Sin Eater | Book Review
Sin Eater by Megan Campisi
Atria Books – April 7, 2020
*An advanced reader ebook copy was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*
I hope you all are holding up well during the COVID-19 crisis and that social distancing and self-isolation is not impacting your ability to find joy and happiness. I hope books and stories bring you some solace during this time, however I totally understanding if it has been difficult to read.
I’ll admit that reading has been touch and go for me. Some days I’m reading voraciously and tuning out the world. Other days the mere thought of reading a book is too much and I chain beauty YouTube videos. It’s a balance.
When I do read I’ve definitely been gravitating toward romance, which is nothing new this year, but I’ve also rediscovered my taste for fantasy! Megan Campisi’s Sin Eater (2020) strikes a nice balance between historical fiction and fantasy with her alternate history novel set in Elizabethan England – or rather a fantastical Elizabethan England.
Likened to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, among other novels, Campisi builds an alternate Elizabethan England based on the obscure folk tradition – the “Sin Eater”. We follow May, a low class teen, from her sentencing to become a Sin Eater – after stealing bread – to her becoming a Sin Eater and shunned by society. There’s an interesting push-pull in the society that shuns the Sin Eater (always a woman) but simultaneously needs their labor to absolve them of sin. On top of this, there’s a mystery that May must uncover filled with political intrigue.
This is a weird book. Unsettling and cruel at times. But May is also an endearing character. Like several reviewers have noted, I think it’s a disservice to the book to compare it to some heavy-hitters like Atwood and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. I don’t think it critical enough to compare to Atwood and I don’t think it’s whimsical enough to be Alice in Wonderland. However, this is something highlighted by the publisher and should not reflect on the author. If you ignore these comparisons I think this is solid debut that is is dark, sometimes humorous, and thoroughly cruel.
I ended up getting sucked into her character development and the mystery, but was left wanting a bit more “tear down the patriarchy” from the ending. May grows from being a lost girl, to getting angry at the world for her lot, to embracing her position in society. There are moments of contemplation that I thought were particularly poignant. The mystery at times almost seemed unneeded because I was often enthralled with May’s circumstances as the society pariah. Yet I did enjoy the mystery and seeing how May leveraged her position into society to uncover the truth of the murders.
Overall, I think readers will find this completely unique and thought provoking!
About the Author
Megan Campisi is a playwright, novelist, and teacher. Her plays have been performed in China, France, and the United States. She attended Yale University and the L’École International de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. The author of Sin Eater, she lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family.
