London, 1321: In a small shop in Paternoster Row, three people are drawn together around the creation of a magnificent book, an illuminated manuscript of prayers, a book of hours. Even though the commission seems to answer the aspirations of each one of them, their own desires and ambitions threaten its completion.
As each struggles to see the book come into being, it will change everything they have understood about their place in the world. In many ways, this is a story about power - it is also a novel about the place of women in the roiling and turbulent world of the early fourteenth century; what power they have, how they wield it, and just how temporary and conditional it is. Rich, deep, sensuous and full of life, Book of Colours is also, most movingly, a profoundly beautiful story about creativity and connection, and our instinctive need to understand our world and communicate with others through the pages of a book.
Barb takes care of the web orders here at Boffins, and is your contact for book club enquiries. She spends all her spare time curled up on the couch reading and for the last several years has reviewed books on the Afternoon Program on ABC radio Perth.
Late in the Middle Ages an English noblewoman, Mathilda Fitzjohn, commissions a book of hours to be created for her family. She particularly requests the master illuminator John Dancaster of London to illustrate the book, a job he accepts with alacrity for times are tough and it is a great honor. Mathilda however is unaware of the secrets hidden in the illuminator’s workshop, secrets John’s wife Gemma knows could bring about their ruin.
Mathilda’s reading of the book is woven together with the personal stories of the people who come together to make it. All of the drama as it unfolds is engrossing, but it is the book itself and the art of illumination that steals the show, in all its colour and detail.
