A revenge-driven cat, a reluctant revolutionary, and a quest across Europe make for one of the most entertaining historical novels I’ve read this year.

Thank you to the author for the ARC (via Booksprout). All thoughts are my own.

Opening Impressions

The Grand Couvert is historical fiction with dark humour, excellent comedic timing, revolutionary chaos, and an evil cat.

Not metaphorically evil either. An actually evil cat.

After witnessing his Countess die during the fervour of the French Revolution, the cat decides to track down everyone who was there that night and kill them. Yes, genuinely kill them.

Alongside this deeply normal plotline, we follow Edward, a hapless Parisian caught up in revolutionary fever while also desperately trying to avoid army service. To survive both the guillotine and the politics around him, Edward ends up sent on a mission to Rome to track down a relic capable of saving the very revolution he has absolutely no interest in fighting for.

The book was bloody great.

History at Its Most Ridiculous

What really worked for me was how grounded the whole thing felt in its historical context while still managing to be completely ridiculous.

The history felt real and a bit absurd, which is usually when you know the history is well told.

Because the French Revolution was absurd. It was chaotic, ideological, theatrical, violent, and full of people loudly pretending they knew what they were doing while events spiralled far beyond anyone’s control.

For more comedic book gold, I have to recommend Gravitido. Check it out here

The Grand Couvert captures that atmosphere brilliantly. It feels researched without ever becoming dense or self-important. There’s enough detail to make the setting believable, but never so much that it slows the pace down.

As a history teacher, this was exactly my kind of historical fiction. The sort where you can tell the writer genuinely understands the time period but also understands that history is often weird, petty, dramatic, and occasionally very funny.

The Evil Cat

The evil cat is easily one of the strongest parts of the book.

The concept sounds completely unhinged on paper and somehow works perfectly in execution because the novel commits to it fully. The humour lands because the book never backs away from how ridiculous the idea actually is. He pushes over statues, moves people’s objects around to make them crazy. It’s like a regular cat turned up to 11… no wait, a regular cat works.

That said, my one real critique is that the cat occasionally feels slightly one note. The repeated descriptions of people as “assholes” started to lose impact after a while because the joke gets used a lot. A lot a lot.

Still, the cat remains memorable throughout and ends up giving the book a really distinct personality. There are plenty of historical fiction novels about revolutions. Far fewer involve a revenge-driven cat stalking his enemies across France.

Edward, Europe, and National Character

Edward also works really well as the centre of the human story because he’s not some fearless revolutionary hero. He’s mostly just trying to survive.

There’s something genuinely funny about following a man trapped inside one of the most dramatic political moments in European history while privately wanting no part in any of it.

I also really appreciated how well the different nationalities and European characters were handled. With an Irish writer, the Irish character Tony was particularly well done. This feels like a writer who genuinely understands European nuance and nationality rather than flattening everyone into stereotypes. 

The characters feel culturally distinct in a believable way, which adds a lot to the humour and dialogue throughout the novel.

Final Thoughts

I mean this in the best way possible, but this is exactly the sort of historical fiction I could imagine doing brilliantly in an airport bookshop.

The sort of book you buy before a flight, read in two days, and finish feeling both very amused and vaguely smarter.

It’s funny, well paced, historically textured, and genuinely entertaining. It also benefits massively from being a standalone. In an era where every historical or fantasy novel seems determined to become a trilogy, there’s something refreshing about a book that simply tells its story well and finishes.

The Grand Couvert is ridiculous in exactly the way history often is.

And that’s exactly why it works.

Author links:

website: https://eoghanbrunkard.com/
X : @BrunkardEoghan

join me on instagram