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Ancestry
Beginning with his great-great-grandfather Abraham Block, acclaimed novelist Simon Mawer sifts through evidence like an archaeologist, piecing together the stories of his ancestors. Illiterate and lacking opportunity in the bleak Suffolk village where his parents worked as agricultural laborers, Abraham leaves home at fifteen, in 1847. He signs away the next five years in an indenture aboard a ship, which will circuitously lead him to London and well beyond, to far-flung ports on the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. In London he crosses paths with Naomi Lulham, a young seamstress likewise seeking a better life in the city, with all its prospects and temptations.
Another branch of the family tree comes together in 1847, in Manchester, as soldier George Mawer weds his Irish bride Ann Scanlon—Annie—before embarking with his regiment. When he is called to fight in the Crimean War, Annie must fend for herself and her children on a meager income, navigating an often hostile world as a woman alone.
With a keen eye and a nuanced consideration of the limits of what we can know about the past, Mawer paints a compelling, intimate portrait of life in the nineteenth century.
Another branch of the family tree comes together in 1847, in Manchester, as soldier George Mawer weds his Irish bride Ann Scanlon—Annie—before embarking with his regiment. When he is called to fight in the Crimean War, Annie must fend for herself and her children on a meager income, navigating an often hostile world as a woman alone.
With a keen eye and a nuanced consideration of the limits of what we can know about the past, Mawer paints a compelling, intimate portrait of life in the nineteenth century.
428 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 28, 2022
46 people are currently reading
752 people want to read
About the author
Simon Mawer
39 books340 followersSimon Mawer was a British author who lived in Italy.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 102 reviews
February 20, 2023
3.5 Stars <\b>
Ancestry: A Novel Is a very well written blend of Ancestral research and what the author imagines may have been the stories of his Ancestors from the records he found during his research.
I have a passion for All things Ancestry and history and have spent years researching my own family. It’s an amazing hobby that is so rewarding and interesting. So when I came across this book it really piqued my interest.
Simon Mawer has achieved a very cleverly constructed story of his ancestors with fact and fiction. It’s a moving story where women struggled at the hands of men and yet reared and provided for families under very trying circumstances. Every family has a story to tell and Simon Mawer’s family have led interesting lives. While I enjoyed the book for its research and story I am not sure how I would have reacted to this one had I not had a passion for Ancestry.
I do think the book could have been trimmed down quite a bit and while the Crimean war battles was very documented I did find it made for tedious reading. An interest and engaging story, just not one for my favourites shelf.
Ancestry: A Novel Is a very well written blend of Ancestral research and what the author imagines may have been the stories of his Ancestors from the records he found during his research.
I have a passion for All things Ancestry and history and have spent years researching my own family. It’s an amazing hobby that is so rewarding and interesting. So when I came across this book it really piqued my interest.
Simon Mawer has achieved a very cleverly constructed story of his ancestors with fact and fiction. It’s a moving story where women struggled at the hands of men and yet reared and provided for families under very trying circumstances. Every family has a story to tell and Simon Mawer’s family have led interesting lives. While I enjoyed the book for its research and story I am not sure how I would have reacted to this one had I not had a passion for Ancestry.
I do think the book could have been trimmed down quite a bit and while the Crimean war battles was very documented I did find it made for tedious reading. An interest and engaging story, just not one for my favourites shelf.
May 13, 2023
A really interesting book. I loved the way it played with history, being sort of a mix of novel and docudrama.
July 21, 2022
An astonishing blend of historical fiction and imaginative non-fiction, ANCESTRY is a book that will stay with me forever. Mawer’s recounting of his nineteenth-century ancestors’ lives is girded by the most basic facts of life and infused with admiration and love on every page. A beautiful, haunting, and extremely moving testament to what men and women without means or agency must endure to keep their families together and what we owe—and can learn from them—in turn.
June 9, 2023
‘That is the trouble with the usual historical documents: they don’t say how things happen, merely when.’ Ancestry is the author’s attempt to address this problem and to paint a picture of the lives of some of his ancestors, and a picture more vivid and immersive than that set out in official documents – birth, marriage and death certificates, census returns – although even these provide interesting detail and a few puzzles.
The story begins with the author’s great-great-grandfather Abraham Block, the illiterate son of agricultural labourers who in 1847 leaves home at the age of fifteen to sign on as an indentured (apprentice) sailor aboard a merchant ship travelling between ports in the Mediterrean, as well as further afield. Occasionally the ship docks in London and I particularly enjoyed, as imagined by the author, Abraham’s first impressions of the teeming city – its sights, sounds and smells – a place so different from the Suffolk village in which he grew up. ‘There were familiar smells – horse piss and horse shit, human shit, rotting vegetables – blended with smells he was only beginning to discover – the pungent smell of spices, the sour stench of vinegar, the stink of a tannery. The streets ran between cliffs of buildings. Pubs, factories, warehouses, a covered market, a church, shops, houses all slammed together as though by some ill-tempered child playing with pebbles and mud ….Whistles blew. Whips cracked. Shouts rang out.’
In London, Abraham meets Naomi Lulham, a young seamstress, who will eventually become his wife. As we discover, the life of a sailor’s wife in nineteenth century England is a lonely one with information about the whereabouts of crew, and even the ship, taking week, possibly months to arrive. And when it does, it may contain bad news.
