The sin eater by Megan Campisi
Macmillan, 2020. ISBN: 9781529019100.
(Age: Adolescent - Adult) This vibrant story plunges us into the
world of the Middle Ages in Britain, Campisi vividly reflecting
historical Elizabethan world in a tale that focuses on the
particular role of the 'sin eater' in that era. The narrative is
centred on a young adolescent woman, who, struggling to survive
alone with no family, job or money, is arrested for stealing.
Inexplicably, she is not hanged with the other young female
perpetrators of minor misdeeds, but is told, bluntly, and clearly
with no choice, that she will now be a 'sin-eater'. She is forced to
undergo the torture of having the 'S' for sin-eater burnt on to her
tongue and a brass collar clamped around her neck, then told that
she is to fulfill this new role in silence, and thus to have nothing
to do with anyone else, as she is now and will be, for the rest of
her life feared as an untouchable.
Within a short time she is called to do her first sin-eating,
escorted to a home, and given particular foods that are chosen as
appropriate for the story of a newly-dead person's life. After each
'eating' she returns to the small room where she manages to live
alone with almost no possessions. As Campisi draws us deeply into a
world where poverty dominates, we become aware of her gradual
acceptance of her 'work', and of the strangeness of this life. In
the realisation that the task will enable her to eat, she accepts
that she has a position where it is a law that no-one may speak to
her, but neither should they ever hurt her, because she is tainted
by her role, and this would endanger others.
Through her construction of a re-imagined and startlingly vivid
world set in Elizabethan England, Campisi depicts the squalor and
poverty of that time, especially that endured by the poor, seen in
such stark contrast to that of the rich, especially of the royals.
We note some specific aspects of that era through her clever
adaptation of words, Campisi having constructed alternative names
and places for what we know historically. In her vibrant,
descriptive story-telling, she reveals much about the lives of those
who are poor and struggling to survive, while also describing many
'probable' aspects of how those, whom we recognise as 'the royals',
lived. Plunging us into this world of rigid and distinct social
classes, Campisi inferentially enables us to make sense of time and
place, to work out who is the ruling monarch, and thus to read this
story as representation of real history. The sin eater is
indeed an exciting read and a vibrant, wonderful creation. It would
be suitable for adolescent and adult readers.
Elizabeth Bondar