Down the Common

Quietly contemplative and informative, Baer's understated narrative records one day in each month of a year in the life of Marion, an ordinary peasant woman in medieval England. It's a life of unceasing labor and multiple childbirths, a day-to-day drudgery in which endurance is all that she can hope for. Married for 14 years to Peter, the village carpenter, Marion has two surviving children, eight-year-old Peterkin, whose left hand and foot are twisted and useless due to burns suffered in an accident, and healthy two-year-old toddler Alice. The family lives in a one-room thatch-roofed cottage, one of fewer than a dozen that make up the village. It's cold and dark. Cleanliness is impossible, the battle against mice and rats constant. All the villagers are obligated to their feudal lord, owing not only their labor but also a certain portion of their food and livestock. Self-awareness and self-determination are concepts foreign to the villagers, though Marion, who isn't terribly introspective, does question the meaning and quality of her arduous life. In her first novel, Baer, who's 82, admirably conjures up the conditions of medieval existence, Marion's backbreaking work, her ill health and constant exhaustion. Unfortunately, the characters' earthy stoicism informs the prose and the narrative, neither of which is lively enough to enable readers to take much pleasure in the author's evident diligence. Illustrations by the author; not seen by PW. (May) FYI: Baer was for many years a director of Ganymed Press.