Month: January 2023

My Commonplace Book: January 2023

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A selection of words and pictures to represent January’s reading:

commonplace book
noun
a book into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use.

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Her words themselves mattered. Words in a song, words in a poem, words caressed until at last they speak a truth, one soul to another, they all mattered. And maybe they matter still.

Music in the Dark by Sally Magnusson (2023)

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Because she is a woman, and because she is poor, and because she is foreign, she cannot possibly have the same feelings or longings that any other person has. She cannot be motivated by love. In his mind, she must be driven by need, by greed, by want.

Prize Women by Caroline Lea (2023)

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Mural of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty in Killarney, Ireland

As for me, in those days, I saw all political systems as more or less the same, forms of foolishness, the prattling of apes, designed to keep the lesser chimps down. This was a shameful foolishness of my own. I have come to see that neutrality is the most extremist stance of all; without it, no tyranny can flourish.

My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor (2023)

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Someone whom he had loved past words was becoming a gentle shade, melting away from him month by month, day by day. Time devours everything, but each mortal believes that his own memory can enshrine immortality. He holds the dear image in his heart, but while he yet holds it the laurels fade, the image is dimmed.

Wild Strawberries by Angela Thirkell (1934)

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“Detecting consists of asking the right questions,” replied Warner. “Just as a barrister proves his case by examination and cross-examination, so does the detective, and one of the most important people he has to examine is himself. Asking myself questions is my chief way of forming theories, and when I have formed one, I seek to demolish it with more questions.”

Death of an Author by ECR Lorac (1935)

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Charles O’Brien, the Irish Giant

The Giant has learned this lesson: anything you can imagine, can exist.

The Giant, O’Brien by Hilary Mantel (1998)

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I was candid in my reply since I could do nothing more. ‘I fell in love’.

‘But why did you allow it, with such a man? You should have turned away from him. A woman cannot choose whether she will love her husband or not.’

Which explained much about the Best marriage.

A Marriage of Fortune by Anne O’Brien (2023)

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And suddenly she heard Thirza’s voice, as clear as a bell.

The truth’s not important, Vi. If people want to believe, then that’s just what they’ll do.

The Other Side of Mrs Wood by Lucy Barker (2023)

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Power makes fools and puppets of those who lack it, turning us into poor, needy creatures, desperate to win favour from our master. And when we taste a little power ourselves, we place our dependants in the same position that we were in, as if to exact a vicarious revenge for past humiliations; and thus power works its slow corruption on those who do not have it as well as those who do.

The Shadows of London by Andrew Taylor (2023)

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Chrysanthemum festival, Gifu, Japan

Let it be a lesson to us all that even good intentions can lead to great tragedy if not executed with the utmost care.

The Inugami Curse by Seishi Yokomizo (1951)

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‘Influence is easily won and lost, but power cannot be unseated. If I am dethroned tomorrow, my influence will wane quicker than the moon. Whereas that mountain over there has stood for many lifetimes and will still be standing for many more to come.’

Lady MacBethad by Isabelle Schuler (2023)

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If his will ever weakened, and he found himself staring out of the window, lost in dreams of other places, his mother’s words came back to him, spoken on a hot day at the edge of his convalescent bed when he was just a boy: ‘There’s other ways to travel’.

She was right. He had books, and there was no barrier to the places he could visit in his own mind.

Homecoming by Kate Morton (2023)

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If the entire history of the universe was explained within the time-frame of a single day, the Earth wouldn’t have been formed until late in the afternoon. The dinosaurs would have arrived a few minutes before midnight. And human beings would only have existed for the final two seconds.

The Orange Girl by Jostein Gaarder (2003)

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Clytemnestra, by John Collier, 1882

But it is easy to turn to the weakest when you are racked with pain, to hurt those who can’t defend themselves when you are unable to hurt those who have hurt you. This is how the world works, raging gods forcing nymphs and humans into submission, heroes taking advantage of lesser men and women, kings and princes exploiting slaves.

Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati (2023)

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Thirty per cent of fifty thousand dollars! Jimmy jingled the few pieces of silver remaining in his pocket. Fifteen thousand dollars! And here he had been walking his legs off and starving in a vain attempt to earn a few paltry dollars honestly.

“There’s something wrong somewhere,” muttered Jimmy to himself.

