DNF at 10%. I wanted to love Sparrow, as the premise was fascinating and the language was lyrical. However, the story failed to capture me and I was struggling to keep focused throughout. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the free advance copy.

An incredible piece of fiction that feels like true history. This eye-opener of a story will leave the reader weeping in sorrow and rejoicing in the masterful storytelling inside.

sparrow is not the type of book i usually pick up, and it left me with mixed emotions.

set in carthago nova in the sunset of the roman empire, sparrow is a gritty portrayal of the life of a slave boy raised in a brothel—first by the cook, and later by the “wolves” who work upstairs, the women he eventually joins. the brothel is the young boy’s entire world; as he grows, the boundaries of his world slowly expand. within those limited boundaries, hynes captures the brutality and hopelessness of the lives of the slave class along with fleeting moments of joy and tenderness in the boy’s life.

hynes’ writing is beautiful, if dense, but the material is dark and at times difficult to read. this is a meticulously researched portrait of slavery and an unconventional sisterhood born out of necessity, told through the eyes of a man at the end of his life looking back on his childhood. i thought the abrupt ending was fitting, but i wish hynes had included more clues as to how the boy reached the place he is telling this story from, or even how he learned to read and write.

Set during Byzantine Rome, readers are shown the harrowing life a slave. Sparrow is raised on the Spanish coast in a whorehouse were everyone is known by their muse names. Life is not easy and as he grows it gets much more difficult.

The depth of detail is immense. As a reader, your five senses are overwhelmed with the sights and sounds. I found this intense, in-depth description to stop the flow occasionally for me as a reader which is why I didn't give it a 4 out of 5 stars. I do really enjoy the look into this part of History that is very overshadowed and seldom explored.

Comps were insane (and tough to live up to - little life!) but it was a well-told heartbreaking story. Left me feeling uncomfortable and sad!

A unique historical fiction novel about a slave boy in a brothel on the Spanish coast in Ancient Rome. What makes it unique, unlike most Ancient Rome fiction which is often about palace intrigue (which I enjoy!), this novel is about the boy and his entire existence seen through the small metaphorical peephole he has to view the world. The female slaves he lives with in the brothel serve as his mothers, mentors, friends, and sometimes foes. I cared about the characters and would like to spend more time with them, learning more about the rest of their lives. The novel’s brutality is excruciating at times, yet it make the sparks of humanity within the story that much more beautiful.

I am a library associate and received an advance copy from #NetGalley.

This book follows a young boy left at a brothel and forced into service in the ancient Roman Empire. There is a lot of historical detail, and the book takes place in one of the conquered areas of Hispaniola, which I haven’t read as much about. The connections and rivalries between the women of the brothel, and their different styles of teaching the young boy what it takes to survive their harsh world are well developed and nuanced. There is sexual assault depicted, but through the eyes of a young boy so it is not overly graphic. I highly recommend this for any historical fiction lover.

I was warned more than once by the narrator of James Hynes’ devastating novel, Sparrow, that this was not the kind of story where there would be satisfying revelations about lost characters or characters finding happy endings. Perhaps it’s because I’m so used to characters finding resolution—or at least the narrative tidiness of having loose ends tied up—but I felt emotionally pummelled by this novel. Sparrow hits hard and is not likely to leave my brain any time soon.

Our narrator—who has multiple names over the course of the novel—was doomed to a nasty, short, and brutish life. “Pusus” (which just means ‘boy’) is a slave in Carthago Nova, on the southeastern coast of what is now Spain, in a brothel. When we meet him, he’s very young and his first duties are really just to stay out of the way. He is so good at staying out of the way that even though he’s growing up in a brothel that Pusus maintains a shocking degree of naivety. The women who work there (mostly slaves themselves) shelter Pusus as much as possible, for as long as possible, from the reality of what goes on upstairs in the building where they all live. I understand the desire to protect Pusus but the terrible moment when Pusus is forced into sex work himself hits all the harder because I shared a bit of Pusus’s oblivious hope that he might get away with just being an extra pair of hands to clean, to run errands, and to fetch water.

We see everything that happens to Pusus through his child’s eyes. On the one hand, this is a good way to introduce readers to Pusus’s world. Being confined to the brothel for so long means that Pusus notices everything once he’s allowed to venture outside. He tells us about the smells of the fishermen’s stalls and takes in the details of the workers around him. His brain is a sponge for everything any adult says to him, even if he doesn’t understand what they mean. On the other hand, having an observant child narrator means that I frequently wanted to reach into the book to rescue the boy before anything worse happened to him.

Pusus is constantly reminded of the difference between his status as an orphaned slave in a brothel and the status of the free people around him. His only means of escape is entirely psychological, in the form of dissociating whenever someone hurts him or something particularly upsetting happens. He imagines himself flying away like the sparrows he occasionally sees, until he feels safe to return to the real world. Except, it’s not always clear at times—especially toward the end of the novel—that Pusus has returned to the real world. There are hints that Pusus might have found a way to always be a sparrow.

I suspect that I’ve made Sparrow sound utterly repellant or depressing. This is a bleak book but I found myself fascinated to watch the growth of a character raised in slavery, in a place where only bad things happen to people who have little to no hope of gaining their freedom. In spite of Pusus’s warnings that there wouldn’t be a happy ending, I couldn’t help but hope that he would find a way to gain some freedom. I cheered every time Pusus and the other sex workers found ways to claim a bit of liberty in their extremely circumscribed lives, even if it was just slowing down to get a bit of breathing room.

I strongly recommend this challenging book for the vibrance of its setting and for the rich psychological portraits of its characters.

This is a captivating, brutal story of a young boy enslaved at a brothel in the waning days of the Roman empire. It offers insight into a life and time not often told, and for this alone it makes for fascinating, albeit disturbing, reading. However, I found the lack of detail of how the man telling the story came to be, from his days as a "wolf" in the brothel, to being a literate, well-educated old man and the ending was too abrupt for my liking.

This is a story of the life of Roman slaves in a brothel including a child - the protagonist. I was a little taken aback since I was expecting more banal historical fiction. It is an unvarnished look at the abuse suffered by humans treated as chattle. This is a powerfully written first person narrative, exploring how one can survive such a terrible lot in life. The resilience of the humans involved, and the joys of chosen family are slivers of light in a dark look at slavery. I found my self caring deeply about the characters. The historical details of a small Roman town were interesting.

Sparrow is one of my favorite books that I read this year and definitely in my top 10 all time favorite books. This was such a beautiful and heartbreaking book and I loved every single moment of it. I was so grateful that I was able to get an electronic advanced copy and I preordered two hardcovers (one to keep nice and one to tab and annotate when I read it for a second and third and forth time).

Sparrow is about an older man named Jacob who is recounting his life starting from when he was a young slave in Spain. Through Jacob's eyes we are transported back to the 4th Century Roman Empire. We learn that his life has not been as easy one even though you still hope that he was able to experience some good.

At 10 years old he was forced to become a "wolf" in the Brothel that he spent his whole life in. His first rape was just so brutal and heartbreaking. At this point you already love this little boy so much and seeing him experience such pain was just so hard. The descriptions of all of his experiences really make you feel like you are experiencing everything with him.

Despite the sad subject matter, I highly recommend you read Sparrow. You definitely won't regret it!