Canticle
In Janet Richard Edwards’s luminous, mesmerizing historical novel Canticle, a thirteenth-century saint-in-the-making has her faith fostered by a community of women.
As a teenager on her family farm, Aleys lives to pray and teaches herself Latin to read the Bible. When her father arranges her marriage, she runs away and takes up Franciscan orders. Her spiritual advisor, Friar Lukas, deposits her with the beguines in Bruges, a closed community of religious women who reveal other ways of worshiping God. Aleys’s ability to read and translate the Bible marks her as different and dangerous, as do her miraculous healing abilities. Soon, Aleys is forced to make life-altering decisions to protect her sisters from the Church’s scandal-sniffers.
The narrative spans four years in Aleys’s eventful life. The prose buzzes with electric spirituality, getting inside the hearts and minds of medieval Christians. Mysticism is handled from women’s perspectives, too. The friendships and animosities that Aleys stirs within the tight-knit beguine sisterhood are compelling, and the engaging conversations between the women ring true. From welcoming and warm Magistra Sophia to suspicious Sister Katrijn, the tale is ripe with rich personalities and human foibles.
The story unfolds at a sequential clip, amping up the dread when Roman inquisitors arrive to verify Aleys’s miracles and investigate rumors of the beguine’s altering of biblical texts. These crises bring out the heroic or frail sides in Aleys, the beguines, and Friar Lukas. Their reactions are used to explore the metronome nature of faith as it swings from doubt to certainty and back again. Through Aleys’s trials, profound questions about what it means to seek God, and what the cost of searching is, are issued.
Told from the vantage point of women, Canticle is a glorious historical novel that evokes the fervor and flavor of medieval Christian culture.
Reviewed by
Peggy Kurkowski
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