The Efficiency Expert by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1921)

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“Man is an unoriginal animal,” said Hercule Poirot.

“Women,” said Mrs Oliver, “are capable of infinite variation. I should never commit the same type of murder twice running.”

Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie (1936)

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Favourite books read in January:

The Shadows of London and The Other Side of Mrs Wood

Authors read for the first time in January:

Lucy Barker, Isabelle Schuler, Costanza Casati, ECR Lorac, Edgar Rice Burroughs

Places visited in my January reading:

Canada, Scotland, Vatican City, England, Ireland, Norway, Japan, US, Australia, Greece

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Reading notes: I read sixteen books in January, which is a great start to the year for me. About half of them were NetGalley books and for the first time in years I’m almost up to date with my NetGalley shelf – I only have five books left to read now (until I end up requesting more). I’ve also written most of the reviews but will wait to post them here until on or around the publication dates. The rest of this month’s reads included books for Nordic FINDS, Japanese Literature Month, Read Christie 2023 and the Classics Club Spin!

In February, Karen and Lizzy will be hosting ReadIndies, a month dedicated to books from indie publishers, so I hope to join in with that, as well as the next Read Christie 2023 choice.

How was your January? Do you have any plans for your February reading?

For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain by Victoria MacKenzie

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I had thought I was ready for the life of an anchoress. I had wanted to prolong each moment of my life, to get closer to experiencing time as God experiences it: not the instantly dissolving moment, but something larger and more encompassing. A stillness that doesn’t pass as soon as you think yourself into it.

Victoria MacKenzie’s new novella, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain, is set in Norfolk in 1413 and imagines a meeting between two real-life women: Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. If these names are familiar to you, you’ll know that they were both English mystics of the medieval period and were also both authors. Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love is thought to be the first English work we can be sure was written by a woman, while Margery’s The Book of Margery Kempe is considered to be the first autobiography in the English language.

The stories of the two women only converge towards the end of the book in a meeting which did take place according to Margery herself in The Book of Margery Kempe, but maybe not exactly as it is described here. Victoria MacKenzie recreates the events leading up to their encounter and the sort of conversation they may have had, but before reaching that point she explores the backgrounds of both women, with the perspective alternating between Margery and Julian as they follow very different paths through life.

Little is known of the real Julian’s early life, but MacKenzie suggests here that she may have lost her family to an outbreak of plague and that this, along with an illness during which she experienced visions or ‘shewings’ of Christ, influenced her decision to become an anchoress, secluded in a cell for twenty-three years. Margery, in contrast, doesn’t lock herself away, but remains in the secular world, a wife and mother of fourteen. Like Julian, she begins to have religious visions, but while Julian’s faith is personal and private, Margery prays, weeps and preaches in public, drawing attention to herself and leading to accusations of heresy.

This is Victoria MacKenzie’s debut novel and I admire her for writing something so unusual and original, but although I did like it, I couldn’t quite manage to love it. I found the structure and pacing very unbalanced, with the first section, telling the two separate tales in parallel, being by far the longest and the actual meeting at Julian’s cell being dealt with in just a few pages near the end. Maybe if I was a more religious person myself I would have appreciated this book more, but I could still find a lot to interest me in this story of two medieval women whose different personalities and different journeys through life shape the nature of their relationships with God and each other.

Thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 4/50 read for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

The Inugami Curse by Seishi Yokomizo

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Translated by Yumiko Yamazaki

My choice for this year’s Japanese Literature Challenge (hosted by Dolce Bellezza) was easy as I only had one unread Japanese novel on my TBR. The Inugami Curse is one of a series of detective novels by Yokomizo that I’ve been enjoying over the last few years since discovering that they were being released in English translations by Pushkin Vertigo. This book was originally published in 1951 and features the private detective Kosuke Kindaichi. It’s the fourth in the series that I’ve read and one of my favourites – it’s certainly stronger than Death on Gokumon Island and The Village of Eight Graves and maybe even better than The Honjin Murders.

The Inugami Curse is set in the 1940s in post-war Japan. Kosuke Kindaichi, our unassuming, stuttering, head-scratching detective, has been summoned to the lakeside town of Nasu by the lawyer of a wealthy businessman who has recently died. The will is about to be read and the lawyer is afraid that it will cause trouble amongst the heirs. Already one of the young women who is set to benefit has been the target of several suspicious ‘accidents’ and things seem likely to get worse once the full conditions of the will become clear.