Part two of the book focuses on another ancestor, George Mawer a soldier serving with the 50th Regiment of Foot. Married life for him and his Irish wife Annie involves frequent moves between barracks whose cramped conditions offer little privacy. When George’s regiment is sent to Crimea, he and Annie may be aware of the dangers but our sense of foreboding is greater knowing the history of that conflict. In fact, as the book demonstrates the danger was not restricted to the battlefield; many soldiers died of disease. Others died as a result of disastrous decisions by army leaders.
In George’s absence and later when she finds herself alone in the world, Annie has to find ways to fend for herself and her children. It’s a hostile world for a woman alone and Annie is forced to make desparately difficult decisions affecting her children’s future.
Alongside the human stories, there is a wealth of historical detail but this is subtly woven into the narrative in way that never makes it feel like you are reading a history text book. The details amplify the story, not interrupt it.
Throughout the book, the author makes plain the responsibility he feels to bring to life the experiences of his ancestors whilst respecting the documented facts, so far as they are known. ‘Abraham Block, Naomi Lulham, these are real people with whom I am playing – their live, their loves, their innermost secrets. I feel the obligation to place the pieces with infinite care.’ Where there are gaps, he uses his imagination to give the reader a sense of them as individuals. We learn about their hopes, dreams and struggles, of which there are plenty. At times, this involves speculation on his part. For example, at one point the author give us three possible versions of a pivotal moment in Annie’s life.
Another theme the author explores in the book is those things handed down through the generations. Not just genetic material but the ‘intangible, unmeasurable things that run through families – memory, stories, myths and legends’. He makes the point that physical evidence – not just documents but buildings, places – can disappear. For instance, November 1848 sees Abraham walking along a street that no longer exists towards a house that no longer exists.
I found myself especially drawn to the female characters, especially Annie. Her resilience and determination to find a way around the obstacles that confront her was inspiring. Sadly, both Naomi and Annie have to deal with the aftermath of tragedy, bringing up their children alone.
In comparison to the detail lavished on recounting the lives of the author’s distant ancestors, the manner in which the two branches become conjoined is covered in relatively short order. The absence of a family tree seems a strange omission. I would have found it helpful, especially given many names recur down the years.
At first sight, the lives of Abraham, Naomi, George and Annie may seem very different from our own but in Ancestry the author skilfully draws out the human connections that exist between them and us.
The story begins with the author’s great-great-grandfather Abraham Block, the illiterate son of agricultural labourers who in 1847 leaves home at the age of fifteen to sign on as an indentured (apprentice) sailor aboard a merchant ship travelling between ports in the Mediterrean, as well as further afield. Occasionally the ship docks in London and I particularly enjoyed, as imagined by the author, Abraham’s first impressions of the teeming city – its sights, sounds and smells – a place so different from the Suffolk village in which he grew up. ‘There were familiar smells – horse piss and horse shit, human shit, rotting vegetables – blended with smells he was only beginning to discover – the pungent smell of spices, the sour stench of vinegar, the stink of a tannery. The streets ran between cliffs of buildings. Pubs, factories, warehouses, a covered market, a church, shops, houses all slammed together as though by some ill-tempered child playing with pebbles and mud ….Whistles blew. Whips cracked. Shouts rang out.’
In London, Abraham meets Naomi Lulham, a young seamstress, who will eventually become his wife. As we discover, the life of a sailor’s wife in nineteenth century England is a lonely one with information about the whereabouts of crew, and even the ship, taking week, possibly months to arrive. And when it does, it may contain bad news.
Part two of the book focuses on another ancestor, George Mawer a soldier serving with the 50th Regiment of Foot. Married life for him and his Irish wife Annie involves frequent moves between barracks whose cramped conditions offer little privacy. When George’s regiment is sent to Crimea, he and Annie may be aware of the dangers but our sense of foreboding is greater knowing the history of that conflict. In fact, as the book demonstrates the danger was not restricted to the battlefield; many soldiers died of disease. Others died as a result of disastrous decisions by army leaders.
In George’s absence and later when she finds herself alone in the world, Annie has to find ways to fend for herself and her children. It’s a hostile world for a woman alone and Annie is forced to make desparately difficult decisions affecting her children’s future.
Alongside the human stories, there is a wealth of historical detail but this is subtly woven into the narrative in way that never makes it feel like you are reading a history text book. The details amplify the story, not interrupt it.
Throughout the book, the author makes plain the responsibility he feels to bring to life the experiences of his ancestors whilst respecting the documented facts, so far as they are known. ‘Abraham Block, Naomi Lulham, these are real people with whom I am playing – their live, their loves, their innermost secrets. I feel the obligation to place the pieces with infinite care.’ Where there are gaps, he uses his imagination to give the reader a sense of them as individuals. We learn about their hopes, dreams and struggles, of which there are plenty. At times, this involves speculation on his part. For example, at one point the author give us three possible versions of a pivotal moment in Annie’s life.
