Sin Eater by Megan Campisi book review
Set in an alternate Tudor England, Megan Campisi’s wonderful debut novel “Sin Eater” is a riveting depiction of hard-won female empowerment that weaves together meticulous research, unsolved murder — and an unforgettable young heroine.
The novel opens as 14-year-old May, a starving orphan, steals a loaf of bread. She’s immediately captured and thrown into a cell with 20 other women — some are runaways, a few are pickpockets or prostitutes. All the women are sentenced to torture or execution: by whipping, branding, hanging or being burned alive. Only May at first appears to be spared. But she learns her own fate when two priests visit her cell. One tattoos an S onto her tongue. The other bears a brass collar embellished with the letter S and locks it around May’s neck as he recites her sentence: She is to be a sin eater, a person who “bears the sins of all folks in silence to her grave. She alone may never confess or be absolved [unless] she serves faithfully in true piety to the Maker’s will.”
May is now a mute figure shunned by all, feared and hated even by the older sin eater who is required to take her into her home and act as her mentor. Each sin has an accompanying food — raisins for adultery, orange marmalade for bigamy, porridge for bearing a grudge; various types of animal hearts for killings — a culinary litany as mouthwatering as it is horrific. Still, May swiftly realizes the advantages of her plight: “I will never have another hungry day!”
And there are other perks to May’s new calling: It gives the impoverished girl entry to the homes of merchants, midwives and even the court of the Virgin Queen Bethany, the ruler of this alt-England, known as Angland. Before long, May is privy to several longtime secrets and a witness to suspicious goings-on, all of which point to a decades-old murder that appears to involve highly ranked members of court. But how can May determine who the murderer is, when there is no sign of a victim?
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Campisi, a noted young playwright, employs deft plotting and an impressive gift for evoking the lives of women in this reimagined Elizabethan era, when being born female was often a death sentence, by dint of sexual assault, starvation, domestic abuse, illness or lack of education. Not even wealthy mothers are safe from the dangers of childbirth, and Queen Bethany must maintain her power as Elizabeth I did, by encouraging foreign suitors while she orchestrates dangerous political intrigue closer to home.
The unlearned May can only count to 12 and recognizes just a handful of letters. She’s astonished when she first climbs a set of stairs, sees red paint on a merchant’s walls and watches dumbfounded as a set of pulleys is used to raise a tent. Yet despite her innocence and heartbreaking loneliness, she quickly learns that, in a world where an oppressive, religious patriarchy holds sway, her outsider status gives her a power that others can’t even imagine.
An unexpected act of kindness spurs May to muster her hard-won confidence without sacrificing her own compassion. Her cottage becomes a sanctuary for others who are shunned — “a reeking leper, a peevish cripple, a gabby-goose actor.” As the Virgin Queen’s court prepares for an outdoor festival to honor a departing foreign emissary, the determined May schemes to infiltrate the festivities, hoping to learn the identity of the unknown victim and wreak vengeance on the killer.
Occasionally, the novel’s milieu grows confusing. The array of names, especially May’s nicknames for those in court — Country Mouse, Painted Pig, the Willow Tree, Mush Face, Black Fingers — can leave a reader as momentarily befuddled as the sin eater who is trying to make sense of it all. And the mystery, while carefully plotted, is never quite as compelling as the characters and vibrant, Bruegelesque setting where it all unfolds.
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But the dark world of “Sin Eater” exists only slightly sideways from our own, especially in the midst of a pandemic that reminds us of earlier eras when disease, mistrust of the government and fear held sway. And while Campisi doesn’t flinch from depicting its horrors, the ultimate effect is far more exhilarating and hopeful than grim. There is no Hogwarts-style magic here, other than the alchemy of great storytelling, which results in a book reminiscent of “The Handmaid’s Tale” or Russell Hoban’s great, sui generis sci-fi novel “Riddley Walker.”
In a universe of marvels, May herself is one — she revels in the knowledge she gains day by day as she unapologetically, even ruthlessly, begins to wrest back autonomy from those who casually and cruelly rule the society where “her folk” are denied even the most basic freedoms. By the end of Campisi’s story, the orphaned sin eater’s appetite for food may be sated, but not her relentless hunger for justice.
Elizabeth Hand’s 16th novel, “The Book of Lamps and Banners,” will be out later this
SIN EATER
By Megan Campisi
Atria. 304 pp. $27
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