Six Degrees of Separation: From Romantic Comedy to The Streets

August 5, 202313 Comments

It’s the first Saturday of the month, which means it’s time for another Six Degrees of Separation, hosted by Kate of Books are my Favourite and Best. The idea is that Kate chooses a book to use as a starting point and then we have to link it to six other books of our choice to form a chain. A book doesn’t have to be connected to all of the others on the list – only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month we’re starting with Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld. This is not a book I’ve read, but here’s what it’s about:

With a series of heartbreaks under her belt, Sally Milz – successful script writer for a legendary late-night TV comedy show – has long abandoned the search for love.

But when her friend and fellow writer begins to date a glamorous actress, he joins the growing club of interesting but average-looking men who get romantically involved with accomplished, beautiful women.

Sally channels her annoyance into a sketch, poking fun at this ‘social rule’. The reverse never happens for a woman.

Then Sally meets Noah, a pop idol with a reputation for dating models. But this isn’t a romantic comedy – it’s real life.

Would someone like him ever date someone like her?

Skewering all our certainties about why we fall in love, ROMANTIC COMEDY is a witty and probing tale of how the heart will follow itself, no matter what anyone says. It is Curtis Sittenfeld at her most sharp, daring and compassionate best.

Romantic Comedy doesn’t sound like my sort of book, although I did enjoy one of Curtis Sittenfeld’s earlier novels, Prep. I nearly used that for my first link but remembered that I’d already used Prep in a previous Six Degrees post, so instead I’ve gone with another book with Romantic in the title: The Romantic by William Boyd (1). This is the first – and still the only – book I’ve read by William Boyd, although I’m definitely planning to read more. It tells the story of Cashel Greville Ross, following him through his life from birth to death as he befriends the Romantic Poets in Italy, searches for the source of the Nile, joins the army in Sri Lanka and uncovers family secrets in Ireland.

The Romantic was longlisted for this year’s Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction but didn’t make the shortlist – a big mistake, in my opinion! Another book I had read from the longlist that didn’t get shortlisted was The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley by Sean Lusk (2). The novel follows Zachary Cloudesley, son of an 18th century clockmaker and inventor of automata, as he travels to Constantinople in search of his missing father.

Automata is the link to my next book, The Clockwork Girl by Anna Mazzola (3). Inspired by the real life scandal of ‘The Vanishing Children of Paris’ in 1750 and the technological advances in the creation of clockwork dolls and automata at that time, this is a fascinating novel set in Paris just a few decades before the French Revolution. It has a wonderful atmosphere, a beautiful cover and was one of my favourite books that I read last year.

Another book set in Paris is It Walks by Night by John Dickson Carr (4), part of the British Library Crime Classics series. This is one of five novels Carr wrote featuring the French detective and juge d’instruction (examining magistrate), Henri Bencolin. It’s a clever locked room mystery which I did find interesting – and couldn’t solve! – but I didn’t much like Bencolin as a character. I preferred The Black Spectacles, one of his Gideon Fell mysteries which I read earlier this year.

It Walks by Night was published in 1930 and so was The Mysterious Mr Quin by Agatha Christie (5). I really enjoyed this collection of short stories featuring Mr Satterthwaite, an elderly English gentleman, and his mysterious friend, Harley Quin, who comes and goes without warning and stays just long enough to help Satterthwaite solve the mystery. Much as I love Christie’s Poirot and Miss Marple novels, it’s always interesting to venture beyond those books and see what else she wrote.

The author of the final book in my chain shares a name with Harley Quin (although he spells it with two ‘n’s). The book is The Streets by Anthony Quinn (6), in which a young newspaper reporter in 1882 visits some of London’s poorest slums to report on the living conditions. The book is fictional but based on real nineteenth century sources. I found it fascinating from a social history perspective, but the plot and characters didn’t interest me much and I struggled to finish it.

And that’s my chain for this month! My links have included the word ‘Romantic’, books longlisted but not shortlisted, automata, Paris, books published in 1930 and the name Quin or Quinn.

