Golden Hill – Francis Spufford
I read somewhere (sorry I forgot where!) that this was fabulous historical fiction, so of course I had to read it. It was suprisingly hard to find and in the end I bought it from the Kindle store.
Here is the blurb …
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 counting-house door in Golden Hill Street: this is Mr. Smith, amiable, charming, yet strangely determined to keep suspicion simmering. For in his pocket, he has what seems to be an order for a thousand pounds, a huge amount, and he won’t explain why, or where he comes from, or what he can be 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.
As fast as a heist movie, as stuffed with incident as a whole shelf of conventional fiction, Golden Hill is both a novel about the 18th century, and itself a book cranked back to the novel’s 18th century beginnings, when anything could happen on the page, and usually did, and a hero was not a hero unless he ran the frequent risk of being hanged.
This is Fielding’s Tom Jones recast on Broadway – when Broadway was a tree-lined avenue two hundred yards long, with a fort at one end flying the Union Jack and a common at the other, grazed by cows.
Rich in language and historical perception, yet compulsively readable, Golden Hill has a plot that twists every chapter, and a puzzle at its heart that won’t let go till the last paragraph of the last page.
Set a generation before the American Revolution, it paints an irresistible picture of a New York provokingly different from its later self: but subtly shadowed by the great city to come, and already entirely a place where a young man with a fast tongue can invent himself afresh, fall in love – and find a world of trouble.
I enjoyed this novel, it was fun and well-written. I was fascinated by early New York – only 1000 people and the dutch influence. It was a rolicking ride – a bit like a short Fielding novel (and that has to be a good thing), action, romance, a duel and a secret purpose.
I think it is very accomplished and if I was more literary I would have more to write.
More reviews …
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/01/golden-hill-by-francis-spufford-review
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/03/golden-hill-a-crackerjack-novel-of-old-manhattan