Review by Booklist Review
Aleys, like all women in thirteenth-century Bruges, has few choices in life. She loves reading and learning and longs to stay in her home, help her father, and pray over the gorgeous psalter full of stories her mother read to her as a child. On the night before her arranged marriage, Aleys finds salvation in the Franciscan brotherhood, who give her the assignment of recruiting women from the Beguines, who let her shelter with them. At first, Aleys is shocked by their way of life. They aren't nuns, but that doesn't mean they aren't pious. More than anything, Aleys is entranced by their subversive mission to make religious texts readable in Dutch. Aleys' journey of piety and devotion expands with the Beguines, leading to a life more remarkable than thought possible. Edwards' debut novel is full of interesting period details and the kind of clergy-led machinations that fans of Ken Follett's historicals will enjoy. The interesting frame, smooth language, and empathetic main character make this an easily recommendable addition among historical fiction with a religious angle.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Edwards debuts with an inspired tale of a devout and defiant young woman in medieval Bruges, in Flanders. Aleys, 16, grows up with adoration for the church. After her mother dies, she becomes more devout. Her friend Finn teaches her Latin and she falls in love with him, but her hopes for their future together are dashed when he says he's joining the monastery. Then her father declares that she'll marry the head of a guild. Distraught, Aleys runs away from home. She's taken in by the beguines, a group of women who secretly translate religious texts from Latin into Dutch. Deeply committed to finding her calling, she asks God, "What's my gift," and an answer seems to come while she prays for a deathly ill boy, whose infected wounds disappear. Nervous about the attention paid to Aleys for the miracle, the bishop places her in isolation, where she's preyed upon by a sexually abusive priest. Her efforts to escape threaten the beguine community, already under scrutiny for the translations, and Aleys is forced to make an impossible choice. Drawing on stories and biographies of medieval saints, Edwards faithfully highlights the lives of 13th-century religious women and the sacrifices they were forced to make. Readers of Lauren Groff's Matrix ought to take a look. Agent: Jonah Straus, Straus Literary. (Dec.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A young woman's religious obsession affects those around her and highlights a tumultuous moment of great change for common people. From childhood, Aleys, a woolmaker's daughter in medieval Brugge, Belgium, seeks the divine, like her mother, who inherited a beautiful illuminated psalter. Although the saints' stories were written in Latin, Aleys' mother told them from memory in Dutch, giving her daughter dreams of hair shirts and pilgrimages. After the mother's death in childbirth, Aleys joins the Franciscan friars at the behest of one Friar Lukas. He tasks her to live with an order of beguines--secular women dedicated to good works--and recruit some to become Franciscan nuns. However, she finds that the beguines have their own purposes, including a clandestine reading circle, leaving them with little desire for ecstatic spirituality. Aleys' visions are well described but not parsed in modern terms like neurodiversity or mental illness. She heals a few sick and dying people but cannot save the beguines' magistra, Sophia, from death. Katrijn, Sophia's deputy--and, perhaps lover--casts Aleys out of the community. Lukas's older brother Jaan, the bishop of Tournai, uses Aleys as a prop to convince townspeople of the church's power. Confused by her unpredictable gifts, Aleys accepts Jaan's offer to make her an anchorite. She'll live in a sealed room attached to the church and never leave, gaining status as a holy woman. Even in strict confinement, Aleys has erotic visions of union with Jesus and Mary that echo the title's reference to the Old Testament Song of Songs. Meanwhile, she teaches Marte, the beguine assigned to bring her meals, how to read and write, resulting in a showdown with an inquisitorial papal delegation. The ending might seem foregone, but author Rich Edwards has a twist or two in store, plus some stark examples of clerical corruption that are as relevant in the 21st century as they were in the 13th. In elegant prose, this deceptively quiet novel juggles big spiritual ideas with big social issues. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
