Class concerns are definitely front and center in this tale which takes place during the English Civil war at the time when Oliver Cromwell was rising to power. It was so touching when she said “don’t worry, your hair will soon grow back” and Jacob looked around “eagerly” – like a child so desperate for affection and he found she was speaking to someone else. And throughout it all you will play the part of the good angel on his shoulder, just hoping he will make the right choices. I actually shut the book in horror when Becs walked in on Jacob and Ferris and didn’t open it till the next night…the suspense killed me! The book confused me, shocked me, charmed me, warmed me through, worried me sick and in the end, shattered me.

The historical setting is the English Civil War of the 17th century, and we absorb some of the radical ideas of the time from the servants' reading of contraband pamphlets that must be carefully concealed from their Royalist masters.But the risks they run are very real, are reflected in every single sexual encounter they have, even when they are “safe” in Ferris’s Aunt’s house in London. Perhaps if both men had lived in more tranquil times their lives would have been less tragic, but both had the misfortune to live through violent upheavals in society that only serve to bring out the worst in their characters. I pictured Becs and myself together, squabbling, but always over little things, while I rotted away at the core from love of Ferris. I repeated the words in my head and tried to feel the shock of them, but they remained strange and cruel, far removed from Ferris and me. Certain scenes, such as the chapter entitled The Uses of a Map, Christopher and Jacob's oblique courtship and the shattering closing pages will always remain some of my favourite literary passages.

Perhaps because it contains more of Jacob's friend and subsequent lover Ferris, or perhaps because it contains a little more of the author herself, there is one set piece that is different. No doubt the likes of us will appear in a novel 400 years hence routinely discussing multi-seeded organic bloomer. It's completely addictive, heartbreaking, wonderfully written, with characters who creep under your skin and refuse to move.These three constituents are the gunpowder that sets off a violent picaresque taking us through action with the New Model Army, a torridly erotic period of recovery in London and finally participation in an idealistic Diggers' commune before its brutal dissolution by the local lord of the manor. It is beautiful and frightening - terrifying, in some places - but captivating and startlingly erotic. Here is the most twisted revelation of my book reading-instead-of-sleeping experience, I felt for Jacob.

This was McCann's debut novel and she has since published two more, The Wilding and Ace, King, Knave. The historical setting is the English Civil War, and we absorb some of the radical ideas of the time from the servants' reading of contraband pamphlets that must be carefully concealed from their royalist masters. Reading the book, it's easy to love and despise them at the same time, to hope for things to go well when quite clearly, they can only go from bad to worse.I'm rarely absorbed so much by a book - I think it actually sped up my metabolism, so, uh, yeah - and I was definitely overstimulated by this one.

What really impressed me more than anything else is the sure bravery that the author shows in writing this 1. One thing the author does best is to show that, while of a different measure that Jacob’s, that whole society was concerned with Godliness, the Bible, the Devil, and Biblical righteousness of man (thougth, notably, Ferris is a closet non-believer, i. But Ferris is intent on establishing a commune, a prospect Jacob reviles, yet to keep his lover he has no choice but to join the motley band. Both men were married and Ferris was in love with his wife – there was no real concept of gay, but that’s what makes gay historicals so fascinating, for me.Her first-person narrative and turns of phrase have an authentic seventeenth-century feel to them, and her main character Jacob is a magnificent creation. His sense of self-loathing, however, is ingrained in every page, less so at the beginning and ebbs and flows throughout.