A Little Trickerie by Rosanna Pike was the latest pick for my book group. Have I mentioned my new book group? I love it. It’s hosted by a local independent book shop and we’ve had enough meetings now that faces are familiar. The format for the evening is basically – mingle; break into chat groups (light and casual at one end of the shop, deep-divers at the other – I hang with the deep-divers); then another little mingle and browse at the end of the evening.

In the mingling bit, one of the other deep-divers asked if I had liked the book (she hadn’t). I said I loved the chapter headings and this was greeted by shrieks of laughter. Yes, that sounds like a harsh review, but I genuinely liked the chapter headings – they were a great snapshot of Pike’s style of humour. Some favourites:

Waste-of-money shoes
Oysters have a roof
This church-place is all corrupted
Rather lovely cushions
Shit in a nest
Most deplorable way
Dining like a sparrow
Business with whores
Of sweet frumenty
More wild falsities

The story focuses on Tibb Ingleby, born a vagabond, and someone who has never ‘…had a roof of her own’. However, her mother taught her that if a person is not too bound by the ‘Big Man’s rules’, then there are many ways a woman can find shelter.

Ma said that she would give the cordwainer man a baby — the thing he could not get from his dull-as-ditchwater wife — and we would get a roof in return. That baby-child would be born, and when it was out then the cordwainer would discard the woman called his wife by hook-or-by-crook, and we would live there in that neat stone house and eat from clay plates like the kings we were. Or so said my ma who was oftentime mistook.

In the opening chapter, Tibb’s mother dies in childbirth, and although her voice remains a constant guide for fourteen-year-old Tibb (‘…a woman is never without a weapon, Tibb’), she is nevertheless very alone.

As Tibb makes her own way in the world, she finds a group of friends who offer a sense of safety. When an opportunity arises to change their lives – all that is needed is a ‘little trickerie’ – Tibb and her friends execute an ambitious plan. I won’t say any more about the plot, apart from the fact that Pike handles the relationships between the friends beautifully.

Now I am thinking there is something very wrong about hearing those giving-up words from the mouth of my big friend Maria. They are so like those words Ivo said just recently about the separate-rooves plan. But mostly I am thinking that these two people must love me very much to have come back for a girl named Tibb.

I don’t go out of my way to read historical fiction (usually the dialogue annoys me) but in the case of Tibb and her band of friends, the dialogue was delightful (especially the frequent but always well-placed use of ‘fuckers’).

And have I not always said to beware the fuckers?

This novel has lots to say about the power of the church (it’s set in the 1500s, at the beginning of the English Reformation); those on the edge of society and people with differences; and where we put our faith, however, I wasn’t entirely convinced that the inclusion of current social issues (such as homelessness and gay rights) needed a Tudor setting – the exploration of religious hypocrisy alone would have been enough.

Pike uses metaphor and imagery to great effect – for example, Tibb’s depression is represented by a snake, and her benchmark for a ‘good life’ is to have a roof over her head – and this story is simply fun to read. There were parts of A Little Trickerie that I felt could have been trimmed but overall, this book has a lot of charm and Tibb is a character that will stay with me.

3/5

I can see her a little better now, and she is thin like a reed, this old mother-of-the-King. If I were that rich I would cram my face so full with ham pies that Ambrose would need to roll me into the bedchamber like a barrel every evening.