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The Unwritten
Longlisted for the Exeter Novel Prize in 2021, The Unwritten is a story about a working-class Fourteenth Century woman who becomes an outlaw. A Robin Hood tale in its true and original guise of class rebellion.
England, 1369. Nor Sawsham, a clever peasant woman born in the wake of the Black Death, is forced into an abusive arranged marriage that produces no children. She realises her father-in-law, the ambitious and cruel Bailiff, will not let a little thing like her life stand in the way of his and his son’s advancement.
Escape is no small thing and in doing so she finds other misfits like herself. Together they must find a way to survive outside the bounds of common law. Nothing is certain. Meanwhile, her father-in-law will not give up his mission to make his son a widower…
This exciting historical adventure shows the everyday Medieval world to be, far from the staid feudal dullness of school history, as turbulent and diverse as our own.
England, 1369. Nor Sawsham, a clever peasant woman born in the wake of the Black Death, is forced into an abusive arranged marriage that produces no children. She realises her father-in-law, the ambitious and cruel Bailiff, will not let a little thing like her life stand in the way of his and his son’s advancement.
Escape is no small thing and in doing so she finds other misfits like herself. Together they must find a way to survive outside the bounds of common law. Nothing is certain. Meanwhile, her father-in-law will not give up his mission to make his son a widower…
This exciting historical adventure shows the everyday Medieval world to be, far from the staid feudal dullness of school history, as turbulent and diverse as our own.
274 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 20, 2022
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 31, 2022
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 March 2022
The Unwritten is a powerful and revealing account of the daily strife of a certain strata of women in 14th century England.
The style of the prose keeps you rooted in the time period, and the well-researched details add wonderfully to the reading experience. The narrative is tight, each scene and chapter progressing the story along.
The characters in this novel are varied and always thoroughly defined, with even the minor characters being memorable. The author does not shy away from the cruelties of the age, yet there is nothing gratuitous in the descriptions of the horrors meted out so unjustly (from a 21 century perspective) on many of those in the book.
The Unwritten is a worthy novel, both in terms of its historical social commentary (sadly still having parallels in the modern age) and the basic fact that it is a very fine, sincere, and beautifully told tale.
The Unwritten is a powerful and revealing account of the daily strife of a certain strata of women in 14th century England.
The style of the prose keeps you rooted in the time period, and the well-researched details add wonderfully to the reading experience. The narrative is tight, each scene and chapter progressing the story along.
The characters in this novel are varied and always thoroughly defined, with even the minor characters being memorable. The author does not shy away from the cruelties of the age, yet there is nothing gratuitous in the descriptions of the horrors meted out so unjustly (from a 21 century perspective) on many of those in the book.
The Unwritten is a worthy novel, both in terms of its historical social commentary (sadly still having parallels in the modern age) and the basic fact that it is a very fine, sincere, and beautifully told tale.
Displaying 1 of 1 review