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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
(yawn). It is okay, but there are so many really wonderful spy novels from the Golden Age of spy fiction and before, and quite a few good ones coming out now, that this fairly bloated spy romance really didn't seem worth while.
My knowledge of Spanish history is limited, mostly drawn from historical novels. Yes, I know of Franco’s Spain, but I have little to no understanding of its complex history. C. J. Sansom places his readers in Madrid right after the end of the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s ascent to power. The country is struggling, and the city is half destroyed. But the British want to be extra sure that Spain doesn’t join World War II. Against this backdrop, we have four British citizens – one who is brought there as a spy (Harry), one who is trying to make money from Spanish misery (Sandy), one who is stuck in a forgotten labour camp (Bernie), and one who is somehow caught in the middle of it all (Barbara). They share a history, and some also share a profound dislike for one another.
The story unravels slowly, building momentum. The author cleverly unwraps the personal histories and interdependencies of our four characters while creating a vivid image of war-torn Madrid and Spain’s complex politics. The climax was somewhat unsurprising but still unsettling. Admittedly, I was rooting for success, but the hope dies last, I guess. The ending seemed a bit abrupt after the long build-up, but even then the author slid in one final cliffhangerish moment. A truly great read if you like historical fiction.
The story unravels slowly, building momentum. The author cleverly unwraps the personal histories and interdependencies of our four characters while creating a vivid image of war-torn Madrid and Spain’s complex politics. The climax was somewhat unsurprising but still unsettling. Admittedly, I was rooting for success, but the hope dies last, I guess. The ending seemed a bit abrupt after the long build-up, but even then the author slid in one final cliffhangerish moment. A truly great read if you like historical fiction.
Any book was going to suffer from being 'what I read right after Life and Fate' but this was such a let down.
Very clichéd writing at times and the most interesting characters are the supporting cast of Spaniards who are glossed over for the English: a trio of former public schoolboys and a nurse, who all seem to have blundered into Spain without much understanding of it, each of them either intent on or unwittingly causing mayhem for the locals.
Very clichéd writing at times and the most interesting characters are the supporting cast of Spaniards who are glossed over for the English: a trio of former public schoolboys and a nurse, who all seem to have blundered into Spain without much understanding of it, each of them either intent on or unwittingly causing mayhem for the locals.
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Un extraño coctel de novela de posguerra española con toques del tercer hombre, retorno a Brideshead y algo de LeCarré. El argumento resulta predecible y el desenlace atropellado pero se lee con interés y se reconoce el esfuerzo de un autor británico por documentarse y crear un retrato veraz de la España franquista. Hay que ser español para pillarle en un par de detalles y nunca demasiado gordos.
Ik wist voor het lezen van dit boek niet zoveel af van de Spaanse Burgeroorlog dus deze was erg leerzaam maar het kostte me af en toe wel wat moeite om m’n hoofd erbij te houden (vooral door de vele timeskips). Aangrijpend boek, knap hoe de schrijver alle verhaallijnen mooi door elkaar laat lopen en bij elkaar laat komen.
Rather disappointing, after the Shardlakes. Fine re: Spanish Civil war, but the characters and story needn't be so bland.
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
After the conflict…
1940. The Spanish Civil War is over and Franco’s regime is in charge. What will later be known as the Second World War is underway – France has fallen, Britain has retreated from Dunkirk and is grimly facing daily aerial bombardment, and Franco is rumoured to be about to bring Spain into the war on the side of Germany and Hitler. Against this backdrop, four English people will play out their own drama in a Madrid still wrecked and reeling, its people starving and afraid.
Harry Brett has been invalided out of the army after Dunkirk, suffering from damaged hearing and shell shock. He has recovered well enough, though, to take on a job proposed to him by the Secret Service – to go out to Spain and try to win the confidence of Sandy Forsyth, once his old school friend and now involved in shady dealings in Madrid. When he gets there and makes contact with Sandy, he discovers Sandy is now living with another old acquaintance – Barbara Clare, once the lover of another school friend, Bernie Piper, who was declared missing, presumed dead, after the battle of Jarama. We follow these three as Harry tries to find out what Sandy is up to, and Barbara continues to hope against the odds that Bernie is not dead and to use whatever little influence and money she has to find him.
