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Golden Hill von Francis Spufford
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Golden Hill (Original 2016; 2016. Auflage)

von Francis Spufford

MitgliederRezensionenBeliebtheitDurchschnittliche BewertungDiskussionen / Diskussionen
1,0715918,856 (3.9)1 / 157
"New York, a small town on the tip of Manhattan island, 1746. One rainy evening in November, a handsome young stranger fresh off the boat arrives at a countinghouse door on Golden Hill Street: this is Mr. Smith, amiable, charming, yet strangely determined to keep suspicion shimmering. For in his pocket, he has what seems to be an order for a thousand pounds, a huge sum, and he won't explain why, or where he comes from, or what he is planning to do in the colonies that requires so much money. Should the New York merchants trust him? Should they risk their credit and refuse to pay? Should they befriend him, seduce him, arrest him; maybe even kill him? Rich in language and historical perception, yet compulsively readable, Golden Hill is a story "taut with twists and turns" that "keeps you gripped until its tour-de-force conclusion" (The Times, London). Spufford paints an irresistible picture of a New York provokingly different from its later metropolitan self but already entirely a place where a young man with a fast tongue can invent himself afresh, fall in love--and find a world of trouble"--… (mehr)
Mitglied:gennyt
Titel:Golden Hill
Autoren:Francis Spufford
Info:London : Faber & Faber, 2016.
Sammlungen:Deine Bibliothek
Bewertung:****1/2
Tags:read 2019, fiction, 21st century literature, English literature, historical fiction, New York, 18th century, colonialism

Werk-Informationen

Golden Hill von Francis Spufford (2016)

Kürzlich hinzugefügt vonprivate Bibliothek, michaels207, janerawoof, TheKroog, Alison1144, ryanfb, postsign, Oifti
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Gruppe ThemaPosteingangLetzter Beitrag 
 Historical Fiction: Golden Hill by Francis Spufford7 ungelesen / 7Chawton, Februar 2017

» Siehe auch 157 Erwähnungen/Diskussionen

What a joy this book was. It's on my list of best books of 2024 - the first and hopefully not the last - because it is a rollicking, swash-buckling, super-hero like, action packed story of Mr Smith landing in New York with a promise for money, and people not sure whether to believe him or not. £1000 in sterling was a lot of money in 1745 and because Manhattan was so small, word soon spread with the community divided about whether he had forged the promise or not. The tension is then built because he won't say what the money is for, and so of course that excites the gossips even more.

This then is the story of what happens to Smith in the days waiting for confirmation that the note of promise is true and what an exciting time he has. There is a naked woman, sex, acting in a play, spies, a duel, jail, a love interest with the most shrewish of women and a brilliant chase scene. Smith is either building bridges or burning them and so the story is a roller-coaster of excitement without ever losing sight of the fact that we are in the 18th century. This is helped by the nod to the grammatical constructions and vocabulary of the time, particularly in the chapters that are letters.

I can see this book as a series for Netflix, not just because of the action but also because Spufford has conjured the time and place so well.

Smith had instructed his brain to ignore the information of his nose - schooled reflex of the city-dweller, in the face of stinks - and it took a little time for his brain to take the news that there were few stinks to ignore. The vapour from the scalps remained the worst of New-York's bouquet. A little fishe, a little excrement: guts here, shit there; but no deep patination of filth, no cloacal rainbow for the nose in shades of brown, no staining of the air in sewer dyes. A Scene of City-Life, his eyes reported. A Country-Walk, in a Seaside District, his nostrils counter-argued. No smells; also, he realised, no beggars. He had been strolling the city's densest quarter for minutes, and yet no street-Arab children pepper-pointed with sores had circled him round, no gummy crones exhaling gin had plucked his sleeve, no mutilated men in the rags of uniform had groaned at him from the ground.
p24

Brilliant to tell us what New-York was like by what it wasn't and a wonderful way to contrast it with London.

There is a twist or reveal at the end of the story, one which has been built up to the whole time - why does he want the money? But then there is a second - a much slyer one that slipped by unnoticed and one that is much more egregious to the people. This is after all America, and America was built on such things.

Questions for book club discussion

The ending seems to fall off a cliff. What happens to Smith? Were you satisfied by the ending or not?

There are several references to novels in the book and of the narrator interrupting the story to comment. What do these tell us about the purpose of a novel and its limitations?

Is there a significance to the title Golden Hill?

How well does the book show us the menace that lurks behind New-York's daily life?

Does anybody know anything about the play Cato? (I don't) How is it relevant to this story? ( )
  allthegoodbooks | Feb 16, 2024 |
Difficult to review this without reference to the major (and to me, unexpected) plot twist at the end. Mr Smith arrives in New York in the mid 18th century and presents a bill for payment to a merchant for a huge sum of money. It is due at next quarter day, which is Christmas. And so Mr Smith spends the next 2 months in New York. His position is very unclear, as we're not told what he is there for, or in what capacity, is he merchant, trader, conman or there for political ends? He meets those in charge at the time, and a motley crew they turn out to be. Then there is the mixed Dutch/English merchant and coffee house classes. He suffers the issues of the newly arrived, in finding his feet, but, in one sense, fails to help himself by remaining a bit of a mystery - what is he there for? That all becomes clear at the end and was not at all what I was expecting. It is a quite astonishing sleight of hand that pulls this particular tablecloth out from under your nose.
For a lot of this I wasn't sure what to make of it, and I'm still not sure that most of the rating isn't down to the final 20% of the book. Part of me wants to read it again and see if there are clues I missed. ( )
  Helenliz | Oct 10, 2023 |
This book hit all of my favorite reading zones: historical fiction, mystery, adventure. It opens with Mr. Smith's arrival in New York from London, and two basic questions: how does a 23 year-old come by a bill for 1,000 pounds (about $200,000 in today's money), and what does he plan to do with all this cash once he has it in hand? These questions simmer and build among the citizens as Mr. Smith adventures around New York, never far from their prying and gossiping tongues. For me the questions often slipped to the background as one after another heart-stopping moment bubbled up; at times I was racing through passages because if I lingered the tension would have killed me. We are never very far from the start, however - suddenly readers are given tantalizing glimpses into Mr. Smith's mind, and we are urgently swept right back to those two original questions. ( )
  blueskygreentrees | Jul 30, 2023 |
Mixed feelings about this rather unusual book.

