With writing that's elegiac and enthralling, this is a chase story with a wry edge and a romantic heart. 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. The island on which Lacroix settles for a while is initially reported as having no trees, then it has a few trees, then it is treeless. I cared so little that I wasn’t even curious about revelations about the mystery that drove the whole chase (and it was obvious in the middle of the book, I waited for a twist that never came). We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

While fighting in Spain, it eventually becomes apparent, he was witness to a My Lai-like massacre carried out by frightened, starving British troops against the small Spanish village of Morales.Now We Shall be Entirely Free is the first of Andrew Millar's novels that I have read but it certainly won't be the last. It says something , not quite sure what though, when the charachter chasing the hero is more fascinating than the actual hero. This is a powerful, moving and magnificent novel, that certainly deserves to be read by a wide audience. Perhaps his excellent eighth book, a cat-and-mouse thriller set at the height of the Napoleonic wars, will change that, though the fact it’s not made this year’s Man Booker longlist is already something of a travesty.

All Miller’s novels create alternative worlds in which their author experiments with emotional and moral concerns. It’s equally interested in its villains and it’s heroes, and gives a lot of energy to its peripheral figures. I'll quote from Johanna Thomas-Corr review in The Guardian: the fact it’s not made this year’s Man Booker longlist is already something of a travesty.Indeed, surely one of the most pressing ethical obligations of our own time and place is to recognise ourselves in the other. As characters traverse the length and breadth of the country, a Britain is evoked that seems entirely plausible and yet frighteningly strange.

But as the story reaches its climax, the tension between action and withholding becomes increasingly problematic. Through a combination of threats and violent assaults, he inexorably makes his way towards Lacroix’s new idyll. By the Costa Award-winning author of PURE, a stunning historical novel with the grip of a thriller, written in richly evocative, luminous prose. ben scritto, almeno da quello che posso giudicare visto che io sono italiana e il libro è in inglese.There are some tense and frustrating moments in the book, but then the tension faded and the story started to waver as it approached its climax. The former is an often-forgotten art form in the contemporary novel, which often seeks to impress rather than entertain, but the latter is what makes him one of the most impressive novelists at work today. As for the verisimilitude issue, Miller focuses on British troops’ atrocities in the retreat to La Coruna in 1809, taking his cue from a letter of the commander, John Moore, who described British troops’ behaviour as “infamous beyond belief”. On one level it is impressive to have a book which makes no attempt at post-modernism (other than using the names of those in the My Lai massacre for some of the characters), at allegory, or at drawing parallels with modern events (any hint of Brexit in the British retreat from Europe is purely accidental) – however, in my view, this robs historical fiction of much of its interest for me. From its first sentence it grabs the reader's attention, and it never lets go - the narrative is a gripping, propulsive, thrilling ride.