Iris Hawkins knows what she wants. She wants a fun night with a man. She wants luxury. And she wants to be able to rise to the top of the stock market. Unfortunately for Iris, society in the London of 1940 frowns on fast girls like Iris. Society also doesn’t allow women to do much more than typing and filing while men make the big bucks on the stock exchange. Nothing daunted, Iris forges ahead as best she can until everything changes when Nazi Germany declares war. To make things even more interesting, Francis Spufford’s latest virtuosic ramble through history and money, Nonesuch, throws supernatural forces at our heroine along with German bombs and casual misogyny.
Iris’s careful plans for her life start to unravel on an emotional rollercoaster of a night. Her date is a blowhard who doesn’t like it when Iris has thoughts about the economy and the looming war. When she escapes with the female half of the double-date, Iris seduces a young man who is being treated poorly by a cruel woman—only to encounter the fallout of taking the young man’s virginity. It’s an awful lot. Iris is more than happy to retreat back into her regular life. She has no idea (and won’t for some months yet) that she made a serious enemy that night. She also doesn’t know that history is in danger of being twisted out of alignment by that same enemy, someone who will stop at nothing to seize power for themselves. Geoff, the young man Iris seduced, is none too pleased when he learns that he’s also wrapped up in whatever hornet’s nest Iris kicked up that night. He also very much wants things to go back to normal so that he can focus on being a soldier and technician for the BBC.
I would’ve been very happy with a purely historical story. I love a story about Britons facing down the Nazis. But the supernatural mystery and danger Spufford cooks up for Iris and Geoff fascinated me. (The only other book that compares is Tim Powers’s equally entralling novel, Declare.) Things get delightfully weird as Iris investigates a magical society that, unlike the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn1, for example, actually figured out how to manipulate the universe. Iris is a fairly selfish person in many ways, but I cheered for her as she found a bigger cause than herself to fight for. I also love a story in which an un-heroic character discovers hidden depths.
The only reason I didn’t give Nonesuch a full five stars is because it ends on a massive cliffhanger. This book is very much the first half of a bigger story.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
- Fun historical fact: In April 1900, Aleister Crowley and William Butler Yeats (among others) fought a magical duel (read: brawl) in the Battle of Blythe Road. ↩︎