The Oblates Confession, William Peak
The Oblates Confession, William Peak
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
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The Oblate's Confession

Author: William Peak

Narrator: William Peak

Unabridged: 14 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/30/2020


Synopsis

England. The Dark Ages. An elderly monk is ordered by his abbot to confess the terrible sin he committed as a child. But where to begin? One loose stitch unravels another. A lifetime has passed since he found himself standing alone, a little boy in the snow outside an early, primitive monastery sited at the edge of a dangerous, still-pagan world. He remembers the plagues he survived. He remembers the wars. He remembers the friends who survived neither. He remembers struggling to understand a world inhabited by monks, grave men who, for the most part, used their voices only to sing the holy office. He remembers his father – the Anglo-Saxon warrior who donated him to the monastery, abandoned him there and he remembers the lone time his father returned, the price he exacted of his son, the awful secret he has carried since his father. All his life he’s been surrounded by men called “Father,” but who is his real father? The distant stranger who came into his life that one time, abruptly, and just as abruptly left? Or the silent fathers in their dark robes chanting their endless devotion to another, even more distant, Father? The old monk returns, in memory, to the wild, forbidding mountain of Modra nect, and the rough hermit who long ago offered him a vision of sanctuary there. Perhaps the holy man gave him the answer, gave him the key. He writes to bring it back, to confront long-buried secrets, to retrieve the thread of his life.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Gill's on October 09, 2014

My Review: A written confession of a monk of his sin; a child’s view of living his life in a monastery, his view of all those around him, and his surroundings as far as he could see. His religious instruction, his questioning, his learnt understanding of human behaviour clearly shows Peak is a master......more

Goodreads review by Bryn on December 18, 2014

A small-press gem, and a definite addition to Anglo-Saxon fiction – or my experience thereof. It’s slow and psychological, and it’s set in a monastery. It won’t win action fans (although its one war scene, done in the same style, exhibits a high realism). I myself, heathen that I am, had my surfeit......more

Goodreads review by Mieneke on December 03, 2014

In the materials I was sent along with The Oblate's Confession there was a mention of a connection to the work of the Venerable Bede. This link to Bede, whose work featured in some of my Old English classes at university drew me to this work. Yet it wasn’t the straight historical fiction novel I was......more

Goodreads review by Joe on November 20, 2014

William Peak's The Oblate's Confession is a beautifully written fictional study of an oblate (think Monk's apprentice) within a medieval monastery. It's essentially as series of loosely related vignettes in the life of Winwæd, son of Ceolwulf, as an oblate who is placed in some unique roles within t......more

Goodreads review by J. on October 05, 2014

"The Oblate's Confession" by William Peak is a work of historical fiction set in Seventh Century Northumbria. It is the tale of Winwaed, whose father gave him to the service of Redestone Monastery when he was a small child. Such a gift child is called an oblate. As the title indicates this is his co......more