The dead man, Sahei, was the head of the Inugami family and as his children, grandchildren and other members of the household gather at the family home for the reading of the will, Kindaichi discovers that Mr Wakabayashi, the lawyer who had requested his presence, has been found dead after smoking a poisoned cigarette. This is only the first of several murders because, as Wakabayashi had predicted, Sahei’s fiendishly clever will sets the family members against each other. But which of them is prepared to kill to get what they think they deserve? There is one obvious suspect – Sahei’s eldest grandson, Kiyo, was repatriated from Burma just a few days earlier and has returned to the Inugami home with his face hidden by a mask, having been severely wounded in the war. Is it really Kiyo behind the mask? Kindaichi is sure that if he can establish the identity of the masked man, he will hold the key to the mystery.

This is a very enjoyable novel and unlike some of the other Japanese mysteries I’ve read, which are excessively puzzle-orientated, this one focuses as much on characters, motives and family secrets as it does on the methods behind the crimes. However, those methods are still very clever. Yokomizo is quite fair with the reader – the clues are there and it’s possible to work out parts of the solution – but I doubt anybody would be able to deduce exactly how each of the murders were committed. I was happy to wait for Kosuke Kindaichi to explain everything at the end! The murders themselves are bizarre and often gruesome – this book is definitely more graphic and more macabre than most British detective novels from that period – but also dramatic and filled with symbolism.

As well as the entertaining plot, the book touches on various aspects of Japanese culture and history, portraying a country in the aftermath of war, with many families like the Inugamis awaiting the repatriation of the Japanese soldiers. There are also descriptions of koto (zither) music and displays of chrysanthemum dolls. With each book in this series I feel I’m learning a little bit more about Japan. I can’t wait to read The Devil’s Flute Murders, another Kindaichi mystery being published in English later this year.

My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor

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Joseph O’Connor’s new novel My Father’s House, published in the UK today, is based on the true story of Hugh O’Flaherty, a Catholic priest who helped thousands of Jews and Allied prisoners of war to escape from Italy during World War II. This is the third book I’ve read by O’Connor (the others are Shadowplay, about the author Bram Stoker and the actors Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, and Ghost Light, which explores the relationship between the playwright John Millington Synge and the actress Molly Allgood) and I think it’s the best of the three.

The main part of the novel is set in 1943. Born and raised in Ireland, Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty is serving in Vatican City during the war – a neutral territory within Nazi-occupied Rome. As an official Vatican visitor to Italy’s prisoner of war camps, Hugh has been trying to improve conditions for the prisoners, but his actions mark him out as an Allied sympathiser and his superiors prevent him from carrying out any more visits in case he makes the Vatican a Nazi target. However, Hugh won’t be stopped that easily and soon he has set up an Escape Line, successfully smuggling Jews and escaped prisoners out of Rome right under the eyes of the Nazis.

The biggest escape mission yet – the ‘Rendimento’ – has been arranged for Christmas Eve, 1943. In the hope that the Gestapo will be less vigilant on this particular night, Hugh and his group of courageous volunteers have put elaborate plans in place to move a large number of people out of the city under the cover of darkness. As we count down the days and hours leading up to the mission, we also get to know each member of Hugh’s team and how they came to be involved in the Escape Line.

The group use the cover of meeting for ‘choir practice’ and this is where they discuss their plans and receive their instructions – carefully coded, of course, as the Nazis have eyes and ears everywhere. One Nazi in particular is getting too close for comfort; he is Obersturmbannführer Paul Hauptmann, who already has his eye on Hugh due to the camp visits and is starting to close in on the Choir and the Rendimento. But although Hauptmann is our villain, O’Connor gives him a surprising amount of depth, describing his home life and his relationship with his wife and children. This reminder that Nazi officers were often also family men leading normal domestic lives just makes Hauptmann’s behaviour feel even more chilling and shocking.

