--- product_id: 120205020 title: "Bellman & Black: A Novel" price: "€ 39.47" currency: EUR in_stock: true reviews_count: 7 url: https://www.desertcart.be/products/120205020-bellman-and-black-a-novel store_origin: BE region: Belgium --- # Bellman & Black: A Novel **Price:** € 39.47 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Bellman & Black: A Novel - **How much does it cost?** € 39.47 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.be](https://www.desertcart.be/products/120205020-bellman-and-black-a-novel) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description Bellman & Black: A Novel - Kindle edition by Setterfield, Diane. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Bellman & Black: A Novel. Review: Listen to the rook - Diane Setterfield is a delight: a brilliant, astute author who is a gift to lovers of elegant fiction that teaches as well as entertains. I read through many of the reviews and I have a few comments of my own. I, like most readers here, read her first book and loved it. I awaited a second eagerly and when I found out it was ready, I was doubly delighted when I found the subject matter included rooks, or crows/ravens as most Americans know them. (Ravens are bigger). I feed four crows on a regular basis and have spent many happy moments watching their antics. I've named each of them according to their individual personalities. Those of us who love crows also know that they are the smartest birds...... Some have complained that B&B isn't as good as THE THIRTEENTH TALE, I think it's different, but equally as good. When a writer produces a best selling novel we often expect the second to be a slightly altered version of the first. This book has been compared to Dickens because of the character Scrooge, and while that may be true, the writing style is more spare, even though it's rich in detail, it doesn't have the lengthy descriptive passages Dickens is known for...I used to teach English, and each year I would ask my students if they preferred spare prose styles or those laden with description. ( Not surprisingly, the spare usually won out, the reason given being "it makes the book shorter." It saddened me that so many students hadn't yet discovered the joy of reading, and each year I made it my mission to develop students into voluntary readers.) One astute girl, who also read a lot, liked spare prose. She gave the reason as being, "It allows me to fill in the details with my imagination." One of the things I loved about B&B was the way Bellman's enterprise, the production of fabric, created a similar environment in my own imagination as I read it, the story structure forming a "loom" that allowed the story to weave back and forth in my mind, much the way a loom weaves cloth. The novel doesn't lack description that is engaging, however, from the details of cloth making to the particulars of daily life, mores, and social structure of the time period. There also seems to be confusion as to who Mr. Black really is. Suppositions ranging from death, the ghost of the crow killed by Will as a boy, guilt, greed, or the passage of time. I think it's all of them, represented by Mr. Black. The book is part allegory, part historical fiction, and part morality tale, with a light dose of fantasy. It's a veritable feast of topics and themes to talk about, perfect for contemplative hermits like myself or lively book clubs. Both Mr. Black's occasional appearances and the timely interjections of the "rook commentator" are opportunities for conjecture. As I see it, there are three very large themes, none new, but how in this day and age do you develop new themes, you can only find new ways to explore them. First, guilt, as an entity, is actually a healthy quality for humans to possess, if we felt no guilt, we'd all be amoral beings incapable of recognizing good versus bad, much less acting decently. We can surmise that Will's life was influenced by his early guilt over killing an innocent bird, the rook. The message here is to make the reader analyze how to deal with guilt, suppress it and ruin one's life from its subconscious influence, or lance it and clean up the mess, make atonement in whatever way suits the infraction, if possible. Guilt segues into greed, driven by desperation, because Will put the acquisition of great wealth ahead of spending time with his family, even before tragedy struck. His daughter even went so far as to write, "Kiss Dora," in his diary, hoping he'd see it and spend more time with her. Eventually he believed that the acquisition of more wealth would ensure her survival, when all the while she hungered more for his presence. His daily endeavors became making more and more money, both to protect Dora and pay Mr. Black his share of the business.... Both of these themes feed into the major one, which I believe, is the recognition of time as being finite in all of our lives, some more so than others. This is perhaps one of the most dominant themes in the history of civilization. Some readers mention Scrooge, from "A Christmas Carol" by Dickens. I would also mention a stanza from "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam," an 11th century