レビュー要約

• 題材の明確さと読みどころの強さが評価されている。物語や論述の推進力があり、人物やテーマに踏み込む構成が読後の印象を残す。

レビュー

• 親ナチ英国政府！から秘密を抱えて逃亡！？

  歴史If 物。もしチャーチルが首相に選ばれず、且つ、ダンケルク惨敗後、ドイツに降伏したら・・・十分有りえた設定。1950年、ゲッペルスが老いたヒトラーの後継者。独軍はスターリンを逮捕処刑し、ウラルでソビエト軍と対峙中。ビーバーブルックが英国首相で親ナチ政策を推進し、巷ではユダヤ人狩りが進行している。お話しの主人公は地下に潜ったチャーチルが率いるレジスタンスに協力して機密文書を密かにスパイしてきたが、うっかりミスで漏洩がバレ、秘密警察の魔の手が迫るも際どく逃亡。以下追う側と逃げる側との息詰まる展開になって手に汗握る。ただ少し長い（700頁弁当箱サイズ！）。英語は簡潔平易。文学賞受賞しているくらいだから読みごたえは十分ある。

• Appassionante

  Storia appassionante e coinvolgente, personaggi ben disegnati, un libro da leggere tutto di un fiato e poi rammaricarsi perché è finito...

• Brilliant!

  While I read and enjoy a lot of WW2 books, this is the first I've read one with an alternate ending. That's just not quite a genre I read much of. However, this truly was magnificent. It felt plausible. The characters were easy to understand, to see and hear in my mind. This book was well written and even though it was very long, it didn't drag. It held my attention all the way through. Well done!

• Good alternate history book

  A long while ago I read Fatherland by Robert Harris and found the whole 'what if?' scenario absolutely fascinating. Recently I found this novel by chance as I wandered around W.H. Smith prior to boarding a flight. I waited till I got home before ordering the book for a fraction of the price from Amazon. I'm glad I did, I really enjoyed it. Set in 1952 the story takes place in a Britain that made peace with Germany in 1940. Fascists have taken important seats in parliament, Germany is fighting an unwinnable war with Russia and Churchill has been driven underground as leader of the Resistance. There are a number of characters, their story-lines intertwining as the book progresses. We have David, a Civil Servant who is smuggling secret documents to the Resistance; his wife Sarah who worries her husband's recent detachment is evidence of an affair; Frank, David's unstable University friend who has been driven to madness by an important secret shared with him by his drunken emigre brother; and Gunther Hoth, an SS man tasked with hunting down Frank and the Resistance and learning their secret. I have always been fascinated with alternate history situations, often wondering how author's managed to deal with such vast subject matter in which the entire history of the world needs to be rewritten. In this respect Sansom has excelled, seamlessly blending fact with fiction to create a very believable world setting should Hitler have got his way. I'm sure the real history buffs among us will find the odd anomaly or two but in what history based book can we not find some minor fault? I enjoyed Dominion greatly but one or two things did take the shine off the book for me. Every time the main characters found themselves in a bind coincidence draws them quickly back together. In one scene our heroes are rescued from a difficult situation, David wonders out loud if Frank, who has been separated from the group, has managed to escape only to be told he has been picked up already. This served only to dampen any feelings of tension in the storytelling; each time a problem arrived you instinctively knew the group would be back together come the end of the next chapter. I found the events of the penultimate chapter a little anticlimactic considering the subject matter of the book - I won't say any more for fear of spoilers. I have never read any of CJ Sansom's other books but I am considering checking them out after reading Dominion. His writing style reminds me of Crichton or Harris; although he often deals with problems from a political angle he broaches the subjects so that even the most ignorant (myself included!) can understand and continue to enjoy the story (very much like Crichton with his digestible scientific explanations). In other reviews I have noticed people criticising Sansom's writing style but I must admit to enjoying casually written stories such as this every now and again; not everything we read needs to be 'high' literature. No doubt these reviewers will slate the King's and Crichton's of this world despite their success and achievements. If you enjoyed Fatherland or any other alternate history novel, Dominion is well worth a read. At 700 pages plus it will keep you busy for a long while and leave you sad it is over once you are finished.

• England Under the Nazi Boot

  In the long tradition of alternate history or dystopia novels (such as Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD, Sinclair Lewis' IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE, George Orwell's 1984 and Philip Roth's THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA), Sansom's novel describes Great Britain as having given in to appeasement in the 1930s and having made peace with Germany. Hitler is dying, the war in Russia continues, Churchill has gone underground, Beaverbrook is prime minister and Mosley is Home Secretary with his Blackshirts everywhere. Jews are rounded up to face an unknown future, violence, repression, strikes, torture abound in a London engulfed in a yellow smog. The book is a page turner, each scene leading to another dramatic confrontation. It is completely engrossing and historically interesting since there were in Great Britain, as in France, pro-Fascist movements and members of the Government (Lord Halifax, Chamberlain) who were in favor of appeasement. For those readers interested in history, I suggest they read the author's comments at the end of the work on the actual history of the period. To sum up: highly recommended

• What would you have done?

  Different, obviously, from his brilliant Shardlake series, this is a sort of companion piece to his Winter in Madrid. However, it's also a fast-paced page-turner like the ones featuring his Tudor sleuth, and with a knife-edge political situation in the background of this grim Britain. It's a haunting story that asks the reader how much they would have conformed if this what-if grotesque scenario had emerged in the mid 20th century. Sansom is a writer who we're already missing.

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