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A Novel of Old New York
by Francis Spufford
Book Reviewed by:Winner of the 2017 Costa First Novel Award.
The spectacular first novel from acclaimed nonfiction author Francis Spufford follows the adventures of a mysterious young man in mid-eighteenth century Manhattan, thirty years before the American Revolution, in "a first-class period entertainment" (The Guardian).
New York, a small town on the tip of Manhattan island, 1746. One rainy evening in November, a handsome young stranger fresh off the boat pitches up at a countinghouse door on Golden Hill Street: this is Mr. Smith, amiable, charming, yet strangely determined to keep suspicion shimmering. For in his pocket, he has what seems to be an order for a thousand pounds, a huge sum, and he won't explain why, or where he comes from, or what he is planning to do in the colonies that requires so much money. Should the New York merchants trust him? Should they risk their credit and refuse to pay? Should they befriend him, seduce him, arrest him; maybe even kill him?
Set thirty years before the American Revolution, Golden Hill captures an ancient iconography of New York not only in his depictions of the physical city and its diverse citizens, currencies, and costumes, but also in the clever and pungent language of his prose. Golden Hill is an update of eighteenth-century picaresque novels by the likes of Henry Fielding and entertains us with its savage wit, mystery, charismatic protagonist, and romantic storyline as it propels us toward a powerful revelation at the novel's end. "Intoxicating" (The Financial Times) and "as good a historical novel as you could read" (The Times, London), Golden Hill shows us a city provokingly different from its later self; but subtly shadowed by the great icon to come, and already a place where a young man with a fast tongue can invent himself anew, fall in love - and find a world of trouble.
Costa Book Awards
2016
The language is downright musical at times, as when describing the local theater — "very dusty and dark and cumbered by lumber it was." The tone and themes of Dickens permeate the book (most notably in the critique of slavery and call for social reform), and there is a dash of Jane Austen as well. Serious devotees of historical fiction will appreciate Spufford's unrestrained verbosity and knowing winks toward his influences. Golden Hill's nimble story and whip smart humor is a handsome reward for the loquacious digressions...continued
Full Review
(599 words)
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(Reviewed by Lisa Butts).
In one of the most memorable sequences in Golden Hill, the protagonist, Mr. Smith, attends a Guy Fawkes Night celebration that goes terribly awry after an effigy of the Pope is burned. Smith is taken for Catholic and pursued by an angry drunken mob.
In Britain, Guy Fawkes Night is a celebration of the failure of the 1605 assassination attempt on King James I and much of England's aristocracy. The conspirators, a group of thirteen disgruntled Catholics, planned to blow up Parliament to achieve its desired goals of gaining greater religious freedom under the reign of the Protestant King, as Catholics were persecuted in England at the time. Thirty-six barrels of gunpowder were placed in the cellar of the House of Lords, but then several ...
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Francis Spufford has long been one of my favourite writers of non-fiction; he is now becoming a favourite writer of fiction as well. Golden Hill is a meticulously crafted and brilliantly written novel that is both an affectionate homage to the 18th century novel and a taut and thoughtful tale.