Persian poet, astronomer and mathematican: "The Moving Finger Writes; and, having writ, moves on. Nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it." It's as apt today as it was a thousand years ago. Ms. Setterfield, writing as the rook, says it with graceful but forceful impact: "All stories must come to an end. This one. Everyone's. Yours." Review: "They're not what you think they are." - William Bellman spends his entire life haunted by one bad decision he made in childhood. That life is the subject of Diane Setterfield's second novel, seven years after her glorious début, The Thirteenth Tale . First at his family's fabric mill in rural England, and later in a very peculiar business of his own in London, William is constantly followed and watched by...something. His business fortunes, his wife and children, his fleeting happiness--everything he acquires in life manages to vanish, leaving him older and increasingly bitter and hermitic. Will he ever finally confront the demon that has always threatened him? That's the big question at the heart of BELLMAN & BLACK. B&B is subtitled "a ghost story," but it isn't your usual kind of ghost story. The title of my review is a quote from the book on the subject of rooks, the strange, beautiful black birds that resemble crows. If you read B&B, you'll learn a great deal about these elusive creatures, and you'll see what they have to do with the fate of William Bellman. It's definitely unusual. I bought this book from desertcart.uk last month and had it shipped to me here in NYC because I couldn't wait for the American release--that should tell you how much I loved THE THIRTEENTH TALE. The first book reminded me of Charles Dickens and Daphne du Maurier, my all-time favorite authors. This new book reminds me of the same giants, but not in the same way. B&B is a shorter, simpler story than TTT, and it made me think of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. If you consider William Bellman as a stand-in for Ebenezer Scrooge, you begin to see just what Setterfield is up to. I can't say I loved this the way I loved the first one, but it's an interesting, surprisingly fast read, and Setterfield's vivid, graceful prose is always welcome in my house. Try it. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | ASIN | B00BSBR382 | | Accessibility | Learn more | | Best Sellers Rank | #659,114 in Kindle Store ( See Top 100 in Kindle Store ) #876 in British & Irish Literary Fiction #1,552 in Ghost Fiction #3,963 in Historical Literary Fiction | | Customer Reviews | 3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars (2,087) | | Enhanced typesetting | Enabled | | File size | 6.5 MB | | ISBN-13 | 978-1476712000 | | Language | English | | Page Flip | Enabled | | Print length | 337 pages | | Publication date | November 5, 2013 | | Publisher | Atria/Emily Bestler Books | | Screen Reader | Supported | | Word Wise | Enabled | | X-Ray | Enabled | ## Images ![Bellman & Black: A Novel - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81yQIXc36oL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Listen to the rook *by H***R on March 4, 2014* Diane Setterfield is a delight: a brilliant, astute author who is a gift to lovers of elegant fiction that teaches as well as entertains. I read through many of the reviews and I have a few comments of my own. I, like most readers here, read her first book and loved it. I awaited a second eagerly and when I found out it was ready, I was doubly delighted when I found the subject matter included rooks, or crows/ravens as most Americans know them. (Ravens are bigger). I feed four crows on a regular basis and have spent many happy moments watching their antics. I've named each of them according to their individual personalities. Those of us who love crows also know that they are the smartest birds...... Some have complained that B&B isn't as good as THE THIRTEENTH TALE, I think it's different, but equally as good. When a writer produces a best selling novel we often expect the second to be a slightly altered version of the first. This book has been compared to Dickens because of the character Scrooge, and while that may be true, the writing style is more spare, even though it's rich in detail, it doesn't have the lengthy descriptive passages Dickens is known for...I used to teach English, and each year I would ask my students if they preferred spare prose styles or those laden with description. ( Not surprisingly, the spare usually won out, the reason given being "it makes the book shorter." It saddened me that so many students hadn't yet discovered the joy of reading, and each year I made it my mission to develop students into voluntary readers.) One astute girl, who also read a lot, liked spare prose. She gave the reason as being, "It allows me to fill in the details with my imagination." One of the things I loved about B&B was the way Bellman's enterprise, the production of fabric, created a similar environment in my own imagination as I read it, the story structure forming a "loom" that allowed the story to weave back and forth in my mind, much the way a loom weaves cloth. The novel doesn't lack description that is