The great dome provides the main source of light for operations to take place (despite patients having to be carried up stairs)! When he recovers, seemingly haunted by what he saw or did in the war, he decides to set out for the far Hebrides to rediscover his sense of himself. There were a couple of twists in the plot that I did not expect, and that is always good…it’s not good if the overall plot and ending is predictable in a novel of 410 pages. He may, or may not, have committed some atrocity in the war which he has chosen to banish to the far reaches of his mind. I literally just finished the book and yet I would still struggle to tell you anything significant that happens in it - for some reason the majority of the story revolves around a woman’s decision to have eye surgery?

A British army ‘incident’ is investigated, and the reader is a party to a slick chase (the pursuit of Lacroix) throughout the British isles and the perpetrators of brutality against prisoners, and women, and the civilian community are to be brought to summary justice. Exhausted and hurt, he is nursed back to something like his former self by his trusty housekeeper, Nell, but remains “absent” in mind.His first novel, INGENIOUS PAIN, was published by Sceptre in 1997 and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour prize in Italy. Through a combination of threats and violent assaults, he inexorably makes his way towards Lacroix’s new idyll. Andrew Miller's talent for immersive world-building, fully-rounded characterizations, profound emotional and philisophical meditations, combined with exciting plotting are all on display in this novel.

So we get two plotlines, the one of a destroyed man running away from the past and the two men on a mission. Miller has much to say and I hope he finds readers that will come, not just for the great story telling, but to discover those themes that run deeper throughout the book. As a massive fan of Haruki Murakami, the intricate descriptions are very much something I enjoy, so, naturally, I absolutely fell in love with this book.Perhaps his excellent eighth book, a cat-and-mouse thriller set at the height of the Napoleonic wars, will change that, though the fact it’s not made this year’s Man Booker longlist is already something of a travesty. First off, on the back cover this is sold as 'The world of Jane Austen bespattered by mud, atrocity and driving rain' when in reality this book doesn't remotely remind me of Austen, not even a smidgen. The idea that honour, or integrity were sustained in the face of brutal killing and rampage was dismantled in Clausewitz’s book. Miller recreates the past so vividly that reading the novel is never less than a fully immersive experience . There might have been a couple of places that my interest was flagging but it was a page each at best–so not an issue!

A thoroughly intriguing read and well placed in the historical setting, with enough references to critique modern society. Whenever he leaves home, whether on campaign or on the road, he seems to be fleeced of the majority of his possessions.Now We Shall Be Entirely Free opens in 1809, shortly after the Spanish campaign of the Peninsular war. If one of the qualities of a wonderful reading journey is thinking about the book while not being able to read it, well, this is the one for me. It is about a young Englishman who comes back wounded from fighting in the Peninsular War/Napoleonic Wars over in Spain in 1809.

This is partly owing to the character of Lacroix, which never develops as fully as it promises to, with the result that we spend a lot of time inside a life that has an insufficiently detailed interior. Thanks to the author's gloriously descriptive writing, I was transported to the early 19th century where I accompanied Lacroix on his journey. A sense of menace permeates the novel and there is a perfectly odious villain, but Miller does offset this with some lightness and humor mixed into his tale.Does it show a conflict in Miller himself, between his appetite for writing a historical yarn and something quieter, more subtle and more inward? He fills his novel with vividly etched characters and has a way with words that delights, surprises and enthrals.