Another theme the author explores in the book is those things handed down through the generations. Not just genetic material but the ‘intangible, unmeasurable things that run through families – memory, stories, myths and legends’. He makes the point that physical evidence – not just documents but buildings, places – can disappear. For instance, November 1848 sees Abraham walking along a street that no longer exists towards a house that no longer exists.
I found myself especially drawn to the female characters, especially Annie. Her resilience and determination to find a way around the obstacles that confront her was inspiring. Sadly, both Naomi and Annie have to deal with the aftermath of tragedy, bringing up their children alone.
In comparison to the detail lavished on recounting the lives of the author’s distant ancestors, the manner in which the two branches become conjoined is covered in relatively short order. The absence of a family tree seems a strange omission. I would have found it helpful, especially given many names recur down the years.
At first sight, the lives of Abraham, Naomi, George and Annie may seem very different from our own but in Ancestry the author skilfully draws out the human connections that exist between them and us.
February 17, 2023
Simon Mawer’s “The glass room” about a house built by architect Mies Van Der Rohe is one of my favourite books. There has been criticism of that book and “Ancestry” that too much is invented and assumed about what really happens, but isn’t that fiction?
Mawer methodically uses facts available to him then imagines the rest which he mentions several times.
In “Ancestry” he is a great feminist, giving credit to the achievement of women who rose up despite the inequality, too carve the best lives they could. And again he strikes a nerve. My grandmother was raised in an orphanage in Babbacomb and her mother who “was in service” had two fatherless children. There were many poor houses in the Torquay area and her grandfather died in one. I gave up digging it was all too sad. But Mawer gives voice to the shame that my grandmother felt never wanting to discuss her background. It’s a book that made me feel incredibly lucky to be born now and be educated.
I listened to the book on Audible and Johnathan Keeble does a great job with his intonation.
5 stars for the research and insight into how far we have come.
Mawer methodically uses facts available to him then imagines the rest which he mentions several times.
In “Ancestry” he is a great feminist, giving credit to the achievement of women who rose up despite the inequality, too carve the best lives they could. And again he strikes a nerve. My grandmother was raised in an orphanage in Babbacomb and her mother who “was in service” had two fatherless children. There were many poor houses in the Torquay area and her grandfather died in one. I gave up digging it was all too sad. But Mawer gives voice to the shame that my grandmother felt never wanting to discuss her background. It’s a book that made me feel incredibly lucky to be born now and be educated.
I listened to the book on Audible and Johnathan Keeble does a great job with his intonation.
5 stars for the research and insight into how far we have come.
June 29, 2022
This book was not what I expected but it really drew me into the story and I was sorry when it ended. A story that puts flesh onto the bones of the authors family discovered through census returns, birth and death certificates. The book was very poignant and the horrors that the families lived through very real - grinding poverty, disease and war. I felt the author shone a spotlight on the strength of the women in the story and how they held their families together in some terrible times. I often forgot that I was reading a history of the authors family and learn so much. It is my first book by this author but definitely will not be my last. I highly recommend it. Many thanks to NetGalley, Little Brown Book Group UK and the author for the ARC in return for an honest review.
July 25, 2022
I really loved the idea of this book. I work researching family histories and have often imagined a life for people around what the records can tell us. So many parts of their story we can only imagine but never truly know.
The author has done this wonderfully with some of his own ancestors. Taking the dates and facts presented by census and historical records and breathing life into each individual. Transforming them from dry facts to a living breathing person with hope and dreams, disappointments and failures.
The story takes us from rural Suffolk to London to Barbados to the Crimea. Through grinding poverty and the horrors of war, the research not only into the lives of his ancestors but the events they lived through is excellent.
A really poignant portrait and a beautiful tribute to the ancestors
The author has done this wonderfully with some of his own ancestors. Taking the dates and facts presented by census and historical records and breathing life into each individual. Transforming them from dry facts to a living breathing person with hope and dreams, disappointments and failures.
The story takes us from rural Suffolk to London to Barbados to the Crimea. Through grinding poverty and the horrors of war, the research not only into the lives of his ancestors but the events they lived through is excellent.
A really poignant portrait and a beautiful tribute to the ancestors
February 27, 2023
Mostly slow moving. Mawer blends fact with fiction when delving into his family ancestry, and therefore inserts himself into what is largely a fiction novel. So when those moments of inserting himself into the story appeared, it felt jarring and "off". It was an interesting premise, but didn't work well enough for me to rate it higher than I have done here.
September 6, 2022
Vanity project. Very disappointing.
November 30, 2023
A past that only consists of the artefacts is like a skeleton unearthed in an archaeological dig. Where is the flesh and blood? Who were the people? What did they feel? Where have they gone? (Ancestry p.1)
In Ancestry, Simon Mawer imagines the flesh and blood of two sets of his great-great-grandparents, ordinary people from the struggling working classes. The vicissitudes and sorrows of their lives, as well as moments of joy and achievement, are brought to vivid life in this meticulously researched novel.
