I guess this book is intended to be deep, and have a cool setting and a mystery to boot, but I have to admit that I just didn't love it.

Certainly Unsworth is pointing at larger truths than just the surface level of the story: itinerant priest in 11th century England joins band of roving players as a means of hiding and gets caught up in a murder mystery. But the mystery is hinted at to loudly and too early, so it falls apart. And Unsworth never really explores his other themes in earnest, and the writing is only so-so.

As a historical novel it's ok, but there are better ones. As a mystery it's ok, but there are definately better ones. As a treatise on the nature of reality vs. the roles we play and the way we present ourselves to the world it really just doesn't dig deep enough.

Perhaps the problem is that Unsworth was trying to write too many books at the same time. It's not a bad book, it's just not a very good one either.

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OK, Im admitting a big bias here. Im a huge fan of Barry Unsworth, I love books set in the Middle Ages, am a sap for historical mysteries, and tend to seek out books about art and the creative process. And thats all here in Morality Play, the story of a band of players who, upon arrival in a small village in 14th century England, decide to make a play based on the recent murder of a young boy from that village.

Each time I read this novel I notice something new. Unsworth is one of our master story tellers he won the Booker for Sacred Hunger -- and he has a cunning way of setting his history novels in a past that feels true both to that past and to today. Its no exaggeration for me to write that reading Unsworth got me back into reading novels, a practice Id abandoned for several years.

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Barry Unsworth's short novel "Morality Play" (1995) is a murder-mystery set in 14th century England.

The narrator of the book is a 23-year old priest, Nicholas Barber, who becomes restless with the duties assigned him and runs away. He has a brief affair with a married woman then and meets a group of itinerant players just as one of their members dies. Nicholas joins the troupe which heads to a small village where they decide Deciding to do something different than has been done before They decide to make a play out of the real murder which has just occurred. The murder of a 12-year old boy, Thomas Wells. A young boy was found dead by the roadside and a girl has been condemned for execution. In order to create the play, the players must learn the truth of the crime and uncover, among other things, that the girl accused of the murder is both deaf and mute. The troupe comes closer to the truth of the murder than they realize.

This is a really entertaining book, a mystery told by a master storyteller, with beautiful langauge. Barry Unsworth offers us a mystery from the 14th century full of modern conceptions integrated into the narrative. He gives us a tale of child molestation and murder mixed with the social and class structure of the middle ages.

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