In the year 1267, young Franciscan John the Pupil is tasked by his master, the fearsomely clever polymath Roger Bacon, to carry Bacon's newly-completed book all the way from Oxford to Viterbo, where the Papal Court currently resides, and present it to the Pope.
This will be the first time John has ventured outside his own village, and he has a daunting journey of dangers and temptations ahead of him.
Before he sets out, John studies the map of a pilgrim's journey from Canterbury to Jerusalem and concludes, "The journey does not signify an actual one, I know that. The purpose of this exercise is to lift the spirit into closer relationship with Our Lord." And so it is with John's own odyssey. His journey is not short of incidents - he encounters a jealous pilgrim who tries to steal the book, he finds himself at a hospitable mansion where he could easily settle down and live as a teacher or mendicant, one of his companions falls prey to the pleasures of the flesh with a French woman and John's own head is turned by a mountain girl - but Flusfeder is trying to adhere as closely to the Medieval mindset as he can, and he elevates their symbolic importance as stages of John's spiritual development over their value as set-pieces in an adventure tale.
Like The Name Of The Rose before it, this novel is a faux-Medieval manuscript which centres on a protégé of Roger Bacon. But there are profound differences. William of Baskerville was essentially a modern man who used his master's analytical methods to pursue logical conclusions, however unpalatable they might be. John the Pupil, though, doesn't have William's iron nerve. He reveres Bacon and his methods, but for him all enquiry reinforces what he has always been taught and affirms the glory of God's creation: "I shall remember to be instructed by the world," he writes, "to remember that nothing is too humble to be the evidence of God's love."
Ultimately, the integrity of the closed Medieval world is maintained. We have to set aside our 21st-century sensibilities and learn to listen. The publisher's suggestion that this novel is "Umberto Eco seen through the eyes of Quentin Tarantino" is ridiculously wide of the mark. But it's lean, intelligent and drily witty, and proves that characters from the past don't have to be "just like us" to keep us engrossed.
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