In September we’ll be starting with Wifedom by Anna Funder.

The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer

August 2, 202313 Comments

I’ve read several novels about English witch trials in the 16th and 17th centuries, most recently The Bewitching by Jill Dawson, and I wondered whether this one – The Witching Tide, Margaret Meyer’s debut novel – would have anything new to offer. I’m pleased to say that although there are some obvious similarities with the other books I’ve read, this book also explores some different elements and ideas so was definitely worth reading.

The novel is set in 1645 in the small coastal village of Cleftwater, East Anglia. Martha Hallybread is a servant in the household of Kit Crozier, whom she nursed as a child. Martha has never married herself, choosing instead to devote her life to Kit and his family, as well as serving as the village midwife and healer. When the witchfinder Master Makepeace arrives in Cleftwater, Martha fears that she could become a target, particularly if anyone discovers her secret ‘poppet’, a wax doll inherited from her mother. However, a twist comes very early in the novel when Martha avoids being rounded up with the other suspected witches – and finds herself one of several women enlisted by the witchfinder as assistants.

Most books focus on the misogyny behind the witch hunts, but The Witching Tide reminds us that there were also women involved in condemning their fellow women. Some of them may have really believed they were cleansing their towns and villages of witchcraft, others probably just thought it was the best way to avoid falling under suspicion themselves; in Martha’s case, she hopes that her position will allow her to bring some comfort to the women awaiting trial and find a way to prove they are innocent.

Another thing that makes Martha an unusual protagonist is the fact that she is mute – and yet this is the aspect of the book I found least successful. Margaret Meyer has said that Martha’s lack of speech is intended to represent the way in which the ‘witches’ were silenced, denied a voice and prevented from defending themselves against their accusers, but although this is a clever idea, I felt that Martha made herself understood too easily, expressing complex ideas and sentences through gestures so that even strangers seemed to know what she meant. I could see what the author was trying to do, but I wasn’t completely convinced.

Martha’s story is fictional, but inspired by the real life East Anglian witch hunts of 1645-47 and the imaginary Cleftwater is loosely based on Aldeburgh, Suffolk, the location of one of the hunts. Knowing that real people experienced the things Martha and her friends went through makes the book even more meaningful.

Thanks to Orion Publishing Group/Phoenix for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 7/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2023

This is book 28/50 for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

My Commonplace Book: July 2023

July 31, 202315 Comments

A selection of quotes and pictures to represent July’s reading:

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

We salvage what we can, what truly matters to us, even at the gates of despair.

The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay (1984)

Self portrait by Artemisia Gentileschi

One thought crosses Orazio’s mind as he takes in his surroundings at the Palazzo Conscente. Wealth may enable a man to acquire beautiful things but good taste cannot be bought.

Disobedient by Elizabeth Fremantle (2023)

She was approaching a new land, and she would go ashore. She wanted to be alone. She would probably cry at the sheer beauty of the dream come true. She felt that she would enjoy that cry enormously, and that she would not be able to indulge it comfortably if someone were with her. She had that beautiful feeling that you get when you are in the middle of a very sad but fascinating book, which you are convinced will reduce you to pleasurable tears.

Wonder Cruise by Ursula Bloom (1934)

The Witchfinder General, from a broadside published by Matthew Hopkins before 1650.

Faith was different. Hers was not like other people’s. It had some basic defect, its restless inner needle always roving, from conviction to disbelief to shame and round again, moved about by some unseen current, the source of which she didn’t know. Mam had always said to pay no heed to how it worked; where the needle came to rest was a matter twixt a woman and her soul. In the end it was deeds that counted.

The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer (2023)

That meant that I could choose any I wished. Not that it could be better than my real name, but it was interesting to think what I would call myself. The problem was that once you had a name, even if it was the most terrible one in the world, it belonged to you. And often it was the first thing that people would know about you. So to try and unstick yourself from whatever it was was far more difficult than it sounded.

