LoveReading Says
Full of heartache, and wonder, this is a story that sits small, but flies out into the world to take on epic proportions. Jacob, a slave in an abandoned British town, tells the story of his life as Sparrow, whose first memories are of a brothel in Spain towards the end of the Roman Empire. As his view of the world around him widens, as he learns the cruelties that await, it is the smallest of things, the moments shared, the love shown, that produce a glow of hope around which his spirit rises. James Hynes creates a world that shouts with urgent vibrancy, with colour, hate, love, indifference. He highlights the choices made, even if it would appear there are none, where the imagination can travel, even if there is nowhere to go. This is as much about the women surrounding Sparrow as it is the small boy as he grows up. The most essential details of life surrounded my thoughts, clustered into knots, fighting to be heard. The setting feels so very real, and although the historical location sits so firm, and absolute, and true, the essence of the humanity within could be anywhere, at at any time. The boy Sparrow has taken up lodging in my heart, I ache, truly ache for the life he has lived, the story that Jacob tells. The ending sent a spiral of emotion shivering through me, and the echoes still remain. Chosen as a LoveReading Star Book and Liz Pick for its month of publication, Sparrow is a stunningly powerful, beautifully sorrowful novel, it stands as a warning and yet is full of hope.
Liz Robinson
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Sparrow Synopsis
For readers who have been moved and overwhelmed by Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, Emma Donoghue’s Room and Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain, Sparrow tells the story of Jacob, son of no one, last survivor of an abandoned British Roman town. Raised in a brothel on the Spanish coast in the waning years of the Roman Empire, a boy of no known origin creates his own identity. He is Sparrow, who sings without reason and can fly from trouble. His world is a kitchen, the herb-scented garden, then the loud and dangerous tavern, and finally the mysterious upstairs where the ‘wolves’ - prostitutes of every ethnic background from the far reaches of the empire - do their mysterious business. When not being told stories by his beloved ‘mother’ Euterpe, he runs errands for her lover the cook, while trying to avoid the blows of their brutal overseer or the machinations of the chief wolf, Melpomene. A hard fate awaits Sparrow, one that involves suffering, murder, mayhem, and the scattering of the little community that has been his whole world.
Through meticulous research and bold imagination, Hynes brings the entirety of the Roman city of Carthago Nova - its markets, temples, taverns of the lowly and mansions of the rich - to vivid life. You will feel you have been to this place, and understand how a slave class - conquered people of every age, walk of life, or skin colour - made the brutal empire function.
Sparrow recreates a lost world of the last of old pagan Rome as its codes and morals give way before the new religion of Christianity, and introduces readers to one of the most powerfully affecting and memorable characters of recent fiction.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781529092417 |
| Publication date: |
11th April 2024 |
| Author: |
James Hynes |
| Publisher: |
Picador an imprint of Pan Macmillan |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
449 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Historical Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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