Golden Hill

What a delicious feast! Golden Hill is Spufford's first novel, after five idiosyncratic books of nonfiction, and it's clear he had a ball with it, delighting in the language and the details of his subject: the colonial outpost of New York City in 1743, and the entry of a charming, secretive, and apparently wealthy young man into its tiny, fractious society. Not everything goes well for Richard Smith, but things certainly do go, and Spufford packs a heap of action into his mid-sized novel, adding a few modern notes to the gleefully rogueish style of 18th-century masters like Fielding, Sterne, and Smollett. I had been looking forward to Golden Hill ever since it swept a handful of prizes in the UK last year, and I wasn't disappointed at all.