As the clock ticks down on Christmas Eve, the suspense increases as we are kept wondering whether the mission will succeed. However, the chapters describing the build-up to the Rendimento are interspersed with other chapters in which each member of the Choir introduces themselves and their background and tells us how they met Hugh and joined his group. I wasn’t very keen on this structure as I felt that it broke the flow of the story and took away some of the tension, but it was still interesting to hear their different voices (some of which I found more convincingly written than others). They included Sir D’Arcy Osborne, the British envoy to the Holy See, and his butler John May, diplomat’s wife Delia Kiernan, and escaped soldier Sam Derry – all of whom were real people.

I had never read anything about Hugh O’Flaherty and his work until now, so I’m pleased to have had the chance to learn something new. I see he was the subject of a 1983 film, The Scarlet and the Black, starring Gregory Peck, which I’ve never come across either. Although My Father’s House is a complete novel in itself, it’s apparently the first in an Escape Line trilogy – I’ll be looking out for the next one and will be interested to see if it’s going to focus on a different member of the group this time.

Thanks to Harvill Secker for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 3/50 read for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Top Ten Tuesday: Authors I discovered in 2022

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This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is “New-to-Me Authors I Discovered in 2022”. There were lots of authors I tried for the first time last year, but the ten I’m listing below are all authors I enjoyed and am hoping to read again.

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1. Catriona McPherson – In Place of Fear, a mystery set in 1940s Edinburgh, was my first book by Scottish author McPherson. I think I might try one of her Dandy Gilver mysteries next.

2. Nevil Shute – I finally got round to reading Pied Piper last year and enjoyed it. A Town Like Alice is probably going to be the next book I read by Shute.

3. Frances Quinn – Frances Quinn’s That Bonesetter Woman was one of my books of the year in 2022, so I’m looking forward to reading her previous novel, The Smallest Man.

4. F. Tennyson Jesse – I had wanted to read A Pin to See the Peepshow, Jesse’s retelling of the Thompson/Bywaters murder case, for years and was finally able to with this new British Library edition. Her other books seem to be more difficult to find.

5. Tom Mead – I loved Death and the Conjuror, a new mystery series set in the 1930s and featuring retired magician Joseph Spector. The next book, The Murder Wheel, is out in July!

6. Karen Joy Fowler – Another book I enjoyed last year was Booth, Karen Joy Fowler’s fictional biography of the theatrical Booth family. Her books had never appealed to me before, but I obviously need to look at them again,

7. Patricia Wentworth – I chose Fool Errant as my first Patricia Wentworth novel for last year’s 1929 Club. I didn’t love it but it was entertaining and I’m hoping to try another of her books soon, maybe one of her Miss Silver mysteries.

8. William Boyd – Another of my books of the year for 2022 was my first William Boyd novel, The Romantic. He has a very extensive backlist which I’m looking forward to exploring.

9. Jill Dawson – I enjoyed The Bewitching, based on the true story of the Witches of Warboys. Her previous books seem to cover a wide range of topics and settings – the problem will be deciding which one to try next!

10. ETA Hoffmann – I read The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr for last year’s German Literature Month. It’s a very unusual and original novel and was a good introduction to his work!

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Have you read any of these authors? Which new (or new-to-you) authors did you discover last year?

A Marriage of Fortune by Anne O’Brien

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This sequel to The Royal Game continues the story of the Paston family. The Pastons were an influential Norfolk family during the 15th century and left behind a collection of private correspondence, known as the Paston Letters, which are a valuable source of information on life in England at this time. In this novel and her previous one, Anne O’Brien brings the story of the Pastons to life, using their letters to provide the outline of the plot. You could read this book as a standalone if you wanted to, but I would recommend reading both in order if you can.

A Marriage of Fortune is again narrated by several of the Paston women. First there’s Margaret Mautby Paston, now a widow with seven children. Her eldest son, Sir John, is now head of the family following the death of his father, but Margaret still takes an active part in managing the household, arranging the marriages of her younger children and continuing the ongoing feud against the Duke of Norfolk over the ownership of Caister Castle. Margaret’s priority is seeing that the Pastons continue to rise through the ranks of society, so she is furious when her eldest daughter Margery announces that she is in love with the family bailiff, Richard Calle. She refuses to allow a marriage between the two, but is unprepared for the lengths to which Margery is prepared to go.

