Skip to main content

Sparrow by James Hynes: book review


 


Sparrow by James Hynes (2023) is set in ancient times at the end of the Roman Empire. 

Jacob is the last survivor of an abandoned British-run Roman fishing town, Carthago Nova, on the Spanish coast. He wants to set down his history before he dies along with the dying empire. He promises the reader that he won’t lie, but because he is ‘just another author no one will ever remember’, and this is just another book that changes nothing’ he creates his own identity: the Sparrow.

He begins as a child in his mother Euterpe’s kitchen and herb-garden, before he moves into the tavern and the rooms upstairs. His life is of poverty in a town of rich markets, temples, taverns, and mansions. But life is changing – the city’s religion is changing. The city is transforming from pagan rituals to new moral codes and the basis of Christianity. The emporers of the city are twin boys Romulus ad Remus. Romulus had big plans for a city called Rome but Remus made fun of him and was killed for it. Romulus rules the city.

The Sparrow’s life is not an easy. It is a life of suffering, beating, begging, and murder. The city is brutal and lawless. The one thing he is grateful for is his mother’s stories about the world beyond the garden wall. He, the Sparrow, hopes that some day he will fly away from this life.

Sparrow as a boy is a slave, fetching water and shopping, but he can read. His father, before he was killed, tried to teach Sparrow everything: reading, poetry, and philosophy. 

As a man, Sparrow now calls himself Jacob – longing to be a free man. ‘I have the freedom of the unremarkable, the powerless, and the insignifcant … I am the last Roman, the emperor of junk,’ he says. Is he doomed forever to be a slave? 

This is not a work of history – it is a work of fiction. It is about power, loss of power, freedom and loss of freedom. It is a long and unpleasant read where mythology and fiction are indistinguishable. 







 

MARTINA NICOLLS

MartinaNicollsWebsite

Rainy Day Healing

Martinasblogs  

Publications

Facebook

Paris Website

Paris blogs

Animal Website

Flower Website

Global Gentlemanliness

SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES 


MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author  of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce  (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pir-E-Kamil - The Perfect Mentor by Umera Ahmed: book review

The Perfect Mentor pbuh  (2011) is set in Lahore and Islamabad in Pakistan. The novel commences with Imama Mubeen in medical university. She wants to be an eye specialist. Her parents have arranged for her to marry her first cousin Asjad. Salar Sikander, her neighbour, is 18 years old with an IQ of 150+ and a photographic memory. He has long hair tied in a ponytail. He imbibes alcohol, treats women disrespectfully and is generally a “weird chap” and a rude, belligerent teenager. In the past three years he has tried to commit suicide three times. He tries again. Imama and her brother, Waseem, answer the servant’s call to help Salar. They stop the bleeding from his wrist and save his life. Imama and Asjad have been engaged for three years, because she wants to finish her studies first. Imama is really delaying her marriage to Asjad because she loves Jalal Ansar. She proposes to him and he says yes. But he knows his parents won’t agree, nor will Imama’s parents. That
1 comment
Read more

Flaws in the Glass, a self-portrait by Patrick White: book review

The manuscript, Flaws in the Glass (1981), is Patrick Victor Martindale White’s autobiography. White, born in 1912 in England, migrated to Sydney, Australia, when he was six months old. For three years, at the age of 20, he studied French and German literature at King’s College at the University of Cambridge in England. Throughout his life, he published 12 novels. In 1957 he won the inaugural Miles Franklin Literary Award for Voss, published in 1956. In 1961, Riders in the Chariot became a best-seller, winning the Miles Franklin Literary Award. In 1973, he was the first Australian author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for The Eye of the Storm, despite many critics describing his works as ‘un-Australian’ and himself as ‘Australia’s most unreadable novelist.’ In 1979, The Twyborn Affair was short-listed for the Booker Prize, but he withdrew it from the competition to give younger writers the opportunity to win the award. His autobiography, Flaws in the Glass
Post a Comment
Read more

The Beggars' Strike by Aminata Sow Fall: book review

The Beggar’sStrike (1979 in French and 1981 in English) is set in an unstated country in West Africa in a city known only as The Capital. Undoubtedly, Senegalese author Sow Fall writes of her own experiences. It was also encapsulated in the 2000 film, Battu , directed by Cheick Oumar Sissoko from Mali. Mour Ndiaye is the Director of the Department of Public Health and Hygiene, with the opportunity of a distinguished and coveted promotion to Vice-President of the Republic. Tourism has declined and the government blames the local beggars in The Capital. Ndiaye must rid the streets of beggars, according to a decree from the Minister. Ndiaye instructs his department to carry out weekly raids. One of the raids leads to the death of lame beggar, Madiabel, who ran into an oncoming vehicle as he tried to escape, leaving two wives and eight children. Soon after, another raid resulted in the death of the old well-loved, comic beggar Papa Gorgui Diop. Enough is enou
8 comments
Read more