I greatly enjoyed the aspects which concentrated on colonial New York in the 18th century. The discussion of the various currencies, the layout and feel and feel of New York City so many centuries ago, the judicial system, etc., were very interesting.

Unfortunately, I thought much of the interaction between the characters was contrived and a bit tedious. I was also surprised to learn that the author is male. In many ways, it seemed the sensibilities expressed will appeal more to a female audience. ( )
  la2bkk | Apr 24, 2023 |
This book was recommended to me in a roundabout way by a friend of a friend (probably because I'm a New Yorker) and I'm so very grateful that it was brought to my attention as it is not a book I would ever have thought to pick up on my own.

Richard Smith arrives in a fledgling New York in 1746 with a note worth £1000 (or 1,738 pounds New-York money). The city isn't much more than a small town with a population of just 7,000. The note is worth a fortune and young Smith is a complete stranger to Mr Lovell, the merchant to whom Smith has presented the note of exchange. Mr Smith refuses to expand on who he is, what his business in NY is, or how he came to have such an incredible sum. Thus they agree to postpone the payment until Lovell can write to London to confirm that Smith is not a fraud.

In that time, we are taken on wild romp with Smith as he navigates the streets and politics of this small city and its inhabitants. There are celebrations and near death escapades, an escape involving ropes and rooftops, there is theft and forbidden love and prison murder and mayhem and there are secrets abounding.

Francis Spufford touches upon myriad serious topics of the era but all within the bounds of an epic story. Plot twists abound and never do they feel contrived. And when the mystery of our intrepid Richard Smith is finally revealed at the very last pages it feel so right and so natural and so damn fulfilling. ( )
1 abstimmen Jess.Stetson | Apr 4, 2023 |
"Golden Hill” is neither a shaggy-dog yarn, like “Tristram Shandy,” nor a bloated doorstop, like Samuel Richardson’s “Pamela,” for readers with scads of time on their hands. It keeps its theme—the moral conundrum of America—ever in its sights, through breakneck chase scenes and dark nights of the soul. It has the high spirits of an eighteenth-century novel, but not the ramshackle mechanics.
hinzugefügt von theaelizabet | bearbeitenThe New Yorker, LAURA MILLER (Jul 3, 2017)
 
"Delirious storytelling backfilled with this much intelligence is a rare and happy sight."
hinzugefügt von theaelizabet | bearbeitenThe New York Times, DWIGHT GARNER (Jun 27, 2017)
 
The whole thing, then, is a first-class period entertainment, until at length it becomes something more serious.
hinzugefügt von theaelizabet | bearbeitenThe Guardian (UK), Steven Poole (Jun 1, 2016)
 

» Andere Autoren hinzufügen

AutorennameRolleArt des AutorsWerk?Status
Spufford, FrancisHauptautoralle Ausgabenbestätigt
Crow, EleanorIllustratorCo-Autoreinige Ausgabenbestätigt
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- TOBIAS SMOLLETT, The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748)
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The brig Henrietta having made Sandy Hook a little before the dinner hour - and having passed the Narrows about three o'clock- and then crawling to and fro, in a series of tacks infinitesimal enough to rival the calculus, across the grey sheet of the harbour of New-York - until it seemed to Mr Smith, dancing from foot to foot upon deck, that the small mound of the city waiting there would hover ahead in the November gloom in perpetuity, never growing closer, to the smirk of Greek Zeno - and the day being advanced to dusk by the time Henrietta at last lay anchored off Tietjes Slip, with the veritable gables of the city's veritable houses divided from him only by one hundred foot of water - and the dusk moreover being as cold and damp and dim as November can afford, as if all the world were a quarto of grey paper dampened by drizzle until in danger of crumbling imminently to pap:- all this being true, the master of the brig pressed upon him the virtue of sleeping this one further night aboard, and pursuing his shore business in the morning.
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"New York, a small town on the tip of Manhattan island, 1746. One rainy evening in November, a handsome young stranger fresh off the boat arrives at a countinghouse door on Golden Hill Street: this is Mr. Smith, amiable, charming, yet strangely determined to keep suspicion shimmering. For in his pocket, he has what seems to be an order for a thousand pounds, a huge sum, and he won't explain why, or where he comes from, or what he is planning to do in the colonies that requires so much money. Should the New York merchants trust him? Should they risk their credit and refuse to pay? Should they befriend him, seduce him, arrest him; maybe even kill him? Rich in language and historical perception, yet compulsively readable, Golden Hill is a story "taut with twists and turns" that "keeps you gripped until its tour-de-force conclusion" (The Times, London). Spufford paints an irresistible picture of a New York provokingly different from its later metropolitan self but already entirely a place where a young man with a fast tongue can invent himself afresh, fall in love--and find a world of trouble"--

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Durchschnitt: (3.9)
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