You stand before something of this caliber, of this infinite and oh-much-appreciated majesty, like the monkeys at the beginning of "2001"--in full awe of the macabre monolith, black & Godly, for its monstrous magnetism & set of awful (...demonic?) implications.I LOVE THIS novel! It t makes my hair stand on end and goosebumps begin to form...This is avant garde, and nearer perfection than any novel in recent memory (I'd probably have to contend with Graham Greene's "Quiet American" or "End of the...

Things They Don’t Teach You in Architect School No 12 : once the foundations of your new church are dug, don’t forget your human sacrifice. Some kid around 8 to 12 is the best, but in a pinch, any old tramp will do.

As an architectural historian, Ackroyd's play with real characters and actual places is especially intriguing. The real 18th century architect Nicholas Hawksmoor becomes the fictitious Nicholas Dyer, heavily involved with the occult. Hawksmoor the architect (a favorite of mine and always on my "top ten", Hawksmoor's works are high on my bucket list of must see buildings) designed six London churches. Ackroyd has the fictional Dyer designing seven churches, the last one of which was conjured in m...

It seems like such a good idea, two timeline's interweaving, kind of a crime novel crossed with something like The Time Traveller's Wife with a bit of obscure Satanism thrown in for good measure. But, and I'm not sure if this was Ackroyd's intentions, it doesn't quite come off like that. In reality, or whatever world Ackroyd is writing about, it comes across as a split-personality disorder across the centuries. Don't get me wrong, for the right audience, it is completely worth digging through th...

Ackroyd is always at his best when he is writing about London. In many of his books, London is the main character, not so much a protagonist or antagonist but a present character all the same. This is true here. Hawksmoor is about a series of murders that are connected with the churches in London. The book soars when dealing with London, and the menace of the neighborhood, the life of Spitalfields is wonderfully illustrated. For all its briefness, it is a heavy book that talks a while to diges

I simply got stuck in this book and I'm not sure how much was me and how much was the book. Parts were interesting but parts seemed so labored. I really wanted to like it. Oh well. I may try this again in a few months and see if it hits me any differently. Til then, there are so many other things I want to read.

SUMMARY:Inspector Morse meets the Time Travellers Wife with a hint of Grand Designs. But without the actual in-plot benefits of inexplicable time travel, a love interest or Kevin McCloud. THE LONG-WINDED VERSION:Ah London, the Big Smoke, the Great Wen, the sunken, scum-ridden, grease-spotted, pitted underbelly of the Old World. New York is referred to as the Big Apple, which implies shiny, fresh-ripened juiciness. If London was a fruit it would probably be that odd-looking stinky one that comes

This tale of the merged identities of a 17th century London architect and a contemporary police detective is wracked with darkness and terror. Few novels have ever had such a smashing impact on me, leaving me close to collapse. Magnificent style by Ackroyd (as always) but not offset by his often too-cleverness. It won major awards, then seems to have been largely forgotten. Come on, lads, lets not let it get away.

A question asked in order to create a dramatic effect is known as a rhetorical question…‘And so the facts don’t mean much until you have interpreted them?’The task of a writer is to interpret the facts. Peter Ackroyd is a master of dark interpretations of history and his Hawksmoor is one of such eisegeses establishing the murky and murderous rapport between the past and the present.Do cathedrals – houses of God – serve the living or do they glorify the dead? The Night was far advanc’d, and the C...

If this was a movie, this is what most likely what your experience of watching it will be.It opens with a dark, ancient-looking world, so you begin with a quiver of excitement. Actually, it'll be London, in the early 18th century. The characters, and the way they speak, look and sound queer (on paper, its a very old english with lots of weird spellings and words with their first letters capitalized, like : "There is no Light without Darknesse and no Substance without Shaddowe..."). Sort of where...

I first read this when I was still in college, in a copy borrowed from the British Library. It seemed brilliant and just a little obscure back then, and my impression hasn't changed much. Ackroyd weaves a complex web of allusions and resonances that propel a tale of two oddly parallel lives in London in the 18th century and the 20th century. It's the story of how 7 churches in London were secretly constructed on occult principles as focuses for dark energies; the result seems to be a sort of war...

So the blurb on the back of the book had almost zero to do with the plot, which involves the Plague and the Great Fire of London, and an 18th century Satan-worshiping church builder who sacrifices children, and mysterious present day murders at those churches which may or may not be being perpetrated by a ghost... it's a deeply weird book. It's also one of those books that was clearly written for other writers. He's put together the narrative like a piece of old-fashioned clockwork, and it's bre...

There's bodies decomposing in containers tonightIn an abandoned building whereA squatter's made a mural of a Mexican girlWith fifteen cans of spray paint and a chemical swirlShe's standing in the ashes at the end of the worldFour winds blowing through her hair—"Four Winds", Bright Eyes, Cassadaga (2007)What a strange, subtly troubling, idiosyncratic novel this was—not my first by Ackroyd, but the others (The House of Doctor Dee, The Trial of Elizabeth Cree, English Music, good books all) were re...

One has to admire Peter Ackroyd for not following the easy path. A book which has devil worship, murder and old London landmarks seems almost tailor-made for the Dan Brown crowd (okay, this was published long before Brown became a sensation, but on paper it would look a dream for any PR department), but then he goes and writes the first chapter – and, indeed, every odd numbered chapter – in daunting 1700’s English. “And so let us beginne, and, as the Fabrick takes its Shape in front of you, alwa...

What an amazing book! Profound, intriguing, emotionally heart-felt, disturbing. Everything you could want out of book. Which is to say - an incredible novel... but not for everyone.Reading HAWKSMOOR heartily rang the area of my aesthetic bells that J.G. Ballard or Steven Millhauser also chime - and I can distinctly remember being dismayed by reviews on Goodreads that dismissed those authors with "unlikeable characters", "too cold", "too British", "too removed" or, in Millhauser's case "more inte...

You wouldn't think that an old-fashioned way of writing, as in the odd-numbered chapters of this book, could put me off. I mean, I've learnt Anglo-Saxon and Old Icelandic, and Middle English is easier for me than a post-modern novel. Oddly enough, though, this has been called a post-modern novel (though the author, apparently, somewhat disagrees), so maybe that's why.Actually, though I found those sections off-putting, I found them better written and more interesting than the modern sections. I'...

A Sinister, Complex Portrait of Occultism, Architecture, Murder, Rationalism, and the Endless Permutations of Human Behavior Linking Past and PresentThis book is far too challenging, complex, and well-executed for me to butcher with a brief and clumsy review. Rather, I recommend that you pick it and give it a careful read. You will learn a great deal about 18th century London and the building of grand churches by Christopher Wren and his assistant Nicholas Dyer, Satanism and a rich melange of oc...

I suppose I picked this book because it had something to do with the architecture of Nicholas Hawksmoor, whose churches are scattered around London and have a very particular style: massive and unadorned. I had also read Mr Ackroyd is a great expert in London. The book turned out to be a crime novel, a fictional account very loosely based on Hawksmoor who is transformed here into one Nicholas Dyer, assistant to Sir Christopher Wren and troubled worshipper of the occult. He is at odds with the ne...

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Though this is a fairly short book at 217 pages, it is not an easy read, in part because the historical chapters are written in olde English which takes some getting used to. When I reached part two, I decided to stop and begin reading the book over again: I found I was understanding the language a bit better but I also realized there were coincidences across time to which I should be paying closer attention. I also wanted to acquaint myself with the actual historical events of the time period b...