The relationship between Margaret and Margery is very sad to read about. Margery is another of our narrators, which means we get to know exactly how she feels about her mother’s refusal to accept her love for Richard and the family estrangement that occurs as a result. Margaret believes that a daughter’s first duty should be to her parents and that Margery has no right to consider her own happiness, but there’s always a sense that she might come to regret taking this stance and we are kept wondering whether mother and daughter will be reconciled in the end.

We also hear from Margaret’s sister-in-law, Elizabeth Paston Poynings, whose husband has been killed fighting on the Yorkist side at the Second Battle of St Alban’s, leaving her a widow with a young son. Like Margaret, Elizabeth has found herself facing a struggle to hold on to her late husband’s estates, which are being claimed by the powerful Percy family. A fourth narrator is Anne Haute, cousin of Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV’s queen. Anne is betrothed to Margaret’s son, Sir John Paston, but with the rapidly changing political situation in England – Edward IV on the throne one minute, Henry VI the next – it seems that Sir John is reluctant to either make the marriage official or release her from it. I had a lot of sympathy for poor Anne when she begins to discover that she’s wasted years of her life on a man who clearly doesn’t really love her.

I enjoyed A Marriage of Fortune; this is one of my favourite periods to read about, but I still haven’t read the original Paston Letters or Helen Castor’s non-fiction account of them, Blood and Roses, despite having had the latter on my TBR pile for several years now. This was maybe a good thing as far as this novel was concerned, as it meant that although I was familiar with the historical background – the kings and queens, the battles and rebellions – I didn’t know the personal stories of the individual Paston family members, so I never knew what was going to happen to them next. However, I do think this novel, like the first one, was slightly too long, with a lot of information packed into it. It may have been better to have focused on fewer characters; Elizabeth Poynings’ story, in particular, felt very separate from the others and could possibly have been left out.

I’m not sure whether there will be a third book on the Pastons or whether Anne O’Brien will be moving on to something else now. Either way, she always chooses interesting historical women to write about so I know it will be worth looking forward to.

Thanks to Orion for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 2/50 read for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett

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Imagine you find a box of documents that make up the research material for a true crime book. After reading them, you see that the book will shed new light on the eighteen-year-old case of the Alperton Angels – but what will you do next? Destroy the documents? Or hand them over to the police? This is the premise of Janice Hallett’s new novel, The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels. It’s fascinating, but Hallett has a style all of her own which can take a while to get used to. I knew what to expect as I loved her previous novel, The Twyford Code – one of my favourite books of 2022 – and I think I enjoyed this one even more.

The case of the Alperton Angels involved a cult led by a man who called himself the Angel Gabriel, two vulnerable teenagers and a baby they believed to be the Antichrist. When true crime writer Amanda Bailey is commissioned to write a book for a new series re-assessing historic crimes, she decides to write about the Alperton Angels from the perspective of the baby, who is now about to turn eighteen. The only problem is, she has no idea where the baby is – or even who they are. Even worse, she discovers that one of her rivals, Oliver Menzies, is working on the same book from the same angle. Who will find the baby first and uncover the truth behind the Alperton Angels?

The whole novel is presented as Amanda’s collection of research material: emails, letters, WhatsApp messages, and even excerpts from books and film scripts. Where she has met and interviewed people involved in the case, these conversations are transcribed by her assistant Ellie, who adds her own amusing observations and asides. This modern, multimedia style of storytelling is not something that would usually sound appealing to me, but in Janice Hallett’s hands I love it. And actually, when I think about it, it’s really just an updated form of the classic epistolary novels I’ve always enjoyed, so there’s no reason why I shouldn’t like it!

Despite the fragmentary style, I could still get a feel for the personalities of the main characters – Amanda persistent and tenacious, Oliver gullible and easily led, and Ellie witty and down to earth – but there’s also a sense that there’s a lot we’re not being told. How much can you trust what someone says in an email or in an interview where they know they’re being recorded? Similarly, the facts behind the case of the Alperton Angels are unravelled very slowly, one little piece of information at a time, and with many of the suspects and witnesses following their own agenda, we don’t even know if what we are reading is true or will be proved false later in the book. Things do eventually start to come together and make sense – and if you continue to the end, you’ll be rewarded with some great twists!

I found The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels completely gripping and difficult to put down, particularly as there are no traditional chapter breaks so no logical places to stop. Now I’m looking forward to reading Janice Hallett’s first novel, The Appeal.

Thanks to Viper for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.