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A Novel
by Francis Spufford
Book Reviewed by:A spellbinding tale about an ambitious young woman who must thwart an occult plot by time-traveling fascists during the chaos of the London Blitz—from "one of our most powerful writers of wayward historical fiction" (The Washington Post).
Following the acclaim of his previous novels Golden Hill and Cahokia Jazz, Francis Spufford delivers a masterpiece of literary fantasy, hailed by Joe Hill as "a book that scoops up all the wonder and hope and pleasure of the Narnia novels, and pours it into a story for grown-ups."
It's the summer of 1939, and the air in London is thick with the tension of impending war. Iris Hawkins, a fiery young financial secretary, has a chance encounter with Geoff, a genius engineer from the new technology of television. What was supposed to be one night of abandon draws her instead into a nightmare of otherworldly pursuit—into a reality where time bends, spirits can be summoned, and history hangs by a thread.
Soon there are Nazi planes droning overhead. In a time when death falls randomly from above each night, when the streets are darker than the wildest forest and all the men are away in uniform, the defense of the city is in the hands of its women. But Iris has more to contend with than just the terrors of the Blitz. Over the rooftops of burning London, in the twisted passages between past and present, through the vast night sky and across the tiny screens of early television, a fascist fanatic is travelling with a gun in her hand, and only Iris can stop her from altering the course of history forever.
Both a thrilling page-turner and a profound exploration of ambition, love, and the fight against tyranny, Nonesuch is a story that is as enchanting as it is urgent. Packed with twists, tension, and wonder, it is a triumph of storytelling.
PROLOGUE
The time to do it, if she was going to try something so mad at all, was in the gap between the closing of the office and the first checking of the blackout. Mr. Seaton, the air raid warden for the Mariner Building, worked in the insurance office on the second floor, and when he put on his tin hat at the end of the day and turned into the voice of authority, he liked to start from the ground and work upwards.
There ought to be a few minutes before he got up to the ninth floor. He was somewhere down by the feet of the immense statue of the sea-king that rose from bottom to top of the facade; she was up by its chin.
The other girls were putting on coats and hats and mufflers and leaving one by one. She had already gone through the whole routine of shutting down the teleprinter, but when Mr. Cornellis put his head around the door to turn off the light, she ducked down onto the floor behind the desk and pretended to be busy in the supply drawer.
"I'm just changing the ribbon for ...
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (6/4/2026)
...ignificance that is associated with trees. But for repression in ownership, Black Americans would likely be leaders in our agro-economy. NOW READING: Nonesuch by Francis Spufford. Marketed as fantasy this spellbinding novel takes a look at an alternative WWII London where there are dark and mysterious happenings. Mother Mary C...
-Anne_Glasgow
Iris Hawkins is a financial secretary in London with quite enough to worry about. The Nazis have just invaded Poland, and the bustling city is subsumed with blackouts, air raid sirens, and the sense that things are about to get much worse. But after a hookup with a young man named Geoff (who works in the nascent medium of television), she's pursued by a monstrous figure made of old newspaper. From there, Iris is drawn into the world of the occult, where she must stop a fascist plot to rewrite history. But Nonesuch also concerns itself with the minutiae of living in this very interesting place at this very interesting time. Iris's journeys on the London Underground are lovingly plotted from station to station; her work at a stock brokerage is complicated by a barrage of wartime regulations; she navigates the realities of rationing, first only butter and sugar before the rest of the ration book's pages get filled out. At times, the pacing suffers as a result (the book is almost 500 pages, and feels a good hundred pages longer), but it's a pleasure to explore a bygone London—a more innocent London, one which hadn't yet been marred by German bombs...continued
Full Review
(566 words)
(Reviewed by Joe Hoeffner).
Kaliane Bradley, New York Times bestselling author of The Ministry of Time
What a joy! Bejewelled with dazzling prose, propulsive as a rocket, mandala-complex in its worldbuilding, and corkscrewing jubilantly through fantasy, history, romance, occultism, adventure, and the wartime Stock Exchange, Nonesuch is a novel with endless ingenuity and an enormous heart. Kelly Link, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Book of Love
Nonesuch salts actual history with the conventions of the fantastic in a way that thrills me, but by now that feels like a trademark of Spufford's writing. Here are the most interesting (and terrifying angels) since Madeline L'Engle, and the human characters, too, are so full of life and feeling they practically set fire to the pages as you turn them.
When Nonesuch begins, just before the invasion of Poland by the Nazis in the late summer of 1939, Geoffrey Hale is a technical wizard working for the BBC in the young medium of television. Although by this point residents of the United Kingdom only have about 20,000 TV sets all told, Geoff rhapsodizes about its capabilities. "It makes you feel like you're there," he says, "and not just in one place, either. It's a flow…a pack [of images] shuffled by television itself." Soon enough, Geoff has to leave the cozy confines of the BBC for Dunkirk, but it's a reminder to the reader of the progress and innovation that waits on the other side of the war.
The history of television actually began a century before the events of the novel. That...
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