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August 2009: Company of Liars by Karen Maitland

A monthly discussion on varying themes guided by our members. (Book of the Month discussions through December 2011 can be found in this section too.)
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JaneConsumer
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Post by JaneConsumer » Sun August 30th, 2009, 12:43 am

I haven't finished the book yet. I'm about a third of the way through.

I flipped to the back and read the author's bio. Does anybody know what a psycholinguistic is? I don't suppose it means freaking out. ;)

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Post by Ash » Sun August 30th, 2009, 1:41 am

Wiki says:

A psycholinguist is a social scientist who studies Psycholinguistics. Psycholinguistics is interdisciplinary in nature and is studied by people in a variety of fields, such as psychology, cognitive science, and linguistics. There are several subdivisions within psycholinguistics that are based on the components that make up human language.

More specifically, a psycholinguist studies language, speech production and comprehension using behavioral and neurological methods traditionally developed in the field of psychology, though other methods such as corpus analysis are also widely used. Due to its interdisciplinary nature, psycholinguists can be found in linguistic, psychology, cognitive sciences, communication science, disorders and other departments. The main aim of psycholinguistics is to outline and describe the process of producing and comprehending communication. In the tradition of psychology, various models are used to further this understanding.

Following the "Chomsky Revolution", linguists suddenly found themselves the center of attention. Shortly thereafter, the exciting idea of finding meaning in language was rejected by Chomsky himself and linguists rapidly lost their celebrity status. Following the turbulence of the field in the 60's and 70's, many linguists chose to revert to previously favored methods of strict observation and description. Linguists look upon psycholinguists as missing the point in language description and ignoring wide amounts of variability in language. Psycholinguists look upon linguists as antiquated and atheoretical.[citation needed]

Psycholinguists currently represent a widely diverse field. Many psycholinguists are also considered to be neurolinguists, cognitive linguists, and/or neurocognitive linguists themselves or are associated with those who are. There are subtle differences between the titles, though they are all attempting to use different facets of similar issues.

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Margaret
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Post by Margaret » Sun August 30th, 2009, 3:12 am

I'd be interested to know whether you all feel that this is a genuine supernatural story or whether the supernatural elements were all invented by Camelot.
Have you finished reading the novel yet, Lady Macbeth? Because I think answering this question before you've finished reading would constitute a spoiler. So, with that warning -


SPOILER ... SPOILER ... SPOILER ... SPOILER


I think Narigorm makes this a genuine supernatural story. All of the other supernatural elements can be explained away in some fashion (although the swan wing takes some doing), but Narigorm clearly has some type of occult powers.
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Post by Lady Macbeth » Sun August 30th, 2009, 12:42 pm

Yes, I have finished the novel - in fact, I'm almost at the end of her next novel, The Owl Killers. I guess we do have to take Camelot's word for the events - it's that all the other members of the ensemble couldn't believe Camelot's accusations against Narigorm and it smacked of all the jumped up charges made against so called witches in medieval times. It got me thinking that, even if Camelot believes this, it may not be so..........
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Post by Ash » Sun August 30th, 2009, 1:15 pm

I haven't gotten to the end yet, but my feeling is that it is indeed supernatural, that these events can't be explained without it. My only reason is that I have read enough fantasy novels in my day to take all supernatural as natural, if that makes sense.

There are a couple of anachronisms in the book that normally would have had me question the author, if not flat out wallbanged it. But they didn't bother me this time. One was the use of Yiddish by a character in England of 1300s. At that time it was very much a German and Eastern European language, and am not sure it would have been used much even among 'converted' Jews in any country. The fact that Romingo recognized it made her story come out, but I am not even sure it was used in Venice at that time (I need to check; I know that the ghetto was already in place in the 13th century. But I don't think the term she used for it was). I think tho that the author could get away with this, because having her use Yiddish, as well as Romingo recognizing it, was an easy way for 21st century readers to catch on to her secret very quickly. Not sure any other Judaica trait would have helped most readers to make that connection.

