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Captain Swing and the Blacksmith
Beatrice Parvin’s debut novel Captain Swing and the Blacksmith, is set in the West Country in the 1840s, a time when the area was in the grip of poverty. It’s haunted by memories of the Swing Riots 10 years before, when labourers caused extensive damage in a desperate attempt to increase starvation wages. Sue Trindall, the protagonist, is a character shaped by the trauma of the riots and the devastating effects that the riots had on her community.
Sue, a 17-year-old laundry presser, lives in Amesbury with her alcoholic father, a man known for his talent for persuasion. When Sue’s father is asked by protestors to write threatening notes signed ‘Captain Swing’, his family’s fortunes are changed forever. In order to earn money after her mother’s death, Sue starts selling buttons. One day, after finding a pair of pearl buttons embedded in mud outside the Town Hall, her fortunes start to look up. The attention of an apprentice blacksmith, Jack Straker, promises a brighter future. But when Jack abandons Sue in favour of her wealthy friend Eleanor, and she loses her precious buttons as a result of her father’s actions, Sue leave Amesbury, pregnant and devastated. And thereby begins her fight for survival...
Sue, a 17-year-old laundry presser, lives in Amesbury with her alcoholic father, a man known for his talent for persuasion. When Sue’s father is asked by protestors to write threatening notes signed ‘Captain Swing’, his family’s fortunes are changed forever. In order to earn money after her mother’s death, Sue starts selling buttons. One day, after finding a pair of pearl buttons embedded in mud outside the Town Hall, her fortunes start to look up. The attention of an apprentice blacksmith, Jack Straker, promises a brighter future. But when Jack abandons Sue in favour of her wealthy friend Eleanor, and she loses her precious buttons as a result of her father’s actions, Sue leave Amesbury, pregnant and devastated. And thereby begins her fight for survival...
400 pages, Paperback
Published June 28, 2017
About the author
Beatrice Parvin
1 book1 followerBeatrice Parvin is a teacher, dancer and writer. She toured Europe and the Middle East with Balkan band, ‘Mukka’ and North African musicians, ‘Al Andalus’. ‘Captain Swing and the Blacksmith’ is her first novel completed after an MFA in Creative Writing at Kingston University.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 26, 2018
What strikes you first about this debut novel is the elegant cover with its intriguing title. Second is the generous addition of a soundtrack CD telling the story in folksong, without taking the price above what's reasonable for this size book and its production quality. Because I was reading this book in bed, I only listened to the CD after I'd finished it, but it provides a terrific sense of atmosphere from the period plus an extra layer of context to the narrative with its haunting traditional instruments played by Pete Watson and Frank Biddulph and the clear, pure voices of Emmie Ward and Rebecca Hollweg.
The overtures encourage you to expect something extraordinary from the novel itself, and I was pleased to find it is an extraordinary novel indeed -a lyrical hymn to rural Wiltshire's natural beauty interwoven and contrasted with the shocking hardships of the rural poor, suffering from the effects of the Enclosures Act and the industrialisation of farming overseen by callous landowners who grew fat on the profits while the living hell that was the workhouses overflowed with displaced labourers - a bittersweet mix indeed.
Set against this backdrop is a picaresque journey of young Sue Trindall, whose early dreams of running her own stall selling buttons and ribbons is overturned by the oldest means ever, forcing her to make her own way in a largely hostile world against all the odds. Buffeted by cruelty and misfortune, she is however sustained by her strength of spirit, aided by rare kindnesses from the most unexpected places, often from those who have least to spare themselves. Throughout she finds sustenance for her soul from the beauty and constancy of the natural world, the one anchor in an unpredictable and troubled life.
So caught up by her character from the start, I read this longish book quickly in a couple of sittings, but the vivid portrait of Sue and her world will stay with me for a long time. Like a latter-day Tess of the D'Urbervilles but ultimately more uplifting, this is highly recommended for anyone who loves an engrossing, well-researched and well-written historical novel; for those interested in early 19th century social history; and for anyone who enjoys reading about strong feminist heroes.
This is a remarkable debut novel, and I hope we shall see many more from this gifted author. I hope also that she will make it available also as an ebook to help it reach the much wider audience it deserves than can be reached by paperback alone.
