The Second Sleep by Robert Harris

Publisher:        Hutchinson

Published:       2019

ISBN-10:        1786331373 (2019 hardback edition)

ISBN-13:         9781786331373

Pages:             336

Words:            111,000 approx.

*** SPOILER ALERT – DISCLOSES SOME KEY DETAILS OF THE PLOT ***

Robert Harris is British, a former journalist, and a very well-known author of literary historical fiction.  One of his first successes was the best-selling Fatherland, an alternative history novel based on the idea that the Nazis won the second world was and kept their greatest crime secret for decades thereafter.

The term ‘second sleep’ refers to the view, held by some historians, that until the industrial revolution it was normal in the western civilisations for people to have two separate periods of sleep in each night – sometimes referred to simply as the first and second sleeps.  In this novel, many or all of the characters sleep according to that pattern but there is also a more subtle meaning in the choice of title, which will become clear shortly.  The book has an appealing old-world feel, enhanced by the use of italicised chapter titles such as The register yields a secret and In which Fairfax’s plans are thwarted.

The protagonist of the novel is one Father Christopher Fairfax, a priest within the diocese of Exeter who has been dispatched by his bishop to bury a fellow priest (Fr. Lacy) who has died in a remote west-country location.

Although we are told at the very start that Fr. Fairfax sets out on his journey in the year 1468, the story is set some 800 years in the future – but this does not become unmistakably apparent until Fairfax reaches his destination and begins to settle in for the night.  There are a few early clues that the 1468 being referred to here is actually in the future.  The first clue noticed by this reviewer is a mention of parakeets in the Devonshire countryside. 

Later, we learn that the late Fr. Lacy was a collector (illegally) of artefacts from the twentieth-first century – including items made from plastic and an Apple mobile phone!  In due course, it emerges that technological civilisation was wiped out by some undeclared catastrophe in the mid-twenty-first century, that the catastrophe was interpreted as the Apocalypse of which the bible warns, and that the numbering of years was re-started with the year 666 – hence, 1468 is about 800 years in the future.

In the time of Fr. Fairfax and his late colleague, all technology much more advanced than the horse and cart has disappeared, and all efforts to recover the technology of the ‘ancients’ is condemned by the church as heresy.  The church has its own tribunals for trying those accused of heresy, and a heretic’s punishment may include the branding of an H onto his forehead.  The clergy are required to be celibate – a requirement which Fr. Fairfax struggles to comply with.  Perhaps most startling of all, the English state is waging a long-term war against a caliphate in Yorkshire!

Fairfax investigates the circumstances of Fr. Lacy’s death and comes to believe that it was connected in some way with his illegal collection.  That investigation brings the father into closer and closer contact with the other main characters: an itinerant lecturer on the ancients, the local grand lady (Lady Sarah Durston, which whom Fairfax commences an affair) and a wealthy and energetic local gentleman retired from the army but still using the rank of captain.  Together with these characters, Fairfax’s investigation expands to include the nature of a concrete ‘monument’ known as The Devil’s Chair.  Their investigations lead them to suspect that near this structure there must be something significant and secret buried at the time of the Apocalypse.  Unauthorised and illegal excavations by the captain’s men uncover a series of underground cells constructed from reinforced concrete and connected by steel doors.  Immediately after the discovery of these chambers, Fairfax’s bishop arrives and it becomes clear that he has been aware of the later Fr. Lacy’s interests for many years.  A land slide traps Fairfax and Lady Durston within an inner chamber from which there appears to be no hope of escape.  The story ends with Fairfax reassuring the injured Sarah that ‘there is a door – we will go through it in the morning’, even though he has failed to find a tool with which the door can be opened.  Whether Fairfax’s statement is taken literally or figuratively, this seems a very unsatisfactory ending.

Overall, this is a fascinating novel based upon an ingenious idea but somewhat marred by its ending.  The motives of the protagonist, in what may be the last hours of his life, are left ambiguous – and not in a way which makes it possible for this reader to draw satisfying conclusion of his own.