This was an enjoyable read and I would recommend it. thanks for letting me have an advance copy. I'm new to this author.

I loved this so much I ignored phone calls! an absolute gem, An historical adventure through New York. Beautiful prose peppered with historical old NY English really places you in time and space. Wonderful characterisation and full of mystery.

Unfortunately, I read this book back in 2017 but completely forgot to upload a review on here, so can't remember exactly what I was going to say about it!

A novel set in the mid-18th century in New York in the 18th-century style. Amazing achievement. I struggled with the style a bit, hence the 4 stars not 5. But I shan't forget this in a hurry

I reviewed this book in a video that can be found here: http://www.betterthandreams.com/2017/12/october-and-november-2017-wrap-up-a-month-of-ya-and-mg-and-i-finally-finished-women-in-clothes/

A masterly and satisfying novel that held my interest throughout. This book is beautifully written, has a well-crafted plot and a surprising narrator.

Dazzling in its conception, fascinating in its recreation of a place and time, and joyous in its language and humour, Golden Hill can legitimately be described as a tour de force. Granted, there are moments when perseverance on the part of the reader might be called for, and some could take issue with the denouement, but it’s original, quirky, absorbing and essentially rather brilliant.

Golden Hill has gathered up the Costa First Novel Award along with a cluster of other awards including most recently the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje prize, which goes to a novel which best evokes a 'sense of place'. Celebrated as one of the best novels about the eighteenth century, the action is set around the nascent city of New York during a time when it was still heavily influenced by its Dutch roots and contained no more than seven thousand people. Still decades away from casting off British rule, the city is freshly-minted, not as foul smelling as London and yet with a greater barbarism and sense of danger. Enter the mysterious Mr Richard Smith, an Englishman newly-arrived and armed with a promissory note for one thousand pounds. It appears genuine and if so will need to be paid up within sixty days, so it is in the interests of all, not least Lovell the merchant required to pay out, that Mr Smith be proved false and cast out. Golden Hill charts Mr Smith's adventures as he tries to stay on the right side of the law while running afoul of butchers, thespians, lawyers, slaves and all manner of other calamities, including a duel and a stay in debtors' prison. A fresh take on the picaresque novel, Golden Hill appears to be a high-spirited frolic but surprises the reader by the darkness it uncovers.

Covering the space of a scant two months, Richard Smith rides quite the colonial rollercoaster in terms of personal fortunes and emotions. In a strange way, Golden Hill feels like one of the more honest depictions of the period that I have ever read. While at university, I studied a module on The Development of the Novel, which charted the evolution of the genre from Pamela through to Dickens. Despite straying into epistolary but rarely, there is an atmosphere to Spufford's story which recalls the work of Tobias Smollett or perhaps more aptly, Henry Fielding, with Spufford making direct appeal to his mighty forebears. There is the same note of bawdiness in these authors writing at the novel form's inception which exists in Golden Hill, but where Fielding and Smollett keep their eyes firmly upon a world where everyone is white and heterosexual, Spufford's gaze has gone where theirs could not, with his novel considering issues of race, class, sexuality and gender.

Richard meets Tabitha Lovell, daughter to the merchant who he just may be about to bankrupt, and the two of them strike up a spiky repartee which prickles with tension, with the question of what the two feel towards each other never clear. Mr Smith seems to be deliberately striving to remain an enigma and with the combative Tabitha so ready to lie to confound and confuse, the two of them like a baffling Beatrice and Benedict, with Tabitha's sister expressing her polite derision that they cannot just get over themselves. Tabitha however is never able to get over anything, condemning novels as 'slush for small minds' and widely derided as a shrew. Another joy of a character is Septimus Oakeshott, secretary to the Governor and secret ally to Smith, rescuing him from more than one scrape with an increasing sense of impatience. In a town full of those eager to elbow their way forward in the New World, Septimus is a rare man of honour. Is Smith one such as he? Yet, for all that he is happy to be a man of mystery, occasionally we gain glimpses of a man who just may be more moral, who expresses disdain at Septimus' liaison with the slave Achilles not because of Achilles' race but because as a slave, Achilles is more vulnerable than his master.

For all the veneer of respectability, no matter that the drawing-rooms of New York may be alike to those of London, there is no mistaking that Mr Smith has stumbled unprepared into a world far more wild than that which he has departed. French scalps adorn a gibbet in the marketplace, Pope Day descends into drunken chaos which leaves Mr Smith fleeing for his life. The people of this budding nation proclaim their allegiance to King George but there is such a sense of being adrift from familiar British values that one has a sense of rebellion brewing already. The sense of multiple worlds within this city is captured vividly as Smith runs from his attackers, in the company of Septimus, and at once point dashes into a strange house and crashes through a family's parlour.

Golden Hill wears its historical context lightly, with Spufford managing to set up the time period without apparent effort. Somehow we are pulled into this time period, within it, without any overly long paragraphs of set-up. The rhythm of the prose feels reminiscent of the novels I read at university. Yet, there is more happening here. Spufford experiments with meta-fiction, with Smith appearing as Juba in Cato, offering an early hint to what truly motivates our strangely unknowable protagonist. Spufford appears to break the fourth wall at various points within Golden Hill, apologising here for being unable to adequately describe a game of piquet and introducing certain blind-spots within the narrative with excuses such as 'I do not want to write this part of the story', but while these may appear to be the interventions of a Fielding-esque omniscient author, in fact we are being tricked still further, with a twist in the telling that I did not anticipate.

Golden Hill is a remarkably assured piece of work - it is easy to forget that this represents Spufford's debut novel. It is ambitious to frame a story around a character who evades all attempts to truly know him, that we should follow his every step and yet not be admitted into his confidence. Precisely how Mr Smith has come by his note is something that he chooses to keep to himself and similarly what his plans may be for the money provided he is able to live long enough to claim it. Yet for all that Smith is keeping from us, we can see that there is still a great deal of which he is ignorant. Not only is he easily tricked by Tabitha's falsehoods, but he is also an innocent abroad. He looks around New York and compares its cleanliness favourably to London, sees its freshness and does not understand what is behind it. Smith falls into calamity after calamity because he cannot comprehend the rules of this new country.

While Fielding's Tom Jones may sail through his troubles bruised but unbeaten, we do not have the same feeling of surety for Smith's safety. Despite the novel's generally exuberant tone, there are hair-raising incidents such as the roof-top chase and the duel which take the reader to some far darker places than those early novelists would ever have dared. While Golden Hill is in many ways a pastiche of Fielding and his contemporaries, Spufford conjures a vision of the infant New York that I could truly believe in; full of colonial trappings over a fierce and savage world. Yet, I feel that Spufford's finest achievement was how I have found myself coming back time and gain to the fate to scratchy Tabitha, with the final pages leaving me full to the brim with questions. Spufford may be coming to novel-writing late in his career, with Golden Hill, he reveals himself to be a true master of the form.

I couldn't read as the copy isn't available anymore and there is an error with the copy I downloaded a while ago.

(Read April 2017) 5★
What a surprise! What started out as possibly a light-hearted romp turned out to be a completely absorbing story of New York in 1746, thirty years before the Revolutionary War. It is written in the language of the time, with some simplification of heavy Dutch accents for the English language readers, and I don’t think I ever noticed a false note. It sounds as if it was written then.

The narrator says at the end (and it’s not a spoiler) that “I, who did not know what Mr Smith was thinking, lend my own spirit to set in motion a puppet of him . . . Nonsense, absurdity upon absurdity! I . . . find I can concoct the necessary passages by a winking charm, by talking faster, by a conjurer’s distracting busywork.”

Concoct is probably the right word. It’s a story with a hero who is quick-witted, charming, but always on very thin ice, and he does end up in some dire situations. It’s much more of an adventure than I’d suspected.

Richard Smith is a young man who has sailed from London, population over 700,000, to New York, population only 7,000, with a bill for a thousand pounds. H races from the boat to the business house on Golden Hill Street to present it, needing some cash to cover his accommodation and meals. He has some money to exchange, but it will have to last him until the bill clears with London, many weeks hence.

Society doesn’t know quite what to make of him. If he is, as the bill would suggest, very wealthy, then they want to wine and dine him. But if he’s a charlatan – and he’s so clever, he could well be – they don’t want to make fools of themselves.

