Anchoress of Shere

Starred review from April 1, 2002
This exceptional thriller from British author Moorcraft, a film producer and former war correspondent, exhibits a rare quality of intelligence and imagination, with a remarkable depth of feeling for the book's characters and their predicaments. Be forewarned that there's nothing cozy or comforting about this engrossing, subtle historical, which centers on a spiritual quest into Christian mysticism and smoothly alternates between past and present. In 1329, Christine Carpenter, an actual personage who lived in the village of Shere in the Surrey woodlands, had herself walled up in a church cell to live out her remaining days in prayer and meditation. In our own time, scholars have come to the village to study the legendary "Anchoress of Shere" to try to understand her drastic decision. Among them is Father Michael Duval, whose interest in Christine's story has grown into a psychotic obsession. Duval has kidnapped and killed six young women in an attempt to reproduce his crazed image of Christine. Now he has seized another victim, Marda Stewart, a bright and courageous lady who knows her only chance to survive is to play an intellectual cat-and-mouse game with her maniacal captor. The resultant suspense will keep the reader riveted to the very end of this brilliantly original tale. (Apr. 22)FYI:Moorcraft is also the author of
African Nemesis: War and Revolution in Southern Africa (1990) and
What the Hell Am I Doing Here?: Travels with an Occasional War Correspondent (1995).

May 1, 2002
In the English town of Shere, Father Duval writes the biography of Christine Carpenter, the titular anchoress, but his subject's attractions discombobulate his mind. With so little evidence available, he decides to embroider her story by adding sodomy and rape to the mix, calling it "selective reinterpretation." But then he steps over the edge, both in writing and in life: he kidnaps a young woman and immures her, like Christine, in a dark, dungeonlike stone cell, claiming that it is God's will. This young woman, however, has a clever brother. First published in Britain, this intense, fascinating look at religious dementia is based on a medieval legend. Moorcraft is a former war correspondent and film producer. Strongly recommended for most collections.

Copyright 2002 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2002
Echoes of " The Collector" and " Silence of the Lambs" are heard in this grim thriller. In the fourteenth century in Shere, Surrey, a girl named Christine chooses to be an anchoress: she is walled into a tiny cell in the local church, with only a trefoil opening for light, food, and water. Michael Duval, a Catholic priest in the same church in the 1960s, is obsessed with her story, which he is researching and writing. That's not all he is doing, as he kidnaps Marda, a recent arrival to Shere, and walls her up in the church as he has done with six other women. Marda's tale alternates with Christine's along with fairly explicit narratives of violation, torture, and pain. As the tale progresses, we are never quite sure how much of both stories is true and how much Duval is making up. The resolution has a final, bizarre theological twist. For fans of historical mystery/horror.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)