The overtures encourage you to expect something extraordinary from the novel itself, and I was pleased to find it is an extraordinary novel indeed -a lyrical hymn to rural Wiltshire's natural beauty interwoven and contrasted with the shocking hardships of the rural poor, suffering from the effects of the Enclosures Act and the industrialisation of farming overseen by callous landowners who grew fat on the profits while the living hell that was the workhouses overflowed with displaced labourers - a bittersweet mix indeed.
Set against this backdrop is a picaresque journey of young Sue Trindall, whose early dreams of running her own stall selling buttons and ribbons is overturned by the oldest means ever, forcing her to make her own way in a largely hostile world against all the odds. Buffeted by cruelty and misfortune, she is however sustained by her strength of spirit, aided by rare kindnesses from the most unexpected places, often from those who have least to spare themselves. Throughout she finds sustenance for her soul from the beauty and constancy of the natural world, the one anchor in an unpredictable and troubled life.
So caught up by her character from the start, I read this longish book quickly in a couple of sittings, but the vivid portrait of Sue and her world will stay with me for a long time. Like a latter-day Tess of the D'Urbervilles but ultimately more uplifting, this is highly recommended for anyone who loves an engrossing, well-researched and well-written historical novel; for those interested in early 19th century social history; and for anyone who enjoys reading about strong feminist heroes.
This is a remarkable debut novel, and I hope we shall see many more from this gifted author. I hope also that she will make it available also as an ebook to help it reach the much wider audience it deserves than can be reached by paperback alone.
December 15, 2023
Captain Swing and The Blacksmith
My husband and I both read Beatrice Parvin’s book and have similar reactions. There is a very strong sense of place. My husband likes the way the Swing Riots are in the background and become more apparent as the book goes on. This Historical detail helps cement reality and purpose.
I particularly like the visual and vivid descriptions which bring life into the work as if the writer is painting with words. The buttons and shiny finds appeal to me as this is something I also do. Like a Magpie, while out on walks if something catches Sue’s eye (the main character) she will pick it up. A fragment of something beautiful found in the dirt when cleaned up can have endless possibilities. These descriptions speak to me. As does the fact she is an enterprising individual aspiring to start her own business. She weaves stories around these finds and I love that she brings her finds round to links in the story further into the novel. That lost buttons can unexpectedly be reunited with their original costume. This brings a sense of geography and smallness of space.
The occupation of letter writing for a largely illiterate society (agricultural) is new to me. Penning love letters to attract suitable suitors is interesting and helps weave the story together.
I love the descriptions of the landscape and you get a good sense of the temperature, time of day and can almost smell and touch the foliage as the descriptions are so vivid.
It is a relief that Sue manages to eke out a reasonable life for herself despite her many hardships. This is not Hardy but it has echoes of his work which again appeals as I love the time period the novel is set in.
Thank you for the delightful accompanying CD which brings long forgotten Old English Folk songs to life. The chosen tunes are poetical and complement the text exquisitely. Lovely harmonies fit for dancing, my feet were certainly tapping!
I would have liked more on plants and potions and the development of Mother’s garden through the change of the seasons.
It was a page turner for me and I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
Janie and Alastair Murphy
My husband and I both read Beatrice Parvin’s book and have similar reactions. There is a very strong sense of place. My husband likes the way the Swing Riots are in the background and become more apparent as the book goes on. This Historical detail helps cement reality and purpose.
I particularly like the visual and vivid descriptions which bring life into the work as if the writer is painting with words. The buttons and shiny finds appeal to me as this is something I also do. Like a Magpie, while out on walks if something catches Sue’s eye (the main character) she will pick it up. A fragment of something beautiful found in the dirt when cleaned up can have endless possibilities. These descriptions speak to me. As does the fact she is an enterprising individual aspiring to start her own business. She weaves stories around these finds and I love that she brings her finds round to links in the story further into the novel. That lost buttons can unexpectedly be reunited with their original costume. This brings a sense of geography and smallness of space.
The occupation of letter writing for a largely illiterate society (agricultural) is new to me. Penning love letters to attract suitable suitors is interesting and helps weave the story together.
I love the descriptions of the landscape and you get a good sense of the temperature, time of day and can almost smell and touch the foliage as the descriptions are so vivid.
