2018/52: Now We Shall Be Entirely Free -- Andrew Miller

the thought that had touched him several times since coming back from Spain, that we are not private beings and cannot hide things inside ourselves. Everything is present, everything in view for those who know how to look. [loc 3776]

1809: a soldier, near death, is brought to a house in Somerset by a postilion, and nursed slowly back to health by the housekeeper. The soldier's name is John Lacroix, and he has survived the retreat to Corunna. In body, at least: he has become deaf, and his feet are raw, but he is otherwise largely undamaged physically. His mind is another matter, and it's clear that something terrible happened to him during his last days in Spain. When a fellow officer visits to recall him to his regiment, he flees -- first to Bristol, then north to the Hebrides.

On his trail are two hunters: an English corporal, Calley, who has testified against Lacroix, and a Spanish officer, Medina, who represents the victims of an atrocity perpetrated by English soldiers in the small Spanish village of Morales. The two have been enjoined to 'do what your country requires of you'. Calley, it transpires, is not the kind of fellow you would wish to encounter on such an errand: but perhaps the violence which he applies to every obstacle is justified, or at least explicable. Perhaps.

Somewhere in the Hebrides (the particular island is never named) Lacroix meets the Fender siblings, who are members of a community of free thinkers. Emily, the least eccentric of the three, is losing her sight: Lacroix finds in her a kindred spirit, and begins to understand his own freedom in contrast to her 'small independence'. But will love, given or received, help him to confront the terrible things in his past?

Miller's narrative is slow, and seldom straightforward. We see Lacroix and Calley through the eyes of many observers: their perceptions don't always equate with our own. The clues about what happened at Morales are scattered throughout the novel: I'm not sure they're ever stitched into a comprehensive account, except in the reader's mind. Instead, we see how thoroughly the experience has permeated Lacroix: seeing gas-lamps lit, he imagines "if there had been lights like these that night in Spain ..."

This is a novel full of resonant images: 'lyrical and full of light', I have written, though perhaps that's only the ending. Complex philosophies are presented simply, as when a Somerset farmer says 'the man standing still knows just as much and will have his boots less worn. The world will pass through him'. Or Lacroix, reflecting that 'everything in view for those who know how to look'. Which could be a metaphor for Now We Shall Be Entirely Free: it's all there if you look.

I'd recently read False Lights, which also features an officer tormented by memories of war. Now We Shall Be Entirely Free takes a different approach, both with the original horror and the man's reaction to it. Miller's novel feels more vivid as an exploration of PTSD (perhaps because the sufferer is the central character here, and the theme is escape rather than redemption), but this is not to disparage False Lights. These are two very different novels which happen to be set in the same period. They are maps of different territories.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing a free ARC in exchange for this honest review!