Hawksmoor

by Peter Ackroyd, Will Self (Introduction)

Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor was first published in 1985. Alternating between the eighteenth century, when Nicholas Dyer, assistant to Sir Christopher Wren, builds seven London churches that house a terrible secret, and the 1980s, when London detective Nicholas Hawksmoor is investigating a series of gruesome murders on the site of certain old churches, Hawksmoor is a brilliant tale of darkness and shadow.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Horror, London, Crime, Historical

272 pages, Paperback

First published September 23, 1985

About the author

Peter Ackroyd CBE is an English novelist and biographer with a particular interest in the history and culture of London.

Peter Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, his father having left the family home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers by the age of 5 and, at 9, wrote a play about Guy Fawkes. Reputedly, he first realized he was gay at the age of 7.

Ackroyd was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English. In 1972, he was a Mellon Fellow at Yale University in the United States. The result of this fellowship was Ackroyd's Notes for a New Culture, written when he was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. The title, a playful echo of T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), was an early indication of Ackroyd's penchant for creatively exploring and reexamining the works of other London-based writers.

Ackroyd's literary career began with poetry, including such works as London Lickpenny (1973) and The Diversions of Purley (1987). He later moved into fiction and has become an acclaimed author, winning the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Thomas More and being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987.

Ackroyd worked at The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. In 1982 he published The Great Fire of London, his first novel. This novel deals with one of Ackroyd's great heroes, Charles Dickens, and is a reworking of Little Dorrit. The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space, and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place". It is also the first in a sequence of novels of London, through which he traces the changing, but curiously consistent nature of the city. Often this theme is explored through the city's artists, and especially its writers.

Ackroyd has always shown a great interest in the city of London, and one of his best known works, London: The Biography, is an extensive and thorough discussion of London through the ages.

His fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the sequence of biographies he has produced of Ezra Pound (1980), T. S. Eliot (1984), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), Thomas More (1998), Chaucer (2004), William Shakespeare (2005), and J. M. W. Turner. The city itself stands astride all these works, as it does in the fiction.

From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (Voyages Through Time), intended for readers as young as eight. This was his first work for children. The critically acclaimed series is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.

Early in his career, Ackroyd was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and, as well as producing fiction, biography and other literary works, is also a regular radio and television broadcaster and book critic.

In the New Year's honours list of 2003, Ackroyd was awarded the CBE.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 Clock struck Eleven as we entered the Street; I wanted no Coachman to see us, so I took him by the Arm and led him thro’ Alleys to the Church. He had so got his Load, as they say, that he came along with me quite willingly and was even ready to sing out loud as we cross’d the dark and empty Lanes.
Do you know this one, do you? he asks: Wood and clay will wash away, Wash away, wash away, Wood and clay will wash away I have forgot the rest, he adds as he links his Arm in mine. Then on reaching Lombard Street he looked up at me: Where are we going, Nick?
We are going Home, says I and pointed out to him the Church of St Mary Woolnoth with the Scaffolding upon it.
This is no Home, Nick, at least not for a Live Man.

History repeats itself as farce but this farce may grow into the blackest comedy.

Is Dust immortal then, I ask’d him, so that we may see it blowing through the Centuries? …And in a feigned Voice he murmured, For Dust thou art and shalt to Dust return. Then he made a Sour face, but only to laugh the more.

Evil is universal and eternal so it can’t be drowned even in the pernicious currents of time.

[Fabian · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 Affair" for that one). I had prematurely labeled David Mitchell the "pioneer of authentic fauxhistorical forms" & I guess even the poetry of A.S. Byatt (3/4ths of which actually forms the novel "Possession: A Romance") qualifies... but Ackroyd outwrites them all. His tale is exquisite, & even, as an art work, symmetrical & allegorical. London is alive but the immobilization of time is perfected--all ages become one.

And the reader loves it. He squeezes the nectar from its amazing prose---which is as timeless as ancient birds cawing in Greek. I was enraptured with this book--it was serendipity which made me sit and read it, to ponder it with a glazed-as-a-doughnut look (staple of mine, yep) and look at shadows with a different set of eyes. The architecture of the churches of London and the narrative are equaled--here is true art becoming text, here are all the familiar and utmost elements of Haute Lit.: mirrors, doppelgangers, everlasting prototypes like the master & apprentice relationship... and the ravishes of time. This is, alas, a book I will never hesitate to reread.

