Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller (2018)

If I didn't have the evidence before me in the preliminary pages, I would have said that this was a first novel. The writer clearly has a strong capability with wordsmithing in its technical aspect, at least in one respect. He is able to mould phrasing, particularly that which is descriptive of emotion, often into elegant and succinctly poetic shapes. But what gives it the feel of a first novel is everything else. He is obviously somewhat uncomfortable working with historical materials. His work in the area of dialogue is quite stilted and repetitively flat. Just two examples. OK, so where to start. Perhaps a likening which will lend the flavour of it as a whole? Two images occurred to me while reading: one of that slightly dampened and functional impression that one gets after reading what is identifiable as 'popular' fiction: the characters essay through their lives with the sense that the engineering, the construction which surrounds them, acts like blinkers do to a horse. They're obediently following the path made for them - they are functions, ultimately. I wonder what Miller makes of authors, whom he must presumably have come across, whose bright belief in the action carries all with it; the engineering of whose pieces is swamped in a flood of their imaginative quicksilver, its presence deep down somewhere, invisible to the lit imagination of the reader. Conversely, Miller's manipulations are so near the surface as to be indistinguishable from being fully in view. So this novel drags its feet, the reader hampered by the obviousness of the contrivances. The second image really I think says the same thing,  but perhaps it will illustrate it better. It's as though a novel were a performance in a theatre. In the reading of any good novel, we're concentrated on the stage because the strength of the author's voice makes it so. Their belief carries us. We become far less aware of the everyday world around us, and occupy the golden space of fascination. With this novel, we have been invited to partake in the expected way, turn up, occupy our seat, and then, on the stage, a lot less grabs us. Instead, we're distracted by how the scenery lowers and lifts, the back and forward in the wings of how the thing is done, the prop-room under the stage busy with concocting the action. All of which is a long way round of saying that that essential thing, the suspension of disbelief in the reader, accessed via the assertive belief of the writer, is distinctly absent in this case. In an eighth novel, that is worrying. OK, so - mentioned earlier was the fact that he also seems to be uncomfortable with historical detail. Consistently here one gets the unmistakable feeling of "display hands", a bit like "jazz hands"! Hands turning from palms down to palms up in a long curl of reveal. Curl, here is this historical item discussed. Curl, we'll include one of these to lend verisimilitude. Curl, I'll have this character use this archaic word to remind you of when this is set. Curl, I'll just explain this attitude so as to illustrate the difference between then and now. All of these things do need doing, but of course they need doing invisibly, as 'natural' consequences of the forward thrust of the piece. The corollary of this is anti-historical manipulation; the above historical insertions are all the more 'necessary' because there is a strong feeling of the modern in how these characters relate to one another and think. Grim attempt at 'relatability'? It's a pervasive foolishness at the moment, so disquietingly possible.   I also mentioned the dialogue earlier - not a lot else to say than that it's occasionally flat. "No?" "No." "Really?" "Yes." is illustrative of a few odd conversations in our lives, but not great as a template for a lot of exchanges. I think the intention may have been the 'incantatory' - and it might theoretically have had that effect if the casing for it had been more lustrous and intriguing, but this novel misses that by a way. Worth mentioning are a few very strange factual assertions: that anywhere in Somerset could be anything like a hundred miles from the sea is deeply odd; that the Mersey was ever called the Mercy I can't find a reference for, but am willing to be gainsaid; the consistent, supposedly poetic, reference to sea-mist at one juncture as 'smoke' is very......loose; and calling a taxman instead a 'tacksman' is again not something I've come across, but it's possible, I guess. Every now and then the still intact dignity of this novel is surprised by a little steam-spike of camp: two of the military men in a hot room in Spain silently following a fly around the room with their eyes at a tense moment is......well, funny. Counter to these criticisms: there is a sequence in the pp 170s where this came alive for a short moment, where the main character has been left on a Hebridean island under the influence of some drops of opium - it really caught me up (hopefully not the result of a passing mood). The conclusion: perhaps Miller needs setting free. He needs to throw off the cloak of what must be his lack of confidence when it comes to the historical, and, thus disrobed, plunge into the contemporary with the energy he has saved. Perhaps there's plenty of this in the seven novels prior to this one. If so, this one may just be an aberration, and I wish him well for a return to home territory.