A few weeks back, I started a series of posts on books I acquired in a recent “book browse and buy binge” (BB&BB), which also incorporated that other stalwart of book acquisition, the Airport Read (AR). 😉

First off the blocks was Frankie McMillan’s My Mother And The Hungarians (A NZ Book Award longlisted work), followed by last year’s Booker prize winner, Milkman by Anna Burns.

Julie Czerneda’s The Gossamer Mage was not part of either the BB&BB or the AR, but nonetheless fits within this mini-post series, which is all about reading books and sharing what I think with you—which leads me straight to this week’s installment, which is Book of Colours by Robyn Cadwallader.

Dear readers, this is a beautiful book and I really enjoyed reading it. Book of Colours is historical fiction, set in early 14th-century England, during the reign of Edward II.  It was a time of political unrest, chiefly between the barons and the King (rather than the wider turmoil of the Peasants’ Revolt, later the same century.) It was also the era of the Great Famine of 1315 – 1322, which is estimated to have killed approximately 25% of the population across Europe.

The central focus of the Book of Colours is a commission for an illuminated Book of Hours, with the story shifting between Mathilda, who commissions the work, and the illuminators, or limners — Gemma, Will, John, Benedict, and Nick — who undertake the work. Both the famine and political unrest affect the central characters in the book, but it is the manuscript and its making that ties the whole together, and I really like the way the author achieves this effect.

I also really like the sound historical basis to the novel, which comes through clearly without weighing the storytelling down. I also really liked all the characters and the way they — and my understanding of them, as a reader — develop through the story. Most of all I like the way the art of illumination is almost a character in itself, and how the intersection between the art and the individuals informs the book.

Overall, the Book of Colours is a very rewarding read, one you may well like if you’ve also enjoyed novels such as Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, The Lords of Vaumartin by Cecilia Holland, Hild by Nicola Griffith, or Vision Of Light by Judith Merkle Riley.

I purchased my copy of this book, which is a paperback edition, 387 pp, published by Fourth Estate (HarperCollins) in 2018.