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Golden Hill

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Golden Hill

By: Francis Spufford
Narrated by: Sarah Borges
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Summary

New York, a small town on the tip of Manhattan Island, 1746.

One evening, a handsome young stranger off the boat from England pitches up to a counting house on Golden Hill Street, with a compelling proposition - he has an order for 1,000 pounds in his pocket that he wishes to cash. But can he be trusted? New York is a place where a young man with a fast tongue can reinvent himself, fall in love, and find trouble....

©2016 Francis Spufford (P)2017 W.F. Howes Ltd Americas Colonial Period Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction United States New York
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Critic reviews

"A novel of such joy it leaves you beaming...verifiable gold." ( The Sunday Telegraph)
"The best 18th century novel since the 18th century." (BBC Radio 4)
"A cunningly crafted narrative that, right up to its tour de force conclusion, is alive with tantalising twists and turns.... This is a dazzlingly written novel. Little brilliances of metaphor and phrasing gleam everywhere." ( The Sunday Times)
All stars
Most relevant
the result of.clearly deep research and nonetheless profoundly focussed on the characters. the author luxuriates in the minutiae of human reaction and inter-action. A masterpiece in its own way. and a revelation about 18th century New York.

Most unusual

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I loved this novel. Drawn by the reviews on the writing I was not disappointed but this did not come at the compromise of the story or the suspense of the end. Not sure what to compare it to but if you're a literature lover I'd recommend this and hope you enjoy

A beautifully told story which immerses the reader

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Start reading or listening to this book from looking up some old XVIII century drawings of New York and Boston. The whole book gained an additional dimension after that.
It's read as if written in 1746, a matter of fact. I enjoyed the mixture of cultures described, certain obvious facts, like slavery, an obvious part of life or the tragedy of being gay in 1700s. Little things, like newly fashionable coffee houses, almost being able to smell that strong coffee and freshly baked bread. The story itself kept me interested as it's never boring and keeps surprising, but the description of the long gone New York, so different to anything we know now had its own magic and charm.
I would have loved to know what happened to some of the main characters, but I guess the feeling of unfinished business, something missing is a part of the story.

This story will keep you guessing to the very end.

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Brilliant book, brilliant reader; highly recommended. Moving, clever, original; what more could you wish for from a novel?

Dazzling!

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While (as the book's ending will show -- no spoilers here) the decision to have the story read in a female American voice is logical, the actor chosen here is not an ideal choice, as she clearly has a much smaller personal vocabulary than the author. She constantly mis-stressed and mispronounced words (steepled, basso, Hades, concupiscence, mountebank), substituting more familiar ones in some places ('connection' for 'contention', 'slivers' for 'silvers', etc). Surely one of the jobs of those at Whole Book Audio should be to ensure that the performance represents the book accurately, otherwise one might as well get a free LibriVox recording. I have decided to write this review (something I rarely do) because I have noticed the same fault on too many of Whole Book Audio's other recordings, and they really need to improve this aspect of their business (the second narrator in David Mitchell's _The Bone Clocks_ was a particularly egregious example).

_Golden Hill_ is set in New York City of the early 18thC and includes a cast of characters with a variety of accents, some of which the reader executed more successfully than others, with her attempt at Scottish sounding very East European. _Golden Hill_ also includes brilliant set-pieces of performance within the novel: a Sinterklaasavond feast, Bonfire Night ('Pope Night'), and the performance of a play. In the last of these, it is central to the plot that two of the characters are much better actors than the others, but the reader was unable to portray the differences between the terrible acting and the great acting, flattening them out to much of a muchness.

I've focused on the performance here because I found it detracted from my enjoyment of what, had I merely read it in my head, would have struck me as a well written, entertaining, and unusual story. Until a better recording is produced, I recommend buying the book and reading it yourself!

Good book, poor performance

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