The other anachronism was the attitudes of some characters that felt like they came from the 21 century and not the 14th. But this wasn't as pervasive as some books, and I could explain it by suggesting that in that horrible time of death, the idea that people might start questioning belief in the same way wouldn't have been a stretch. People are human after all, and some attitudes that might sound modern probably were considered, if not voiced, in that desparate time, in the same was as Job did.

BTW was anyone else bothered by Norigam being treated as a child, at the age of 12 when she would have been close to married age? Making her closer to 9 would have worked better for me.
Last edited by Ash on Sun August 30th, 2009, 1:19 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Margaret
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Post by Margaret » Sun August 30th, 2009, 6:48 pm

I didn't realize Narigorm was 12. She seemed younger, because she was presented as being strangely knowledgeable and confident for her years. Of course, even though medieval girls were marriageable at a very young age doesn't mean they were any more mature than 12-year-old girls today. Also, I don't think people in the peasant classes married especially early. The girls who were married at puberty (and younger!) were from aristocratic families who used them as political pawns. In the peasant classes, people married to establish families, so it wouldn't make sense to marry until a girl was old enough to bear a healthy child and stay healthy herself.
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Post by Ash » Sun August 30th, 2009, 7:40 pm

I am not sure where I got the 12 year old age from, but it has stuck with me; I am thinking its in the book. But anyway, I do see your point, thanks, Id forgotten the difference between peasant and royalty in that matter.

Ok, a few anachronisms that are really killing me. They've been traveling for many months together. No one saw Adela's hair unveiled in all that time? And not picking up that Camelot was not what he says he is for that long really does stretch things. Even if she was in menopause, she'd still have to go to the bathroom sometime. Other guys would probably notice this thing. Finally whats with the sherlock holmes scene when they found Jofre's body? Did villages in that time actually have coroners? Did they atualy talk like Perry Mason?

Alright, thats out of my system. Taking a break from reading, going back in a few hours to finish it. Its interesting, even tho the anachronisms are bothering me, she is a good enough writer that I am sitting for two days reading almost non stop!

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Margaret
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Post by Margaret » Mon August 31st, 2009, 6:41 am

Women in many centuries really did disguise themselves as men and pull it off successfully. Donna Woolfolk Cross handles this quite well in Pope Joan, because the novel shows how Joan makes the decision to live as a man and what she does to make sure no one discovers that she has breasts, menstruates, etc. Of course, in Company of Liars, Maitland can't do this, because she's keeping Camelot's gender secret from the readers, too. The Scandalous Women blog recently interviewed Cross and asked her how it would have been possible for Joan to successfully disguise herself as a man for so long. Cross points out that some 400 soldiers who fought in the American Civil War were actually women disguised as men!

A number of women served in the Royal Navy disguised as men, and the pirate Mary Read is another example of a woman who lived as a man. I've read of cases where a woman living as a man was only found out when she died and her body was prepared for burial.
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Post by annis » Mon August 31st, 2009, 7:11 am

Posted by Ash
Did villages in that time actually have coroners?
Coroners were indeed an institiution by the 13th century, the post being originally created in the 12th century by Richard the Lionheart as another one of his many money-making schemes. This was after all the monarch who treated England aa a cash cow and is reputed to have said "I'd sell London if I could find a buyer for it". Tell me again why the English adored him?

In fact it's quite possible that the term "coroner" was even older, going back to the time of King Alfred, but what role the Saxon coroner played isn't clear.

http://www.britannia.com/history/coroner1.html

Bernard Knight has written an entertaining historical mystery series feauturing a (fictional) early coroner or crowner, known as the "The Crowner John" mysteries.

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Margaret
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Post by Margaret » Mon August 31st, 2009, 7:15 am

Tell me again why the English adored him?
My guess - he wasn't there very much of the time, and they hated his brother John.
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