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A review by tombomp
The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers
Did not finish book. Stopped at 33%.
Got a third of the way through, about 130 pages. I might come back to this, I might not. Maybe I'm just feeling very irritated by books or something. On the face of it this seems right up my street - based on an obscure historical event, cusp of the Industrial Revolution, class politics, well depicted fascinating landscape - but I just feel frustrated at this point. The one truly positive thing I will say is his descriptive writing is clever. I liked the heavy use of alliteration. There's definitely a mood, an image, being presented at all times.
On the other hand... it just feels like so far it mostly shies away from any interest, for me. There's a lot of people, but I don't get any sense of any of them. The coiner gang is portrayed as brutal and stupid. OK, you don't have to run a story about them being working class heroes or whatever, but it feels like he's not even interested in them being smart. "King" David Hartley is just presented as a violent thug, with no sign of what's so good about his plan, no sign of his supposed "charisma". The gang just forms and follows him for no obvious reason. How does the coin forging work? They find a mysterious wandering "magician" who did a trick levitating a dog (???) which apparently makes him perfect for forging coins. He talks in riddles. David Hartley also talks in pseudo-pagan natural world mysticism for some reason. He has a scene where he sexually assaults someone by wanking him off and then gets a bit telling the reader about how he didn't do that and he's very homophobic and hates gay people. Oh yeah, there's a typical third person narrative and then interspersed are bits of first person narrative written in phonetic spelling that are presumably in-narrative intended to glorify him but it doesn't work that way for us as readers.
And it intersects with a minor issue I always have with historical fiction, especially when it's presenting one specific event: how much of this has any basis in what we know? If the sources are biased against the gang, why did you just reproduce that? Is there a legend about them as local heroes that he felt he especially needed to puncture?
Overall it just feels really dull. I'm 1/3 in and barely anything has happened (a couple of antagonists have appeared for like, 5 pages), I don't know personalities, only the vague sense of the social system, I don't know what they're doing with the clipped coins or how their plan works, I don't know why the guy lives in a hovel despite presumably making a mint on his coin scheme... there's just nothing to grip on to. Maybe I'm being a dickhead, maybe I'm expecting too much, maybe I'm in a bad mood... just, decent prose doesn't hold me alone
On the other hand... it just feels like so far it mostly shies away from any interest, for me. There's a lot of people, but I don't get any sense of any of them. The coiner gang is portrayed as brutal and stupid. OK, you don't have to run a story about them being working class heroes or whatever, but it feels like he's not even interested in them being smart. "King" David Hartley is just presented as a violent thug, with no sign of what's so good about his plan, no sign of his supposed "charisma". The gang just forms and follows him for no obvious reason. How does the coin forging work? They find a mysterious wandering "magician" who did a trick levitating a dog (???) which apparently makes him perfect for forging coins. He talks in riddles. David Hartley also talks in pseudo-pagan natural world mysticism for some reason. He has a scene where he sexually assaults someone by wanking him off and then gets a bit telling the reader about how he didn't do that and he's very homophobic and hates gay people. Oh yeah, there's a typical third person narrative and then interspersed are bits of first person narrative written in phonetic spelling that are presumably in-narrative intended to glorify him but it doesn't work that way for us as readers.
And it intersects with a minor issue I always have with historical fiction, especially when it's presenting one specific event: how much of this has any basis in what we know? If the sources are biased against the gang, why did you just reproduce that? Is there a legend about them as local heroes that he felt he especially needed to puncture?
Overall it just feels really dull. I'm 1/3 in and barely anything has happened (a couple of antagonists have appeared for like, 5 pages), I don't know personalities, only the vague sense of the social system, I don't know what they're doing with the clipped coins or how their plan works, I don't know why the guy lives in a hovel despite presumably making a mint on his coin scheme... there's just nothing to grip on to. Maybe I'm being a dickhead, maybe I'm expecting too much, maybe I'm in a bad mood... just, decent prose doesn't hold me alone