[Shovelmonkey1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 from Cambodia, whatsitcalled? Ah the Durian (thanks Google).

Peter Ackroyd knows a lot about London and all of his books revolve around creating diverting Poe-esque tales of ghostly mystery and imagination. Stories which he then dresses with his frankly encyclopaedic knowledge of London's social history and development. There's not a nook, cranny, wient or alley which Ackroyd doesn't know about and that is part of the joy of his writing.

So, two intertwining tale of black magic, murder and devilment set amongst the hallowed cloisters of the greatest churches in London. Evil from the past echoes through the ages (frequently in the format of ye-oldy-worldy English) and the hidden signs and symbols of architect Nicholas Dyer act as a conduit to the future and Detective Nick Hawksmoor who is somewhere in the 20th century trying to clean up modern murders in the same churches. Dyer is based on the 17th century Nicholas Hawksmoor who was a real chap and as the go-to-guy behind Christopher Wren's work was commissioned in 1711 to design 6 churches; St Alfeges, Greenwich; St Georges, Bloomsbury; St Mary Woolnoth, St Georges East Wapping; St Annes at Limehouse and most famously, Christchurch Spitalfields.

Ackroyd has obviously performed a historical switcheroo by naming his modern day protagonist and detective, Nicholas Hawksmoor thus continuing that "echoes through eternity theme". Uh huh, I like what you did there. Obviously there is no real evidence that Hawksmoor was a devil worshipper who cunningly hid satanic squigglings in these churches, however that will not stop a bunch of overwrought historical scholars suggesting such things and cheerfully it was this nonsense which inspired Ackroyd to write what is, in my opinion, a damn fine read. *Applause* for Mr Ackroyd.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Sarah Epton · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 breathtaking stuff. Motifs, names, events, character's gestures, they all keep clicking and whirring around and around each other, cog and teeth fitting so seamlessly it makes you feel all liquidy inside. This book also had some of the most gorgeous lines of any I've recently read. "Anxiety was, for her, a form of prayer." Oh so perfect. Which is why at the end I threw the book across the room. It had been such a perfect read until the last two chapters when... nothing happened. The characters just did one more rotation and the mechanism wound down. No real climax, no resolution, I'm not even sure what the hell happened, to be honest.

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 interested in ideas than people". Now, this does not seem to be a problem for *me* as, on the one hand, I know some cold, distant, removed people (a few of them may even be British) and so this writing approach strikes me as true to life - there are all kinds of people in the world. And as for "interested in ideas" - well, yes, novelty for its own ends itself can be a trap (especially in genre fiction) but, in the hands of an able-bodied author... who *wouldn't* be interested in an examination of ideas? So, for some, you *may* not like HAWKSMOOR (even the author considers it something of a flawed work because of his inexperience in writing characters at the time) - and yet I say, *perhaps not*, because the authorial investigation of the two main characters was one of the things I personally loved about this book!

Here, too, a word about genre. HAWKSMOOR is a crime novel that is more about the murderer than the murders, a detective novel that is more about the Detective than the process of detection, a mystery story that is less interested in solving a mystery than it is about expounding on "mystery", an historical novel that is a-historical and, it could be argued, a horror story that utilizes some standard tropes of the genre (primitive demonology, occult architecture, human sacrifice, the mutability of time) but not in any of the usual, mechanical ways (no chants, no tentacled things reaching through holes in the air, no master plan to birth the Anti-Christ). This is the kind of book "postmodernism" was invented for!

The plot is fairly simple: we follow parallel strands of narrative taking place in London - one in the 17th Century, as Nicholas Dyer, architect under Christopher Wren, plots his building and refurbishing of London's great churches after the two-fisted historical sucker-punch of the Plague and the Great Fire has nearly scoured the map clean. Dyer has a very particular worldview, heavily informed by arcane knowledge of the past and occult philosophy, as well as his harrowing early life as an orphan in the squalid streets - he is a calculating but emotionally unbalanced man, scheming, paranoid and very intelligent - and he means to make his mark on London and history itself through his Great Work. Meanwhile, in 1980s London, DSI Nicholas Hawksmoor is set to the task of solving a series of murders taking place on the grounds of these selfsame churches. Hawksmoor is a rational, controlled man as befits a detective - he could be seen as the end result of the "Sherlock Holmes" character: a man who sees patterns in everything and is adept at separating useless information from worthwhile data. But then why is he having so much trouble with these murders?

