A Man of Honour (Simon Smith, Echo)

When debut novelist Simon Smith was a child he was told, ‘Someone in our family shot a prince.’ That man was Henry James O’Farrell, whose failed attempt in 1868 to assassinate Queen Victoria’s son Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh in Sydney led to O’Farrell being tried and hung in record time. O’Farrell was a patriot, a gentleman, a religious man, an unwell man and, it would appear, quite the dandy. He was also a very charming self-declared ‘man of honour’. What would motivate such a man to attempt the assassination of such an eminent person? This question captured Smith’s imagination so much that he wrote A Man of Honour, a delightful fictional exploration of his relative’s mind and motivations. Real documents, letters, prison-cell interviews and court transcripts add authenticity to this novel, while the strength of the writing can be found in Smith’s sensitivity to his subject, his lyrical prose and imaginative narrative voice. The present tense adds immediacy and verve to this fictional rendering of near-forgotten history, and there is a sense that this story is one only Smith could tell. Man of Honour will sit comfortably on the shelf next to Kate Grenville’s Secret River and Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang, and will find a home with readers who love textured, lyrical novels such as Hannah Kent’s Burial Rights.

Deborah Crabtree is a Melbourne-based writer and bookseller. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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