Sin Eater by Megan Campisi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars “I guess I'm not a washerwoman anymore.” Needless to say, the worst job in Megan Campisi’s Sin Eater (2020) is being a sin eater. Only women can do it, “since it was Eve who first ate a sin: the Forbidden Fruit.” Sin eaters are shunned and feared: “Unseen, unheard.” If you touch one, you’re cursed; if you talk with one, you approach the ur-sinner Eve. Sin eaters hear (via Recitations) and then Eat (via particular foods) the sins of every dying person and then bear all those sins in silence until they die when, if they’ve been good, they might be able to join the Maker. Although some of the food representing the sins is appealing, like bread (original sin) and cream (envy), some is appalling, like a lamb’s head cooked in ewe’s milk (the rape of a child) or pig’s heart (a murder in wrath). Apart from obvious disadvantages, like never being able to touch or talk to anyone and having to live in the dirtiest, smelliest, and poorest part of town, the occupation provides some advantages, like constant free food and the ability to go almost anywhere and to listen to anyone’s conversations. Apart from sin eating, Campisi’s alternate Tudor world is only slightly transformed from our historical one, as most of the major Tudor players and features appear with slightly different names (e.g., King Harold/Henry and Queen Bethany/Elizabeth, Eucharistian/Catholic, the new faith/Anglican, the Maker/God, Angland/England, and so on. Fairy tales and nursery rhymes are modified: Hans and Greta are lost in the woods and find an old sin eater’s house, while Jack falls in the well and drowns so Jill eats foods for his sins. Foreigners are called strangers, anyone becomes anyfolk, and panto boys pantomime news events in public spaces. The fundamental things are the same, like “virgin” queen surrounded by suitors, harsh life for the hungry poor, superstition, sins, religion, intolerance, and misogyny. Well, Christian misogyny is enhanced, as Eve plays the role of our Satan: when you die, you’ll either go to the Maker or to Eve (“purest evil. Even worse than Judas, who betrayed the Maker's son”). Our first-person present-tense narrator May Owens (WHY is it almost ALWAYS present-tense first-person narrators now?), an illiterate 14-year old orphaned washerwoman, is arrested for stealing bread and sentenced to become a sin eater, having a bronze collar with an S on it locked on her neck and an S tattooed onto her tongue and becoming apprentice to the current sin eater, a middle-aged plump woman who slaps May whenever she tries to speak. May follows her mistress on her rounds, attending Recitations and Eatings in the houses of dying people (e.g., a baby, a teenage girl, an old woman, a rich merchant). The only thing May can say is the prayer to begin each Recitation: “The unseen is seen, the unheard is heard, your sins will be mine. When the food is et your sins will be mine.” The plot gets going when May and her mistress (who have bonded into an “us”) attend the Recitation for the queen’s poisoned old nurse and find that for the Eating a deer’s heart indicating a murder has been put among the sin-foods, though the old woman did not confess to having killed anyone. May’s mistress balks at eating the wrongfully placed food item, is accused of treason, and is taken to the dungeons. At a loss, May eats the deer’s heart, but afterwards thinks that she must tell someone at court about the mistake. But she’s supposed to be “Unseen, unheard.” But her mistress will be pressed! Desperate and naive, May tries to tell the Queen’s favorite, her secretary “Black Fingers,” only to have him try to cut her throat. What began as a Christian misogyny dystopia story has morphed into a court murder mystery, with May the amateur sleuth analyzing clues from Recitations and eavesdropped conversations. We root for the lonely May! She has an observant eye, a sympathetic heart, and an imaginative mind, hearing objects, insects, and animals talk. She’s feisty, nicknaming people Mush Face, the Country Mouse, and the Painted Pig. She tells a good story. She idealizes her da and hates her mother’s vile rogue relatives. She is at first passive (“I follow, because where else can I go?”) and has low self-esteem (“I'm monstrous”). Will she be able to grow and achieve something in her occupation and world? She shows signs of self-empowerment when she starts wielding her ostracization as a weapon/banner (“I am a curse!”) and taking pleasure in making people get out of her way. Campisi’s writing is vivid and marked by impressive similes, like “The others, whose faces had earlier opened to me in wonder, encouragement, and envy, drop away like leeches full of blood.” The bleak, bizarre concept of the novel gives rise to neat lines like, “Can I be forgiven for eating an unrecited heart?” But the book has some flaws... First, Campisi misuses lay a couple times, as in “I lay again on the grave of my da.” (It’s a lost cause, but this is a present tense novel, so please write, “I lie again on the grave ...”) Second, the climax verges on absurdity. (A bucket of two-day-old piss, an outdoor festival, a jakes, a voodoo doll, a red herring, Black Fingers and minions, a chase, a sprained ankle, costumes, a play, a chase, a burn victim, a serious fleshhook, a hot cauldron, a confession—And is this a Christian misogyny dystopia or a slapstick mystery?) Third, given the vital role played by sin eaters in Angland, there’s no way a large town containing the Queen's castle and court would have only one or two of them. (It wouldn’t be possible for one or two to deal with all the Recitations and Eatings, and if the sin eaters got sick or died, how could the dying be absolved of their sins?) Fourth, people wouldn’t be so cruel to a person playing such a vital role for their salvation as a sin eater. (They'd be bad to lepers and beggars and maybe strangers and Eucharistians, but they’d not risk antagonizing someone who’d someday have the power to send them to Eve when hearing/eating their sins; Campisi must REALLY want to isolate May and show how horrible misogyny is.) Fifth, that said, by introducing several “squatters” into May’s empty home—a leper, an ex-actor, an actor, etc.—Campisi softens May’s isolation too much. (I’m glad for May, but it makes me wonder if Campisi lacks the courage of her Christian misogyny dystopia convictions.) Sin Eater has been compared to The Handmaid’s Tale, but the ambiguity in the ending of Atwood’s book makes Campisi’s look like the YA mystery novel that it finally is. View all my reviews
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