…and came away wildly frustrated that nobody milked that poor fucking cow!
The medieval chapters were among the best historical fiction I’ve ever read. I found myself frustrated with the present day chapters because I was dying to get back to the 14th century.
I felt that there was a lot of repetition in the present day part, which probably contributed to the frustration. I stuck it out though since the other half was so rich.
Gonna ask my therapist why I was so much more upset about the cow than the people literally dying of the plague.
The feeling you describe of a kind of complacency towards crazy shit that happens in the past is spot on. It was simultaneously an awful and gripping revelation.
The parallels between the modern-day scenes and Kivrin’s timeline are unending. I think it’s why lots of us still enjoyed the book despite the repetition in the prof’s chapters. The one you have illustrated being the most poignant, especially given our own pandemic experience.
Another parallel I enjoyed was the bell ringers and the bell towers - the former having a sense of self-importance and being above quarantine and the latter grudgingly carrying on in the face of greater terror.