Sin Eater | Megan Campisi

Résumé : 

The Handmaid’s Tale meets Alice in Wonderland in this gripping and imaginative historical novel about a shunned orphan girl in 16th-century England who is ensnared in a deadly royal plot and must turn her subjugation into her power.

The Sin Eater walks among us, unseen, unheard

Sins of our flesh become sins of Hers

Following Her to the grave, unseen, unheard

The Sin Eater Walks Among Us.

For the crime of stealing bread, fourteen-year-old May receives a life sentence: she must become a Sin Eater—a shunned woman, brutally marked, whose fate is to hear the final confessions of the dying, eat ritual foods symbolizing their sins as a funeral rite, and thereby shoulder their transgressions to grant their souls access to heaven.

Orphaned and friendless, apprenticed to an older Sin Eater who cannot speak to her, May must make her way in a dangerous and cruel world she barely understands. When a deer heart appears on the coffin of a royal governess who did not confess to the dreadful sin it represents, the older Sin Eater refuses to eat it. She is taken to prison, tortured, and killed. To avenge her death, May must find out who placed the deer heart on the coffin and why.

Voici une traduction personnelle du résumé ci-dessus :

TRADUCTION A VENIR

Extrait : 

SALT FOR PRIDE. Mustard seed for lies. Barley for curses. There are grapes too, laid red and bursting across the pinewood coffin – one grape split with a ruby seed poking through the skin like a splinter through flesh. There’s crow’s meat stewed with plums and a homemade loaf, small and shaped like a bobbin. Why a loaf in such a shape? I think. And why so small? There are other foods too, but not many. My mother had few sins. She was a fox, running from the scent of trouble with wary eyes and soft feet. Tussling only when she was sure she’d win. The salt, mustard seeds, and barley grains are the only foods I know the sins for. They’re for childhood sins, the kind parents chasten you with or children sing rhymes for in the street.

Little Jack Horner,

Sat in the corner,

Eating a winter pie.

He ate all its meat,

For being a cheat,

And said, ‘Now a good boy am I.’

The sin eater comes next, hefting her belly into the front room where the coffin sits, boards fresh and blunt from the saw, the nails placed but not sunk. She smells of wild onions already begun to sprout despite a full month until May Day. I feel ashamed at my small truckle bed in the corner, our house not fine enough for me to have a room of my own. The sin eater gruffs for a seat, and Bessie, our neighbour, brings her a stool. It disappears so completely under her skirts, I imagine her great buttocks swallowing it whole. A burp of laughter escapes my lips, and I clap my hands across my mouth.

Voici une traduction personnelle de l'extrait ci-dessus :

TRADUCTION A VENIR

Extrait de Oat Porridge 

Mon avis : 

AVIS A VENIR

Ma note :

16/20

Infos complémentaires :

Genre : Historique

Editions : Atria Books
Date de parution : 2020

Nombre de pages : 304