- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Ltd; First Edition edition (23 Sep 1985)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0241116643
- ISBN-13: 978-0241116647
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16.2 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 112,686 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
In the aftermath of the great fire, eighteenth-century London is a city of extremes. Squalor and superstition vie with elegance and reason as brilliant architect, Nicholas Dyer, is commissioned to build seven new churches. They are to stand as beacons of the Enlightenment - but Dyer plans to conceal a dark secret at the heart of each one.
Two hundred and fifty years later, in the same vast metropolis, a series of murders occur on the sites of those same churches. Detective Nicholas Hawksmoor investigates, but the gruesome crimes make no sense to the modern mind...
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First Sentence
AND SO let us beginne; and, as the Fabrick takes its Shape in front of you, alwaies keep the Structure intirely in Mind as you inscribe it. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
AND SO let us beginne; and, as the Fabrick takes its Shape in front of you, alwaies keep the Structure intirely in Mind as you inscribe it. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book was given to me not long after it was published nearly twenty years ago. This does not mean that I am a slow reader, merely that I am easily distracted by other pieces of fiction that come my way. It would be extremely harsh of me to say that my intuition to leave Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor was justified but literary stylistics over a plot that should have absorbed me left me feeling cheated at the novels conclusion.
For all the literary accolades that this book was afforded, in hindsight they seem misplaced. Yes, it is a credit to the skill of Peter Ackroyd that he can maintain a dual narrative in which the same actions are replayed over a two hundred year period (1700's/1980's) and he can use the vernacular, idioms and syntax of the two separate centuries over alternating chapters, but this does not make him a 'virtuoso writer'.
In the classic canon of gothic literature (Poe, Shelly, Hogg, Stevenson...) and modern (King, Herbert, Barker...) one consistent feature of terrorising your audience is the authors taut psychological control over the information which is administered gradually. What prevents Hawksmoor from being a great read as opposed to the `I-cannot-get-sleep-until-I finish-the-last-chapter' tension elicited by Stephen Kings' better horrors is the structural weakness of alternating actions between centuries. By the time we come round to the actions of Sir Nicolas Hawksmoor or Detective Hawksmoor, my interest has waned; that, in a gothic genre, is fatal.
The other cardinal rule of the gothic is that we are fascinated by the central character. Here, we do have character that is truly intriguing , morally repugnant and spiritually suspect in the form of Sir Nic. whose architecture is incredibly sinister (even in daylight.) However, human sacrifices aside, he does not have the power to really chill you. Detective Hawksmoor (the other central protagonist) is simply two-dimensional.
Hawksmoor on the whole is a missed opportunity because the central metaphysical premise to the novel is very powerful and could have evoked more potently the deep-rooted human anxieties of predestination. Hawksmoor, like present day London, can , in turns thrill with the dark history of its past whilst you meander in the pedestrian banality of its present.
For all the literary accolades that this book was afforded, in hindsight they seem misplaced. Yes, it is a credit to the skill of Peter Ackroyd that he can maintain a dual narrative in which the same actions are replayed over a two hundred year period (1700's/1980's) and he can use the vernacular, idioms and syntax of the two separate centuries over alternating chapters, but this does not make him a 'virtuoso writer'.
In the classic canon of gothic literature (Poe, Shelly, Hogg, Stevenson...) and modern (King, Herbert, Barker...) one consistent feature of terrorising your audience is the authors taut psychological control over the information which is administered gradually. What prevents Hawksmoor from being a great read as opposed to the `I-cannot-get-sleep-until-I finish-the-last-chapter' tension elicited by Stephen Kings' better horrors is the structural weakness of alternating actions between centuries. By the time we come round to the actions of Sir Nicolas Hawksmoor or Detective Hawksmoor, my interest has waned; that, in a gothic genre, is fatal.
The other cardinal rule of the gothic is that we are fascinated by the central character. Here, we do have character that is truly intriguing , morally repugnant and spiritually suspect in the form of Sir Nic. whose architecture is incredibly sinister (even in daylight.) However, human sacrifices aside, he does not have the power to really chill you. Detective Hawksmoor (the other central protagonist) is simply two-dimensional.
Hawksmoor on the whole is a missed opportunity because the central metaphysical premise to the novel is very powerful and could have evoked more potently the deep-rooted human anxieties of predestination. Hawksmoor, like present day London, can , in turns thrill with the dark history of its past whilst you meander in the pedestrian banality of its present.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I came to this book via Iain Sinclair who I came to via JG Ballard. The book was first as I expected: a creepy look at the Hawksmoor's churches with the satanic undertones suggested in Sinclair's Lud Heat. The atmosphere is superb, both in the 18th century parts and '50's parts. There's a clever parallel between Dyer and Hawksmoor suggesting the lingering of unresolved evil. However this book bored me a great deal. It takes ages to get going. It's a short book at just over 200 pages but should have been condensed to a short story. In the end I was glad to have finished it. It does, however, change the way you walk past London churches...
34 of 37 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a dark and skilfully-woven book that held me in thrall and then ended so abruptly that it felt as if the power had been cut. Hawksmoor was ahead of its time, playfully flaunting literary devices that are almost cinematic and have since become widely used. For instance, the narrative flashes backwards and forwards in time, and strange resonances accumulate until past and future become entwined. Words and phrases leap across centuries, and characters overlap in life and death in a chilling and macabre dance.
Much of the narrative is delivered in first person by Nick Dyer, acolyte of Sir Christopher Wren and practitioner of satanic arts. Ackroyd serves up with relish the foul deeds and alarming inner thoughts of Dyer, whose churches rise up as temples of darkness alongside contemporary works that are designed to celebrate enlightenment, science and engineering.
Ackroyd so immersed himself in 17th-century English (he claims to have read over 200 books from that time while researching, or perhaps rehearsing, Hawksmoor) that Dyer's first-person narrative is credible, readable and well-paced.
If you are new to Ackroyd, start here. If not, be prepared to find a black and elliptical side to him that might surprise you.
Much of the narrative is delivered in first person by Nick Dyer, acolyte of Sir Christopher Wren and practitioner of satanic arts. Ackroyd serves up with relish the foul deeds and alarming inner thoughts of Dyer, whose churches rise up as temples of darkness alongside contemporary works that are designed to celebrate enlightenment, science and engineering.
Ackroyd so immersed himself in 17th-century English (he claims to have read over 200 books from that time while researching, or perhaps rehearsing, Hawksmoor) that Dyer's first-person narrative is credible, readable and well-paced.
If you are new to Ackroyd, start here. If not, be prepared to find a black and elliptical side to him that might surprise you.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Atmospheric !
The thing about Peter Ackroyd's books is that they are very atomospheric they really take you to that place & time ,this book does this in spades ,blending fact & fiction past &... Read more
Published 8 months ago by D. S. Sample
The Great Architect's hand stretches out ...
I first read 'Hawksmoor' just over twenty years ago and I've come back to it several times since then, finding it gripping each and every time. Read more
Published on 7 Oct 2009 by Brian Flange
Mysterious and stimulating...
Memorable: moments of brilliance balanced with the more mediocre. The 'moments of brilliance' are, however, incredible. Read more
Published on 4 Sep 2009 by Ms. N. J. Dixon
Not one for the lily-livered or hidebound by custom
I would say this is one of the best works of fiction by an English writer in the past 50 years. It fills me with joy that a lot of people found it a tiresome read or convoluted or... Read more
Published on 4 Sep 2009 by Real Name
Never forget the most crucial part of any plot is the finale
Like another reviewer, I bought this book back in 1985, struggled with it and never got to the half way point. I recently decided to give it another bash. Was it worth it? Read more
Published on 17 Jun 2009 by S. Thompson
Never ending story
"There is no light without darknessse and no substance without shaddowe," declares a seventeenth century narrator in Peter Ackroyd's peculiar story of psychogeorgraphy. Read more
Published on 27 April 2009 by The Big Pink One
incredibly good
Peter Ackroyd doesn't write 'easy' books (when I say 'easy' books I'm thinking of Bernard Cornwell, George MacDonald Fraser and so on, who have their merits too off course). Read more
Published on 8 Oct 2007 by Didier
A literary time machine
This book is a gem. It won both the Whitbread Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize.
Set in 17th century London, the novel centres around Dyer, a non-fictitious... Read more
Set in 17th century London, the novel centres around Dyer, a non-fictitious... Read more
Published on 29 July 2007 by Phoebus
A tiresome read
A predictable plot that trundles along before coming to a blessed end. The endless "echoes" between the ages, presumably meant to be ingenious, are merely tiresome. Read more
Published on 25 April 2007 by R Crane
the plot gets buried with the corpses...
Having heard of the glowing reviews for this book I bought it eagerly and soon got a good way in. My interest in it waned however as the storyline started to resemble any number of... Read more
Published on 2 Mar 2006 by Book Ed
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