Beyond the basic plot, though, HAWKSMOOR is a fascinating and deep interrogation of rationality and superstition, of humanity and science, how one lives one's life by a belief system and what happens when that system finds itself under assault.

If all that sounds intriguing, read this book. There are echoes of the recent TV show TRUE DETECTIVE here and Alan Moore built upon some of the ideas from HAWKSMOOR in his brilliant work about the Jack The Ripper murders, From Hell, which is why I first added this to my reading list decades ago (Gull, in FROM HELL, could be seen as taking advantage of Dyer's groundwork). I'm glad I did. And now, into the spoiler zone and some more in depth analysis for those who have read the book:


Ackroyd's use of an Olde-English writing style does a marvelous job of not only capturing a voice and the time period, but also of resonating with the material and its concerns - the capitalizations and occasional antiquated word or term reminding us how powerful language is and yet how easily it falls aside under the sway of history ("Words must be pluckt from Obscurity and nourished with Care, improved with Art and corrected with Application. Labour and Time are the Instruments in the perfection of all Work" says Dyer). No mere po-mo affectation, this!

What impressed me was how sympathetic Dyer is as a character. A poor wretch, a smart boy born into terrible circumstances who rises by a combination of luck, cunning, intelligence and perseverance, yet driven by a belief system that puts him at odds with his own time. And even this belief system, atavistic and superstitious as it is, holds some appealing truths - not just the sour reflections on corrupt humanity (Dyer can not bring himself to believe in mankind, and thinks they are ruled only by profound terror, a view supported by the cesspit around him and mirrored in Bedlam - and given the scenes of Modern London we are also shown, not so squalid but still as inhuman for the mentally ill and those made lonely by "civilization", we understand Hawksmoor's emotional anomie as well) but also canny reflections on rationality's propensity to demystify and reduce, to atomize and disenfranchise (well shown in the dialogue at the playhouse). We find ourselves questioning Wren's assurance that there is a difference between "phrensies and inspirations" - from our personal experience if nothing else. In this sense, Dyer is fascinating as an occupant of a particular moment in history, as the new system begins to uproot the old - yet the implications of the "new" are just as terrifying, in different ways, than the barbaric "old".

But, in the end, Dyer is also a monster, murdering men and children (powerful sequences sketching the varied vice-ridden inhabitants and criminals of London brought to mind the police line-up opening of Algren's The Man With the Golden Arm of all things, as well as contrasting the viciousness, barbarity and general abuse with Dyer's methodical, ritualized murder), biliously mocking the beginnings of our scientific age (the scene of Wren's speech to the Royal Society - with Dyer's sarcastic, sinister asides - is also excellent) and yet forced to hide his monumental works in plain sight and guard their secrets jealously and murderously (even, as it turns out, mistakenly). His grand philosophy is informed and poisoned by his own personal history, motivated by fear, paranoia and awful example. And this depth of character is also helped by the resonance and echoes to be found in the victims - the young boy who builds model cathedrals, the harrowing history of a poor man's descent into mental illness (his social incapacity seen also in Dyer) and homelessness.

I felt the origin of Dyer's belief system, his being taken in from the awful street-life by the "Enthusiastiks" (who strike me as learned Decadents/Hellfire Club types, although this is cannily left to the imagination) and tutored in a schismatic, esoteric thought that builds on his own naturally cynical view of humanity (given his experiences, who could blame him?) was quite well done. Rarely has the psychology of the sinister character that motivates plots like these been so well developed. On the other hand (and in retrospect rightly so) Hawksmoor starts out as a cold, mechanical cypher, slowly unraveling in the narrative before us as he questions the subjectivity of reality. And why "rightly so"?

It seems that applying terms like protagonist and antagonist to a book like HAWKSMOOR is near-useless. The doubling and twinning of Dyer (an apt name, in retrospect) and Hawksmoor that builds throughout the book is subtle, deep and amazingly deft ("'He's cunning, though.' Then he pointed to his own head. 'He's very cunning'"). The repetition (plotting of blueprints and building of models shaping space to human intent, a figure is seen falling across the sky), the echoes (a compass lost is found again, listeners to popular music keeping time in storefronts, two landladies, two Walters), the turns of phrases and subtle indications of malleable time (Hawksmoor just cannot find the famed Meridian, even when directed to it, "the timing" is the major problem in examining the crime scenes, time and geography are frequently blurred, smudged and distorted under the monuments' influences - or is that just the nature of time and the human mind?) all seem to point towards success in Dyer's obscure plans ("I have built an everlasting Order, which I may run through laughing: no one can catch me now.") but... to what end? The framing of that quote seems to imply that the desire (despite all the profound talk) is to escape the absolute that is Death, a basic human motivation. And does Dyer succeed?

