Miller hat einen ganz wunderbaren Historischen Roman geschrieben, der vor allem durch seine kunstvoll gesetzten Auslassungen, Leerstellen, Perspektiv-, Orts- und Zeitwechsel besticht und den Leser in eine nicht nachlassende Grundspannung versetzt. I'll quote from Johanna Thomas-Corr review in The Guardian: the fact it’s not made this year’s Man Booker longlist is already something of a travesty. If you have ever been to any of the islands you'll know what I mean when I say it's impossible not to be affected by the beauty all around. The antagonist, the 'baddie' however comes across purely as an ugly villain, a vicious man from the gutter with no saving graces. A brilliantly told historical fiction novel, with rich characters and a wonderful plot - such tensely dramatic moments!

Miller’s new novel, “Now We Shall Be Entirely Free,” seems bent on defying convention and expectations, and deploys the Mantel magic only intermittently. Then she stood a while in the odd grey light of the snow, looking at the soft confusion of footprints by the door of the house.While fighting in Spain, it eventually becomes apparent, he was witness to a My Lai-like massacre carried out by frightened, starving British troops against the small Spanish village of Morales. I don't read a whole lot of historical fiction, but something about the plot description of this one really appealed to me, and I'm so glad I got to read this memorable story. There were a couple of twists in the plot that I did not expect, and that is always good…it’s not good if the overall plot and ending is predictable in a novel of 410 pages. Eventually he arrives at a remote island in the Hebrides where he is given shelter by the Frend family, comprising Emily, her sister Jane, and their brother Cornelius.

It has been followed by Casanova , Oxygen , which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 2001, The Optimists , One Morning Like a Bird , Pure , which won the Costa Book of the Year Award 2011, The Crossing , Now We Shall Be Entirely Free and The Slowworm's Song . when business was brisk,” and explains to his companion about “the creeler, the gaffer, the carding room. The thriller nonsense that unspools from this plotline is relatively engaging, but I’m not sure this element of suspense was entirely necessary to keep me reading. There are some tense and frustrating moments in the book, but then the tension faded and the story started to waver as it approached its climax.

Sightseers would fly to the islands from London, drop anchor in a spot like this, swarm around with their sketch books, then up a ladder again and off to … Iceland. Warlight is the only one I didn’t appreciate (I found it beautifully written at the level of its sentences but somehow also extremely boring); the other two I’d read before were very good, and Now We Shall Be Entirely Free is excellent. One passage that especially sticks in my mind is from a scene in which two characters finally come together in an act of intimacy. Ultimately, this is a book about the horrors of war, and what it does to the humans who are involved in it. Through a combination of threats and violent assaults, he inexorably makes his way towards Lacroix’s new idyll.