Havoc, in Its Third Year: A Novel

I read this book while on holiday, and as a testimony its power: although I was in Québec, in the 21st century, and in the best of moods (who isn't, at the beginning of a month of holidays?) I felt immediately transported to the north of England in the heydays of Puritanism, and gripped by the dark picture Bennett paints about the human condition. What happens to John Brigge is not a 'new' story, but I've seldom seen it so powerfully told.The setting is bleak and harsh (a city in the north of England in wintertime, at an unspecified time somewhere in the 17th century), and befits the story and the characters. John Brigge, as coroner, is one of the city's councillors and, though he would have preferred to live simply on his farm he has reluctantly joined the council, and now fulfills his obligations and duties as best he can. But when he is called upon to convict an Irishwoman accused of killing her baby, he cannot but admit to himself that the evidence is poor and, although pressured by the others councillors, he refuses to convict her and goes in search of a missing witness. Little by little, as he continues his investigation and probes deeper and deeper into the case, he comes to realize his fellow councillors, especially 'the Master', are perhaps worse than the 'tyrant' they overthrew a couple of years earlier.Soon John Brigge is isolated, and must face the choice between following his conscience (and in the process alienating the other councillors even more) or convicting an innocent woman. And though John Brigge did not set out to oppose anyone and had no other purpose than see justice done, the Master spells it out clearly for him: there is no middle ground, if you are not with us you are against us. So, in the space of just a few months, John Brigge sees all he holds dear crumbling before his very eyes and must come to terms with some harsh truths: friends turn out to be turncoats, the sort of vagrants he used to despise demonstrate far greater moral integrity than the city councillors, his own apprentice whom he tried to teach humility and gentleness becomes a puritan fanatic... And in the midst of all this John's wife is about to give birth to their first child.As I said in the beginning, this is one of the most powerful books I've read in years. Bennett writes in a very sparse style, but nonetheless in this one style knows how to convey both the grim, fanatic puritanism of the city councillors as the overwhelming love John Brigge feels for his firstborn son and wife.A beautiful, very moving book.

a moving intense .. historical novel .. with at its heart a family in danger .. dreamlike sequences in the latter part .. the 'hero ' a man of great integrity .. I read it quickly .. I enjoyed it

I enjoyed this for the insight into the period. The main character annoyed me with his blinkered, holier than thou, though well meaning and caring view which means it got me involved. The second half fizzled out and became a bit predictable, but I guess that's how life was then.Its almost a parable about the effects of religious zeal, an Animal Farm for religion. Its easy to draw parallels with recent events.

I don't usually read historical fiction, but this is excellent. A political book, which considers the role religious idealism and a sense of moral certainty can have in destroying the lives of naive people who think they can shelter from the gathering storm. It has more that a degree of contemporary relevance.

Great

I love this period in history - have countless books on the Tudors and Stuarts but this is most definitely not one of my faves. It's all a little bit silly really. I didn't find any of the characters or how they reacted with each other particularly believable. It almost descended into farce on a number of occasions and therefore - a very rare thing for me - I almost gave up on the book.

Excellent.

Seventeenth-century Yorkshireman John Brigge has enough troubles keeping his sheep-farm going and worrying about the well-being of his family, but is regularly dragged into local politics by his positions as coroner and as a town governor. The other governors, moreover, have alienated the townspeople by their increasingly extreme and unforgiving puritanism, and are now turning on each other; and Brigge himself is vulnerable because he is a Catholic. But in his work as a coroner, he comes across a case that might fatally damage his principal enemy…This book, with its great use of archaic words and phrases, really got me deep into a feeling of the period: its primitiveness, superstition, savagery and millenarianism. And it changed my view of the period: I’d always thought of the Puritans as basically or ultimately the good guys, but it made me understand how they could so easily make themselves so unpopular. What a choice for the people of the time: an immoral aristocracy or controlling and fixated Calvinists. God preserve them!