Mr Lovell is the man to whom Smith (he’s always called Smith) presents his bill, and Lovell lets Smith know he’s suspicious. But when prodded by one of his lovely daughters, he invites Smith to dinner.

“’Come now, come on now,’ said Lovell, with a grin that seemed, from disuse, in need of the oil-can, to ease the rusty motion of his jaws. ‘Let’s not let a poor beginning spoil matters.’”

This was a time when houses were staffed with slaves, and the contrast was enormous between lavishly luxurious homes and draughty, icy boarding house rooms for the whites and then even worse for the blacks. Miserable.

When Smith is walking down the street “someone was sweeping the last leaves, and singing slow in an African tongue as if their heart had long ago broken, and they were now rattling the pieces together desultorily in a bag.”

Here is the coffeehouse where he breakfasted every day, running up an account, sweating until his bill cleared. This is one of the best descriptions I know of a place like this. People come and go all morning in “the great plural organism of the room, which now and again loses a body or gains a body, as people arrive and depart, but talks on, talks on.”

And here is a lovely young woman who is forced to dress up in a gown. “. . . she stood there inside it as if it were no part of her, like a tall pole which in the wind happens to have become entangled in a cloth.”

And here a singer / actress who is past her prime but still voluptuous and drooled over by the menfolk. The women see her differently. “Once, Mrs Tomlinson might have had a fresh, or ingenuous charm. Now- said the judgement of the women’s gaze, at least, upon her six-and-forty years – she trembled, like a plum already fermenting, about to burst in a mess of juices.”

We see more of Mrs Tomlinson – quite a LOT more.

We meet the wealthy Dutch, who helped establish New York, and see Smith allowed to join their society in a limited fashion. He’s never quite accepted. There’s a noisy Dutch Christmas celebration, and the narrator explains that it is not a widespread holiday in 1746.

“Whether Christmas Day were an occasion for work or for play was, at that time in New York, a matter of denomination. The followers of the established church kept the feast, with green branches in their houses and logs upon the fire, and bunches of sweet-smelling rosemary, and so did the Lutherans and Moravians. But the Quakers, the French Calvinists, the Dutch Reformed, and the English-speaking Baptists and Presbyterians, all signified their dissent, and their scornful judgement of the feast as a Popish mummery, by treating the day as one for ordinary business.”

Who knew? Not me, the grand-daughter of a devout Presbyterian minister, and I’d be willing to bet he didn’t know that either!

There’s mystery, romance, fun, betrayal, death, something for everybody. And all sounding like an authentic 18th century story.

Loved it. Thanks for the review copy (from which I’ve quoted – there may be changes) to NetGalley and Faber and Faber and especially Francis Spufford, who has written non-fiction until now. Three cheers for his move into fiction!

Who is Mr Smith? Is the question that everybody wants an answer to in GOLDEN HILL, even the reader. We even have to wait to discover that his given name is Richard. Not that you feel cheated about the withheld information, just page turningly curious to find out.

To begin at the beginning, Mr Smith arrives in colonial New York on a wet November day, he makes his way to Lovell and Company on Golden Hill Street and presents a bill of exchange for £1,000 payable in 60 days. This is an enormous sum of money and to pay it out to an unknown young man would be foolhardy. Now we sit and wait for those sixty days to pass and whilst we do the world of eighteenth century New York is brought vividly to life for us.

Mr Smith is pleased to discover that coffee houses have made it to the new world and we spend much time in them with him observing the political factions of a truly new New York. He falls in love, gets chased by a mob, escapes over rooftops, is arrested twice, fights a duel, performs in a play and we still don’t know who he is. Hints and a tiny bits of information are dropped along the way, enough for you to ponder.

All is revealed just before the end and very satisfying it is too. Golden Hill is a joyous romp through colonial New York. We see the city through the eyes of a newcomer and in doing so get immersed not only in the geography but also the politics of the place. I suspect that Golden Hill will be in Top 10 books for 2017, why not read it and see if it will make your top ten too.

I wanted to love this but the ponderous writing style just alienated me and I couldn't get to grips as all.