There are no solid answers given to almost any of the novel's questions (frustrating for some, I imagine). One could argue that in essence what Dyer has achieved is to have metaphorically placed a mirror in time: on one side is over-emotional Dyer, fighting his arcane war against rationality as he rages, plots, murders and succumbs to paranoia while achieving his goal - and his inverted reflection centuries later is Hawksmoor, the stolid, reliable, rational and emotionally disconnected man who eventually unravels under the weight of a mystery that doesn't make sense, and which causes him to question the entire foundation of his worldview, to wonder whether all the patterns he sees are parts of a larger scheme or merely the human mind sifting reassuring order from chaos (itself merely a hard-wired animal survival technique and not indicative of any larger "truth"). One could phrase this in numerous clunky ways - Hawksmoor is Dyer "reincarnated" or that Dyer "possesses" Hawksmoor - but these are reductive genre terms and don't do justice to the intense and evocative writing. My own take is the visual one I presented - Dyer and Hawksmoor are the same person, a continuum or life-line split halfway along its length, each side reflecting an inverted vision of the other.

So, who is the murderer in modern London? Again, in clunky genre terms we might tick off the usual suspects: "an unknown killer", "an unknown killer possessed by Dyer", "Dyer himself, moving through time", "Dyer himself in the past, his actions on his victims echoing in modern time through some arcane temporal power", "some evil force conjured by Dyer's action working in the present" - but none of these answers are satisfying and again the author does such a good job of making these narrative concepts moot that I can't help but feel the answer is contained in my given conception - the reason why Hawksmoor can't solve the murder, the reason it makes no sense is because HE is the murderer, acting unconsciously (thus reinvigorating an old noir trope without resorting to the predictable amnesia card - although, as I said, the actual "how" of it seems moot) - at least in the sense that he IS Dyer inverted.

And so does Dyer's plan succeed? Yes and no. On a large scale, yes, he has created his churches and they are sunk deep into the history and fabric of London like monumental stone sentinels around which the temporal currents of history crash, ebb and churn, never changing in themselves but deforming the flow of life and events. Elaborating from Alan Moore's conception in FROM HELL, Dyer can be seen to have magically, symbolically "locked" the heart of London into place as a vast Pitte, a frozen point in time, leaking corruption into the city and the world (I mention FROM HELL because I felt Moore's point in that work was not just that Gull had merely succeeded in killing some women and attaining his personal "enlightenment" from the power released, but that he had also succeeded in binding, in the occult sense, the symbolic concept of "women" to this fearsome invention of the "serial killer," codifying it into the culture of the 20th Century as an awful, real-world bogeyman, the manifestation of his own and his culture's misogyny let loose to threaten and terrorize as it echoes through time).

But on the human scale - no Dyer does not succeed in cheating death by dodging through a hole in time ("no one can catch me now") - instead, he plunges through the metaphorical mirror and lives the awful life of Hawksmoor - himself - from the heights of respect and notoriety down into despair of failure and loneliness and then, finally, terminating by facing his own reflection in his church - and thus there is nowhere to go, there is only solitude and loneliness because there is only "yourself" and your actions... after all.

[W.D. Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's bodies decomposing in containers tonight
In an abandoned building where
A squatter's made a mural of a Mexican girl
With fifteen cans of spray paint and a chemical swirl
She's standing in the ashes at the end of the world
Four 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 read so long ago that it may as well have been....

Here, if the 19C had its Madwoman in the Attic, the harpsichord pavane which we imagine the 18C to have been is revealed to contain shadows within shadows, such that the vaunted 'Dialectic' of Enlightenment is rather a stately dance toward oblivion, if I interpret all of this murk correctly—not an Allegory of Love, but of Death, Decay, Darkness, all those other capital-Ds.

Nicolas Dyer (1661-1715) is portrayed as the devil-worshipping architect of an M Night Shyamalanian number of churches (7), who, as a young boy (after surviving the plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666) is taught by his rescuer/necromancer Mirabilis that "Christ was the Serpent who deceiv'd Eve, and in the form of a Serpent entered the Virgin's womb", and that only human sacrifice can summon the Great Powers. This so impresses the lad that he commits the murder of a young virginal boy to sacralize each of those churches—let the 7 trumpets blow.