The first third of the novel is taken up with the story of Simon Mawer’s maternal great-great-grandparents, Abraham Block, a seaman from Kessingland on the Suffolk coast, and the woman he married in London, Naomi Lulham, a seamstress from Hastings. Both had left their homes seeking a broader life with more opportunities than their home towns offered, Abraham arriving in London in 1847 and Naomi in 1849. Their lives, both before they met and together, show clearly the poverty endured by so many ordinary people, the accommodations forced on them, the injustices of a society that views some lives as of less worth than others, and the precariousness of life itself at this time. The lives of seamen, particularly those on ships that travelled abroad, and their families are evoked in detail as are the places where they lived such as parts of London in the 1840s and 1850s.
For two hours she walks the length of the street, pushing past the pedestrians, risking her life crossing from one side to the other … The city seethes around her, ripe with the stench of horse piss, loud with the rumble of iron-shod wheels. (p.83)
And when Abraham and Naomi’s lives have been told, we are given a brief glimpse of the lives of their descendants into the twentieth century.
Mawer does the same for the descendants of his paternal great-great-grandparents, Annie Scanlon from county Mayo and George Mawer, a private in the 50th Regiment of Foot, when he completes their story which takes up the remainder of the novel. Beginning with their marriage in Manchester Cathedral in 1847, Mawer describes the nomadic and relentless life of an ordinary soldier’s postings, the lack of privacy and of a settled home for soldiers’ families, and the difficulties faced by wives and children. When their men were sent overseas, they were no longer considered to be of any concern to the army. Left to fend for themselves, women such as Annie did what they must to ensure their families survived. This section also focuses in some detail on the Crimean War, where George Mawer fought. This war was in some ways a foretaste of World War 1 with its use of trench warfare, artillery bombardment and heavy casualties as well as, in some instances, mismanagement and chaos caused by those in command. George Mawer’s experiences – rampant disease, hunger and malnutrition, lack of shelter (tents sent well after the troops arrived) and hypothermia, the loss of comrades – are harrowing and highlight the way ordinary soldiers were treated as nothing but expendable units – cannon fodder.
Skillfully, in plain but compelling prose, the characters and their world are made real. At various points in the narrative Mawer pauses and draws aside the veil to show the reader the slim documentary foundations upon which this work of historical fiction is based: birth registrations, marriages, census data, hospital records, newspaper reports. These highlight the fact that what we are reading is a real life, that the documents show us that what has just been described did really happen. Mawer also acknowledges that it may not have happened in exactly the way he has described it. At one point he asks,
‘Is that how it was? Is that what happened? The truth is, we don’t know.’ (p.89).
And we can never know for certain but as Simon Mawer says in his final paragraph,
‘It is only through those remaining fragments – an entry in the census, a birth or a death certificate, the occasional relic passed down through the generations – that they can be perceived. Yet they lived and loved, cried tears of pain and laughter, slept and dreamt, awoke and ultimately died. We know because those are the attributes of being human; the rest is intuition.’(p.414)
It is this intuition that the novelist uses when he or she writes a work of fiction based on real lives, an intuition based largely on the author’s own outlook on life and personality – it is possible for two people to write of the same life, based on the same documents, yet interpret those documents differently and come up with entirely different narratives.
To my mind, Ancestry is an absolutely brilliant novel. The appearance within the text of the author with his explanations and questions heightened the sense that I was reading a plausibly imagined real life. Most of all, Ancestry passes my ultimate test of all fiction – the characters are still alive in my mind weeks after finishing the story, most especially Annie Scanlon.
Ancestry was long listed for the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.
In Ancestry, Simon Mawer imagines the flesh and blood of two sets of his great-great-grandparents, ordinary people from the struggling working classes. The vicissitudes and sorrows of their lives, as well as moments of joy and achievement, are brought to vivid life in this meticulously researched novel.
The first third of the novel is taken up with the story of Simon Mawer’s maternal great-great-grandparents, Abraham Block, a seaman from Kessingland on the Suffolk coast, and the woman he married in London, Naomi Lulham, a seamstress from Hastings. Both had left their homes seeking a broader life with more opportunities than their home towns offered, Abraham arriving in London in 1847 and Naomi in 1849. Their lives, both before they met and together, show clearly the poverty endured by so many ordinary people, the accommodations forced on them, the injustices of a society that views some lives as of less worth than others, and the precariousness of life itself at this time. The lives of seamen, particularly those on ships that travelled abroad, and their families are evoked in detail as are the places where they lived such as parts of London in the 1840s and 1850s.
For two hours she walks the length of the street, pushing past the pedestrians, risking her life crossing from one side to the other … The city seethes around her, ripe with the stench of horse piss, loud with the rumble of iron-shod wheels. (p.83)
And when Abraham and Naomi’s lives have been told, we are given a brief glimpse of the lives of their descendants into the twentieth century.
Mawer does the same for the descendants of his paternal great-great-grandparents, Annie Scanlon from county Mayo and George Mawer, a private in the 50th Regiment of Foot, when he completes their story which takes up the remainder of the novel. Beginning with their marriage in Manchester Cathedral in 1847, Mawer describes the nomadic and relentless life of an ordinary soldier’s postings, the lack of privacy and of a settled home for soldiers’ families, and the difficulties faced by wives and children. When their men were sent overseas, they were no longer considered to be of any concern to the army. Left to fend for themselves, women such as Annie did what they must to ensure their families survived. This section also focuses in some detail on the Crimean War, where George Mawer fought. This war was in some ways a foretaste of World War 1 with its use of trench warfare, artillery bombardment and heavy casualties as well as, in some instances, mismanagement and chaos caused by those in command. George Mawer’s experiences – rampant disease, hunger and malnutrition, lack of shelter (tents sent well after the troops arrived) and hypothermia, the loss of comrades – are harrowing and highlight the way ordinary soldiers were treated as nothing but expendable units – cannon fodder.
