Read it in the Green Room
The Pretender
- writingEnergetic, earthy prose
Our inference from one review: a good fit for readers who like historical fiction with a lively, earthy, voice-driven style and a teenage narrator's point of view, more than a sober, formal period retelling.
Beta invites go out in waitlist order. One devlog email a month, at most — or just read the devlog.
The Pretender
Jo Harkin
The Green Room
Backstage of The Pretender.
Walk in mid-chapter. The people of the book are there, as themselves, knowing what they know so far — and nothing else. Ask them anything. They have read exactly as far as you have.
A moment in the Green Room
The Pretender · Jo Harkin
The narrator
Of The Pretender, as they are at your reading place
You
What happens next?
The narrator
“I can only tell you what you have read. Past your page there is nothing yet — not for you, and not for me. Turn it, and come back.”
Their knowledge stops where your reading does.
Who is in the room
Anyone who has walked on by your page.
The cast
Any character who has appeared so far. Someone who hasn’t walked on yet isn’t in the room. That’s not a limitation; that’s the point.
The narrator
The voice telling you the story, as far as it has told it.
The author
As the book presents them — the mind behind the pages you have read, not a biography.
The book itself
Ask what it is doing to you so far. It answers from its own pages, up to yours.
Before you go in
What critics and prize juries said.
Editorial synthesis
In The Spectator's review, the novel is praised for its energy, which the reviewer ties partly to its language: a mix of Chaucerian and modern everyday English. The reviewer also admires how convincingly it renders a teenage boy's chaotic mind, and calls it the most enjoyable historical novel they have read in years. This is one reviewer's view, not a consensus.
Drawn from spectator.com.
Recognition
How it stays unspoiled
Nothing past your page exists.
The companion is assembled from the passages you have read and only those. A character who knows the ending is no one worth talking to, so there is no override — not behind a setting, not behind a confirmation. Your position is the wall.
Get the book
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Bring your own copy
The ebook is not on eBooks.com for your region yet. An EPUB you already own works just as well: Green Room reads the books in your folders.
The cast has been waiting for you.
Join the waitlist — beta invites go out in order, and the devlog keeps you honest company until then.