The actual architect of those churches was one Nicholas Hawksmoor(1661-1736), who in the late 20C is also the name of a Sherlock-wannabe-type of DCI investigating a number of interrelated murders around...you guessed it, said 7th Seal/Sign churches—while he is completely unaware of their history, he is deeply troubled by the haunting sense of a pattern that he cannot seem to bring to...light.

So intricate is the patterning that Mr. Ackroyd has accomplished here, it would take me another half-dozen (plus one!) readings to even begin to puzzle them all out. If, like Mr Dyer (perhaps) I had several transmigration-of-the-soul lifetimes (Met-Him-Pike-Hoses!), I could perchance to dream to do it...

But, alas, this Terpsichorean Travesty of a review endeth here—at merely the commencement of ¶6.

And it's the sum of man, slouching towards Bethlehem
A heart just can't contain all of that empty space
It breaks, it breaks, it breaks

[Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 Jack the Ripper can come out in the screen anytime, gutting a prostitute.

An architect, Nicholas Dyer, is commissioned to build seven churches in London. Unknown to everyone (except to his fellows in the cult), he is a devil-worshiper. So he buillds these churches, infusing therein the requirements of the black arts he knows, among which is the need to have human lives sacrificed for these structures, sort of like the bottles of wine being smashed against boats or ships before their maiden voyage. He begins killing people for this.

Fast forward some 250 years later, in the 20th century. There's a series of gruesome murders. The sites are these same churches, now old. A detective named Nicholas Hawksmoor is investigating these crimes.

Dyer's world and that of Hawksmoor somewhat mirror each other, like the latter is but a refrain of a song of long ago. From start to finish you and your movie companions are at the edge of your seats in suspense, with thick, palpable air of horror hanging over the cinema.

Then the movie ends. You all go out, discuss the movie, and quarrel over it.

[Nicky · Rating 2 out of 5]

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've read other work by Peter Ackroyd and found them flat; he actually managed to catch my interest with the parts set in the 1700s, but the rest... He has a very dry style: "This happened and then he went and did this, because someone else was doing this. Then he did this and said something about it and..."

I have to confess I skim-read this, and probably won't remember much about it in a week. The ideas are fascinating, but ach, I don't get on with Peter Ackroyd!

[Bam cooks the books · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 before continuing.

The story begins in the early 18th century when architect, Nicholas Dyer, has been commissioned to build seven new churches in London, a city devastated by the Great Plague of 1665 followed by the Great Fire of London in 1666. Note that Peter Ackroyd has played with the name of the actual architect, Nicholas Hawksmoor, and increased the number of churches he designed by one.

Dyer is a practitioner of the ancient dark arts and includes symbols of his religion in his designs while concealing a sacrificial murder at each as well. "My churches will indure, I reflected. I have liv'd long enough for others, like the Dog in the Wheel, and it is now the Season to begin for myself: I cannot change that Thing call'd Time, but I can alter its Posture and, as Boys do turn a looking-glass against the Sunne, so I will dazzle you all."

The chapters alternate between the past and modern day London (1985) where a series of murders are occuring at each of Dyer's churches which are under investigation by senior police officer, Nicholas Hawksmoor.

Names, words and objects from the past echo in the present in a fascinating way, while issues about 'time' and 'dust' are repetitive threads. The reader watches in horror as both Nicholas Dyer and Nicholas Hawksmoor unravel before our eyes as they pursue their life missions. This is a strange, complex book but worth reading.

[nettebuecherkiste · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ich glaube nicht, dass ich alles kapiert habe, werde nachlesen müssen. Die Idee ist jedenfalls toll.

