Joining Artt in his “sacred wandering” are Old Cormac – “tough old meat,” ready to turn his hand to most tasks – and Trian, a “strange” boy, not yet 20, who’s prone to daydreaming.
Everyone’s a little in awe of him, even the Abbot, which explains why, when Artt bangs on the old man’s door in the middle of the night, insisting that he’s been instructed in a dream to take two monks and found a retreat on an uninhabited island, the Abbot shrugs his shoulders and gives the men his blessing. He can do complex sums in his head, and navigate by the stars. He speaks many tongues, and has read many books. The Cluain Mhic Nóis monastery is used to welcoming visitors, but few are as impressive as Artt, a famed “soldier for Christ,” responsible – or so the rumour goes – for converting entire tribes of Picts, Franks and Lombards. Haven, latest novel from Emma Donoghue, the Booker-shortlisted author of Room (2010), is cut from similar cloth it’s a grim and grisly tale of monastic privation and isolation in seventh-century Ireland. For other novelists, however, the dirt and the darkness appears to be the draw, as seen in Ottessa Moshfegh’s Lapvona, a bleak portrait of pain, suffering and filth in a fictional medieval village in Eastern Europe.
In last year’s Matrix, Lauren Groff brought the spirited Marie de France back to life as the empowered leader of a sisterhood of nuns in a 12th-century abbey while Katherine J Chen’s Joan – published earlier this month – is a grand historical epic and feminist celebration of France’s most famous girl warrior. A new era in historical fiction is upon us these days, the Middle Ages are all the rage! For some, it’s an opportunity to look at an old story through a new lens.
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