THIS exquisitely wrought book is for any who would seek to understand the Reformation from the inside. The author describes its unfolding slowly, and then with appalling and devastating speed, in the lives of a village community. She also writes for anyone who appreciates a tale well told.

It is a story about death: Alice the narrator has lost one child, she is married to the lord of the manor, who lost his first wife in childbirth and all but one of his other children; he himself is slowly dying of an unnamed condition that makes him increasingly sclerotic. With deep irony, he has ordered the building of a chantry chapel in the village church, a tomb for his family’s remains, and stone effigies of himself and his two wives to lie upon it. These are carved even as his own body appears to be turning to stone.

The creation of the new chapel destroys shrines to saints that are important to the villagers; but the chapel itself is doomed, because this is 1546, and those enforcing the ban on prayers for the dead are on the move across the country. The bridge between the living and the dead will be destroyed, depriving the bereaved of a profound means to express their grief. “The tombs of the dead are the hearts of the living,” Alice observes.

The story is paced through the passing of days, the saints’ days that are destined to be scratched from the prayer books, and the turning of the seasons. The natural world is beautifully rendered: “by the river a scatter of white where a swan has shed its feathers; the wind in the alders sounds like rain”.

The narrator, Alice, has the perspective of a passive recipient of others’ power, who sees and understands a great deal, therefore. She, nevertheless, expresses her own autonomy where she can, finding ways to effect change by working with, not against, the grain of men’s desires and purposes. Her actions are bold in their context — sometimes shockingly so.

The book is deeply wise, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Dr Claire Gilbert is the author of I, Julian: The fictional autobiography of Julian of Norwich, is now out in paperback (Hodder & Stoughton, £9.99 (£8.99); 978-1-3998-0754-8) (Books, 6 April 2023).

The Book of Days
Francesca Kay
Swift Press £16.99
(978-1-80075-349-5)
Church Times Bookshop £15.29