engaging, however, from the details of cloth making to the particulars of daily life, mores, and social structure of the time period. There also seems to be confusion as to who Mr. Black really is. Suppositions ranging from death, the ghost of the crow killed by Will as a boy, guilt, greed, or the passage of time. I think it's all of them, represented by Mr. Black. The book is part allegory, part historical fiction, and part morality tale, with a light dose of fantasy. It's a veritable feast of topics and themes to talk about, perfect for contemplative hermits like myself or lively book clubs. Both Mr. Black's occasional appearances and the timely interjections of the "rook commentator" are opportunities for conjecture. As I see it, there are three very large themes, none new, but how in this day and age do you develop new themes, you can only find new ways to explore them. First, guilt, as an entity, is actually a healthy quality for humans to possess, if we felt no guilt, we'd all be amoral beings incapable of recognizing good versus bad, much less acting decently. We can surmise that Will's life was influenced by his early guilt over killing an innocent bird, the rook. The message here is to make the reader analyze how to deal with guilt, suppress it and ruin one's life from its subconscious influence, or lance it and clean up the mess, make atonement in whatever way suits the infraction, if possible. Guilt segues into greed, driven by desperation, because Will put the acquisition of great wealth ahead of spending time with his family, even before tragedy struck. His daughter even went so far as to write, "Kiss Dora," in his diary, hoping he'd see it and spend more time with her. Eventually he believed that the acquisition of more wealth would ensure her survival, when all the while she hungered more for his presence. His daily endeavors became making more and more money, both to protect Dora and pay Mr. Black his share of the business.... Both of these themes feed into the major one, which I believe, is the recognition of time as being finite in all of our lives, some more so than others. This is perhaps one of the most dominant themes in the history of civilization. Some readers mention Scrooge, from "A Christmas Carol" by Dickens. I would also mention a stanza from "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam," an 11th century Persian poet, astronomer and mathematican: "The Moving Finger Writes; and, having writ, moves on. Nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it." It's as apt today as it was a thousand years ago. Ms. Setterfield, writing as the rook, says it with graceful but forceful impact: "All stories must come to an end. This one. Everyone's. Yours." ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ "They're not what you think they are." *by T***. on November 5, 2013* William Bellman spends his entire life haunted by one bad decision he made in childhood. That life is the subject of Diane Setterfield's second novel, seven years after her glorious début, The Thirteenth Tale . First at his family's fabric mill in rural England, and later in a very peculiar business of his own in London, William is constantly followed and watched by...something. His business fortunes, his wife and children, his fleeting happiness--everything he acquires in life manages to vanish, leaving him older and increasingly bitter and hermitic. Will he ever finally confront the demon that has always threatened him? That's the big question at the heart of BELLMAN & BLACK. B&B is subtitled "a ghost story," but it isn't your usual kind of ghost story. The title of my review is a quote from the book on the subject of rooks, the strange, beautiful black birds that resemble crows. If you read B&B, you'll learn a great deal about these elusive creatures, and you'll see what they have to do with the fate of William Bellman. It's definitely unusual. I bought this book from Amazon.uk last month and had it shipped to me here in NYC because I couldn't wait for the American release--that should tell you how much I loved THE THIRTEENTH TALE. The first book reminded me of Charles Dickens and Daphne du Maurier, my all-time favorite authors. This new book reminds me of the same giants, but not in the same way. B&B is a shorter, simpler story than TTT, and it made me think of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. If you consider William Bellman as a stand-in for Ebenezer Scrooge, you begin to see just what Setterfield is up to. I can't say I loved this the way I loved the first one, but it's an interesting, surprisingly fast read, and Setterfield's vivid, graceful prose is always welcome in my house. Try it. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review *by M***L on January 13, 2021* I have just found Diane Setterfield and this is the second book that I have read. Thoroughly enjoy her work, can't wait to read another. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.be/products/120205020-bellman-and-black-a-novel](https://www.desertcart.be/products/120205020-bellman-and-black-a-novel) --- *Product available on Desertcart Belgium* *Store origin: BE* *Last updated: 2026-04-22*