Tag: NetGalley November

#BookReview Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller

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Now We Shall Be Entirely FreeAbout the Book

One rain-swept February night in 1809, an unconscious man is carried into a house in Somerset. He is Captain John Lacroix, home from Britain’s disastrous campaign against Napoleon’s forces in Spain.

Gradually Lacroix recovers his health, but not his peace of mind – he cannot talk about the war or face the memory of what happened in a village on the gruelling retreat to Corunna. After the command comes to return to his regiment, he sets out instead for the Hebrides, with the vague intent of reviving his musical interests and collecting local folksongs.

Lacroix sails north incognito, unaware that he has far worse to fear than being dragged back to the army: a vicious English corporal and a Spanish officer are on his trail, with orders to kill. The haven he finds on a remote island with a family of free-thinkers and the sister he falls for are not safe, at all.

Format: Hardcover (421 pages)          Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Publication date: 23rd August 2018   Genre: Historical Fiction

Find Now We Shall Be Entirely Free on Goodreads

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My Review

Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2019, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free is the third book from my NetGalley November reading list. You can find out more about the challenge here.

The book has two strands that run in parallel. The first is Lacroix’s long journey north from his house in Somerset via Bristol, the home of his sister Lucy, to the Hebrides. It’s a journey he makes without much thought of a particular destination; it’s more about avoiding being recalled to service in the army and trying to escape the memories that haunt him. Only towards the end of the book will he reveal the nature of those memories to a confidante to whom he has become close. In the course of his journey, Lacroix experiences both the best and worst of humanity, experiencing violence but also the kindness of strangers. Eventually he arrives at a remote island in the Hebrides where he is given shelter by the Frend family, comprising Emily, her sister Jane, and their brother Cornelius. One of the themes running through the book is damage – physical, mental and emotional – so it’s notable that Emily is losing her sight and Cornelius is plagued by dental pain. John himself has been left partially deaf due to the illness he suffered on his return from Spain.

The second storyline involves Corporal Calley who has been given a mission by a mysterious individual to track down and kill Lacroix as part of a cover-up of atrocities committed in the war. Calley is the most relentless of adversaries; he’s cruel, brutal and entirely without mercy, committing some horrific acts along the way.  As he closes in on his prey, there is an increasing air of menace, especially since Lacroix is unaware of Calley’s mission.

At the end of the book, although some elements of the story are resolved others, in the manner of a sea fret, are left opaque for the reader to reach their own conclusion about.

Now We Shall Be Entirely Free is the first book I’ve read by Andrew Miller and I can now understand why his writing has been the subject of so much praise. At times, it’s poetic in nature. One passage that especially sticks in my mind is from a scene in which two characters finally come together in an act of intimacy. ‘A mutual falling, the grief of appetite. And in between the touching, the tender manoeuvres, the new knowledge.’  

I received a review copy courtesy of Hodder & Stoughton via NetGalley. I alternated between reading my digital copy and listening to the audiobook version skilfully narrated by Joe Jameson.

In three words: Lyrical, intense, moving

Try something similar: The Redeemed by Tim Pears

Andrew MillerAbout the Author

Andrew Miller’s first novel, Ingenious Pain, was published by Sceptre in 1997. It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for the best foreign novel published in Italy. It has been followed by Casanova, Oxygen, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 2001, The Optimists, One Morning Like A Bird, Pure, which won the Costa Book of the Year Award 2011, The Crossing and Now We Shall Be Entirely Free. Andrew Miller’s novels have been published in translation in twenty countries. Born in Bristol in 1960, he currently lives in Somerset. (Photo/bio: Publisher author page)

Connect with Andrew
Website | Goodreads

#BookReview Lily by Rose Tremain @vintagebooks

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LilyAbout the Book

Nobody knows yet that she is a murderer…

Abandoned at the gates of a London park one winter’s night in 1850, baby Lily Mortimer is saved by a young police constable and taken to the London Foundling Hospital. Lily is fostered by an affectionate farming family in rural Suffolk, enjoying a brief childhood idyll before she is returned to the Hospital, where she is punished for her rebellious spirit. Released into the harsh world of Victorian London, Lily becomes a favoured employee at Belle Prettywood’s Wig Emporium, but all the while she is hiding a dreadful secret…

Across the years, policeman Sam Trench keeps watch over the young woman he once saved. When Sam meets Lily again, there is an instant attraction between them and Lily is convinced that Sam holds the key to her happiness – but might he also be the one to uncover her crime and so condemn her to death?