[Jose · Rating 2 out of 5]

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 new era of 'Reason' ushered in by the times after the Plague and the Great Fire had basically exhausted the people's appetite for horror. He believes, and his belief is well supported by his surroundings, in a demonic theology predating Christian times and where the world is really more in shadow than light to put it blandly. There is a parallel story set in the 80's with a series of murders occuring at each one of the churches designed by Dyer/Hawksmoor. The man in charge of the investigation is called...Hawksmoor. And this is just the most basic of the endless mirroring scenes between the past and the present times. Except for some vivid descriptions of homelessness and moody noctunal scenes,mthis book rings a lot more vivid in the passages written in old English that correspond to the parts of the story with Mr. Dyer as the protagonist. But once you get tired of the endless litany of old street names and revolting low life scenes, the bones of the book are bare and the prose is clogged by bombast. For a worshipper of Darkness Mr. Dyer seems very attached to this world and its thrills. For a modern inspector, Hawkmoor is the epitome of ineffiency as he descends into madness because ...we don't really know why. May be he is possessed. I found the book hard to finish, boring, repetirive and humorless. I won't give up the ending but i won't recommend reading it either unless you are really into mood and some witty turns of phrase.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 warp in the fabric of time which causes certain events and characters to recur over time. The book's rather thinly-sketched titular character, and many of the obscurities of its plot, spring into context when you do a bit of research and find out the real name of the architect who built those 18th-century churches. Well played. A truly brilliant novel that evokes a strong sense of awe.

[Derek Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Sinister, Complex Portrait of Occultism, Architecture, Murder, Rationalism, and the Endless Permutations of Human Behavior Linking Past and Present
This 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 occultism from so many sources as to to make the head spin, the squalor of the city and its denizens, living and dying in the shadows. The struggle between rationalism and irrationality (which parallels the urges to do good vs evil). The story is paralleled with a 20th century detective story of murders of young boys at the same churches designed by Nicholas Dyer after the Great Fire of London by a Nicholas Hawksmoor, though in reality that was the actual name of Christopher Wren's protege. Things get very intertwined in a postmodernist puzzle (though the author eschews this term, preferring to call the combining of past and present narratives as "transitional writing"), with a macabre and pessimistic tone about humanity throughout.

It won't be to all tastes, but the 18th century writing style is perfectly realized, and it will not soon be forgotten.

[Sue]

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.

[Tijana]

Ne kažem ja da je ovo loše samo po sebi, ali, bogami, sačekaće neko drugo raspoloženje.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bettie's Books

[Fatemeh · Rating 1 out of 5]

Now that I'm writing this review, it's been almost two weeks since I've read this book and I don't remember about 80% of what happened and that should mean something. Probably.

[F.R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

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, always keep the structure intierely in mind as you inscribe it.” It’s an excellent read once you get into it; but one can imagine there were a lot of people in 1985 looking for a good thriller for the train, who were excited by the blurb, but scared to death by the opening page. So hats off to Ackroyd, I say! You wouldn’t want it all the time, but it’s good for an author to sometimes make things difficult for his readers.

Nicholas Dyer is an assistant to Christopher Wren, working on six new London Churches in the reign of Queen Anne. He is not, however, the man he appears to be, and gradually his compulsions emerge and murder seems unavoidable. Meanwhile, in Twentieth Century London, police detective Nicholas Hawksmoor is investigating a series of murders committed at Dyer’s churches. Murders which, although he doesn’t know it, have strong echoes of the past.

(I’m evidently a dunce when it comes to architecture by the way. Otherwise I’d have known, before my Google search, that the name of Christopher Wren’s assistant who worked on these churches was actually Nicholas Hawksmoor.)

The way the two narratives weave together is superbly done, with rhymes, phrases, sensations and character names echoing through the two time periods. (Stonehenge is placed expertly into both the 18th and 20th century segments. Wren’s and Dyer’s visit to the monument is particularly brilliant.) There’s a creepy atmosphere built gradually throughout, so that even though the ending is slightly anticlimactic, one still turns the final page with a chill.

[Hristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Așa cum există zăpadă din care nu poți închega un bulgăre, oricât ai presa-o între palme, așa și cartea lui Peter Akroyd e imposibil de delimitat într-o forma închisă. Nimic statornic nu există în ea, nimic care să respecte limita, fie ea spațială sau temporală. Poate pentru ca răul nu are început și nici sfârșit, pentru că nu are nicio sursă dovedită. Dar el este într-o continuă manifestare, iar exercitarea lui în timp nu este unidirecțională și nu este nici liniară, ci spiralată, astfel că volutele care sunt generate pot descrie arce similare. Deși niciodată identice, ele se pot oglindi unele în altele într-atât încât să devină imposibil de separat. Ca doi scaieți care se prind unul de altul cu cârligele lor mărunte, cele doua fire narative din roman devin întrepătrunse un zeci de puncte. Fraze cheie, elemente repetitive, nume identice, similarități si puzderie de congruente, te bulversează cu totul. Romanul nu poseda pământ solid sub picioare decât in bisericile de piatră ale lui Hawksmoor și în existenta lui dovedita de istorie. Confruntarea dintre rațional și mistic este omniprezentă în carte, dar separarea apelor este mereu problematică.
Un thriller total atipic. O carte cu crime, da, dar nu morțile sunt cele care înspăimântă.
Primesc romanul ca pe sămânța din care ar fi putut crește Confiteor, cartea lui Jaume Cabre, unde răul este urmărit de asemenea peste veacuri. În schimbul viorii, avem 7 biserici clădite drept sursă perpetuă a laturii întunecate din om, a instinctului lui ucigaș și malefic, a vibrației demonicului din lume. Ele au puterea de a genera aceleași consecințe nefaste.
Am citit acest roman in umbra romanului grafic Din iad, a lui Alan Moore. Mi se pare că se complimentează reciproc, mie mi-a venit mai ușor sa le abordez ca pe materiale complementare. Fără să devină preferate.

[Peter · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Destruction is like a snow-ball rolled down a Hill, for its Bulk encreases by its own swiftness and thus Disorder spreads."

The novel’s main protagonist, Nick Dyer, ( partly based on the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor who worked alongside Sir Christopher Wren), is a follower of a Satanic cult who consecrates his churches with human sacrifices. Hawksmoor is a 1980's detective investigating a series of murders that mirror those committed in the name of Dyer’s art.

This is my third novel by the author having previously read 'The Lambs of London' and 'The House of Doctor Dee' so in some respects I knew what to expect. The novel will be based on a real historical character but mixed with a modern fictional character, the real world colliding with a fictitious one. The setting for the novel will be London but it will be a far darker and gloomier London than what the tourist of today is going to see with its 18th century smells and noises. Ackroyd’s narrative will shift between the early 18th century and the 1980s, as does the idiom. In all these respects this book doesn't disappoint.

I have been under-whelmed by the previous books by the author that I've read and this one is no different. I had higher hopes for this one as it promised to be a macabre (if fictional) tour of the history of Hawksmoor's churches featuring occultism, magic, sacrifice and horror. What's not to like?

Nick Dyer, is an interesting character however, the policeman Hawksmoor simply isn't credible. The 1700s setting is very atmospheric although I found the 1980s version of London to be rather grey and bland. I also found the dialogue ever more artificial and un-natural as the book progressed. The plot rambles and nothing much happens for large chunks of it. Even the ending is inconclusive. By the time I'd reached the end of the book I wondered why I'd bothered. This is my least enjoyable of the three books by the author that I've read but on the plus side it did make me go and read more background about Nick Dyer and his churches.

[Anya (An Awful Lot of Reading) · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 the dredge of London's underbelly and the odd spellings of the seventeenth century. But I am not the right audience, for the simple reason that I prefer my fiction to make sense. Probably didn't help I read most of the second half of this novel with a cold!

Dyer, the architect in 17th C, is based on Nicholas Hawksmoor, real-life apprentice to Christopher Wren, the man behind the rebuilding of St Paul's (You can tell I've studied too much on London's history!). The story intertwines the building of his churches with the ritualistic killings (it is suggested) he performs there and 200 years later, the same (sometimes) murders being investigated by Hawksmoor, the fictional police detective it is thought to be based on Ackroyd himself. Confusing, huh? You're telling me!

While I'm not sure if I even liked this book, I would recommend sticking through to the end. Even if the ending isn't exactly satisfying and just as confusing as the rest of the narrative.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a weird way I was dreading this book. I’m not a huge fan of historical fiction, especially if it takes place in the middle ages/enlightenment era. However, Hawksmoor is a different kettle of fish and incorporates many other literary genres.

The novel is based on the six churches that Nicholas Hawksmoor (here renamed Dyer) built. The thing is Dyer is part of a Satanic cult and is building churches for human sacrifice.

The even numbered chapters takes place in 1980’s London, where there are a series of murders taking place within the six churches and Nicholas Hawksmoor, a detective, has to uncover the mystery. Unfortunately the past is entwined with the present and it leads to certain startling discoveries.

