[Update: it’s going to be in the Top 10 hardback fiction list in The Sunday Times this weekend - amazing feat for a first novel in its first week of publication, but hardly surprising because it’s SO good. As you are about to find out].
Remember how I was raving about this wonderful, spirited, really fresh-feeling historical novel when it was published last Thursday? It suddenly occurred to me that since novels don’t get extracted or serialised in the papers - unlike e.g. cookbooks - I could just ask Rosanna Pike’s publisher if I could run the first chapter. And she said yes! So here you go - this really is especially and exclusively for you. Read it below and tell me it’s not utterly great and instantly engaging.
Here’s what I said about it, you have Bonnie Garmus saying on the jacket that ‘the fresh, irreverent voice of Tibb Ingleby is sheer brilliance - I loved it’, and The Bookseller made it an Editor’s Choice, saying: ‘I defy you to resist the raw energy and subversive humour of this Tudor picaresque novel narrated by foul-mouthed, big-hearted Tibb ... evoking a Tudor England a far cry from the usual image of courtly banquets.’
This opening chapter gives you the gist perfectly - it’s punchy and funny and original and heartbreaking all at once. Enjoy.