Review of "Golden Hill" by Francis Spufford

Ruth introduced me to Francis Spufford - she read "Light Perpetual" first, and then I followed her and thought it was great. And then she did this one, and recommended it, and it's also great - even better than Light Perpetual. It's a historical novel, set in New York in the 1740s, and has something of the flavour of a pastiche C18th style, brilliantly done with some nods in the direction of historically accurate spelling and grammar, but not so much as to make it hard going. The plot is always engaging, the writing beautiful, and I'm really jealous of his ability to describe action as well as inner life. And the politics, about race and sexuality, are spot on.

It reminded me a bit of the Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, which I loved, though there are no conscious anachronism here as there are there...and also of John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor, which I haven't read for many years but also did something similar with period and style.

I note in passing that there is a description of a plot to burn the great houses of the city, which has been foiled and the perpetrators executed and tortured to death...and that this was a real historical episode, described in some detail in The Many Headed Hydra.