LoveReading Says
Set in an English smuggling town in 1742, Alex Preston’s Winchelsea tells a thoroughly gripping, atmospheric tale of a young woman’s journey from life as a gentlewoman, to smuggler, to pirate in the name of avenging her father’s murder. Shot-through with much mystery, desire and vengeance, this is Moonfleet meets du Maurier, with deliciously evocative language that conjures a wonderful sense of time, place and its heroine’s engagingly headstrong character.
As a baby, Goody Brown was recused from drowning and taken in by a wealthy couple in Winchelsea, where smugglers’ command of the windswept cliffs, coves and secret caves seeps into all aspects of life. As Goody’s beloved brother Francis declares (he was himself adopted by her parents after escaping enslavement), “It is a time for brazen men… A time for the shameless, the vulturous, the shillers and under-merchants to thrive while honest folk struggle and starve”.
This is borne out when their father is murdered by a group of men he’d considered to be friends. Already wildly discontent with the prospect of living a gentlewoman’s life, this tragedy spurs Goody to devote herself to avenging his death, setting her on a perilous, exhilarating path of smuggling, piracy and personal transformation.
Reviewed by Joanne OwenJoanne Owen’s lifelong love of reading and writing began when she was growing up in Pembrokeshire, and very much wished that witches (and Mrs Pepperpot) were real.
More reviews by Joanne Owen About Winchelsea
The year is 1742. Goody Brown, saved from drowning and adopted when just a babe, has grown up happily in the smuggling town of Winchelsea. Then, when Goody turns sixteen, her father is murdered in the night by men he thought were friends.
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Winchelsea Synopsis
The year is 1742. Goody Brown, saved from drowning and adopted when just a babe, has grown up happily in the smuggling town of Winchelsea. Then, when Goody turns sixteen, her father is murdered in the night by men he thought were friends.
To find justice in a lawless land, Goody must enter the cut-throat world of her father's killers. With her beloved brother Francis, she joins a rival gang of smugglers. Facing high seas and desperate villains, she also discovers something else: an existence without constraints or expectations, a taste for danger that makes her blood run fast.
Goody was never born to be a gentlewoman. But what will she become instead?
Winchelsea is an electrifying story of vengeance and transformation; a rare, lyrical and transporting work of historical imagination that makes the past so real we can touch it.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781838854874 |
| Publication date: |
2nd February 2023 |
| Author: |
Alex Preston |
| Publisher: |
Canongate an imprint of Canongate Books |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
333 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Literary Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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| Recommendations: |
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Alex Preston Press Reviews
Imagine Daphne du Maurier crossed with Quentin Tarantino, and you will have some idea of just what a thrilling, bloody and heady ride this novel is -- TOM HOLLAND
I was riveted. Winchelsea is a great read - terrific narrative drive, credible characters, and such an elegant creation of the backdrop in terms of both time and place -- PENELOPE LIVELY
Winchelsea and its fierce young heroine swept me away on an irresistible tide of adventure, revenge, horror, love, smuggling and high drama on land and sea. What a brilliant idea to rework Moonfleet, but add some contemporary touches to the mix. Huge fun, superbly atmospheric and thoroughly enjoyable -- AMANDA CRAIG
What a story! What a heroine! What an adventure! Alex Preston sweeps you from scene to scene, surprise to surprise with all the deft theatricality and fluency of a modern Robert Louis Stevenson. I have rarely read anything so vivid or that makes the eighteenth century, with all its ambitions, terrors, desires and sheer juiciness, so grippingly alive. Huzzah! -- ADAM NICOLSON
Praise for In Love and War: [R]ich and evocative . . . Powerfully affecting, ambitious in its scope, precise in its attention to detail and infused with a love for Florence and its motley eccentrics --Observer
Exhilarating . . . Preston's flair for recreating atmosphere and contemporary speech is immaculate - Financial Times
Rich in historical detail and utterly compelling - Sunday Times
It's a title befitting an epic, and Preston emphatically delivers in this, his third novel but his first foray into historical fiction. That he's a natural at it is clear . . . Vividly imagined and richly atmospheric - Daily Mail
Preston's prose is as eloquent, and as atmospheric, as always - GQ
Richly evocative - Independent
About Alex Preston
Alex Preston is an award-winning author of three novels: This Bleeding City, The Revelations and In Love and War, as well as a book of non-fiction As Kingfishers Catch Fire. He writes regularly for the Telegraph, the Economist and Harper’s Bazaar. He reviews books for the Observer’s New Review, Financial Times and Spectator. Alex is co-founder of the Corfu Literary Festival and Patron of Oxford Literary Festival.
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