Skillfully, in plain but compelling prose, the characters and their world are made real. At various points in the narrative Mawer pauses and draws aside the veil to show the reader the slim documentary foundations upon which this work of historical fiction is based: birth registrations, marriages, census data, hospital records, newspaper reports. These highlight the fact that what we are reading is a real life, that the documents show us that what has just been described did really happen. Mawer also acknowledges that it may not have happened in exactly the way he has described it. At one point he asks,
‘Is that how it was? Is that what happened? The truth is, we don’t know.’ (p.89).
And we can never know for certain but as Simon Mawer says in his final paragraph,
‘It is only through those remaining fragments – an entry in the census, a birth or a death certificate, the occasional relic passed down through the generations – that they can be perceived. Yet they lived and loved, cried tears of pain and laughter, slept and dreamt, awoke and ultimately died. We know because those are the attributes of being human; the rest is intuition.’(p.414)
It is this intuition that the novelist uses when he or she writes a work of fiction based on real lives, an intuition based largely on the author’s own outlook on life and personality – it is possible for two people to write of the same life, based on the same documents, yet interpret those documents differently and come up with entirely different narratives.
To my mind, Ancestry is an absolutely brilliant novel. The appearance within the text of the author with his explanations and questions heightened the sense that I was reading a plausibly imagined real life. Most of all, Ancestry passes my ultimate test of all fiction – the characters are still alive in my mind weeks after finishing the story, most especially Annie Scanlon.
Ancestry was long listed for the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.
October 1, 2023
Absolutely outstanding. Along with other reviewers here I am very interested in ancestry, having discovered some interesting members of my family tree.
This book was cleverly written, combining fact with fiction...picking up the 'what ifs' that I am sure we all encounter at times in our research.
I give it five stars even though parts of it were a little stodgy, in particular the Crimean War, but none the less captivating.
I would recommend this as a book to curl up with this Autumn.
This book was cleverly written, combining fact with fiction...picking up the 'what ifs' that I am sure we all encounter at times in our research.
I give it five stars even though parts of it were a little stodgy, in particular the Crimean War, but none the less captivating.
I would recommend this as a book to curl up with this Autumn.
December 19, 2024
Vdechnout život do jmen v matrikách. O to tady beží! Simon Mawer na základě jedné rodinné povídačky rozkryl své předky v obou liniích do půlky 19. století a dal jim život na stránkách svého románu. Ne všude jsem byla úplně začtená, autorovy vstupy, kterými chtěl udržovat jistý odstup a vědomí, že toto je jeden z možných scénářů, mě vlastně hrozně rušily, ale celkově mi to přijde jako skvělá práce. V závěru za svůj život vděčí dvěma úplně obyčejným ženám, které si musely poradit i s balíkem dětí na krku. A zvládly to zjevně na výbornou.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 12, 2023
This is a book that tells the kind of story that many of us could tell about our ancestors, if we were able to write and imagine as well as Simon Mawer. It's the story of how the two strands of his family came together in the nineteenth century and eventually produced Simon, several generations later. His forebears are soldiers, sailors, laundry women, and seamstresses, all drawn to London in the nineteenth century, one way or another, and through chance meetings making his family history. Mawer succeeds in making the stories and the people come alive, and I enjoyed the mixture of fact and speculation.
July 31, 2023
Turns his own family history research into historical fiction. The switching from fact to fiction might be jarring for some readers, but should work for anyone who's interested in family history and also likes fiction. I loved it, but I do have a special interest.
September 22, 2023
It does well highlighting the restrictions in uncovering history including family history and the 3 stars is purely about how much I enjoyed it.
August 5, 2024
Review to follow.
February 4, 2024
Super interesting with great female protagonists
April 1, 2023
An amazing book with echoes of my own family history with the workhouse looming large, illegitimacy, child deaths and strong women. Thank you
April 28, 2023
Fantastic and captivating. Mr Mawer puts very believable flesh on the bones of the historic records he unearthed of his ancestry.
A window into the personal past....
A window into the personal past....
August 25, 2022
This is a novel for all those who ever wanted to embark on a family history. Seemingly based on people in a yellowing family photograph, Simon Mawer has fleshed out the stories that might have been based, on the bare bones of bald facts such as birth and death notices, marriage banns, ship sailing records, war records and the like.
He has create a saga that sweeps across two hundred years. It follows the illiterate boy Abraham Block who leaves his Suffolk village to apprentice as a sailor and the story of a young seamstress Naomi, travelling to London for the first time. The narrative then moves to George, a soldier who perished in the Crimean war, his Irish wife Annie and their children, left to poverty and near starvation. It is a compelling story of the poor and illiterate. Of women who are ill-used by men and left to carry the consequences. And finally there is the connection of family that binds them all.
