Jeff Strowe tells us, “If Chaucer were alive today, he’d be on the front page of ‘US Weekly.'” His marriage was strained by personality and circumstance. His employment was tedious. His world was remarkably unclean and violent, which isn’t what many people imagine when thinking back to 1386. Strowe pulls these details from Paul Strohm’s new book, Chaucer’s Tale: 1386 and the Road to Canterbury.

The best parts of Strohm’s book deal with the byzantine intricacies and flat-out craziness of life in the 14th Century. Primitive sanitation practices caused awful putrid smells to waft upwards, baking residents of Chaucer’s neighborhood with a daylong, unceasing stench that, despite its’ unceasing presence, undoubtedly caused constant suffering by those caught in the down and upwind paths. Several hundred feet away also laid forth the severed heads of various vagrants, thieves, traitors, and “enemies” of the King.

There’s also some time spent on his literary efforts, though they don’t make up the bulk of the book.