C.J.Sansom

What an amazing author… when one of the members of our book club suggested we read a historical novel I groaned… just not my sort of thing. But a book club is a book club, so I duly and dutifully bought ‘dissolution’, half-heatedly opened it… and several hours later I emerged, not quite finished, but utterly won over by Master Shardlake and the dilemma he found himself in. If the beginning had initial reminded me of ‘The Name of the Rose’ by Umberto Eco, such thoughts disappeared very quickly.

Once I had finished ‘Dissolution’ I just had to rush out and buy the three following novels, ‘Dark Fire’, ‘Sovereign’ and ‘Revelation’. I could hardly wait for the next novel, ‘Heartstone’. I found each compelling, but I think ‘Heartstone’ has to be the triumph of the series.

In brief the stories follow the career of Matthew Shardlake a crook-backed lawyer struggling to survive in the time of Henry VIII and commissioned to solve legal puzzles and mysteries which take him into the worst danger Tudor times could throw at him. Despite his disability he is brave and courageous in the face of violence and torture and the malevolent connivance of his political opponents. These books are set five hundred years ago and they are full of interesting detail which is absorbed as you read, there are never great chunks of background detail thrown at you, the immense amount of historical research that Sansom must have undertaken sits lightly on the narrative, and yet enriches the fabric of the books.

Sansom has also written ‘Winter in Madrid’ and my first attempt at reading it failed… I just could not get into it, but I must persevere and try again as so many people have recommended it to me.

I was looking at his latest novel, ‘Dominion’ in Waterstone’s, and it is different again, set in a world where the Allies did not win World war II; to be honest, once again it is not my sort of read… but on the other hand I really enjoyed ‘Fatherland’ by Robert Harris which has a similar premise .. and I was won over to historical novels by Sansom…

I flipped through the novel and glanced at the notes at the end where Sansom discussed the present state of Britain, his fear of the rise of extremes of left and right, and the desire for separation by the Scots in particular from the United Kingdom. I’m going to buy the book just to read his comments properly… oh and I will probably have to read the rest of the book too!

C.J.Sansom in The Guardian:

“Tragically, and unlike in the 1930s, nationalisms are on the rise in Britain as elsewhere in Europe, with UKIP and, north of the border, the Scottish National Party. In Dominion I have gone to town on the SNP’s opposition to actively fighting fascism, which was also true in the real world. I make no apology for using the book to stress how I see the SNP, for all the moderate face it currently presents, as deeply dangerous, with no politics in the conventional sense, believing only in the old dream that the unleashing of “national spirit” and “national pride” can solve a country’s problems.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/19/sansom-dominion-nightmare-nazi-britain