A Little Trickerie

"It’s a fantastic book. We’ve got two historical novels on the shortlist this year, and they are quite different in approach. This one I love: it’s a debut novel set in the Middle Ages in England. It’s narrated by a young girl, Tibb, who is very put-upon—a vagrant who is looking after her mother. Vagrancy is a capital offense, so she has to stay on the run. It’s written in this extraordinary register. The sensibility is very Chaucerian. There’s low humour, bawdiness, slapstick, and it is all set within this world where people want to believe in miracles. Tibb falls in with a group of travelling players, who come up with a way to confect a miracle. She is such a winning character. Also, the language is so clever—it’s not exactly Middle English, certainly not contemporary, but a mixture of both. That’s a real gift that the author has. There are lots of lovely little comic incidents and vignettes all the way through the book, and it has real heart. This is a character who wants to find a place to belong, that’s a big part of it. Pike tackles aspects of homophobia and prejudice—things that were taken for granted at the time—and she has a really good handle on that period of history without making it too heavy-handed. I think it’s beautifully done."