“Firstly: whichever marketing "genius" decided to promote this book as a retelling of Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales" should be publicly humiliated. After reading the first chapter of the book, the reader, especially if he or she has even the slightest knowledge of Chaucer's classic, will clearly see that, aside from the fact that this book takes place in the Middle Ages in England, and a group of strangers wind up traveling together (towards completely different locations) telling each other the occasional tale, "Company of Liars" has nothing to do with Chaucer and his stories. Trying to push this circle into an ancient square only does "Company of Liars" a disservice. It deserves to stand on its own two feet.
Having gotten that out of the way, I loved reading "Company of Liars." Karen Maitland does an excellent job of bringing us into the world of the Black Death and our heroes, nine strangers who band together in an attempt to outrun the plague. Each character, a Camelot (our narrator), a master musician and his pupil, a magician, a journeyman painter and his pregnant wife, a crippled storyteller, and an extremely odd runecasting child, are all wonderfully fleshed out and unique. Each has an extreme secret they hold close to their breast, and as the story progresses they are somehow inspired by circumstance (don't want to spoil too much) to reveal their secret, sometimes clandestinely, right before their mysterious deaths. And along they way they are hounded by a never-seen wolf who is tracking them, haunting them with cries in the night.
At first I wasn't sure if I would like the book. I had once taken a nightmare of a class in university where we read Chaucer in the original (hence my admonition at the start of this review against the unnamed marketer), nor do I have much interest in the period of time in which the story takes place. But I could not help but be enchanted by the wonderful writing and how Maitland subtly encourages reading with her glimpses of mystery that inspires the reader to wonder what secret a character is keeping.”
missed wrote this review Friday, December 12 2008.
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