Farthing

Small Change, Book 1

By: Jo Walton

Narrated by: John Keating, Bianca Amato

Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

One summer weekend in 1949 - but not our 1949 - the well-connected "Farthing set", a group of upper-crust English families, enjoy a country retreat. Lucy is a minor daughter in one of those families; her parents were both leading figures in the group that overthrew Churchill and negotiated peace with Herr Hitler eight years before. Despite her parents' evident disapproval, Lucy is married - happily - to a London Jew. It was therefore quite a surprise to Lucy when she and her husband, David, found themselves invited to the retreat. It's even more startling when, on the retreat's first night, a major politician of the Farthing set is found gruesomely murdered, with abundant signs that the killing was ritualistic.

It quickly becomes clear to Lucy that she and David were brought to the retreat in order to pin the murder on him. Major political machinations are at stake, including an initiative in Parliament, supported by the Farthing set, to limit the right to vote to university graduates. But whoever's behind the murder, and the frame-up, didn't reckon on the principal investigator from Scotland Yard being a man with very private reasons for sympathizing with outcasts and looking beyond the obvious. As the trap slowly shuts on Lucy and David, they begin to see a way out - a way fraught with peril in a darkening world.

What if: listen to more in the Small Change trilogy.

©2006 Jo Walton (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"If Le Carré scares you, try Jo Walton. Of course her brilliant story of a democracy selling itself out to fascism sixty years ago is just a mystery, just a thriller, just a fantasy--of course we know nothing like that could happen now. Don't we?" (Ursula K. Le Guin)

"Walton crosses genres without missing a beat with this stunningly powerful alternative history…. while the whodunit plot is compelling, it's the convincing portrait of a country's incremental slide into fascism that makes this novel a standout. Mainstream readers should be enthralled as well." ( Publishers Weekly)

bad ending

The ending sneaks up on you and then one is left disappointed. Performance was good though.

English Country House Murder

Jo Walton must have had this alternate timeline series in mind when she wrote 'Farthing', which is ultimately a rather hackneyed English countryhouse murder mystery. The familiarity of the plot does indeed allow Walton to establish her alternate 1949 British history and new society as Nazi Allies for readers.

This new society is fascinating, beautifully crafted and explained. It is a Britain filled with intrigue, dissidence, fear and acquiescence in which the Aristocracy did actually manage to give their country to Hitler in order to maintain their birthright.

The story is not as well crafted. Several passages are almost lectures outlining Farthing's new society and at those times, the story seems a tedious vehicle for the alternate history.

I gave Farthing 4 stars because now, several days after finishing the book, I recall passages or points made and find myself seeing new facets to this alternate world I hadn't noticed while listening. That doesn't happen with many books. It is only today that I look forward to the next novel of the series, Ha'Penny.
Farthing kinda crept up on me.

I'm going to have to read the next 2!

I didn't realize it was part of a trilogy, but I loved it so I need to listen to the next two.

unexpected all the way

If you could sum up Farthing in three words, what would they be?

engrossing, surprising

What did you like best about this story?

as soon as you think you figure out the story and where it is going, it takes a stunning turn.

Which scene was your favorite?

the last scene left me with: what!

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

so you think you know what's coming, think again

A gripping mystery in an alternative universe.

I really enjoyed this book and found it easy to finish. The alternative history found throughout would not be as interesting to those not familiar with WW1 and WW2.

I would say this book is an interesting piece of speculative historical fiction.

Superb execution, outstanding narration

4.5 stars. An outstanding blending of British mystery, historical novel, and alternate history. Walton grabbed my attention right away, with the book exceptionally easy to slip into due to the familiarity of its initial premise (upper crust country weekend, social climbing and social tensions, and a crime in the offing). But in those first chapters you are introduced to the twist, slight at first, that in 1941 Britain entered a peace accord with Nazi Germany, the United States never entered the war, and Germany engulfed the European continent. The book's events take place in 1949, with Britain eight years into the peace with Germany, and Germany eight years into a protracted war with Bolshevik Russia. This combination of familiar mystery with the permutation of a world where WWII never occurred makes for a gripping story.

Walton uses two point of view characters, Lucy Kahn (the daughter of aristocracy who bucked entrenched British antisemitism to marry her Jewish Husband) and Inspector Carmichael (of Scotland Yard, accomplished and educated, with one or two secrets of his own). The scene is the country estate of Lucy's parents, Farthing, and a weekend where the movers and shakers of the Farthing Set are to gather in advance of an important vote the coming week reorganizing the British government. The Farthing Set were largely responsible for the 1941 peace and there is some question about how much power they may be able to consolidate.