I read this book years ago when it came out (2006) and didn’t really connect with it. I wondered at the time if it was because I didn’t know enough about the Spanish Civil War – what the various factions were and what they were fighting for, and who was allied to whom, and so on. So when I started my Spanish Civil War challenge, I decided to make this the last book of the challenge, to see if all my new-found knowledge would make a difference to my reaction. And it did! I still didn’t wholeheartedly love it, largely because it’s very long and I didn’t feel the central stories were strong enough to carry it. However, I enjoyed it considerably more this time, both because I better understood the various tensions among the characters and because it was interesting to see Sansom’s take on the history.
Sansom joins the long list of British and American authors who take the Republican side when writing about the conflict. In this version of history, Republicans are good people, and it was only the nasty Communists, whom real Republicans despise as much as they despise Fascists, who committed all the atrocities on the left, while real Republicans were decent souls defending a democratically elected government against a fascist insurgency. This means that the opposite must also be true – that everyone on the Nationalist side must be an evil Fascist or, perhaps worse, a monarchist. I guess this distortion or, at the least, over-simplification has been repeated so often now that many people accept it as truth, especially when it ties in with their existing political leanings, as it clearly does with Sansom.
The personal stories of the characters are done well, and Sansom uses them to show different aspects of the conflict and its aftermath. The three men, Harry, Sandy and Bernie, all attended an elite public school called Rookwood, and in the early part of the book there are many flashbacks to their time there, showing us how they developed into the men they became. Harry was always the neutral one, friend to both of the others and with no strong views on politics or anything else. Sandy was the bad boy, expelled from previous schools, and soon to be expelled from Rookwood too. Already arrogant, already cruel, naturally he would side with the Fascists in later life. Bernie was a scholarship boy from a humble background, and he already resented the inequalities in society, declaring himself a socialist, so it is no surprise when he later heads off to Spain to fight in the International Brigades. In political terms the characterisations are a little simplistic, but they work well in human terms, although I found Harry’s neutrality made him rather bland to be given the role of main character. The role of public schools in shaping the leaders of the future is portrayed well, though again clearly through the lens of Sansom’s left-wing bias.
Barbara is the outsider, brought into this group as the lover of first Bernie and later Sandy. She is, frankly, an unlikely heroine to have inspired so much passion – Sansom repeatedly tells us that she lacks beauty, mainly because she wears glasses and frumpy clothes, and I couldn’t see much that was outstanding in her personality to overcome these dreadful flaws. We know Sandy is a bad man because he hates her wearing glasses, while Bernie is good and pure because he loves her even with her glasses on. Am I sounding sarcastic? Good, I intend to. However, her role in the Red Cross first as a nurse and later in helping to reunite refugee children with their families gives insight into another aspect of civil war, and makes her the most likeable of the main characters, despite her glasses.
The twin stories – Harry’s spying on Sandy and Barbara’s search for Bernie – come together eventually in a thriller-ish ending, but a rather muted one, which perhaps suits the post-war tone better than a more heroic event would have done. Sansom resists the temptation to make everything happy ever after, which adds credibility, but leaves a rather depressing after-taste.
Overall then, well written as any book by Sansom is, grounded in accurate history but seen through a left-wing lens, and more of a slow thoughtful look at the period than a fast-paced political or action thriller. My own reading experience suggests it works better if the reader is reasonably well versed in this period of history beforehand, in which case it’s well worth reading.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
1940. The Spanish Civil War is over and Franco’s regime is in charge. What will later be known as the Second World War is underway – France has fallen, Britain has retreated from Dunkirk and is grimly facing daily aerial bombardment, and Franco is rumoured to be about to bring Spain into the war on the side of Germany and Hitler. Against this backdrop, four English people will play out their own drama in a Madrid still wrecked and reeling, its people starving and afraid.
