Sin Eater

A Novel

By: Megan Campisi

Narrated by: Shiromi Arserio

"For fans of The Handmaid’s Tale...a debut novel with a dark setting and an unforgettable heroine...is a riveting depiction of hard-won female empowerment." (The Washington Post)

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, 14-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.

“Very much reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale...it transcends its historical roots to give us a modern heroine” (Kirkus Reviews).

“A novel as strange as it is captivating” (BuzzFeed), The Sin Eater “is a treat for fans of feminist speculative fiction” (Publishers Weekly) and “exactly what historical fiction lovers have unknowingly craved” (New York Journal of Books).

©2020 Megan Campisi (P)2020 Simon & Schuster Audio

very slow

unfolded very slowly then rushed to finish without complete resolution, better for a short story

Great read

I enjoyed this book and the development of the story..
The characters felt authentic. I look forward to reading more from this author .q

Humor?

A very engaging novel. The description says there is humor in this story. I must have missed it.
Still, I do recommend it.

I really liked this story!

Wow Wow Wow! I was captured so quickly and o ly able to put it down once to sleep! This is one of those stories that you dwell with awhile before going to the next book cuz you're not done enjoying it yet.
Absolutely marvelous!

Arserio's performance is incredible!

The book was meh and anti-climactic, a 3.5 but Arserio's performance was riveting and captivating. She brought the world to life. Its a tough story and I wanted so much to love it.

offensive language

liked the idea but the offensive language is distracting . there was no value to insert modern day foul language in historical narrative

Delicious World Building

The story itself is very atmospheric. I enjoyed how gently the viewer is brought into the world of the sin eaters and how simple their purpose and reality is to digest. The plot was appropriately paced, though I wish the ending went a bit deeper. I felt like the main character was more of a side character in a story that was not her own. Maybe this is Campisi's intent given the nature of the Sin Eaters duty. The performance was also wonderfully done. Kudos to Shiromi Arserio.


Pro Tip: Write down the sins listed at the beginning of the book. They will be referenced later on in the story with explanation, but not all the time. It adds a bit of fun trivia to the story experience.

Good narration for peculiar story

It was good to learn about sin eaters. The author wrote very well and the topic was well researched. Great narration. I just had to force myself to listen to this. It bordered on the psychologically disturbing for me. The last chapter was the best, and probably the only one I liked.

“I guess I'm not a washerwoman anymore.”

Needless to say, the worst job in Megan Campisi’s Sin Eater (2020) is being a sin eater. Only women can do it, “since it was Eve who first ate a sin: the Forbidden Fruit.” Sin eaters are shunned and feared: “Unseen, unheard.” If you touch one, you’re cursed; if you talk with one, you approach the ur-sinner Eve. Sin eaters hear (via Recitations) and then Eat (via particular foods) the sins of every dying person and then bear all those sins in silence until they die when, if they’ve been good, they might be able to join the Maker. Although some of the food representing the sins is appealing, like bread (original sin) and cream (envy), some is appalling, like a lamb’s head cooked in ewe’s milk (the rape of a child) or pig’s heart (a murder in wrath). Apart from obvious disadvantages, like never being able to touch or talk to anyone and having to live in the dirtiest, smelliest, and poorest part of town, the occupation provides some advantages, like constant free food and the ability to go almost anywhere and to listen to anyone’s conversations.

Apart from sin eating, Campisi’s alternate Tudor world is only slightly transformed from our historical one, as most of the major Tudor players and features appear with slightly different names (e.g., King Harold/Henry and Queen Bethany/Elizabeth, Eucharistian/Catholic, the new faith/Anglican, the Maker/God, Angland/England, and so on. Fairy tales and nursery rhymes are modified: Hans and Greta are lost in the woods and find an old sin eater’s house, while Jack falls in the well and drowns so Jill eats foods for his sins. Foreigners are called strangers, anyone becomes anyfolk, and panto boys pantomime news events in public spaces. The fundamental things are the same, like “virgin” queen surrounded by suitors, harsh life for the hungry poor, superstition, sins, religion, intolerance, and misogyny. Well, Christian misogyny is enhanced, as Eve plays the role of our Satan: when you die, you’ll either go to the Maker or to Eve (“purest evil. Even worse than Judas, who betrayed the Maker's son”).

