Hurdy Gurdy: 'A cure for pandemic gloom' - The Times

Review There is a cure for pandemic gloom. What you need to do is read a funny novel about an even more deadly plague, the Black Death of the 14th century. Hurdy Gurdy is that novel . . . this novel is as short and funny as Dudley Moore. A read made for plague-fogged brains. ― The Times Of the Covid-inflected novels expected this year, few will be as weirdly entertaining as this cautionary tale. ― Mail on Sunday The Black Death seems an improbable subject for a comic novel, but Wilson takes up the challenge, and the result is fiercely funny. ― Sunday Times Hurdy Gurdy bubbles with a convivial, earthy humour and Brother Diggory is an amusing antihero. The prose is highly evocative, full of flesh and blood . . . This is an entertaining and atmospheric picaresque - though in the midst of our own pandemic, Wilson's satire of misguided churchmen and unscientific plague doctors feels somewhat quaint: our own leaders appear far more monstrous. Still, it is often ingenious and frequently hilarious. Brother Diggory kills many, yet survives to tell the tale. I for one am glad. ― The Guardian Ribald yet deeply touching. ― Observer Christopher Wilson's 10th novel, set against the backdrop of a medieval pestilence, is salutary: not only does it serve as a reminder that we've prevailed over this sort of thing before, it's also genuinely and therapeutically funny. ― Telegraph the core of Hurdy Gurdy is the human striving for understanding, be it spiritual or medical, and our capacity for self-delusion. ― The Herald A supremely witty, sharp and rollicking piece of satirical story-telling. With echoes of Candide and Don Quixote, this gem of a novel, following the fate of the hapless novice, Brother Diggory, in his journey of discovery during the Black Death, had me captivated. Laugh-out-loud funny, Hurdy Gurdy confirms Christopher Wilson as a truly original voice in historical fiction. -- Elizabeth Fremantle Wilson's doodles and detours combine into a high-spirited, richly coloured panorama of High Gothic imagery and ideas...If our bumptious young healer-monk grabs the last word, Wilson himself has the last laugh. Even in pandemic times, he hints, comedy is the superpower to purge one-eyed, self-deluding humankind. ― Financial Times A picaresque road trip . . . The effect is a little like Chaucer as told by Adrian Mole. ― Spectator Gloriously entertaining and profoundly moving . . . Chris is a master of the tragi-comic, and one of our finest observers of humanity's definitive absurdities and graces. -- Stephen Kelman I adored this clever and funny novel about a novice monk making his way through plague-struck medieval England. The prose is artful and tender. It fizzes from the first page, drawing you into Brother Diggory's tragic, yet uplifting tale. -- Nikki Marmery Pleasure in its rawest form. ― Bookmunch This is an enthralling read. ― Historical Novel Society Product Description 'What the doctor ordered . . . a fiercely funny novel.' Sunday Times It is the year of our Lord 1349 and it is the season of the Plague. Brothor Diggory's life is about to change. The sickness is creeping ever closer and the monks of his order must attend to the afflicted. He is about to meet the Plague. What he doesn't realise is that encountering an illness and understanding it are two quite different things . . . An uproarious and uplifting novel about sickness and health, and how perhaps we're never quite as cutting-edge as we might like to believe. 'Ribald yet deeply touching.' Observer 'Therapeutically hilarious.' Telegraph 'Often ingenious and frequently hilarious.' Guardian Book Description A bitingly funny historical novel, following Brother Diggory on an eerily prescient journey through fourteenth-century England. About the Author Christopher Wilson is the author of several novels including Gallimauf's Gospel, Baa, Blueglass, Mischief, Fou, The Wurd, The Ballad of Lee Cotton and Nookie. His work has been translated into several lang