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The author has revealed that the plot is derived in part from a terrible incident during the Vietnam War, the massacre at My Lai in 1967. It sounds like an old name for the river, but I can’t find any evidence it is an actual old name for the river. What makes it stand out is it’s emotional and psychology delicacy, the very deliberate and respectful way in which the plot intrudes into people’s lives. Miller's beautiful sentences are a joy to read and his engrossing novel, teeming with vivid historical detail, is as suspenseful as any thriller. Miller is no conventional “historical novelist”, but he has set all his fiction to date in an Elsewhere.
No ancient and honourable institution is without its ancient and honourable crimes,” observes a shadowy superior. His first novel, INGENIOUS PAIN, was published by Sceptre in 1997 and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour prize in Italy. I became aware of this book through the November 11, 2019 issue of the New Yorker in its Briefly Noted section. When I read the opening chapter of this book, however, I was convinced – not so much by the historical details, which are applied sparingly but to good effect, but by the combination of precise and uncluttered visuals, human sympathy and language that can be delicate or blunt or visceral as required, but always beautifully modulated.This was a huge disappointment of something I was really looking forward to read, but right now, I'm relieved that I'm finished, and I can add another book to my charity bag. Having spent many happy holidays on Hebridean islands, I was frustrated for a while by not knowing on which island Lacroix lands because I wanted to be able to picture it and not have it as a generic Scottish island.
Extraordinary; his writing seems to discover, or perhaps creates, additional dimensions to the world, and in the reader. The pacing of his story is excellent; his style is crisp; his apprehension of pain is arresting; and his ability to show people trembling at the edge of un-reason is compelling. Well, it's almost as if Mr Miller was afeared that all these delights would not suffice, so he tacked on a thrilling if highly implausible persecution of Our Hero that made it impossible NOT to keep turning those pages until. Though the plotting is very precise, even the moment when hunter and quarry coincidentally and unwittingly cross paths didn’t feel contrived: it just added to the evidence (shared eventually by at least one of Lacroix’s pursuers) that they are not really seeking a legible or reasonable form of justice but are carrying out a more arbitrary exercise of power, playing their parts in a game none of them can ever really win because those who made the rules don’t care who they really are–or who they could be, if they were free to choose. But what begins as if it might be a full-immersion historical novel (in the manner, say, of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series, also set during that war) quickly becomes instead a psychological mystery.Whenever he leaves home, whether on campaign or on the road, he seems to be fleeced of the majority of his possessions. It throws out its big ideas with such lightness of touch that it’s only afterwards that the reader feels their sting. The chaos of war and the period detail is quite impressive, and the whole thing is a very enjoyable read, but I am deducting a star because the plotting seems a little too neat and contrived. Sightseers would fly to the islands from London, drop anchor in a spot like this, swarm around with their sketch books, then up a ladder again and off to … Iceland. A beautiful and complicated story of guilt that seems impossible to shake off and results in physical pain and depression and which gradually vanishes when new opportunities appear and provide main character with strength to come to terms with the past and forgive himself.
Miller has much to say and I hope he finds readers that will come, not just for the great story telling, but to discover those themes that run deeper throughout the book.
Little does he know that he is being pursued by two men that have much more sinister plans than forcing him back into service. Ultimately, this is a book about the horrors of war, and what it does to the humans who are involved in it.
Simultaneously nervous, choppy and unengaging, and at the same time we were suffering scenes after scenes that gave me nothing. A state-sponsored assassin may, or may not, be coming on his path with a nebulous task of vengeance. Lacroix observed in the immediacy of their physical love after his confession: “she does not especially mind what I have done and she knows more about this thing we are doing than I“.
I appreciated the inclusion of the Hebrides, but having holidayed on various of those stunning islands for many years, I couldn't understand the lack of detail and almost sparseness of the prose in those parts. A well written mixture of historical novel, adventure story and romance set during the Napoleonic wars, that may have been written with at least half an eye to a possible film adaptation. Photograph: Alamy View image in fullscreen The Charge of the 10th Hussars at Benevente (Corunna Campaign), by William Barnes Wollen. Instead of rejoining his regiment, he decides, for reasons that are as unclear to him as they are to the reader, to travel to the Scottish islands, where he has never been. So far so thriller but in the hands of Andrew Miller the story becomes so much more, historical fiction, travelogue, zen like mediation, psychological exposition and romance are all skilfully meshed together for a beautifully written compelling story.
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