It’s 1746 and Richard Smith has just arrived in New York bearing a bill of credit for one thousand pounds. Presenting this to be cashed at the counting-house of the merchant Lovell on Golden Hill Street, the mysterious Smith causes quite a sensation. Who is he and where has he come from? Where is Lovell supposed to find such a huge amount of money? And what does Smith intend to do with it once he has it?

I would like to tell you more about the plot of Golden Hill, but I’m limited as to how much I can say without spoiling things for future readers. I think it’s enough to say that it’s a hugely entertaining story involving duels, card games, imprisonments and a chase across the rooftops of New York. One of the things which makes this book such an enjoyable and compelling read, however, is the air of mystery surrounding Richard Smith from beginning to (almost) end.

“There’s the lovely power of being a stranger,” Smith went on, as pleasant as before. “I may as well have been born again when I stepped ashore. You’ve a new man before you, new-made. I’ve no history here, and no character: and what I am is all in what I will be. But the bill, sir, is a true one. How may I set your mind at rest?”

His refusal to explain what he is doing in New York and why he needs so much money keeps the other characters – and the reader – guessing until the final pages. Is he really as rich as he seems to be or is he involved in some sort of hoax? Should Lovell trust him or will he be made to look a fool?

Smith’s secretive behaviour arouses both fascination and suspicion among the people he meets. Although he says very little about himself and his past, there is evidence that he has been well educated, travelled extensively in Europe, has a good knowledge of the theatre and an aptitude for dancing, acting and magic tricks – and yet he also makes a number of mistakes and blunders that suggest he may not be as sophisticated as he seems. To complicate things further, Smith soon falls in love with Lovell’s daughter, Tabitha, a character I found just as enigmatic as Smith himself. With her prickly exterior, sharp tongue and often spiteful behaviour, it’s difficult to know how Tabitha really feels about Smith, which is something else to ponder while you read.

Francis Spufford’s writing style is wonderful and perfectly suited to the story and the period; it’s clearly intended to read like an authentic 18th century novel and a lot of care has obviously gone into the choice of words and the way sentences are structured. Sometimes the narrator breaks into the story to speak directly to the reader, passing judgement on the actions of the characters, expressing annoyance (at having to explain the rules of the card game piquet, for example), and making amusing asides and observations. This is the sort of thing I tend to enjoy, although I know not everyone does! The narrative style is not just for show, though – there’s another reason why Spufford has chosen to tell the story in this way, although I didn’t understand until I reached the very end of the book.

Another highlight of the novel is its portrayal of New York at a time when, far from being the major city it is today, it’s a relatively small community still with a significant Dutch influence (seen in the design of the merchants’ houses and the names of the surrounding villages and neighbourhoods – Bouwerij for Bowery and Breuckelen for Brooklyn, for example). It’s a city in its early stages of development, just beginning to expand and prosper, and brought to life through Spufford’s vivid descriptions.

There’s so much to love about this unusual, imaginative novel. I had never heard of Francis Spufford before reading this book, but it seems that although he has written several non-fiction books, Golden Hill is his first novel. Naturally I am hoping that he’ll write more!

A competently written novel, providing an interesting insight into life in 18th century Colonial America. I never became fully engaged with the characters, as they were rather superficially drawn, in my opinion, often verging on stereotypical. However, the plotting was good, and the climactic points in the novel were quite dramatic and engaging. The ending, however, was a bit disappointing, as it rather faded away.

Autumn 1746 and Richard Smith arrives in the city of New York fresh off the boat from England. He carries a bill promising £1000 with the guarantee to following parts on subsequent boats which throws the merchants of the city into disorder - who is this man? What is his purpose? Smith is feted by the Lovell family and their friends and he falls for strange, awkward, cynical Tabitha Lovell. When Smith is robbed of all his ready cash and the second boat turns up without the promised bill, Smith is thrown into jailer as a debtor - but things are about to get worse.

This book has had outstanding reviews and I was curious to read it because of that and also because of the setting in 18th century New York, a city one hundredth of the size of London at the time. Spufford has chosen to write the novel using various viewpoints in first and third person and this works extremely well. The level of detailed research about the layout, the customs and life in the setting are incredible, one feels as though one can imagine it clearly. I also found Smith an interesting character, he has values but variable morals. Cleverly there is a huge twist at the end which vindicates Smith completely and ties up all the mysteries neatly and with a sense of purpose. I look forward to reading more by this author.

