Mere

Written by Danielle Giles
Review by Tracey Warr

In the 10^th-century Norfolk Fens, a remote community of nuns and peasants struggles to survive a harsh winter and a harsh abbess. This story may not sound like a page-turner, but it certainly is. The convent is far from the nearest town. It is isolated by a deep and treacherous mere. The author has created a vivid cast of characters who instantly engage readers’ sympathies and worries. Well-wrought suspense and our concern for these characters drive the story on. Hilda is the convent infirmarian, drawing on medieval medical knowledge as well as the older knowledge of her wise woman mother, Sweet. This is a thoroughly imagined world where the characters are pulled between two belief systems – Christianity and the older Norse beliefs that are a holdover from the time of the Danelaw.

Everything starts to go wrong, and the crisis escalates. A boy is lost in the mere, the food stores are far too meagre, a flood wipes out the crops and carries away the livestock. The increasingly desperate community begins to see sin round every corner. Abbess Sigeburg orders the harsh whipping of some of the nuns for minor infractions. Hilda falls in love with the newest arrival at the convent, Wulfrun – a former thegn’s wife who is carrying her own scars. The mere is a constant watery threat to the community, which is compounded by hunger, blizzards and freezing weather. Just as the mere is encroaching on the convent’s arable land, superstition seeps into the minds of the characters and begins to outweigh reason. The old beliefs suggest there is only one way out of their suffering. This is an excellent read. Highly recommended.