review – company of liars

Imagine yourself involuntarily surrounded by a small group of travelers, forced by circumstance to cut off all interaction with society. Rumors tell of cities overflowing with corpses, and no one knows the cause nor the symptoms until it’s too late. A grand pestilence has infected the ports, and the only safe direction is inland and ever north. Such is the historically fictitious medieval mystery Company of Liars by Karen Maitland.

Maitland takes her fascination of the medieval period and constructs a very convincing and entertaining story around the occurrence of the Black Plague. While citizens are dropping like flies from port to port and across the countryside, Maitland’s company of nine is forced to interact and eventually divulge their secrets, stories and lies in a wayward attempt at survival, claiming each one by one. The pestilence serves not only as the driving force behind the story, but also the invisible element highlighting just how “interesting” the times were to live in during that period. Ironically, her interpretation of Medieval England is surprisingly similar, though a bit more lively (especially in dialogue), to other apocalyptic voices such as McCarthy’s The Road. Maitland skillfully illuminates a culture of indulgences, a preponderance of predestination, Jewish scapegoating, hypocrisy and the human pathos of a medieval mindset which is not so historically distant from ours.

Vivid description is Maitland’s major strength throughout the story. Not only does she deliver a magical element to the company’s progression, she also knows how to tell a story within a story. Each character’s secrets are deftly divulged as the story flows, until the final pages whereupon the reader won’t reach an unexpected twist as much as a cathartic resolution. The story of the camelot is an impressive and engaging read.