I know this book has won prizes and had rave reviews but I really didn't take to it. Ii got about 100 pages in and couldn't continue. I found the narrative and language difficult to follow, with too much going on to present a cohesive story.

I think I'll go back to this book to try again but, for now, it left me confused and frustrated.

‘By morning, the news was all around the town that a stranger had arrived with a fortune in his pocket.’

New York, Manhattan Island, November 1746. A handsome young man from London, Mr Smith, arrives with a bill of exchange to the value of £1,000. The bill is to be honoured – within 60 days – by Gregory Lovell, a merchant in Golden Hill Street, who owes this amount to the London company who wrote the bill. It’s an enormous amount, and everyone in the town is interested in trying to learn more about Mr Smith. Just who is this mysterious Mr Smith, and what does he intend to do with his fortune? Where did he come from? Is the bill genuine? Mr Smith has to wait 60 days for his bill to be honoured: how will he fit into New York society during that period? Will the merchants accept him; will they extend him credit? Who will befriend him?

Every chapter provides an element of surprise, a twist which has the reader wondering what will happen next. First there are the various adventures of Mr Smith, as well as the question as to how the bill was to be honoured given the scarcity of cash. And then, just to complicate matters further, there’s a question over the validity of the bill. Mr Smith’s circumstances are fluid to say the least.

Read this novel: enter the eighteenth century with its coffee shops and stratified society, enter a tale (or two) of derring-do, and wonder until the end whether our hero will survive, who he might be and what he is about. To say more could spoil the read.

I enjoyed this novel, it’s both clever and entertaining. While the ending came as a surprise, it is fitting as well as mostly satisfying. Only mostly satisfying? Well, some of the characters were still living on in my mind and I wanted to keep reading, to know what happened next.

This is Mr Spufford’s first novel. I’ve read two of his books of non-fiction and thoroughly enjoyed them.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Faber & Faber Ltd. for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Mr Smith arrives in New York in 1746 and presents a bill to Mr Lovell for the large sum of £1000. SInce bills of this size require verification Mr Smith has to wait on letters of verification arriving from England before payment of monies can be made. It is his adventures during this intervening period that form the story of this novel and undoubtedly Mr Smith has a tough time of it with romance, a duel, prison and mystery also featuring. An entertaining read providing some interesting insights into life in New York when it was a small city of only 7000 inhabitants. What Mr Smith wishes to spend the vast sum of £1000 is kept a mystery until the very end but his determination to carry out his duty for such an honourable purpose is to be commended.

Unfortunately I didn't finish reading this one, but I did skim read as it was one of our books of the month.
Thankyou for approving my request to read it as, even though I did not finish the book, I have definitely been able to take something from it for referral purposes to customers.

The year is 1746 when a young Englishman Richard Smith, arrives in New York with a bill of exchange to the value of £1,000, an enormous amount of money at the time. He seeks out a trader by the name of Lovell, on Golden Hill Street, who has 60 days to honour the bill.

Exactly who Smith is and what his intentions are is unclear, not just to the inhabitants of New York, but to us the readers, however we're not privy to this information until the end of the book. The mystery compels the reader ever onwards.

Whilst making Smith's acquaintance, we are also introduced to some extremely interesting characters among the social elite of Manhattan, the mad, the bad, and the indifferent, many of whom are suspicious of this young Englishman. It's great fun to witness the scrapes that he manages to get himself into while he's waiting for his bill to be honoured, but other than that I won't give away any spoilers.

This book has a winning combination - it's a great tale of adventure, that displays humour alongside the bawdy, and it also dips its fingers into the darker side of life.

The author appears to have captured the flavour of eighteenth century New York particularly well, with the sights sounds and smells escaping from the pages, and the writing is simply exquisite, rich as it is in historical detail. A delightful and entertaining read!

* Thank you to Netgalley & Faber & Faber for my 'wish for it copy', for which I have given an honest unbiased review*