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Golden Hill/Francis Spufford

Francis Spufford is a historian and broadcaster whose first effort at fiction wring is Golden Hill and it’s good. He has written a novel set in middle of the eighteenth century and in the style of Henry Fielding. It’s set in New York, not the heaving massive metropolis we know today but a gossipy town of merchants presided over by the British. Along comes an enigmatic character Richard Smith to collect on a promissory note from a Dutch merchant. He encounters a series of misfortunes including 2 periods in gaol, a duel, a trial and falls in love with the Dutch merchant’s daughter, the malevolent Tabitha. It’s always a good read.

SpuffordReading a novel in particular is a subjective experience. When I started this I was suffering from that cold and viral cough that was doing the rounds and felt below par. This together with finding the characters unattractive and a prose with which I was unfamiliar made for a slow start as I had difficulty in engaging with the narration.

It sprung to life when on Fireworks Night the hero Smith was chased by a mob and this description of flight had real tempo like the action sequence of the film. Spufford, despite being a debutant, can write set pieces well as the trial and duel are also graphically depicted. His descriptive powers extend both to the location and the characterisation so I soon found myself fully engaged.

I won’t review as I have not yet finished Jake Arnott’s The Fatal Tree. This is also set in the eighteenth century , this time in London and features two notable villains of the day – Jonathan Wild and Edgworth Bess. Arnott takes the imitation of the 18th century novel one stage further as the dual narrators Edgworth Bess and a pamphleteer called William Archer use the argot of the day and this is almost incomprehensible in the case of the criminal slang of Bess. I could work out ‘glaziers’ (eyes) ‘tout’ (look for) but ‘peach’ had me floored. Does the reader really want to scurry to the glossary at the back every paragraph? Nonetheless another novel with a good feeling for its historical context, location and tempo with appearances from playwright John Gay and numerous references to the leading pamphleteer of the day Daniel Defoe.

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About Melanie Gay

A former literary agent with three published novels of her own, Melanie retains her life-long love of the written word and recently mastered the Kindle. She is currently writing a historical novel set in 17th Century Britain and Holland. More Posts