BOOK
REVIEW - MARIA MCCANN – AS MEAT LOVES SALT 2001 Flamingo Press.
Mid-17th Century murder, betrayal and a homosexual affair lie at the heart of this powerful, though sometimes dull novel.
Jacob Cullen his murdered a boy and as the body is discovered in a pond, he flees the grand house he serves as a servant, framing a good friend for the crime on the brink of the man’s wedding.
Jacob seeks refuge by joining the New Model Army under the name of Rupert, (he is initially mistaken for Prince Rupert Of The Rhine).
As a pikeman, he son develops a crush on the enigmatic dreamer, Ferris, and gets jealously hostile to any other men who show Ferris any friendship. He alienates himself heavily from the army, but Ferris defends him, and he struggles to lighten up.
Plunged into brutal action in the final stages of the siege of Basing House, and seeing the army slaughter women and children, Ferris and Cullen desert, and head to London, to live with Ferris’s Aunt. Here, Ferris reveals his plans to establish a Digger community on the outskirts of the capital. He teaches Cullen how to use a printing press, even down to the need to urinate on the ink blocks to clean them off. Their pamphlets attract a motley band of dreamers and idealists and some people of skill, and the community seems likely to become a reality. There are problems though; Ferris’s Aunt tries to manipulate a wedding between Cullen and her daughter, to ensure that her son stays at home. Ferris and Cullen are now lovers, and some of the people who know Cullen and his crimes have found him. Cullen endangers matters further by violently beating up a man who insults his boyfriend, and Ferris’s sister discovers their affair (which could lead to execution for both men).
Despite all this, the community is developed, though as it rises up, and despite saving Ferris from drowning in his own drainage well, Cullen starts to see his friend as only using him rather than truly loving him. When he uncovers a plan by the local manorial baron to drive the community out by force, Cullen keeps quiet about it and watches them get beaten and in some cases, including Ferris, Massacred. The story ends with Cullen heading off to start a new life in America.
It’s an inconsistent novel that sets up characters and situations that are then not used. There are mysterious letters of warning to the community from a man called J W, almost certainly Jerrard (Gerrard) Winstanley, who was the most famous of the Diggers, but he never appears or has his identity revealed – Nor is enough made of the presence at various times of the people who know of Cullen’s past. Period detail is very precise and the book shows much research – the author’s sense of tragedy and bloodshed is very astute. Overall, a promising, sometimes passionate work.
Arthur Chappell
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