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The minor characters are drawn well enough in vignettes, and Emily (the romantic connection) is plausible in that women of that era were severely constrained by propriety and a lack of opportunity. During The Napoleonic wars, the Englishman suddenly comes back home in a half-dead state and then he goes on the run from some secret he left behind in Spain.
But as the story reaches its climax, the tension between action and withholding becomes increasingly problematic. I have never studied the Napoleonic wars, and especially the Spanish campaign and the peninsular wars. Over the years, a number of people, me included, have compared the British author Andrew Miller to Hilary Mantel. By the Costa Award-winning author of PURE, a stunning historical novel with the grip of a thriller, written in richly evocative, luminous prose.I would want you to come at this book, if you decide to put it on your TBR list, with the knowledge that it has received favorable reviews (see below for some links), and then take it from there and read away. In the storyline, a key (and very clever, and subtle part of the narrative) concerns the leading lady, Emily.
You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Recommended to fans of historical fiction and even to sceptics like myself - I think anyone who enjoys a story well-told will find something to love here. I love how evocative the time period is in this particular novel, the luxurious descriptions that put you right into the scene and into the interiors of the characters. The concept of “total war” was articulated by Carl von Clausewitz, (in his book On War ) immediately after the Napoleonic wars, published in 1832). I have been lucky to have read several brilliant novels recently, and this one will stay with me for a long time.Warlight is the only one I didn’t appreciate (I found it beautifully written at the level of its sentences but somehow also extremely boring); the other two I’d read before were very good, and Now We Shall Be Entirely Free is excellent. Until the final page it seemed any number of endings were possible, that his characters still had chances and choices. I still eye the Booker list, of course, but I am increasingly interested in the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, for one, which plays more predictably to my own preference for both good scene setting (yay, exposition! His first novel, INGENIOUS PAIN, was published by Sceptre in 1997 and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour prize in Italy.
Already ensconced on the island is a small family of idealists, living their utopian dream in much the same way that Coleridge and others planned to do on the banks of the Susquehanna River. There is a villain but one gets acquainted with this villain’s childhood, and…well I won’t say anything more because I don’t want to include any spoilers about this book. The central tension for the reader is that Lacroix, despite his taciturn nature and his obvious war damage, seems like a decent man. A thoroughly intriguing read and well placed in the historical setting, with enough references to critique modern society.Well, it's almost as if Mr Miller was afeared that all these delights would not suffice, so he tacked on a thrilling if highly implausible persecution of Our Hero that made it impossible NOT to keep turning those pages until. But the focus falls on Emily, whose sight is failing and who fears the loss of her “small independence”. To appease Spanish outrage an English corporal and a Spanish officer are commissioned to track down and kill the English captain in charge of the guilty soldiers. Once I noticed some things wrong, I found myself spending more time fact checking than enjoying the story which was a shame because nearly all the facts are OK if you look into them. A British army ‘incident’ is investigated, and the reader is a party to a slick chase (the pursuit of Lacroix) throughout the British isles and the perpetrators of brutality against prisoners, and women, and the civilian community are to be brought to summary justice.
By the end of the opening sentence of Andrew Miller's new novel, we're already knee-deep in fictional territory he has made his own. Comments that contribute civilly and constructively to discussion of the topics raised on this blog, from any point of view, are welcome. Once an army was in retreat, humiliated, starving, and no longer with any meaningful leadership, some men lost all their humanity and decency. I would appreciate it even more if Miller took the extra steps of more adroitly weaving My Lai and historical accuracy into his narrative. If you have ever been to any of the islands you'll know what I mean when I say it's impossible not to be affected by the beauty all around.In luminous prose, Miller portrays a man shattered by what he has witnessed, on a journey that leads to unexpected friendships, even to love.
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