The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Pestilence, by William Owen Roberts
reviewed by Megan McDowell

William Owen Roberts. Pestilence. Trans. Elisabeth Roberts. Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003. 214 pp. $19.95.

Pestilence is a novel of debauchery and religious excess set in the fourteenth century during the onset of the Black Plague. Religion is the common thread between two vying storylines as Salah Ibn al Khatib, a young Arab brought up in the cool hallways of Muslim academe, sets out across the Christian “infidel” countries of Europe to kill the king of France. Roberts alternates Salah’s clashes with the corrupt and superstitious peoples of Europe with the narrative of a Welsh township called Dolbenmaen, where the end of the world has been presaged by omens but can’t be prevented by any amount of penance. Roberts has done his research on the time period, but the book speaks to the present—as one god (of religion) is replaced by another (money), we see a familiar world emerge from Roberts’s mélange. However, he is not here to preach—like a kid playing gross-out, Roberts delights in shocking the reader, and his portrayal of medieval Europe abounds with uncomfortable (for both characters and reader) situations. There’s Salah, who finds himself wandering through stinking sewers and locked in a tomb with the rotting corpse of a cardinal; add to that the slices of life from Dolbenmaen—a leper’s bestiality, a serf’s pedophilia—and you have a book not meant for the squeamish. Roberts’s language is unaffected and straightforward, countering the epic scope of the novel; the elaborate plot is rendered in short vignettes that convey much in few words. Pestilence’s jacket offers comparisons to Salman Rushdie and Umberto Eco, but the book’s playfulness lies not in its symbolism, puzzles, or semiotics, but rather in its indulgence in the nuances of the period. Roberts revels in the particulars, creating small triumphs: well-wrought scenes like the one in which Salah emerges from the tomb wearing the cardinal’s robes, and the monks who witness his “resurrection” variously wet themselves, run into walls, and lick his feet. These small successes don’t necessarily add up to a fulfilling whole; Pestilence isn’t exhaustive or sweeping, and there are holes in the plot and questions unanswered, things that don’t happen in Rushdie’s or Eco’s writing. Roberts often sets up minor suspenses that end up falling flat, and Salah’s story ends abruptly and unsatisfactorily. However, Roberts is a young writer, and Pestilence is his second novel (his first translated from Welsh to English). If later books exhibit the exuberance and enthusiasm of this one, readers will have much to look forward to.