FRANCIS SPUFFORD Nonesuch. Reviewed by Robert Goodman

Award-winning author Francis Spufford’s new novel is a historical fantasy set during the Blitz in London.

Francis Spufford’s fourth novel, Nonesuch, is a beguiling combination of historical and speculative fiction. Spufford effortlessly blends the experience of living in London in the lead up to and during World War II with a story of the occult with angels, secret codes and ancient societies. And in the middle of it all a feisty, no-nonsense heroine.

Spufford makes his intentions very clear in the Prologue. This involves a woman hiding out in a place called the Mariner Building until after dark, and then using an incantation to bring a statue of the mariner on the outside of the building to life.

‘What,’ said the Mariner, and its voice was like a glacier grinding on a cliff, ‘Do. You. Want.’

She could feel her pulse in her jaw, a throb under her ear.

‘Tell me where the past years are,’ she said.

But that was much later.

The main narrative, as the Prologue implies, begins earlier. It is 1939, in London, the world is on the brink of war and Iris Hawkins just wants to go dancing with her boyfriend Charlie. Only Charlie has made other plans, which Iris ends up bailing on. She runs away to the ‘coloured chaos’ of the Kinesis Club in the ‘dimmer and more bohemian streets of Fitzrovia’. There she meets and seduces Geoff, a one-night stand she immediately regrets but which somehow results in her being pursued by a dark, otherworldly being:

The shape of a man in a hat and overcoat, only more massive than that, bulkier; and with its head lying flat on its shoulder as no head should; and with a face that, from this distance, she could see was made of newspaper. Not covered in newspaper, not masked in newspaper: made of newsprint, old yellowed paper with smeary blocks of black type on it, in an arrangement nobody could mistake for eyes and mouth …

Dealing with this creature, and having to reconnect with Geoff, pulls Iris into a shadowy world of secret societies, angels, magic users and, ultimately, a threat to history as she knows it. In amongst all this, Iris has to deal with the start of World War II and the bombing of London, which itself turns her world upside down.

Iris is a complex and delightful creation. She works for a financial house in London, and when the story starts she has what amounts to a secretarial job. But Iris is interested in finance and the share market and wants to do more; that opportunity arises when the war comes and takes many of the young men away. Iris is also not ashamed of having a good time, particularly in the shadow of the looming war. When she discovers that there is more to the world than she previously thought, she revels in learning about that too, runs towards the danger and takes on the burden of protecting her reality. There is a tragedy in her past that drives Iris, a break with her family that is only hinted at for most of the book.

This book is as much historical fiction as it is fantasy. Spufford builds an evocative picture of London on the eve of war:

She walked across the bridge to the City, as usual … she liked to begin the day with the Thames, with the sight of the spires and towers and blocks and alleys of the Square Mile not enclosing her, warren-like, as it did when she was inside it, but for once visibly spread out into a panorama, apparent as a single spectacle.

Later, Spufford takes readers into the reality of the Blitz: of people taking cover in bomb shelters and tube stations; of the fire wardens, whose job it was to deal with incendiaries; and of rationing and privation:

And partway up Cannon Street, a Victorian building no different from the other red-brick four-storey affairs in a row with it, picked out from them by no principle except pure randomness, had been riven from the top down, destroyed in a descending V by something from the sky … the building’s hidden inner surfaces all exposed, turned inside out, put on violent view.

In among all of this deeply researched historical detail, Spufford builds an alternative world. A world of secret societies and magic, of spells and secret portals. He does this slowly, through Iris’s eyes, and with as much loving detail as the rest of the novel. So that it all becomes of a piece and it is remarkably easy to accept this version of the world.

Francis Spufford’s second novel The Light Perpetual also took the bombing of London as its jumping-off point. In that book, Spufford wondered what might have been different if a particular bomb had not destroyed a particular building and the victims of that bombing had gone on to live their lives. He developed an alternate present that branched off from that point. In Nonesuch he asks a different question – what if someone had the power to prevent Britain entering the war in the way it did, and thus handing the victory to Germany? What if you could rewind all the death and destruction that came with the Battle of Britain? And if you knew this was possible, what if you had the power to stop someone doing that?

Now for the warning. Nonesuch is the first book of a duology. It ends on what can only be described as a massive cliffhanger. The trick Spufford manages to pull is that although readers might suspect what he is building up to, the actual cliffhanger, when it comes, is still a complete surprise. But the journey there is absolutely worth it, and the follow up, apparently to be titled Arcady, cannot come soon enough.

Francis Spufford Nonesuch Faber Fiction 2026 PB 496pp $34.99

Robert Goodman is an institutionalised public servant and obsessive reader, who won a science fiction short-story competition very early in his career but has found reviewing a better outlet for his skills. He was a judge of the Ned Kelly Awards for many years and reviews for a number of other publications – see his website: www.pilebythebed.com

You can buy Nonesuch from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW.

You can also check if it is available from Newtown Library.