Sinful Folk
By: Ned Hayes / Narrated By: Anne Day-Jones
Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
Slow, oh so painful, fraught with suffering… LOVED IT!!!
Medieval peasants fighting a raging fire. A door tied shut. A man bursts through and starts bringing out the scorched and charred bodies of young boys, dead. Why were they there? And who did this to much-loved sons?
Witches?
Jews?
And so we have the setup for Sinful Folk as told to us by Miriam, a former nun who has secretly been living disguised as Mear, a man, a mute, for the past 10-years in this village. She frantically searches for her beloved son, Christian, clutching at bystanders, silently pleading, desperate. Until she sees one blackened corpse with a silver chain around the neck.
Christian has been found. He along with the other boys were in Benedict the weaver’s home when it went up in flames, and the village cries Murder. The fathers, Mear included, gather the boys’s burnt bodies and begin a trek to see the King, to find who did this to their sons, to seek Justice. They pile the bodies in a cart, and through the harsh winter of 1377 they begin their slog where they will come across bandits, liars, thieves, monks who wield the powers of the Inquisition, famine, suffering. They grieve, even as they rail against the Jews.
And as the story progresses, author Ned Hayes masterfully begins peeling layers of mystery back, unfolding a story that is as grotesque as the suffering around the men, haunted as they are by their ignorance and superstitious hatreds. What happened to the village’s Healer woman? Why does Miriam stay silent, stay as a man? She once was a nun; what happened? How did she come to be with child, and what has happened to the father. This is all based on what appears to be meticulous research and, lover of history that I am, I fell for this hook, line, and oh such anguished sinker! Hardships, bloodshed, gore, and bodies decomposing with the thaw, this book has it all. Yessss, it is SUCH slow-going, but each line is written so well, the agony of the era is etched with care and with dirt, violence, mendacity, and cunning.
Oh, and it really was murder…
I’d once started Sinful Folk back when I’d purchased it in 2014, but as captivated as I was by the pain within it, I s’pose I’d found it to be too slow. Dunno why I never finished it; I can only assume the bleakness finally got to me, and I went on to brighter, bouncier things. But a slew of late votes pushed this up to tie for My Next Listen, and so I had this opportunity to do things right, to listen closely, to form ideas of my own as to what happened, even tho’ I’m noted for my obtuse mind when it comes to clever stories.
But oh how I loved this, tho’ I’m fairly CERtain it will NOT be to everyone’s liking; too slow, too brutal. And Anne Day-Jones turns in a magnificent performance. She is flawless as she captures each character, their fear, their hatred. And when it came to the French and Latin that was spoken? Flawless! yet again… uhm… at least it flows with such a seeming lack of effort… dunno, don’t speak French or Latin myself, so maaaaybe she butchered it, but gosh! did it sound great, or what?! The secrets Miriam holds fast, each trial she endures as she evolves from the Mute Idiot to someone who amazes and confounds, someone who might be worthy of friendship and equality, tho’ in the end we see her for what she truly is? Amazingly well-crafted story.
Not much story here but filthy peasants slogging through snow and ice, frostbite and gangrene, secrets and sins. Beautiful, beautiful writing, drop-dead gorgeous narration. So much numbness to grief and suffering, but there are golden threads of the goodhearted and loving; it’s just you have to really pay attention as you go along or you’ll miss it entirely. P’raps too slow at even x1.3 speed, but at x1.7, it was glorious.
Agony has never felt so good, and a promise honored has never ended a story so well…
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