# A Little Trickerie

By Rosanna Pike

Profile: https://hahafiction.com/books/a-little-trickerie-ac6f7bc2/

Tibb Ingleby loses her mother with no home to return to. Traveling through Tudor England, she looks for shelter and finds friends willing to join a deception. Their hoax offers a way out of poverty, until followers gather and enemies take an interest.

## What makes it funny?

Tibb sizes up a prosperous shoemaker as though he's a walking bun, with stuffing beneath his clothes. Her food and body comparisons make respectable adults look ridiculous. The man who lectures her about vagrancy has privately housed and exploited her family, and she hasn't forgotten.

### The comedy at work

Tibb's invented expressions let her judge people without adopting their rules of respectability. The church hoax gives that defiance a practical form: she and her friends have to keep solving problems and outmaneuvering opponents to make the deception work.

### Try this if…

A talkative, irreverent narrator leads this journey among outsiders. Readers drawn to tricksters who challenge religious and social authority may also value the care Tibb finds in friendship amid poverty and loss.

### Good to know

The opening includes strong profanity, death in childbirth and traumatic grief. Pike drew inspiration from the Holy Maid of Leominster, who impersonated an angel in a church; Tibb's life is a fictional invention rather than a biography.

## What to expect

- Genre: Adventure · Historical
- On the shelf: Picaresque
- Kind of humor: Satire · Wordplay
- The atmosphere: Irreverent · Warmhearted
- Format: Novel
- Length: 384 pages
- Published: 2024

## A few distinguishing details

- A homeless Tudor girl and her friends attempt a church hoax
- Tibb's food comparisons puncture a shoemaker's respectability

## Sources & further reading

- Publisher: [Penguin identifies A Little Trickerie by Rosanna Pike as the Paperback edition, ISBN 9780241646076, at 384 pages.](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/457411/a-little-trickerie-by-pike-rosanna/9780241646076)
- Author commentary: [Rosanna Pike interview, Women’s Prize](https://womensprize.com/in-conversation-with-rosanna-pike)
- Review: [Books and travelling with Lynn review](https://lynns-books.com/2024/08/02/review-a-little-trickerie-by-rosanna-pike)
- Reading sample: [Publisher reading sample](https://cdn.penguin.co.uk/dam-assets/books/9780241646076/9780241646076-sample.pdf)
- Publisher: [Publisher ebook listing](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/457411/a-little-trickerie-by-pike-rosanna/9780241646083)
- Publisher: [Publisher paperback listing](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/457411/a-little-trickerie-by-pike-rosanna/9780241646076)