A New Novel Gives Hope For The “After”

The protagonist of Megan Campisi’s Sin Eater has strength and courage during a miserable time in history.

I was lying in bed a few nights ago when I realized that what I’d already written about Megan Campisi’s spectacular new novel, Sin Eater, wasn’t enough. I was stricken with fear, having spent the last hour talking with my husband about what’s happening, when I thought about the book’s protagonist, May.

May has it really bad. Just catastrophically bad. She has a turbulent, abusive childhood with multiple caretakers. Her parents die when she’s fourteen and she has to grow up immediately, supporting herself by being a washerwoman, a job that barely covers her basic needs. When she steals a loaf of bread, she’s imprisoned and given a life sentence as a Sin Eater, a class of public servant who listens to dying people recite their sins, assigns the sins their own food — raisins for adultery, pickled cucumber for idleness, rose hips for lust — and eats these foods before an audience of the dead’s family and friends. In consuming the edible representations of the dead’s sins, the sin eater takes on the burden of those sins, allowing the dead to ascend to heaven. The sin is then the Sin Eater’s own, condemning her to an eternity as “Eve’s handmaiden.” She is so saddled with sin, she will never go to heaven.