Minette Walters' medieval novel The Last Hours (#910) might just as well be named The Lost Hours because that's how I feel about the time I wasted on this Black Death book. It made the rare list for me of "Books I Did Not Bother to Finish".
The plot as sketched on the cover concerns an English manor house which learns from the Bishop's messenger that a deadly plague is consuming the area all around. The lord of the manor is away arranging for his daughter's dowry to be paid, so his wife herds some of the animals and the serfs onto the man-made island the manor stands on, tears up the bridge across the moat and sits tight with her steward and her daughter, isolated against the disease.
Sounds kind of like the pandemic we're going through now, doesn't it? That's what I thought, but this is 1348, so why does Lady Anne sound like a twenty-first century feminist and cultural iconoclast? She teaches her serfs to read (Her own daughter can't because she's too willful to bother.) and introduces hygiene practices unheard of at the time. Oh, and did I mention that she does not believe in organized religion, which makes her a heretic in this time period? All this from a convent-educated teen married off because of her dowry to the first available suitor. I don't think so. The handsome, muscular serf with exotic parentage who she relies on to help her run the estate just pushes it all over the top. I got so tired of mentally rolling my eyes I finally gave up. I just didn't care what happened to all these people. I'm sure she probably survived in triumph, but if you're interested enough to find out, you'll have to read it on your own.
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