On the HahaFiction shelf
A Little Trickerie
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.
From the publisher’s blurb
“Born a vagabond, Tibb Ingleby has never had a roof of her own.”Read the full description at Fig Tree / Penguin publisher description
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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.
A few distinguishing details
- A homeless Tudor girl and her friends attempt a church hoax
- Tibb's food comparisons puncture a shoemaker's respectability
More funny adventure
Sources & further reading
- Penguin identifies A Little Trickerie by Rosanna Pike as the Paperback edition, ISBN 9780241646076, at 384 pages.
Publisher
- Rosanna Pike interview, Women’s Prize
Author commentary
- Books and travelling with Lynn review
Review
- Publisher reading sample
Reading sample
- Publisher ebook listing
Publisher
- Publisher paperback listing
Publisher
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