Then, as things so often do in British mysteries, a body is found and a murder appears to be political and Lucy's husbands looks like he is being framed. What follows are alternating chapters from Lucy's point of view with that of Carmichael's and the investigation. What makes this so effective is that where the book feels weighted heavily toward the British mystery side in the beginning, as the chapters roll by our view of this alternate history expands and acts as an impetus to deep thought about what it would mean if Britain had not stood against Hitler. Whether the insular nature of British culture and its much underscored distaste for the non-English would have worsened if not for the protracted resistance to Hitler. Whether both Britain and the United States would have quite so firmly self-identified as anti-fascist and pro-democratic, as liberty-loving and free, or as interested in at least putting up a facade of equality if they had not stood toe-to-toe against Nazi Germany and, facing a diabolical and perverse enemy, sought to embrace the things that enemy wasn't. Perhaps most effective is Walton's ability to, in the guise of a mystery and political intrigue, show how a country's denizens can believe "it can't happen here" and all the while slip slowly into totalitarian government.

In the end, the reader finds out the whodunit for the crime. But the climax is broader than that, and far more disturbing in its plausibility. There are changes in fortune, and characters who show remarkable insight and others who cannot see what is plain to the reader (though the reader has the benefit of historical hindsight). This book left me thinking for days after I finished it, managing to be both entertaining but also thought-provokingly unsettling, all without being heavy-handed. A book for mystery fans and those who love historical fiction. But also for those who are willing to look a society's complacency in the fact and admit that when someone says "it couldn't happen here," to respond "it could happen anywhere."

"It can't happen here" beaten to death

An alt-historical novel set in England, 1949, in a world in which Britain negotiated a "peace with honor" with Germany, ending the war and resulting in a continental Europe controlled by the Nazis, and an England in which everyone breathed a sigh of relief after the bombing stopped and life went back to normal. Except for the Jews.

With that historical backdrop (which is really the only "science fictional" element of the book), Farthing turns into half thriller, half murder mystery. Lucy Kahn, the daughter of an important family in the "Farthing Set" that negotiated the peace with Hitler, is the rebellious daughter who married a Jew, much to her parents' dismay. They barely tolerate her husband, but invite the two of them to a weekend in the country, in which the very man responsible for negotiating the end of the war is found dead, stabbed through the heart with a yellow star (like the kind they make Jews wear in Europe) pinned to his chest.

Obviously, it's a set-up, and fortunately for Lucy and her husband, David, the Scotland Yard inspector who is sent to investigate smells the set-up and is reluctant to go along with it, even though very powerful forces are obviously pressuring him to arrest the Jew and call it a day.

The mystery is fairly obvious, but the thriller aspects take center stage as we learn the reasons for the murder. The author makes her points rather heavy-handedly at times, and as the book ends (obviously to be continued in a second volume), England is sliding into fascism just like Germany.

I'm somewhat curious to see where the author intends to go with this - will we see England eventually throwing off the new fascism and turning history back on its proper course? It seems rather unlikely with the world the way it is. I was also bemused by every other character being gay or bi and having a same-sex lover in the closet.

3.5 stars. It was a pretty good read, but remember it is more English manor murder mystery than alternate World War II thriller.

Fun to read; more context would be nice

For about the first half of this novel, I thought Farthing was too slight a story to justify the alternate history frame. Indeed, combining a matter as weighty as fascism with something as slight as an English country house murder mystery seemed tactless. A rather thinly drawn police detective and a somewhat insipid English gentlewoman who seems to lack backbone -- at least that's how the characters come across for far too long in the beginning -- almost had me abandoning the book.

But I'm glad I stuck with it, because the story is less generic in the second half, and the author tightens the action. Walton finally adds details that, while they could have been foreshadowed better, were at least compelling once they were revealed. I'm definitely willing to try the next book in the series. "Farthing" is a digestible reminder that the British ruling class really dithered, for quite some time, over what they hated more: Nazis or labor unions. Churchill wasn't the only factor that tilted Britain against the Nazis, but seeing how many ethno-nationalists are among us now, in a time of relative peace and prosperity, it's not hard to believe that in the much poorer 1930s it might have all just as easily gone the other way. Walton's novel capably demonstrates how history sometimes turns on a dime.

The actors' narration rescues the somewhat flaccid first half of the book, and in the second half of the book, the improved story rescues the acting. Bianca Amato has not mastered a proper Home Counties accent, and someone should have told John Keating that a social climber like Inspector Carmichael would never pronounced "Magdalen" the way it's spelled. "Farthing" was one case where the whole of narration plus story was definitely better than the individual parts.

Alt-History Noire

Walton builds a sense of dread well. There are no surprising twists, but you dread each shoe dropping nonetheless. Walton also uses scene description well as allegory. The one weakness is Keating as a reader-- he sounds as if he's reading a children's story, not a gritty political / police thriller. Amato is flawless, however.

Delightful

All the tea and mystery in England. The alternate reality if frightening considering world pol