Sin Eater
A Novel
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3.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
“For fans of The Handmaid’s Tale...a debut novel with a dark setting and an unforgettable heroine...is a riveting depiction of hard-won female empowerment” (The Washington Post).
The Sin Eater walks among us, unseen, unheard
Sins of our flesh become sins of Hers
Following Her to the grave, unseen, unheard
The Sin Eater Walks Among Us.
For the crime of stealing bread, fourteen-year-old May receives a life sentence: she must become a Sin Eater—a shunned woman, brutally marked, whose fate is to hear the final confessions of the dying, eat ritual foods symbolizing their sins as a funeral rite, and thereby shoulder their transgressions to grant their souls access to heaven.
Orphaned and friendless, apprenticed to an older Sin Eater who cannot speak to her, May must make her way in a dangerous and cruel world she barely understands. When a deer heart appears on the coffin of a royal governess who did not confess to the dreadful sin it represents, the older Sin Eater refuses to eat it. She is taken to prison, tortured, and killed. To avenge her death, May must find out who placed the deer heart on the coffin and why.
“Very much reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale…it transcends its historical roots to give us a modern heroine” (Kirkus Reviews). “A novel as strange as it is captivating” (BuzzFeed), The Sin Eater “is a treat for fans of feminist speculative fiction” (Publishers Weekly) and “exactly what historical fiction lovers have unknowingly craved” (New York Journal of Books).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Playwright Campisi draws on a punitive English folk ritual in her rousing, impressive debut, a bleak reimagining of palace intrigue in 16th-century England. Convicted for vagrancy, 14-year-old May Owens is condemned to be a sin eater, a woman meant to absorb the sins of the dying by hearing deathbed confessions and consuming symbolic foods ("Bearing a Bastard Grapes"). After a fellow sin eater refuses to eat a deer heart placed on the coffin of Corlis Ashton, governess to young Queen Bethany (a stand-in for Elizabeth I), the Queen's secretary, Black Fingers, sentences the sin eater to death. Black Fingers then forces May to eat the heart, but she never hears Corlis's confession or learns which sin the heart represents though she senses uncomfortably that the heart signifies murder. As May becomes convinced that Corlis was not guilty, she risks questioning Black Fingers's judgment and he stabs her, a wound from which she barely recovers. Undaunted, May seeks help from fellow outcasts Bridey, who is a leper, and Paul to untangle a complicated court conspiracy. Campisi's stirring portrait of injustice is deepened by May's cleverness, frustration, and grief. This spellbinding novel is a treat for fans of feminist speculative fiction.
