Book Review – The Second Sleep by Robert Harris

About the Book

All civilisations think they are invulnerable. History warns us none is.

1468. A young priest, Christopher Fairfax, arrives in a remote Exmoor village to conduct the funeral of his predecessor. The land around is strewn with ancient artefacts – coins, fragments of glass, human bones – which the old parson used to collect. Did his obsession with the past lead to his death?

As Fairfax is drawn more deeply into the isolated community, everything he believes – about himself, his faith and the history of his world – is tested to destruction.

Format: Paperback (414 pages) Publisher: Arrow
Publication date: 20th August 2019 Genre: Historical Fiction, Science Fiction

Find The Second Sleep on Goodreads

Purchase The Second Sleep from Bookshop.org [Disclosure: If you buy books linked to our site, we may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops]

---

My Review

The Second Sleep starts off like a historical mystery but before long there’s a ‘wow moment’ and you realise it’s going to be something entirely different. This makes it quite difficult to write a review without giving too much away.

Safe to say, from the descriptions of everyday life you can easily imagine yourself to be in the 15th century. Life is simple but harsh, regulated by the seasons and by the strictures of religious doctrine which prescribe certain opinions as heresy. Questioning the teaching of the Church is not a good idea; it can make you powerful enemies. Most people make a living (if you can call it that) from the land or work in the local mill. They marry early and die early. Every now and again, when tilling the land or constructing a building, they come across an object completely unfamiliar to them and whose purpose they cannot identify.

Dedicated young priest, Christopher Fairfax finds everything he’s been taught to believe – and has preached to others – is turned upside down by the discovery of a book containing an earth-shattering revelation. It brings about a crisis of faith but also ignites in him a passion to discover the truth. Fairfax, two influential members of the community and a fanatical antiquarian together embark on a search that is full of peril, not least because discovery would threaten their liberty, and quite possibly their lives.

I loved the setting, the characters, the relationships between them and the page-turning tension of the search for answers. The ending, whilst sobering, is completely in tune with the theme of the book.

The book’s title references the notion that our ancestors may have adopted ‘biphasic sleep’ in which a first and second period of nightly sleep was broken by a short period of wakefulness. It can be viewed as a metaphor for the story that unfolds. Robert Harris seems to have the knack of subtly weaving contemporary issues into historical novels and this one, with its warnings about the fragile nature of civilisation and the risk of assuming its invulnerability, is no exception. Indeed it may be even more relevant now than it was when this book was written.

In three words: Compelling, imaginative, thought-provoking
Try something similar: The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

---

About the Author

Robert Harris is the author of fifteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy – Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator – Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep, V2 and Act of Oblivion. His work has been translated into forty languages and nine of his books have been adapted for cinema and television. He lives in West Berkshire with his wife, Gill Hornby.

Connect with Robert
Website | X