Father Alberto and the Flying Maiden by Timothy X Atack review – a classic tale of madness | Fiction

Men 1474, in a fictional place in the south of Europe, Father Alberto arrives from Jormel Abbey, where he failed in his desire to become a manual illuminator of their famous scriptorium. He is the priest of the new parish of the villages of Hem and Long, whose congregants are often “piebald and lost”, but not very famous or against his group. One of his duties is to take care of the mentally challenged in the monastery of Saint Particular, the patron saint of the unloved, who live in rooms for a long time of the year. The fearsome Abbess and the silent Sister Lorenza introduce Alberto to his crimes using the Index, the manuscripts of prisoners whose strange thoughts are “filled to the brim”. They include Pieter Mastiff, an angry, rude carpenter; Selina, forced nudity and joyless sex; Carin Marina, a former princess with a secret; Malike Dene, who has scarred his body with a map of the “topography of the known universe”; Zanzibar, the horse to kill; she is a mute girl in rags who is “trying to fly without pity”. These are just a few of the many characters in a book like a fairy tale that skillfully combines magical humor with moral themes.

At the end of every summer comes the Feast of the Holy Fool, a wild party that delves into profanity, drunkenness, violence and debauchery. The lunatics are set free to roam freely but must be returned to their cells by the priest with the help of his wise and intelligent sexton, Oblong. The most difficult to retrieve is the Flying Girl, which is on land and in trees. They speak in “a group of light and clear voices” that may be birdsong.

Alberto immediately shows compassion for the insane, telling Sister Lorenza: “I am sorry that all those poor souls are imprisoned especially in Saint Particular because there are no good names for what they are. What if now… we start studying the madness of Christianity?” They devise new ways to help them restore the prisoners humanely after days of feasting: horse singing, which allows them to be stopped; appeasing Pieter by allowing him to use his talents to repair the church; dressed, and Oblong, in wimples and veils to hold Selina, who finds comfort in the presence of nuns. The Abbess is angry: “You think of the unexpected salvation of the weak because of vain pride … God made us whole! … unchangeable! He didn’t make any of us proverbs!”

The book is organized according to the “guidelines of an unfinished book”: a novel about the life of Angelo told 10 years ahead of the main story. This is a successful and interesting device, which clearly illuminates (sic) the story and its themes. “Recto. A wooden church. With an uplifted heart I saw a small spider’s web that was slightly twisted, which is in a dark courtyard.

Father Alberto is a moral tale in which madness is revealed, in Alberto’s words, “the sense of uncertainty that surrounds its form”, which distracts the mad from the unpleasant questions about the nature of things. Atack puts kindness and grace in clear opposition to the abuse of power and the failure of human compassion. The book is exciting, well-paced, sometimes violent, action and the plot is carefully unfolded, while looking for big secrets outside of the story. As Alberto concludes: “Truth is very big, and it comes slowly, in our fast lives…