I finished this several weeks ago and am sorry that I've forgotten enough already that I won't do this excellent book justice. The story begins with Sullivan, an Irish fiddler just escaped from Newgate prison in 1767 and making his way north. Unsworth's prose is layered and full of detail but never ponderous: in a few pages we know, understand, and like Sullivan, learn where he's going and why, and have a feel for the period and its tensions between personal liberty and property rights. And he keeps the action moving forward too!
Sullivan had been imprisoned for the long-ago mutiny of a slave ship, whose captain ordered the live slaves jettisoned in order to collect insurance payments for lost property. The fiddler and his fellow sailors escape to Florida and establish a settlement, where they and their former slave cargo flourish for several years, only to eventually be found and brought to trial in London. The plot which follows includes coal miners, abolitionists, and the son of the ship's owner, now bent on revenge. Or, perhaps, a change of heart.
I have not yet read Sacred Hunger, to which this novel is a sequel, but I plan to. The fact that I already know the broad strokes of the plot hardly matters given the quality of Unsworth's writing.
Sullivan had been imprisoned for the long-ago mutiny of a slave ship, whose captain ordered the live slaves jettisoned in order to collect insurance payments for lost property. The fiddler and his fellow sailors escape to Florida and establish a settlement, where they and their former slave cargo flourish for several years, only to eventually be found and brought to trial in London. The plot which follows includes coal miners, abolitionists, and the son of the ship's owner, now bent on revenge. Or, perhaps, a change of heart.
I have not yet read Sacred Hunger, to which this novel is a sequel, but I plan to. The fact that I already know the broad strokes of the plot hardly matters given the quality of Unsworth's writing.
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