The Leper's Companions

by Julia Blackburn

Book Overview

In this fascinatingly imaginative novel, Julia Blackburn has decimated all the rules, creating a magical tale that is part fable, part allegory, part present, part past, and wholly genuine and poetic.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679439846
• ISBN13: 9780679439844
• Release Date: April 1999
• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Length: 197 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

a spellbinding parable

I really liked Julia Blackburn's little book. It is exquisitely written in lean & learned detail, & carries the Reader off into another time & another place where our ancestors tried to make sense of what they saw, believed & felt.This is a rare book to encounter about what it might have been like to live 800 years ago on the coast of a sparsely-settled land, where a new religion interfaces with the old, where life is so fragile before the onslaught of the weather, relationships are infused with hallucinations, & pilgrimages to the Holy Land undertaken in dire poverty & total surrender.THE LEPER'S COMPANIONS is about a grieving woman & her travel through that hurt into healing.A pearl of a parable that glows with authenticity, & I hope it comes into reprint so that it can thrill others as it did me. Until then go hunt up a used copy, I'm not selling mine!

Coping with Grief

When one goes through a hell of an ordeal (an indelible memory left etched on a soul) how does one cope with it's affects? This is a question that Julia Blackburn explores in The Leper's Companions. In her story, time plays an important part of her character's dealing with the grief she's experienced. When the story opens the narrator is in the present, in a state of mourning for the loss of a loved one. Someone who has been lost to her for an indefinite amount of time. It seems only appropriate that from then on the narrator finds herself far in the past, observing the life and trials of people seemingly far removed from her experience.It is as if, she, by focusing on their lives each in order, is some how also focusing on corresponding aspects of her own life and grief. She does this in a such a quiet way it's almost easy to forget that she's there observing things. There is such a quietness about this process that it is if your were embarking on it with her and were seeing the people for yourself. You go on this journey with her and when she reaches the place she was going to you have to.I think this is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. It's flow and message have left me much to ponder. It has given me much insight on how we deal with and get rid of the grief we carry inside.

must-read

This is a terrific novel. Blackburn writes like a dream, knows her Medieval social history, and is amazingly sensitive. Whether you take it as a novel about writing a novel, as a social study, or as a psychological document, it's totally absorbing. It resembles Peter Cameron's "Andorra" and Mark Richard's "Fishboy" (also admirable novels), but the Medieval angle makes it unique and especially memorable. It's full of wonderful surprises, and has a magical quality to it (not normally a compliment in my book, but anything works if it works!). Maybe more for women, but I loved it. The Fox

Great book, thought provoking and intelligently written

Julia Blackburn's new novel The Leper' Companions is a work of careful thought and hidden meaning. A woman who has suffered a recent loss creates for herself an imaginary, dreamlike world with roots in the 1400s. Throughout most of the book, the author is tangently present in this made-up world and only occassionaly are we reminded that this story is going on only in her mind. I recommend the book based on it's interesting character development. Many would say the end is somewhat anti-climatic, but I believe the author left it so intentionally. All in all a good afternoon's read.

beautiful imagery

The narrator slips into another world with beautiful imagery and characters. It starts in a small town in the 1400's who seem half real and half created in the narrators mind in order to escape from her life. For the second half of the book the characters follow a leper on a pilgrimage to the holy land. The feel of the book is almost magical and I loved the first half which peaks at the lives of the villagers. Towardds the end the book gets a little more sluggish and maybe just a little too anti-climatic even for this kind of book. All in all definitely worth picking up..