An audio book, with footnotes.
The author consulted census results, shipping registers etc to find out about his family history, making up all the rest. In the 1700s a boy near Lowestoft sees a dead body in the water, and takes a gold coin from it. This helps to fund his urge to travel. He sees Istanbul and London, where his uncle Issac (the first of his family to escape peasantry) lives. He catches syphilis then marries a single mother who is lodging with his uncle and aunt, who are childless themselves.
The author confesses he's guessing about motivations, etc. He asks why is the baby called Issac? He asks why does basing the stories on fact make them any better? He sometimes offers us alternative storylines. He tells us whether houses still survive.
The Great Camp episode (indeed, the soldier section) didn't interest me -sounded too much like research. Cholera and Gallipoli feature.
He makes the most of birth certificates - important sources of information for the author. Some key characters could neither read nor write. Mothers had to decide what to call themselves, what name to give the child, what father's name to give. The mothers who couldn't read didn't know whether the official had written the names correctly.
The 1871 census is the last one mentioned. In an epilogue, a photo is described which shows a character from the book and also the author's father.
Other reviews
- Jonathan Myerson (These fictionalised elements are never less than credible, if sometimes overdetailed. So it’s a shame that, rather than allowing his characters to grow and interact, as any novel demands, Mawer instead regularly elbows his way on to the page to remind us that, for instance, “this particular rumour happened to be true”. These reminders of his research only serve to disempower the characters and defuse any jeopardy in the storytelling. Things aren’t helped by prose that is a touch too workaday: tones are “dulcet” and hair, more than once, comes in a “shock”.)
- goodreads
- Douglas Kemp
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