The siege and assault of the Catholic stronghold Basing House is distinctly the best thing in the book. This is a mere undertone, however, to the two opening events that will drive the novel - Jacob's marriage to his beloved Caro, and the recent discovery of the gruesome murder of a young boy from a neighbouring household. McCann's unflinching descriptions of battle are matched by the power of her depiction of London in all its fetid splendour. I just finished reading it a few hours ago and it’s not that Jacob was stopped from beating Zeb but that he remembered that he had been there and went blank on what happened after. I was thoroughly sucked in, though Jacob remains a difficult – often frustrating – character to grapple with.

What really impressed me more than anything else is the sure bravery that the author shows in writing this 1.The story focuses on the relationship of two men, Jacob Cullen and Christopher Ferris, and is set during the English Civil War. His deep insecurity makes him easy to rouse to anger, but it makes his love fierce and compelling (and completely fucked up, which bears repeating).

Jacob is a pretty disturbing character, and I'm still not sure whether he's driven insane by some religious guilt or meant to be a sociopath. Maria McCann's début novel is the story of Jacob Cullen, one of three brothers once of some substance but now reduced to serving in a minor aristocratic household. unless you've read them both), A Suitable Boy (anti-passion, complicated historical/political/social themes), La haine (violence).And even though reading it hurt, hurt badly, I am very glad I read it, because like it says in a review included at the front of the book, this is a book that stays with you for a very long time. It's completely addictive, heartbreaking, wonderfully written, with characters who creep under your skin and refuse to move. He pulls a knife on the man who will become his lover in London, where he nearly succeeds in raping him too. They desert their posts in Cromwell’s New Model Army to establish a farming commune in the countryside.

There is also his great friend and lover Christopher Ferris who, for all of his pamphleteering and desire to found a commune based on the equality of all members, is himself a member of the nouveau-rich merchant class who certainly leans on his money and status to accomplish his ends. but even more than a contextualization, their relationship and their personalities both comment on and personify those things - and how those things often end in terrible failure. Jacob’s clothes are described in exquisite detail at one point, right down to lace and buttons but they are amazing clothes, nothing the like of which he’s seen or worn before – so it makes perfect sense for him to describe them. If you like historical fiction, and enjoy books you can really get your teeth into, then this is one for you – with or without the salt. Perhaps if both men had lived in more tranquil times their lives would have been less tragic, but both had the misfortune to live through violent upheavals in society that only serve to bring out the worst in their characters.

I differ from you in I see that two marked characteristics of Jacob’s sociopathy is his lack of impulse control and his unquestioning sense of Biblical rightouesness, one which leads him to commit the first of his “devilish” act at Beaurepair (the boy was going to expose their Puritan readings when at the time such things were treason, and Jacob acts impulsively, ie. The beginning of the book is a bit hard to get into because one of the main characters appears to be such a dreadful person that it takes a bit of reading to appreciate it. I was aware that the book was making me sad whilst I was reading it but I realised just how much when at the moment of finishing it I felt like a load had been lifted off my chest, I felt lighter, a ray of light touching me at the thought that I did not have to touch that world again. The first friend’s eye caught on the themes of war and soldiering, so I had to explain that the book, although definitely a fine piece of historical fiction set during the First English Civil War, is not actually about the war, nor about soldiering, in any way. I've been talking about this book with some of the lovely people I've met here on GR and even 'gently' pushed some friends to read it.