FRANCIS SPUFFORD has made a name for himself as a writer of extraordinarily vivid fiction that falls somewhere in the fold between counterfactual history and literary fantasy. Nonesuch, his fourth novel, opens in London in 1939. Our heroine, Iris Hawkins, is a secretary who works for a firm in the City of London. Sharp as a tack — she is the only person in the office who knows how to use the mysterious teleprinter — she is also frustrated, thwarted in her ambition to become a stockbroker.
At night, she is a thrill-seeker. One such evening, having abandoned her patronising date, she finds herself at the Kinesis Club, where she meets the chilly Lalage (Lall) Cunningham, and Geoff, a young man who is a technician at the BBC. Both encounters will turn her life upside down.
Iris goes home with Geoff to the house that he shares with his elderly father. But what she imagines will be a pleasurable one-night stand takes a dark turn, and she finds herself caught up in a nightmare of terrifying angelic beings, magical rituals, and a world where time and space is subject to sudden and alarming shifts.
All this is set against a brilliantly realised backdrop of London in the Blitz: Nazi planes begin dropping bombs from the sky, office workers find themselves on fire-watch duty, and stock markets tumble. Iris and Geoff — increasingly entangled — discover that Lall is a Fascist and behind a scheme to change history so that Churchill never becomes Prime Minister. Only Iris can stop her, but this will require acts of exceptional faith and courage.
If this all sounds too fantastical for words, well, Iris and Geoff think so, too. And yet the writing is so mesmerisingly good — cinematic and compelling — that the reader is utterly swept up in the story. I raced to the end — only to find that Spufford had saved one terrible twist for the last possible moment. An ingenious and irresistible novel.
Sarah Meryick is the Editor of the Church Times.
Nonesuch
Francis Spufford
Faber & Faber £20
(978-0-571-39716-7)
Church Times Bookshop £18