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Hawksmoor (Paperback)

by Peter Ackroyd (Author) "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..." (more)
3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
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Product details

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin; New Ed edition (26 Sep 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0140171134
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140171136
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 1.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 22,674 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #5 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > A > Ackroyd, Peter

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Product Description

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... Combining thriller, ghost story and metaphysical tract, Hawksmoor won the Whitbread Book Award and Guardian Fiction Prize in 1985.

About the Author
Novelist, biographer and poet Peter Ackroyd was born in London on 5 October 1949. He won the duplex Whitbread Novel prize and Guardian Fiction Prize for his novel Hawksmoor in 1988.
Inside This Book (Learn More)
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
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Hawksmoor
84% buy the item featured on this page:
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Customer Reviews

14 Reviews
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 (4)
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 (1)
3 star:
 (4)
2 star:
 (5)
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Average Customer Review
3.3 out of 5 stars (14 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Never ending story, 27 April 2009
"There is no light without darknessse and no substance without shaddowe," declares a seventeenth century narrator in Peter Ackroyd's peculiar story of psychogeorgraphy. Time and space amalgamate, and the tale of Nicholas Dyer, a fictional baroque architect constructing churches that were actually built by Nicholas Hawksmoor, becomes entwined with the story of a modern day detective investigating a series of murders that have taken place in the same churches. That detective is named Nicholas Hawksmoor. Confused? You will be. Peter Ackroyd's alternative world is completely bonkers, and while I sense he is trying to make a serious point about the relationship between the past and the present, and the enduring qualities of London geography, I feel that this isn't particularly well suited to the medium of a detective story. The seventeenth century story is written with the style and the vocabulary of the period, which makes the novel atmospheric but difficult. A writer who demands such an effort from a reader should provide a greater reward, but there is little to delight or excite in Hawksmoor. The novel has one redeeming characteristic - it is completely unusual. Bonkers, but unusual.
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28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Dark and beautifully crafted, 23 Jan 2004
By Timothy De Ferrars (France) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
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.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Better than LONDON, 20 Mar 2001
By A Customer
I read this after LONDON, A BIOGRAPHY and I must say right away that it is by far and away a better book at every possible level -- better written, better imagined and better balanced! I have read Moorcock's MOTHER LONDON and Sinclair's DOWN RIVER and while this doesn't have their scope, it has some of their depth. Ackroyd's work sometimes seems a bit schematic, with an echo of the academic about it and his novels often don't ever seem to get beyond a bit of theory, but I would recommend this novel to everyone. While it's well-known that Lud Heat by Sinclair was the inspiration of Hawksmoor, Ackroyd's common touch make his book far more accessible than Sinclair's. It would make a superb movie and I'm really surprised some film director hasn't jumped on it with cries of joy. It wouldn't cost that much to make, either! JB
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars 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. Read more
Published 22 days ago by S. Thompson

2.0 out of 5 stars great atmosphere but boring
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... Read more
Published 12 months ago by B. D. Hopkins

4.0 out of 5 stars 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 21 months ago by Didier

3.0 out of 5 stars I wandr'd the Dark Streets of London...
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... Read more
Published 23 months ago by A. Durnion

5.0 out of 5 stars 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
Published 23 months ago by Phoebus

2.0 out of 5 stars 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

3.0 out of 5 stars 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... Read more
Published on 2 Mar 2006 by caverner

2.0 out of 5 stars A Struggle to read
I read the House of Doctor Dee and thought it was fascinating. This is rather like wading through a quagmire. Read more
Published on 27 Oct 2005 by A. Gordon

2.0 out of 5 stars It may have made him, but Ackroyd's done better than this.
An affirmed Peter Ackroyd fan, I came to Hawksmoor only recently, having devoured many of his novels and non-fiction. Read more
Published on 29 Nov 2001 by J. Burgess

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark and disturbing creation of an hallucinatory London
This is the fourth Ackroyd novel I have read this year. I have not yet finished it as I write, but think it the best of them, though this may be because I am being pulled deeper... Read more
Published on 8 Oct 1999

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