Review of Father Alberto and the Flying Girl by Timothy X. Attack – A Tale of Medieval Madness | imaginary

IIn the year 1474, in a fictional setting in southern Europe, Father Alberto arrives from the Gormel Abbey, where he failed in his ambition to become an illuminator of manuscripts in their famous copy-room. He is the new parish priest of the villages of Hem and Long, whose subjects are generally “piebald and erring,” but not the most eccentric or resistant of his flock. One of his duties is to care for the mentally ill in the monastery of Saint Khas, the patron saint of the deprived, who are confined in cells most days of the year. The fearsome abbess and silent Sister Lorenza brings Alberto to his charges using the Index, an annotated manuscript for inmates whose “strange minds are filled to the brim.” Among them are Peter Mastiff, an angry carpenter and blasphemer; Selena, compulsively naked and unhappy sexually; Karen Marina, a former princess with a secret; Malek Denny, whose body was mutilated with a map of the “known topography of the universe”; Zanzibar is a killer horse. And a silent girl in rags “relentlessly trying to fly.” These are just a few of the wide array of characters in a fable-like novel that skillfully combines comedic antics with serious moral themes.

At the end of each summer comes the Feast of the Holy Fool, a festival of misrule that includes extensively described acts of cursing, drunkenness, violence and sexual licentiousness. The lunatics are released to roam free but a priest must return them to their cells with the help of an eccentric and resourceful sexton, Oblong. The biggest challenge in retrieving it is the flying girl, who moves quickly on the ground and through the treetops. She speaks in a “procession of light and sonorous gibberish” that might be birdsong.

Alberto shows immediate sympathy for the madmen, telling Sister Lorenza: “I feel sorry that all those poor souls are so largely imprisoned in Sant’prétectorie because there There are no good names for what they are. What if here… we began a Christian study of madness? He devises innovations to help them recover prisoners more humanely after the feast days: singing to the horse, allowing it to stand up; Placating Peter by allowing him to practice his skills in church reform; Wearing rectangular-shaped clothes in pimples and veils to catch Selena finding comfort in the presence of the nuns. The superior becomes angry: “You imagine a crude salvation for the weak because of some arrogant pride… God made us perfect! … Unchangeable! He made none of us.” Puzzles!

The novel is organized around a staggered set of “instructions for a book not yet bound”: a picture book about Angelo’s life told retrospectively 10 years before the main narrative. This is a successful and consistently engaging device, which clearly and often subtly highlights (sic) the story and its themes. “Right page. The wooden church. With an uplifted heart I looked at the simple, slightly bent tower, set in a bleak ravine. It was not inconceivable that I should do good deeds here.”

Father Alberto is a morality tale in which madness is revealed, in Alberto’s words, as “a shield of uncertainty around which a form of normalcy revolves,” which distracts rational people from uncomfortable questions about the nature of reality. The attack places kindness and grace in clear opposition to the abuse of power and the failure of human compassion. This novel is delightfully engaging, with well-paced, occasionally violent action, and a carefully revealed plot, while hinting at larger mysteries beyond the margins of the tale. As Alberto concludes: “The truth is too big, and comes too slowly, for our little, fast lives…And that too is glorious, and varied, and many, that all we can be is a small part of the whole.”