will do almost anything to stay alive, and when faced with the fear of death, men will say almost anything to save their life for fear of death. All of this is so clearly intimated in Maitland's exceptional telling of life in the bitterest of times. Our pilgrims are Camelot, the storyteller, Narigorm, a child, an albino diviner who reads runes, sees future, yet carries an even more menacing secret, Rodrigo and Jofre, musicians, master and pupil, who follow Camelot (the eventual unelected leader of the ragtag bunch) as they know not how to live life as travelers, Zophriel, a magician whose name means 'God's spy' (imagine the mystery that lies there), Osmond and Adela, young marrieds, pregnant and running, Cygnus, a man who has one arm and the wing of a swan where his other arm should be, and Pleasence, a nurse-maid who cares for young Narig