One rainy night in 1809, a coach pulls up to a vacant country house in Somerset, discharging a badly injured man. Nell, the housekeeper, can’t tell whether it’s John Lacroix, master of the house, for he possesses few recognizable clothes or belongings, and facial hair and wounds obscure his features.

However, Nell tends him; and yes, it’s John, an officer of hussars returned from a disastrous campaign in Corunna, Spain, against Napoleon. John slowly recovers from his physical wounds, pleasing Nell and his beloved sister, Lucy, but he’s emotionally out of sorts and refuses to speak of his war. And when a comrade visits to urge him to heal quickly and return to his regiment, John decides to travel instead and settles on Scotland as a destination. He’ll look for an island where he may find solitude and solace, though how he envisions those qualities remains vague, even to himself.

Meanwhile, two men have been sent, unofficially yet on high authority, to hunt him. Why they’ve targeted John is unclear, at first. All you know is that one of his seekers, Calley, is as vicious a brute as any who’s ever drawn breath. On sighting a man he’s never met, for example, he measures up the newcomer to guess whether he’d be his equal in a brawl. It’s Calley against the world, and he’ll come out swinging.

This brilliant, delicately written thriller has to do with a manhunt, obviously, but offers a significant twist. John’s hunting himself too, though he doesn’t know that yet, trying to figure out who he is. His entire life, he’s accepted a given version of himself and can’t see its constraints.

Instinctively, he turns away from questions, especially the existential kind. But on his travels, he meets Emily, a freethinking woman who’s going blind, yet sees what he can’t (a lovely touch). As he learns to trust her, he opens himself up to insight and reflection — which is all very well, but two men are trailing him.

To call a thriller “delicate” may sound strange, especially considering that this one, like many, portrays its share of violence. Yet the adjective fits. Miller’s is a subtle hand; he shows just about everything, letting you infer from his beautiful, lucid prose all you need to know while keeping John and Emily less open to themselves than to the reader. That’s extraordinary storytelling.

Like a house assembled by artisans who take pride in details that few visitors or even residents would ever notice, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free reflects the author’s dedication to moments small and large, characters major or minor. Nell, the housekeeper, has an inner life, as does John’s sister, Lucy, though neither plays a lengthy role. Such loving attention extends even to characters with whom our protagonist never even interacts.

Also impressive, and what few authors succeed at, the villain has his due. Calley’s thoroughly repugnant, yet you glimpse the kind of life he’s had, and why he might have surrendered to his crueler instincts — all of it suggested, never announced.

Andrew Miller has written a splendid story that’s at once a page-turning novel of suspense and an inquiry into what defines freedom. ( )

Now We Shall Be Entirely Free is my first online review of a novel by English author Andrew Miller, but it's not the first I've read. I was impressed by the thoughtful treatment of complex issues in Oxygen (2001) and The Optimists (2005) but (because I confused him with A.D. Miller who wrote the rather tawdry Snowdrops) I did not seek out Pure (2011), which won the Costa Book of the Year. I bought Now We Shall Be Entirely Free (2018) because of the buzz around Miller's visit to Australia for the Perth Writers Festival in 2019. (He just scraped in before the Covid border restrictions!)

Miller revisits the issue of atrocities in warfare from The Optimists but from a different angle. The Optimists deals with a traumatised photojournalist on a quest for the perpetrator of a massacre in a place not unlike Rwanda, and the issue explored is not vengeance but rather how a witness to an atrocity can come to terms with what he has seen. Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, however, can be dated to 1809 by a reference to Haydn's recent death in Vienna, and it traces the vengeful pursuit of an officer present at the British army's retreat from Spain at Corunna during the Napoleonic Wars. Military discipline had #understatement broken down leading to an atrocity not unlike the notorious German reprisals on villages during WW2. The presiding authority at an enquiry by the British Army comes to the conclusion that in the chaos of the retreat the men were pushed beyond their limits, and...

After all, it is not as if such things are unknown. No ancient and honourable institution without its ancient and honourable crimes. (p.70)

However, the Spanish have been humiliated and in the interests of diplomacy and to maintain Spain's alliance with the British against the French, a covert decision to pursue a scapegoat is made. The central character John Lacroix was the senior officer present at the atrocity, though his actions are not revealed until the end of the novel. He is to be the sacrificial lamb in an illegal and unofficial extrajudicial killing for political purposes.

Though the reader always knows that the manhunt is immoral, for nearly all of this gripping story, she does not know whether Lacroix is culpable or not. But there is a clue in his name. Lacroix (of French origin) means the cross, an allusion to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ — a sacrificial lamb bringing redemption to sinners.

The title of this novel is an undercurrent throughout the novel, which creates a tension between the contrasting characters. Can anyone be 'entirely free' of obligations, loyalties, duty, responsibilities, or culpability?

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/12/28/now-we-shall-be-entirely-free-2018-by-andrew... ( )

John Lacroix is bundled home from the war in Spain, mostly senseless, before Nell the housekeeper nurses him back to something resembling health. But the army wants him back before he's ready to think about it, so he set out to Scotland with a vague plan of following his father's interest in old songs. But unknown to him, there are two men after him, after the army has found him guilty of a devastation of a village and its women.

The book kept surprising me all the way through. ( )

What I most admire about Andrew Miller is the way he seamlessly incorporates historical setting and events into his narrative without drawing attention to it and thereby spoiling the story. I find this especially noticeable after recently finishing Jennifer Egan's "Manhattan Beach", a story which sometimes seems to exist in order to justify the research for the novel. With Miller it is the opposite: the historical research supports the story, not vice versa. Additionally, the intimate touches, the close attention to detail, and the actual texture of the times are effortlessly rendered. This is how historical fiction should look.

The actual plot leaves a little to be desired, but not much. It could have been tighter, it could have been more hard driving, but it works. This is a gem of a book. ( )

I don’t know why I didn’t like this book much more than I actually did. It is beautifully written, and tells a cleverly constructed story, but somehow, it never quite came alive for me.

It tells the story of Captain John Lacroix, who returns injured following military service in Spain during the Napoleonic War. He is certainly in a bad way, and takes many days after his ignominious return home (more or less dumped, unconscious, out of a horse-drawn carriage) before he is well enough to walk unaided. He is also reluctant to talk about his experiences, even with a former colleague who calls on him some weeks into his recovery, and brusquely declines to enter into any discussion about when, or even whether, he might return to service. As his strength returns, Lacroix, resolves to visit the Scottish Hebrides, as a form of convalescence and an attempt to restore his equanimity.

Meanwhile, in Spain, a joint Anglo-Spanish commission is reviewing an apparent atrocity in a Spanish village. The men from the village were killed, while the women and girls were captured and raped. One of the witnesses who testifies to the Commission is Corporal Calley, and he is secretly despatched to return to England, accompanied by a Spanish officer, to locate, and then kill, the officer who presided over the outrage, to render punishment while also preventing news of the incident spreading more widely.

Miller has an effective and clear prose style, and has clearly researched the period in great detail, conveying much of the rage, squalor and despair that his characters suffer. His characters are vividly drawn too … and yet, somehow, the book left me cold. Perhaps I am just very difficult to please, or perhaps I was just somehow out of sorts when I read it. ( )