It is a relief that Sue manages to eke out a reasonable life for herself despite her many hardships. This is not Hardy but it has echoes of his work which again appeals as I love the time period the novel is set in.
Thank you for the delightful accompanying CD which brings long forgotten Old English Folk songs to life. The chosen tunes are poetical and complement the text exquisitely. Lovely harmonies fit for dancing, my feet were certainly tapping!
I would have liked more on plants and potions and the development of Mother’s garden through the change of the seasons.
It was a page turner for me and I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
Janie and Alastair Murphy
June 11, 2019
Captain Swing and the Blacksmith
Beatrice Parvin, Troubador, 2018, £9.99, pb, 364 pp, 9781788035293
Imber, England, 1843
Since 1830, threatening letters signed Captain Swing have incited agricultural workers to rebel against landowners for implementing work-saving inventions, particularly the threshers that have put so many out of work and sent thousands to the spike: dark, crowded workhouses that serve as repositories for the poor.
In Captain Swing and the Blacksmith, Parvin takes the reader into the dingy, exhausting world of working-class 1840s England, where seamstress and laundress Susan Trindall dreams of one day owning a market stall and selling the buttons she finds on the street. But when she falls for the handsome blacksmith Jack Straker and makes an ill-advised (if understandable) decision, she is disgraced. Her father, who signs his letters Captain Swing, banishes her into a life of poverty and homelessness. Fueled by desperation, unrequited love, and a stubborn (if, again, understandable) quest for revenge, she begins her years-long struggle to survive.
From the workers’ uprising to the perilous world of a seventeen-year-old social outcast, to the Andover Workhouse, Parvin characterizes Salisbury Plain with harsh, sometimes gruesome, detail. Her depiction of the spike, whose deplorable conditions smack of starvation and torture, sent me to the library. In investigating the Swing Riots of 1830 and reading George Orwell’s account of a night he spent in a workhouse (“The Spike”), I realized that Parvin’s description was on point.
Her debut novel, though driven by an obsessive love, is no romance; and while a character finds redemption, it is no parable. Rather, it is a portrait of a time. Evocative of a mean age, Captain Swing and the Blacksmith is both riveting and relevant.
Recommended.
Rebecca Kightlinger
Originally published in Historical Novels Review Issue 86, Nov 2018.
Beatrice Parvin, Troubador, 2018, £9.99, pb, 364 pp, 9781788035293
Imber, England, 1843
Since 1830, threatening letters signed Captain Swing have incited agricultural workers to rebel against landowners for implementing work-saving inventions, particularly the threshers that have put so many out of work and sent thousands to the spike: dark, crowded workhouses that serve as repositories for the poor.
In Captain Swing and the Blacksmith, Parvin takes the reader into the dingy, exhausting world of working-class 1840s England, where seamstress and laundress Susan Trindall dreams of one day owning a market stall and selling the buttons she finds on the street. But when she falls for the handsome blacksmith Jack Straker and makes an ill-advised (if understandable) decision, she is disgraced. Her father, who signs his letters Captain Swing, banishes her into a life of poverty and homelessness. Fueled by desperation, unrequited love, and a stubborn (if, again, understandable) quest for revenge, she begins her years-long struggle to survive.
From the workers’ uprising to the perilous world of a seventeen-year-old social outcast, to the Andover Workhouse, Parvin characterizes Salisbury Plain with harsh, sometimes gruesome, detail. Her depiction of the spike, whose deplorable conditions smack of starvation and torture, sent me to the library. In investigating the Swing Riots of 1830 and reading George Orwell’s account of a night he spent in a workhouse (“The Spike”), I realized that Parvin’s description was on point.
Her debut novel, though driven by an obsessive love, is no romance; and while a character finds redemption, it is no parable. Rather, it is a portrait of a time. Evocative of a mean age, Captain Swing and the Blacksmith is both riveting and relevant.
Recommended.
Rebecca Kightlinger
Originally published in Historical Novels Review Issue 86, Nov 2018.
April 13, 2018
This book has received a Discovering Diamonds Review:
Helen Hollick
founder #DDRevs
'Engrossing, beautifully written, absorbing and in places, heartbreaking... a fabulous first novel,'
Helen Hollick
founder #DDRevs
'Engrossing, beautifully written, absorbing and in places, heartbreaking... a fabulous first novel,'
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews