Nonesuch

A spell-binding fantasy novel set in the Blitz, from the Booker shortlisted author of Golden Hill and Light Perpetual.

SAM'S REVIEW

English writer Francis Spufford is impossible to pin down. He’s written theological non-fiction, memoir and three vastly different novels - Golden Hill, Light Perpetual and Cahokia Jazz. When I interviewed him at an event in the UK for Cahokia Jazz, he told me he was working on an 'Ursula Le Guin-esque fantasy set in the Blitz". 'That makes perfect sense', I said, facetiously. And yet, somehow, Nonesuch, the book in question, does.

It begins in 1939, with Germany having invaded much of Europe and Britain preparing to enter the war. Blackouts are in effect, but the bombers are yet to be seen; as the narrator describes it: "[I]t was all happening there, and happening out of sight. Here there was nothing but waiting". The main character, Iris Hawkins, is attempting to build a career in finance, to move beyond the role of bank clerk that is the glass ceiling for women at the time. She wants to usurp the men who try to limit and define her, professionally and personally. She wants “their fuses to blow, their tiny minds to stutter and shut down, because they look at me and see hips and tits and lips and eyes, a body they think their money can get them, and then they have to ask me my opinion about interest rates.”

After ditching an oafish date via the back door of a restaurant, she finds herself at a dance club filled with art students and filmmakers, the moneyed bohemians of London. There she meets Geoff, a gawky technician in the fledging world of television, and Lall, a diminutive, blonde woman of perfect cheekbones, scathing judgement and a voice that "had underheated country homes in it. Dogs. Thorn hedges. Icy ditches". Lall scorns Geoff's invitation to dance, so Iris takes him by the hand and a few songs later, leads him, overheated and disbelieving, back to his house.

Nights later, when she is once again at Geoff's house, Iris feels herself being watched by an otherworldly presence: a spectre standing in the garden under whose gaze "walls faded to transparency, were as thin as veils, as spiders' webs". Upon leaving work one evening, Iris is chased through the darkness of black-out London by this same spectre. Terrified but determined, Iris seeks an answer to the nature of the spectre and why it is hunting her. She discovers that it is linked to Geoff's father and an ancient mystical order, and that it was set upon her by Lall. Further investigations and encounters reveal that via the spectre and others like it, the order has found a way to change history, and that their intentions aren't exactly conducive to the war effort. Much to Iris and Geoff's dismay, it is down to them to stop the order from succeeding, if only because Geoff "is too committed to science to deny the evidence of what is in front of him; the other, because she is an impertinent baggage who refuses to be intimidated by what is more powerful than her". And so, in between work, falling for Geoff and shifts putting out fires and dodging bombs on the rooftops of London, Iris finds herself battling Lall for control of supernatural forces and the fate of the world.  

Power is central to Nonesuch: how power is acquired and what is sacrificed to acquire it; who holds power and what they use it for; and what the powerless do in the face of a seemingly unstoppable force. At the grand scale this is the Nazis vs Europe, appeasement vs opposition. At the personal level it is Iris' career ambitions vs her gender, her sexuality ("suburban slut") vs propriety, her independence vs her burgeoning relationship with Geoff. 

Spufford shows us how, during war, the existential becomes inseparable from the ordinary. Iris walks to the office over the smoking ruins of bombed out buildings. Geoff leaves the cluttered chaos of his father's house for the "pits and horrors and splintered places" of the frontline. As Spufford simultaneously imposes the fantastical upon the everyday, we are asked whether it is any more otherworldly than the horrors of war. While the spectre hunting Iris can "move like a vapour, or like a sledgehammer, or like a swarm of razors", is this worse than the nightly raids of the German bombers, under which "the air hummed and shook as if it were being sawed apart"?

The depth of Spufford’s historical knowledge, evident in all is previous novels, is once again on display in Nonesuch, as is his wild imagination and gift for writing both spectacular set pieces and intimate portraits of ordinary lives. The juxtapositions between ration books and spell books highlight how, during war, the previously unthinkable becomes the ordinary. The contrasts of Iris debating investment strategies with her employer and fascism with her nemesis, Lall, displays both her independence and how the challenges society faces are interlinked and interdependent – something all too visible in the rise of both inequality and the far right that we face today. 

When Spufford told me that he was writing an “'Ursula Le Guin-esque fantasy set in the Blitz”, it seemed far-fetched. So did a second Trump term or Russia's invasion of Ukraine continuing for years. Like Spufford, life is unpredictable. At times it’s terrifying. Nonesuch is fiction, it’s fantasy, but it is rooted in history. It shows how delicately life is balanced, how one moment can change the future, how one person can make a difference, and how standing up for what you believe, for what you love, can make that difference. 

Sam

PUBLISHER REVIEW

A spell-binding fantasy novel set in the Blitz, from the author of Golden Hill.

'ONE OF THE MOST ORIGINAL MINDS IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE' - NICK HORNBY

'A TREMENDOUSLY VARIED AND SURPRISING WRITER' - GUARDIAN

It's the summer of 1939. London is on the brink of catastrophic war. Iris Hawkins, an ambitious young woman in the stuffy world of City finance, has a chance encounter with Geoff, a technical whizz at the BBC's nascent television unit.

What was supposed to be one night of abandon draws her instead into an adventure of otherworldly pursuit - into a reality where time bends, spirits can be summoned, and history hangs by a thread. Soon there are Nazi planes overhead. But Iris has more to contend with than the terrors of the Blitz. Over the rooftops of burning London, in the twisted passages between past and present, a fascist fanatic is travelling with a gun in her hand.

And only Iris can stop her from altering the course of history forever.

'What a joy! A novel with endless ingenuity and enormous heart.' - Kaliane Bradley

'One of the finest prose stylists of his generation.' - The Times

'My God can he write.' - Richard Osman