I very rarely read historic/period fiction so I'm quite surprised that I picked this up.However, I started reading it a few days ago and have been absolutely captivated by it. It's not an easy read by any means, but is so beautifully written that the horror of the situation is made bearable.

The storyteller here is Anna, a young widow with two young sons, who lives in a remote Derbyshire village. Abused by her father and stepmother, Anna married the first man to kiss her, but is left alone to bring up their sons when he is killed in a mining accident. Into her life comes a young tailor, fresh from London, and it looks like he is about to win her heart when he is taken ill and dies ... it's the Plague. Soon others in the village fall victim to the disease. Desperate to isolate the germs, the village shut them off from the outside world, and Anna recounts her life through the year of the Plague, helping those affected.

The language in this book is like nothing I've ever read before. I don't know if it is realistic for the 17th century but the turn of phrase certainly seems to be, and that recreates the village and the people in it. Rarely have I enjoyed such a tragic novel so much. Highly recommended.

I've marked this as 5 star but really would have preferred to give it 4.5 .... why did it lose that last half a star? Two reasons. One - the epilogue just didn't ring true for me and seemed out of keeping with the rest of the book. Probably just personal preference, that kind of thing may well have happened back then, but I wasn't completely satisfied with it. And secondly, because though there were mentions of how the loss of so many lives affected village life, I'd have liked more on this area. I'd have happily read a couple of hundred pages more!