This historical novel is set in early 17th-century England, where town coroner and governor John Brigge is faced with a crisis of conscience and a clash of religions brought on by his investigation into the murder of an infant.
Critic Reviews
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Outstanding
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Daily Telegraph David Robson
A thrillingly satisfying piece of work.
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Outstanding
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The Independent Stevie Davies
Searingly powerful.
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Outstanding
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The Spectator Ian Thomson
There isn't a bogus sentence in the book, as Ronan Bennett writes with an invigorating plainness and, at times, a poetry that consciously evokes the King James Bible.
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Favorable
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Washington Post Carolyn See
Bennett is a novelist as well as a moralist, so he shapes his tale as a grisly murder mystery, while doing his learned best to imagine what it must have been like to live in that faraway place, during those very hard times.
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Favorable
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Kirkus Reviews
A fresh portrait of a familiar troubled era, but, careful reconstruction that it is, it works better as history, falling rather flat as fiction. [1 Aug 2004, p.700]
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Favorable
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Los Angeles Times Merle Rubin
Plunging us into a somber world of uncertainty, fears and portents, Bennett succeeds in making the vanished past vivid -- and in making us wonder if there are not perhaps some parallels between that time and our own. [1 Sep 2004, p.E10]
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
Marvelously told... this is one of the more rewarding historical novels to come along in some time. [2 Aug 2004, p.49]
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle David Kipen
An occasional reliance on doggedly cinematic structure hobbles the novel, only to disappear at the climax, when it might conceivably have shored matters up. Yet the power of Bennett's allegory holds and builds.
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Favorable
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The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Mark Frutkin
Ultimately, it is Bennett's story-telling power that proves the strength of this novel, and brings alive, in rich detail, the world of 17th-century England.
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Favorable
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The Guardian Kathryn Hughes
Wonderfully done.
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Favorable
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Daily Telegraph Benjamin Markovits
Bennett is a deft and powerful storyteller.... Yet the novel just falls short of its promise.
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Mixed
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London Review Of Books Colin Burrow
It has moments of real and zealous beauty, even if there are also in it quite a few of the things that you just have to bite your lip over and bear when reading a historical novel.
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