Fierce Appetites

Book excerpt: For Elizabeth Boyle 2020 began with the death of her beloved father. It was also the year she turned 40 and came to the end of (yet another) relationship. And it was a plague year - something that, as a medieval historian, she understood deeply. The extraordinary collision of personal and professional got her thinking about how the lives and loves of those who lived in the Middle Ages had much to say about her own life and about our present moment. Fierce Appetites is Elizabeth's enthralling account of 2020, a year like no other. Writing a chapter a month, she navigates experiences that are raw and urgent - grief; addiction; family breakdown; the complexities of motherhood, love and sex; memory; class; education; travel (and staying put) - and uses her astounding knowledge of the past to offer insights, consolation and hope for the future. Fierce Appetites is an exhilarating and original journey through the mind and heart of an extraordinary scholar.