Harry Brett has been invalided out of the army after Dunkirk, suffering from damaged hearing and shell shock. He has recovered well enough, though, to take on a job proposed to him by the Secret Service – to go out to Spain and try to win the confidence of Sandy Forsyth, once his old school friend and now involved in shady dealings in Madrid. When he gets there and makes contact with Sandy, he discovers Sandy is now living with another old acquaintance – Barbara Clare, once the lover of another school friend, Bernie Piper, who was declared missing, presumed dead, after the battle of Jarama. We follow these three as Harry tries to find out what Sandy is up to, and Barbara continues to hope against the odds that Bernie is not dead and to use whatever little influence and money she has to find him.
I read this book years ago when it came out (2006) and didn’t really connect with it. I wondered at the time if it was because I didn’t know enough about the Spanish Civil War – what the various factions were and what they were fighting for, and who was allied to whom, and so on. So when I started my Spanish Civil War challenge, I decided to make this the last book of the challenge, to see if all my new-found knowledge would make a difference to my reaction. And it did! I still didn’t wholeheartedly love it, largely because it’s very long and I didn’t feel the central stories were strong enough to carry it. However, I enjoyed it considerably more this time, both because I better understood the various tensions among the characters and because it was interesting to see Sansom’s take on the history.
Sansom joins the long list of British and American authors who take the Republican side when writing about the conflict. In this version of history, Republicans are good people, and it was only the nasty Communists, whom real Republicans despise as much as they despise Fascists, who committed all the atrocities on the left, while real Republicans were decent souls defending a democratically elected government against a fascist insurgency. This means that the opposite must also be true – that everyone on the Nationalist side must be an evil Fascist or, perhaps worse, a monarchist. I guess this distortion or, at the least, over-simplification has been repeated so often now that many people accept it as truth, especially when it ties in with their existing political leanings, as it clearly does with Sansom.
The personal stories of the characters are done well, and Sansom uses them to show different aspects of the conflict and its aftermath. The three men, Harry, Sandy and Bernie, all attended an elite public school called Rookwood, and in the early part of the book there are many flashbacks to their time there, showing us how they developed into the men they became. Harry was always the neutral one, friend to both of the others and with no strong views on politics or anything else. Sandy was the bad boy, expelled from previous schools, and soon to be expelled from Rookwood too. Already arrogant, already cruel, naturally he would side with the Fascists in later life. Bernie was a scholarship boy from a humble background, and he already resented the inequalities in society, declaring himself a socialist, so it is no surprise when he later heads off to Spain to fight in the International Brigades. In political terms the characterisations are a little simplistic, but they work well in human terms, although I found Harry’s neutrality made him rather bland to be given the role of main character. The role of public schools in shaping the leaders of the future is portrayed well, though again clearly through the lens of Sansom’s left-wing bias.
Barbara is the outsider, brought into this group as the lover of first Bernie and later Sandy. She is, frankly, an unlikely heroine to have inspired so much passion – Sansom repeatedly tells us that she lacks beauty, mainly because she wears glasses and frumpy clothes, and I couldn’t see much that was outstanding in her personality to overcome these dreadful flaws. We know Sandy is a bad man because he hates her wearing glasses, while Bernie is good and pure because he loves her even with her glasses on. Am I sounding sarcastic? Good, I intend to. However, her role in the Red Cross first as a nurse and later in helping to reunite refugee children with their families gives insight into another aspect of civil war, and makes her the most likeable of the main characters, despite her glasses.
The twin stories – Harry’s spying on Sandy and Barbara’s search for Bernie – come together eventually in a thriller-ish ending, but a rather muted one, which perhaps suits the post-war tone better than a more heroic event would have done. Sansom resists the temptation to make everything happy ever after, which adds credibility, but leaves a rather depressing after-taste.
Overall then, well written as any book by Sansom is, grounded in accurate history but seen through a left-wing lens, and more of a slow thoughtful look at the period than a fast-paced political or action thriller. My own reading experience suggests it works better if the reader is reasonably well versed in this period of history beforehand, in which case it’s well worth reading.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Cliched. More here: https://ahotcupofpleasureagain.wordpress.com/2024/11/26/clearing-the-shelves-four-novels/