Over the Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­day I’ve been read­ing a gor­geous new book, John Sat­ur­nal­l’s Feast, by Lawrence Nor­folk. The hard­bound ver­sion is a feast for the eyes, lav­ishly designed and illus­trated, unlike most nov­els these days (open­ing pages of chap­ter 1 shown here).

Each chap­ter opens with an old-style wood­cut illus­tra­tion, fol­lowed by a dropped cap­i­tal on the fac­ing page. The dropped cap­i­tals are styled in a way that’s rem­i­nis­cent of illu­mi­nated man­u­scripts — a bit of a design con­ceit, given that the story is set in the first half of the 17th cen­tury, rather than the medieval period. (The story opens 5 years after the Pil­grims landed at Ply­mouth Rock.)

Sur­pris­ingly, this book is printed in 2 col­ors on every page — a fea­ture you don’t see in very many eBooks… Head­ers, foot­ers (page num­bers) and ding­bats appear in red, along with a dropped cap­i­tal at the begin­ning of each chap­ter.

Even the Kin­dle ver­sion has a bit more visual panache than usual, as shown in this photo of page 1.

A Story to Savor

John Sat­ur­nal­l’s Feast is any­thing but action-packed pulp fic­tion, intended to kill time on long plane rides. The story is set at a time when life moved at a slower pace, when jour­neys took place on foot or on horse­back. When meals took hours and many peo­ple to pre­pare.

This is a book to savor. The words and imagery are dense, com­plex and juicy. They reward slow, atten­tive read­ing.

And that’s appro­pri­ate because the story touches on sen­sory themes — sights, smells, tastes — such as gar­den­ing, cook­ing (slow cook­ing over wood fires), herbal lore, rural vis­tas, the sounds and smells of wood­lands — or the stink of 17th cen­tury san­i­ta­tion.

The author’s lan­guage is lush, emu­lat­ing older styles of sto­ry­telling from cen­turies ago. The story takes you back in time, back to the days when the Eng­lish coun­try­side was cov­ered with thatch-roofed cot­tages and dense wood­lands.

John scram­bled up and down the ter­races and banks, hunt­ing out the secret breaks in the thick­ets or crawl­ing through hol­lows woven from sharp-spined stems. Black­ber­ries lured him into sun-pricked cham­bers. Old byways closed and new ones opened, drifts of net­tles surg­ing for­ward then dying back.

If you can find time dur­ing the busy hol­i­day sea­son to relax, sit by the fire, maybe with your favorite glass of wine — this is a book to keep close at hand.

Slow cook­ing, slow read­ing — for a life well-savored.