'The Smallest Man' by Frances Quinn

The Smallest Man by Frances Quinn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This wonderful book by fellow Brighton author Frances Quinn is based on a historical character - Jeffrey Hudson, court dwarf to Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of the ill-fated King Charles I. Here he is renamed Nat Davey, and given the opportunity to tell his own extraordinary story.
As the author herself admits, 'This is a novel ... not a fictionalised biography or a history textbook, so not everything that happens to Nat happened to Jeffrey Hudson, and here and there, I've changed the order of events, or their locations'. However this matters not one whit, as we follow the tumultuous events of the English Civil War through the eyes of a young man sold by his father as a ten year old boy and presented to the Queen of England in a pie. Seemingly destined to spend his life as a Royal plaything and attendant, Nat knows himself to be 'as big on the inside as everyone else', and is determined to prove it.
Nat's loving and courageous character shines throughout the narrative, and his perceptive depiction of the arranged marriage between a weak and indecisive English despot and an intelligent young French Catholic princess brings both King Charles and Queen Henrietta Maria to to life, warts and all. In addition, Nat's friends and relatives - his wily, abusive father, quietly courageous mother and dense but loyal younger brother Sam; his giant friend Jeremiah, his tormenter and nemesis Charles Crofts, and the feisty Catholic noblewoman Arabella Denham, whom he loves from afar - all spring vividly to life from the page, immersing the reader in a world nearly five hundred years away with no leap of imagination or suspension of disbelief required.
A wonderful story, and you'll find yourself hoping against hope for a happy ending ...



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