Format: Hardcover (288 pages)             Publisher: Vintage
Publication date: 11th November 2021 Genre: Historical Fiction

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Hive | Amazon UK
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My Review

Subtitled ‘A Tale of Revenge’, the narrative moves back and forth in time between Lily’s early years spent with a foster family, her time at the London Foundling Hospital and her subsequent employment at Belle Prettywood’s Wig Emporium. Throughout the book Lily is convinced that the crime she has committed will one day be discovered and that she will be condemned to death as a result. The circumstances of the crime are only revealed towards the end of the book, posing the question whether a crime of this nature can ever be justified even if its motivation is to save others.  

The book has echoes of the novels of Charles Dickens in the way it describes the experiences of those unfortunate enough to find themselves orphans. However, the cruel treatment experienced by the children taken in by the London Foundling Hospital is of a more extreme, and perverted, nature than anything found within the pages of Oliver Twist.  That treatment is in stark contrast to the affection Lily experiences from her foster family, Nellie and Perkin Buck and their three sons, on their farm in Suffolk. That idyllic existence comes to a sudden end when, at the age of six, Lily is removed from the family and returned to the Foundling Hospital. There, along with the other foundlings, she is ordered to ‘forget absolutely’ those who cared for her during the first years of her life; indeed she is told her foster family looked after her only because they were paid. The foundlings’ position is compared to slaves whose masters care nothing for them, but recognise only their monetary value. ‘You are like them… You are like those slaves. For did you not work for the people paid to care for you?’ In fact, Lily is cruelly beaten when, in an early expression of defiance, she attempts to write a letter to Nellie Buck.

A further cruel feature of the system is the way the foundlings are regarded as being the ‘carriers’ of the sins of their mothers – not their fathers, note. They are told they possess an innate wickedness, ‘a blood-wickedness which could lead then into deep thickets of sin and transgression’. Only through obedience and hard work can they pay for the supposed degeneracy of their mothers. As it transpires, wickedness and degeneracy is the province of others, particularly one especially monstrous character.

I found the absence of chapter breaks and the sudden unannounced changes in timeline (at least in my ARC) rather distracting and left me confused at times. However, whatever reservations I may have had about the book’s structure, there’s no doubt about the author’s ability to create beautiful prose. For example, when Lily and her friend, Bridget, travel through the countryside as evening falls in search of a place of refuge. ‘The air they breathed had a taste to it of things burned and gone. And it was not still. It moved in strange patterns, like a wispy black scarf threatening to touch their faces, then suddenly disappearing to reveal the way ahead..’  

A side plot involves Lily search for the mother who abandoned her. The book also depicts Lily’s growing friendship with her employer, the irrepressible and flamboyant Belle, and Lily’s confused feelings towards Sam who is both her guardian angel but also the person who might bring her to justice.

Lily is a character you can’t help rooting for and, although bleak at times, the book has great period atmosphere and a touching ending that offers a little ray of light in the darkness.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of Vintage via NetGalley.

In three words: Dark, moving atmospheric

Try something similar: A Book of Secrets by Kate Morrison

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RoseTremainAbout the Author

Rose Tremain’s best-selling novels have won many awards, including the Baileys Women’s Prize, the Whitbread Novel of the Year, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Prix Femina Etranger. Restoration, the first of her novels to feature Robert Merivel, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She lives in Norfolk and London with the biographer Richard Holmes. (Photo/bio: Goodreads author page)

Connect with Rose
Website | Goodreads