He has create a saga that sweeps across two hundred years. It follows the illiterate boy Abraham Block who leaves his Suffolk village to apprentice as a sailor and the story of a young seamstress Naomi, travelling to London for the first time. The narrative then moves to George, a soldier who perished in the Crimean war, his Irish wife Annie and their children, left to poverty and near starvation. It is a compelling story of the poor and illiterate. Of women who are ill-used by men and left to carry the consequences. And finally there is the connection of family that binds them all.
January 8, 2023
Not as good a read as previous books by this author
Slightly tedious and the battlefield descriptions I did not enjoy
Too bad because The Glass Room was really much better
Slightly tedious and the battlefield descriptions I did not enjoy
Too bad because The Glass Room was really much better
Read
November 26, 2024Nevím, jestli to bylo tím, že jsem neměla žádná očekávání, ale kniha mě příjemně překvapila. Vlastně se divím, že to nedělají všichni spisovatelé- dát si trochu práce se svým rodokmenem a pak kolem toho vystavět příběh, který se odehrát mohl, ale taky se mohl odehrát úplně jinak.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 18, 2022
Abraham lives an impoverished life in Suffolk. He cannot read or write but he dreams of more and is finally apprenticed to become a seaman. Naomi has moved to London to become a dressmaker but fate has more in store. Ann and George are newly wed and living in Army barracks. The lives of these individuals in 1850s England will link through their families.
This is the story of Mawer's own ancestors, he has taken a few facts and written a gripping fictionalised account of their lives. The stories are wonderful, Abraham's life at sea and the difficulties faced by his family as news is often months late, George's adventures in the horror of the Crimean War. Of course there is a lot of literary licence taken to fill in the gaps but this is where Mawer's expertise as a novelist really shines. This is a wonderful book
This is the story of Mawer's own ancestors, he has taken a few facts and written a gripping fictionalised account of their lives. The stories are wonderful, Abraham's life at sea and the difficulties faced by his family as news is often months late, George's adventures in the horror of the Crimean War. Of course there is a lot of literary licence taken to fill in the gaps but this is where Mawer's expertise as a novelist really shines. This is a wonderful book
October 19, 2022
Anyone who has done a bit of family tree research will know that it can be both fascinating and frustrating. On the one hand, it's now possible to find out things about long gone relatives that didn't get passed on by word of mouth. Specifically, it's possible to find out when people were born, died, how they died, what their occupation was at various snapshots in time, who they lived with, and even who their neighbours were.
However, researching census records and the like only get us so far. We still don't know what these people looked like, or what personalities they had. There are often huge gaps in their story, which we have no way, ever, of filling.
In this book, Simon Mawer takes two branches of his paternal family tree, and fills in those gaps using educated guesswork and imagination. He is very careful to muster every scrap of real evidence first before making a judgement about what was actually going on in these people's lives. And then he makes a story out of it.
Since the focus is on two separate branches of his paternal ancestry, the book falls into two halves, which are completely separate, except at the end.
The heroine of the book is Annie Mawer, and her role in assuring the upwardly mobile fate of her descendants is acknowledged.
As others have commented, the author is a very good writer, and an excellent researcher. My only reservation about the book is that the constraints of sticking to evidence compromise the story structure and perhaps its entertainment value (compared to pure fiction). Also, of course, he has necessarily made some assumptions about his characters (his ancestors) which may be entirely wrong! Any text of this kind, which joins the dots of fact with lines of fiction must inevitably fall between two stools.
However, researching census records and the like only get us so far. We still don't know what these people looked like, or what personalities they had. There are often huge gaps in their story, which we have no way, ever, of filling.
In this book, Simon Mawer takes two branches of his paternal family tree, and fills in those gaps using educated guesswork and imagination. He is very careful to muster every scrap of real evidence first before making a judgement about what was actually going on in these people's lives. And then he makes a story out of it.
Since the focus is on two separate branches of his paternal ancestry, the book falls into two halves, which are completely separate, except at the end.
The heroine of the book is Annie Mawer, and her role in assuring the upwardly mobile fate of her descendants is acknowledged.
As others have commented, the author is a very good writer, and an excellent researcher. My only reservation about the book is that the constraints of sticking to evidence compromise the story structure and perhaps its entertainment value (compared to pure fiction). Also, of course, he has necessarily made some assumptions about his characters (his ancestors) which may be entirely wrong! Any text of this kind, which joins the dots of fact with lines of fiction must inevitably fall between two stools.
July 28, 2022
For anyone who is interested in their own ancestors, this is how their stories should be brought to life! Simon Mawer has taken the facts from the records mixed with knowledge of the social history and transformed these to a series of fascinating stories.
First of the great-grandparents living in the mid-nineteenth century are the illiterate Abraham Block, a sailor and young dressmaker Naomi Lulham, who is keen to put her life on a sure footing.. Next up we meet George and Ann Mawer. Their story takes us to the Crimea War and the realities of being a soldier at that time. The stories are fascinating and whilst the characters have been fleshed out, the real story isn't that of the author's grandparents, but the history that he so meticulously researched to make it so readily accessible using the vehicle of his own family history to entertain and inform the rest of us.
