Starred review from August 21, 2006
A present-day scientific odd couple who are longtime domestic partners, physicist Sharon Nagy and historian Tom Schwoerin, look into the fate of the Black Forest village of the title, which apparently vanished in the plague year 1348, in Flynn's heartbreaking morality play of stranded aliens in medieval Germany. Most of the narrative focuses on the consequences of the discovery in the 14th century by Eifelheim's pastor, Father Dietrich, of a crashed space ship carrying the "Krenken," horrific grasshopperlike aliens. Despite Inquisitorial threats, Dietrich befriends, baptizes and attempts to help the aliens return home. Flynn (The Wreck of the River of Stars
) masterfully achieves an intricate panorama of medieval life, full of fascinatingly realized human and Krenken characters whose fates interconnect with poignant irony. Through human frailties, the very Christianity by which Dietrich hopes to save Krenken souls dooms them all.
Starred review from September 15, 2006
Tom, a young historian, obsesses about Eifelheim, a German village that mysteriously disappeared from all maps in 1349. His lover Sharon, a theoretical physicist, occupies herself with testing the limits of conventional theories of time and space. Their interests merge when they discover the remarkable story of Father Dietrich, Eifelheim's parish priest during the Black Death and a believer in travelers from the stars. With a sure grasp of both speculative science and medieval history, Flynn (The Wreck of the River of Stars compellingly weaves past and present together in a dialog of faith and science. With neat turns of plot and intriguing medieval and modern characters, this book, parts of which were previously published as a novella, belongs in even small libraries. Highly recommended.
Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
September 15, 2006
In the fourteenth century, the Black Death ravaged Europe. Most towns decimated by it were eventually resettled, except for Eifelheim, despite its ideal location. Mathematical historian Tom discovers this anomaly and an unexpected connection to his domestic partner Sharon's research in theoretical physics, which seems to be leading to a method of interdimensional travel. In fact, as Eifelheim's priest back then, Father Dietrich, relates, before the plague's arrival, an interstellar ship crashed nearby. The encounters between its passengers and the people of Oberhochwald, as Eifelheim was first called, reflect the panoply of attitudes of the time, from fear of the foreign to love and charity for one's neighbors to the ideas of nascent natural philosophy (science), and the aliens' reactions are equally fascinating. Flynn credibly maintains the voice of a man whose worldview is based on concepts almost entirely foreign to the modern mind, and he makes a tense and thrilling story of historical research out of the contemporary portions of the tale.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)