Francis Spufford is the author of five highly-praised works of non-fiction. His debut novel Golden Hill won the Costa First Novel Award, the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He teaches writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and lives near Cambridge.

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1. 1/5

   Awful...

   This book has received a number of awards, and is marketed as a masterpiece of historical fiction. Hard to understand why. The writer is obviously experienced in writing non-fiction and has reportedly studied the historical context. That doesn't make him a novellist... The language is mannered and contrived, and the text is almost impossible to read. The characters are shallow and improbable. The story is unbelievably long-winded and so full of endless, useless details, it's a pain to try to read through. The writer is trying too hard to be clever and unnecessarily takes us along a number of pointless routes. There are long passages that don't have any bearing at all to the story or to the historical interest - the text simply fills out page after page to no purpose. I regret that I didn't follow my initial instinct to throw away this book after the first 20 pages.

   Tomas H

   06 december 2020