About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

ANCHORESS OF SHERE
by Paul Moorcraft
Poisoned Pen Press, May 2002
$24.95
ISBN: 159085801107


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

This first novel from a history/political science/crime writer is a very ambitious and successful work. The 14th and 20th centuries are presented in equally compelling ways, and the reading keeps one up late at night the first time and will probably haunts one's dreams for some time to come.

Father Michael Duval is a Roman Catholic priest, living in the Surrey village of Shere in 1967. Shere's most famous inhabitant was Christine Carpenter, a 14th Century anchoress-- an extreme form of religious hermit, enclosed inside the church walls to live an austere life of prayer with minimal contact with the outside world. Duval has become obsessed with Christine, and is writing the story of her life although the factual evidence consists of three short notices. He reasons that for her to desire such an intense religious experience, she must have suffered great degradation in the carnal world, and he sets about fictionally recreating this world. The contemporary and the historic stories alternate.

In the present, Duval is rapidly losing his grip on reality. He kidnaps a young woman, Marda, and tries to convince her to emulate Christine's life style as a source of inspiration to his writing. The reader is totally taken into Duval's world, and wonders that he can take the beautiful religious rite that was Christine's and pervert it so. And then the reader remembers that Christine's story is a fiction developed in Duval's sickened mind. As Christine's story becomes more and more horrific, Marda life does even more so. And simultaneously, more of Duval's past is revealed. Marda was not his first victim.

This book isn't for everyone. The violence can be quite graphic. But it is certainly a book that will be remembered.

Reviewed by Debbie Bogenschutz, March 2002

This book has more than one review. Click here to show all.

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]