First of the great-grandparents living in the mid-nineteenth century are the illiterate Abraham Block, a sailor and young dressmaker Naomi Lulham, who is keen to put her life on a sure footing.. Next up we meet George and Ann Mawer. Their story takes us to the Crimea War and the realities of being a soldier at that time. The stories are fascinating and whilst the characters have been fleshed out, the real story isn't that of the author's grandparents, but the history that he so meticulously researched to make it so readily accessible using the vehicle of his own family history to entertain and inform the rest of us.
October 23, 2023
Podívejme se na historii tak, že všechny historický prameny, předměty pozůstalostí, zápisy v matrikách, nebo i rodinný legendy jsou tečičky na papíře s číslama. A Mawer tady tím, že mezi tima tečičkama za pomoci svý literární licence udělal spojnice, nakreslil obraz. Obraz minulosti, ne jejích izolovanejch bodů, on dal dohromady celej příběh. Dokonce i několik jeho verzí. A já to miluju. Protože pokaždý, když já někde vidim nějakej historickej článek, text v učebnici nebo v popisek v muzeu, vždycky se sama sebe ptám: kde z toho zmizely emoce? Jaký byly? Jak ti lidi žili mezi tím, co podepisovali smlouvy, rodily děti, nechávali se korunovat, brali se? Co vlastně víme o jejich životě krom souboru faktů?
October 23, 2024
The mix of fiction with non fiction had me intrigued from the very first pages. I loved the writing style and the sort of breaking of the 4th wall... It felt like a grandfather or an old uncle telling a bedtime story, a fictionalised version of true events...
And the story being peppered with informative footnotes and copies of the various birth/marriage/death certificates and other historical records really brought it all to life.
I'm left with questions: How did he select which ancestors to write about? The ones who interested him enough? The ones who inspired him to create and expand on? Or just the ones who had enough info provided about them?
I also can't help wondering... How does he feel writing about these very intimate sexual relations between his own ancestors? (E.g. on p158 between Ann Scanlon and George Mawer) Surely one wouldn't feel comfortable writing about one's parents or grandparents this way... But what of more distant relatives?
At one point, the author describes George Mawer as "immersed in the eternal present, he can only see the next step ahead". Very different from us with the benefit of hindsight from global history and an all-seeing viewpoint. I suppose that's why it's so nice Mawer has written this story - he's taken the objective wide-angled history recording of his ancestry and zoomed in - captured their lives not in hindsight, but from their own personal immersive present.
Ultimately I loved the writing, and will definitely be looking up this author's other books.
And the story being peppered with informative footnotes and copies of the various birth/marriage/death certificates and other historical records really brought it all to life.
I'm left with questions: How did he select which ancestors to write about? The ones who interested him enough? The ones who inspired him to create and expand on? Or just the ones who had enough info provided about them?
I also can't help wondering... How does he feel writing about these very intimate sexual relations between his own ancestors? (E.g. on p158 between Ann Scanlon and George Mawer) Surely one wouldn't feel comfortable writing about one's parents or grandparents this way... But what of more distant relatives?
He and they are embedded in their present while we watch them through the fog of hindsight. [...] Disaster only plays itself out in retrospect. -p282-3
At one point, the author describes George Mawer as "immersed in the eternal present, he can only see the next step ahead". Very different from us with the benefit of hindsight from global history and an all-seeing viewpoint. I suppose that's why it's so nice Mawer has written this story - he's taken the objective wide-angled history recording of his ancestry and zoomed in - captured their lives not in hindsight, but from their own personal immersive present.
Maybe one day. Maybe one day a descendant four generations down will come poking around the scraps of evidence to put a story together. Maybe edible comes somewhere near the truth. -p395
Ultimately it was the women who won though, the women who swam duly against the tide of history and to drive to their children to the shore, thus saving them from destitution and setting them on the path to middle-class prosperity. Yet by the time of this photograph these women had been largely forgotten. [...] Yet they lived and loved, cried tears of pain and laughter, slept underkept, awoke and ultimately died. We know that because those are attributes of being human; the rest is intuition. -p414
Ultimately I loved the writing, and will definitely be looking up this author's other books.
August 14, 2022
Simon Mawer asked “What is the past?” “Who were the people? What did they feel? Where have they gone?” In this fictionalised “history”, the author attempted to answer these probing questions, providing an intriguing combination of research and imagination to explore the lives of his maternal and paternal great-grandparents in the nineteenth century: Abraham and Naomi Block, Anne and George Mawer, and their children. In theory, I found the idea intriguing; however, reading the narratives he conjured with the consistent footnotes citing periodicals and documents used in his research confused me. Were these real notations? If so, did the reader need to know what research he had uncovered and included in an acknowledged fictional text? Was this his attempt to give further credibility to his fictional family stories? I’m honestly not sure.
What most interested me were the portraits of the women in his imaginative accounts: their strength against the odds in which they found themselves, their struggles to support their children once they were widowed and impoverished, the stringent roles they had to play in their dealings with the men who held all the power. The stories he told about Naomi and Anne were much more compelling for me than the accounts of the Crimean War George fought in or the ship expeditions which kept Abraham away from his family.
I have enjoyed several of Mawer’s other works and continue to admire his fluid writing and astute characterisation. With “Ancestry”, his portrait of nineteenth century society gave a voice to the “real dispossessed”, those women whose difficult lives “had been largely forgotten.”
