To Calais, in Ordinary Time

De: James Meek

Narrado por: Matthew Houston, Louise Williams, Andrew Cullum

Three journeys. One road.

England, 1348. A gentlewoman flees an odious arranged marriage, a Scots proctor sets out for Avignon and a young ploughman in search of freedom is on his way to volunteer with a company of archers. All come together on the road to Calais.

Coming in their direction from across the Channel is the Black Death, the plague that will wipe out half of the population of Northern Europe. As the journey unfolds, overshadowed by the archers' past misdeeds and clerical warnings of the imminent end of the world, the wayfarers must confront the nature of their loves and desires.

A tremendous feat of language and empathy, it summons a medieval world that is at once uncannily plausible, utterly alien and eerily reflective of our own. James Meek's extraordinary To Calais, in Ordinary Time is a novel about love, class, faith, loss, gender and desire - set against one of the biggest cataclysms of human history.

©2019 James Meek (P)2020 W. F. Howes

You need to slow down that recording !

Do yourself a favour and slow the recording at 0,8 speed as suggested by other reviewers. Because obviously , the performers had some train or plane to catch and they couldn't read the book fast enough so it seems ! Does it ruin the story? You bet it does because you can barely understand what's going on ! Once you do slow it down, you realise it's actually a great book that plunges you into the minds of people during the Black Death . It's really worth it.