THE BLACK DEATH

author:
JOHN HATCHER

Fiction
368 pages
De Capo Press

Modern perception of the Black Death is probably shaped more by Monty Python’s “Holy Grail” than any college classroom. The Black Death: A Personal History seeks to change this. Hatcher, the chairman of the history faculty at the University of Cambridge and a multi-published expert on the topic, approaches the era with an unusual tactic: taking the remarkably-intact manorial rolls from the English town of Walsham from 1348-1350, Hatcher produces a story that blends the nonfiction into a narrative, describing the terrifying rise and fall of the plague from a very local perspective.

This approach does indeed make the Black Death personal, and the author does a particularly fine job at describing the pre- and post-plague society. As the plague approached people were led by the church to believe that the plague was a punishment for their sins and that only religious activities could spare people from suffering, but at the same time many questioned and lost their faith. As the plague waned the countryside suddenly found itself in the beginning of a social upheaval with unoccupied plots of land and a lack of willing workers as the lower classes realized their work was intensely more valuable than it had been only two years previously. Although these are basic facts taught in every class that touches upon the subject, turning these facts into a story does emphasize their significance.

There are limits to the abilities of the narrative, no matter how informative it may be. It’s difficult to discern for whom this book was written; the story doesn’t function extraordinarily well as a piece of fiction, but is certainly not meant to be taken as an academic piece. Manorial rolls do not necessarily a great and compelling story make, and the lack of character development in what could have been very interesting people compound the chronicle-like feel of the book. The book actually works best when the people of Walsham are allowed to come through the narrative with all their religiousness, rebelliousness, and inferred personalities intact; the colorful lord and lady of one manor should have a work of fiction dedicated to them alone.

But when taken as what it baldly claims to be, a mix of fiction and non, the book works in a strangely fascinating and intimate way that has nothing to do with either fiction or nonfiction. It does draw you in and make you continue, even when hitting the doldrums (and there are plenty of them: chronicles, overall, aren’t generally known for their pulsing drive forward.) Don’t expect a corpuscles-and-all tale of the plague, but the depth of accessible information provides a surprisingly personal look at two years that turned the world upside down.

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