Golden Hill

Author:

Francis Spufford is an accomplished nonfiction and fiction writer. Golden Hill was published in 2016 as his first novel and received multiple awards, but it was nowhere near his first publication. Spufford has been writing and editing since 1996 and currently teaches creative writing at Goldsmiths College in London. Spufford is married and lives outside of Cambridge in England.

Learn More about Francis Spufford

Three words to describe this read:

Archaic- It took me a while to start enjoying this book, partly because I had to get used to the writing style. It is very dated and causes the reader to have to slow down in order to understand but after a while, you catch on and it comes easier.

Mysterious- The premise of the story is that the main character refuses to admit his intentions or who sent him and by the end, the reader really only has half the story (or else I just missed something). The point was made and it is a clever story, but the reader doesn't get too many details around the resolution.

Political- The story takes place in the earliest days of New York City, before the Revolutionary War and arguably before becoming a city. The mixed currency along with the underlying feud between the governor and the king really placed the book in its historical context.

Quote:

“He had believed till that instant that he hated her, but to hate a strong enemy, full of resource and will, is to continue to admire, after a fashion, especially if what you hate you also find beautiful.”

This idea of hating something or someone but at the same time, still admiring them or on some level longing for them is something that I have considered before. To me, if you have the energy to hate something (because let’s be real, hate takes up a lot of time and energy), on some level, there is a part of you that is still holding on. In short, I don’t always believe that the opposite of love is hate.