Our first-person present-tense narrator May Owens (WHY is it almost ALWAYS present-tense first-person narrators now?), an illiterate 14-year old orphaned washerwoman, is arrested for stealing bread and sentenced to become a sin eater, having a bronze collar with an S on it locked on her neck and an S tattooed onto her tongue and becoming apprentice to the current sin eater, a middle-aged plump woman who slaps May whenever she tries to speak. May follows her mistress on her rounds, attending Recitations and Eatings in the houses of dying people (e.g., a baby, a teenage girl, an old woman, a rich merchant). The only thing May can say is the prayer to begin each Recitation: “The unseen is seen, the unheard is heard, your sins will be mine. When the food is et your sins will be mine.”

The plot gets going when May and her mistress (who have bonded into an “us”) attend the Recitation for the queen’s poisoned old nurse and find that for the Eating a deer’s heart indicating a murder has been put among the sin-foods, though the old woman did not confess to having killed anyone. May’s mistress balks at eating the wrongfully placed food item, is accused of treason, and is taken to the dungeons. At a loss, May eats the deer’s heart, but afterwards thinks that she must tell someone at court about the mistake. But she’s supposed to be “Unseen, unheard.” But her mistress will be pressed! Desperate and naive, May tries to tell the Queen’s favorite, her secretary “Black Fingers,” only to have him try to cut her throat. What began as a Christian misogyny dystopia story has morphed into a court murder mystery, with May the amateur sleuth analyzing clues from Recitations and eavesdropped conversations.

We root for the lonely May! She has an observant eye, a sympathetic heart, and an imaginative mind, hearing objects, insects, and animals talk. She’s feisty, nicknaming people Mush Face, the Country Mouse, and the Painted Pig. She tells a good story. She idealizes her da and hates her mother’s vile rogue relatives. She is at first passive (“I follow, because where else can I go?”) and has low self-esteem (“I'm monstrous”). Will she be able to grow and achieve something in her occupation and world? She shows signs of self-empowerment when she starts wielding her ostracization as a weapon/banner (“I am a curse!”) and taking pleasure in making people get out of her way.

Campisi’s writing is vivid and marked by impressive similes, like “The others, whose faces had earlier opened to me in wonder, encouragement, and envy, drop away like leeches full of blood.” The bleak, bizarre concept of the novel gives rise to neat lines like, “Can I be forgiven for eating an unrecited heart?” But the book has some flaws...

First, Campisi misuses lay a couple times, as in “I lay again on the grave of my da.” (It’s a lost cause, but this is a present tense novel, so please write, “I lie again on the grave ...”)
Second, the climax verges on absurdity. (A bucket of two-day-old piss, an outdoor festival, a jakes, a voodoo doll, a red herring, Black Fingers and minions, a chase, a sprained ankle, costumes, a play, a chase, a burn victim, a serious fleshhook, a hot cauldron, a confession—And is this a Christian misogyny dystopia or a slapstick mystery?)
Third, given the vital role played by sin eaters in Angland, there’s no way a large town containing the Queen's castle and court would have only one or two of them. (It wouldn’t be possible for one or two to deal with all the Recitations and Eatings, and if the sin eaters got sick or died, how could the dying be absolved of their sins?)
Fourth, people wouldn’t be so cruel to a person playing such a vital role for their salvation as a sin eater. (They'd be bad to lepers and beggars and maybe strangers and Eucharistians, but they’d not risk antagonizing someone who’d someday have the power to send them to Eve when hearing/eating their sins; Campisi must REALLY want to isolate May and show how horrible misogyny is.)
Fifth, that said, by introducing several “squatters” into May’s empty home—a leper, an ex-actor, an actor, etc.—Campisi softens May’s isolation too much. (I’m glad for May, but it makes me wonder if Campisi lacks the courage of her Christian misogyny dystopia convictions.)

Sin Eater has been compared to The Handmaid’s Tale, but the ambiguity in the ending of Atwood’s book makes Campisi’s look like the YA mystery novel that it finally is.

Good, did not love it

Interesting storyline and characters, overall good, but I did not love it. I kept waiting for something more and it never came.