What most interested me were the portraits of the women in his imaginative accounts: their strength against the odds in which they found themselves, their struggles to support their children once they were widowed and impoverished, the stringent roles they had to play in their dealings with the men who held all the power. The stories he told about Naomi and Anne were much more compelling for me than the accounts of the Crimean War George fought in or the ship expeditions which kept Abraham away from his family.
I have enjoyed several of Mawer’s other works and continue to admire his fluid writing and astute characterisation. With “Ancestry”, his portrait of nineteenth century society gave a voice to the “real dispossessed”, those women whose difficult lives “had been largely forgotten.”
April 22, 2023
3.5 stars
In this biographical fictional book, Simon Mawer takes a number of facts about his ancestors and writes a tale about how he imagines them to be have been. Some may call it a vanity project, and in a way it is. But aren't all books vanity projects in a way?
What Mawer achieves with this telling of multiple generations is he transports the reader back in time. The past does come alive in this book, and there are many moments where I felt I was there, standing with the characters in the story. Descriptions and detail is exceptionally rich. For all that is achieved, there are still moments where the story flags, where it starts to feel tedious. I also wondered why every ancestor is described in glowing terms, every child described as being clever and adorable, and the parents all described as overly positive and good, even when their actions may not be lawful or honest. I guess Mawer thought he deserved some measure of poetic license. They are his ancestors after all. But when it becomes a case of too much too often, then you can start to see some merit in those cries of vanity project.
For me, it's a solid story. A visit to the past, and to how events may have been seen. I think it does well in its descriptions of the war-front in the 1800s, giving us a glimpse of the hellish conditions and how factual errors caused more devastation and death. Similarly, it gives us a glimpse into how women were treated in the times, how children were also treated. But I think, above all else, Mawer wants to show us the triumph of the human spirit by suggesting survival was, in itself, a great feat.
In this biographical fictional book, Simon Mawer takes a number of facts about his ancestors and writes a tale about how he imagines them to be have been. Some may call it a vanity project, and in a way it is. But aren't all books vanity projects in a way?
What Mawer achieves with this telling of multiple generations is he transports the reader back in time. The past does come alive in this book, and there are many moments where I felt I was there, standing with the characters in the story. Descriptions and detail is exceptionally rich. For all that is achieved, there are still moments where the story flags, where it starts to feel tedious. I also wondered why every ancestor is described in glowing terms, every child described as being clever and adorable, and the parents all described as overly positive and good, even when their actions may not be lawful or honest. I guess Mawer thought he deserved some measure of poetic license. They are his ancestors after all. But when it becomes a case of too much too often, then you can start to see some merit in those cries of vanity project.
For me, it's a solid story. A visit to the past, and to how events may have been seen. I think it does well in its descriptions of the war-front in the 1800s, giving us a glimpse of the hellish conditions and how factual errors caused more devastation and death. Similarly, it gives us a glimpse into how women were treated in the times, how children were also treated. But I think, above all else, Mawer wants to show us the triumph of the human spirit by suggesting survival was, in itself, a great feat.
January 15, 2023
This was an historical fiction unlike any I’ve ever read before. Author Simon Mawer researched his own family’s history and using the genealogical information that he was able to collect (birth, death, and marriage certificates, census data, military records, etc.), he wove together the hard facts with a fictional tale of how his ancestors may have lived given the times and locations where their life events happened.
This was an interesting concept. I’ve done quite a bit of genealogical research myself, and it’s frustrating to find the clinical facts of my ancestors’ births, deaths, and marriages, yet realize that I’ll never know what their personalities were like or what their everyday lives were like. Mawer tells his family’s tale in a very conversational way, which I think pulls the reader in and make us really care about what’s going to happen next (even though, unfortunately, we often know tragedy is just around the corner because we have the luxury of hindsight).
I thought this was a great way for Mawer to honour his family and give readers a real feel for what it was like to live in the 19th century. I was particularly interested in the women’s roles because women have been almost completely overlooked by history. (In fact, I almost didn’t give this 5 stars because I found he spent a bit more time on the fighting during the Crimean War for my liking. That’s just a personal preference... others may find this fascinating.)
Bonus for the added family photos and copies of census records! It made it all feel so personal!
4.5 stars rounded up
This was an interesting concept. I’ve done quite a bit of genealogical research myself, and it’s frustrating to find the clinical facts of my ancestors’ births, deaths, and marriages, yet realize that I’ll never know what their personalities were like or what their everyday lives were like. Mawer tells his family’s tale in a very conversational way, which I think pulls the reader in and make us really care about what’s going to happen next (even though, unfortunately, we often know tragedy is just around the corner because we have the luxury of hindsight).
I thought this was a great way for Mawer to honour his family and give readers a real feel for what it was like to live in the 19th century. I was particularly interested in the women’s roles because women have been almost completely overlooked by history. (In fact, I almost didn’t give this 5 stars because I found he spent a bit more time on the fighting during the Crimean War for my liking. That’s just a personal preference... others may find this fascinating.)
Bonus for the added family photos and copies of census records! It made it all feel so personal!
4.5 stars rounded up
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