Part detective story , part historical fiction, Hawksmoor is a very gripping novel. Also people who are fans of groups such as Current 93 and other World Serpent artists should check this book out as a lot of their philosophies are incorporated. Truly fascinating. A word of warning though, in order to be authentic Ackroyd uses the vernacular used in the 18th century and it pays to do some research on London during this period (and maybe a bit on pagan rites). Other than Eco, I don’t think I’ve read a meta historical novel that’s this good.

[Architeacher · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 my imagination to such an extent that I actually set to work attempting to do drawings of how it might have appeared.

Ackroyd adapts the 18th century Hawksmoor as a 20th century detective solving a series of murders that, coincidentally, occur at the sites of Dyer's 18th century churches. Confused yet? The chapters also alternate between the 18th and 20th centuries, as the two principal characters disconnect from reality and evaporate.

I've read this book three times during the past fifteen years and will probably give it another go later this summer.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I was afraid of your Moving Picture, I said without thought, and that was why I left.

It was only Clock-work, Nick.

But what of the vast Machine of the World, in which Men move by Rote but in which nothing is free from Danger?

Nature yields to the Froward and the Bold.

It does not yield, it devours: You cannot master or manage Nature.

But, Nick,our Age can at least take up the Rubbidge and lay the Foundacions: that is why we must study the principles of Nature, for they are our best Draught.

No, sir, you must study the Humours and Natures of Men: they are corrupt, and therefore your best Guides to understand Corrupcion. The things of the Earth must be understood by the sentient Faculties, not by the Understanding.

There was a Silence between us now until Sir Chris. says, Is your Boy in the Kitchin. I am mighty Hungry."

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 digest.

[Bookworm with Kids · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very strange book - I would give it 2.5 stars but have to round up (generously!) to 3 stars as there were some lyrical passages with beautiful writing. However, the story, characters and plot did not engage my interest. I liked the swapping between the time periods in alternate chapters. I read this book for the Duncan Jones book club (or the David Bowie book club, whichever of the two you prefer!) but it wouldn't be my choice.

[Jakub Karda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Byl to boj... Recenzi asi někdy jindy... Teď jdu koukat do zdi asi.. Určitě se k ty knize vrátím, protože podle mne jsem všechno nedal, ale už teď jsem každou stránku musel číst tak třikrát, tudíž mám načteno za tři knihy (tím omlouvám ty dva měsíce záseku)
Hodně silná kniha

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor is a literary séance disguised as a novel — where London breathes through stone, shadows, and murder.

I picked it up at the 2009 Kolkata Book Fair — the year the fair itself became a wandering spirit, exiled from the Maidan to the unfamiliar sprawl of Milan Mela, a transition that felt oddly in tune with Ackroyd’s spectral themes. I still remember holding the book amid the Salt Lake wind and concrete glare, missing the old grass beneath my feet, just as Ackroyd’s London misses its older, darker soul beneath the modern façade.

Hawksmoor is part historical fiction, part metaphysical thriller. It’s a mirror between centuries: one storyline follows Nicholas Dyer, a chilling 18th-century architect (a fictional stand-in for Nicholas Hawksmoor), building London churches with sacrificial rituals embedded in their stones. The other traces Detective Nicholas Hawksmoor in the 1980s, investigating a string of murders that uncannily echo Dyer’s long-forgotten rites.

The genius lies in the dual narrative — Dyer’s portion written in period prose, spellbinding and archaic, while Hawksmoor’s half slips into modern melancholia. Both Londons — past and present — bleed into one another, as if the city itself is remembering, or perhaps refusing to forget.

Ackroyd doesn’t just explore London; he animates it. The churches in the novel don’t merely stand — they brood. His city is an entity with intent, stitched together by secret geometries, whispers of cabbala, and half-glimpsed evil. And through this, Ackroyd poses a spine-chilling idea: what if architecture, that most solid of arts, could carry memory, malignity, or even murder?

Reading Hawksmoor was a strange thrill — like peeling back wallpaper to find Latin curses underneath. It challenged my sense of time, of place, of the very nature of fiction. Ackroyd doesn’t explain everything, and that’s the point. As with the best gothic tales, much remains buried — quite literally, in the foundations.

If London: The Biography is a love letter to the city, Hawksmoor is its ghost story. For readers of M.R. James, Borges, or Umberto Eco — or anyone who believes that cities, like people, have subconscious minds — this is a novel to shiver through.

In 2009, as the Book Fair relocated and I adjusted to new geography, Hawksmoor whispered an eerie truth: no matter how much the landscape shifts, the ghosts always remember where they were laid.