Atlas: The Story of Pa Salt by Lucinda Riley and Harry Whittaker (2023)

Favourite book read in July:

Wonder Cruise

Authors read for the first time in July:

Ursula Bloom, Margaret Meyer, Harry Whittaker

Places visited in my July reading:

Fictional world of Fionavar, England, Italy, Malta, France, Germany, Norway, Siberia

Reading notes: I only managed to read another five books from my 20 Books of Summer list this month, but one of them (Atlas) was so long it felt like the equivalent of two normal sized books! I’ll see how many more I can read from my list in August but I think 15 is a more realistic target now than all 20.

What have you been reading in July? Do you have any plans for August?

Wonder Cruise by Ursula Bloom

July 26, 202334 Comments

If you’re not lucky enough to be going on a cruise this summer, this 1934 novel by Ursula Bloom is the next best thing! It will give you the opportunity to visit Gibraltar, Marseille, Malta, Naples and Venice, all without leaving your own home. You’ll sail on the Allando in the company of Ann Clements, a thirty-five-year-old single woman who has never been abroad in her life…until now.

At the beginning of the novel, Ann is living in rented rooms in London and working as a secretary, having been left penniless after her father’s death. Her routine rarely changes – long days in a gloomy office, then home to do the ironing and sewing, with only two weeks by the sea with her controlling, bullying older brother Cuthbert to look forward to. She has almost given up hope of having any excitement in her life, until the day she wins a large sum of money in a sweepstake she didn’t even know she had entered. Ignoring Cuthbert’s advice to invest the money in a trust fund for his daughter, Ann decides to spend it on a Mediterranean cruise – and this one decision will change her life forever.

Even while she’s boarding the ship, Ann is having second thoughts. Is she really brave enough to travel alone? Has she brought the right clothes? Surely she’s too old and boring to be having an adventure like this! As the days go by, however, she finds herself doing things she had never imagined herself doing before and for the first time she begins to learn who she really is and what she wants out of life.

I enjoyed this book from beginning to end; Ann is an endearing character and it was lovely to watch her grow in confidence, start to think for herself and leave behind the shy, insecure woman who has grown up under her brother’s thumb. Having been convinced that she would remain a spinster to her dying day, she also meets several men on the cruise who make her wonder whether it’s not too late to fall in love after all. Yet I wouldn’t describe this book as a romance so much as a book about a woman discovering that romance is possible, if that makes sense!

I also loved the descriptions of the places Ann visits, particularly as I’ve been to some of them myself, as well as life on the ship itself, as Ann gets to know her fellow passengers. They are a real mixture of people and although Ann has some preconceived ideas (thanks to Cuthbert’s influence) regarding those who are ‘not her sort’, as part of her transformation she is exposed to new ways of thinking and starts to change her own views.

Wonder Cruise is the first novel I’ve read by Ursula Bloom, but it seems she was very prolific and wrote over 500 books under various pseudonyms, which got her into the Guinness Book of Records in the 1970s! If you’ve read any of them maybe you can help me decide which one I should try next.

This is book 6/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2023

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

July 22, 202316 Comments

I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to decide to read Piranesi. Although I loved Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, this one sounded very different and didn’t immediately appeal to me, but I did still intend to read it sooner rather than later. Now that I have, I think Jonathan Strange is still my favourite, but I enjoyed this book a lot more than I expected to.

Our narrator, Piranesi, lives in a place he calls ‘the House’, a vast, labyrinthine structure containing hundreds of interconnected halls and vestibules. The lower levels of the building are flooded and there is a complex system of tides that only Piranesi understands. The House is his entire world; he believes he has always lived there and can’t remember any other way of life. His only human contact comes twice a week when he meets a man he thinks of as ‘the Other’ and assists him in his quest to find the Great and Secret Knowledge. Apart from himself and the Other, Piranesi is only aware of thirteen more people who have ever existed in the world, all now skeletons resting in the niches and alcoves of the House.

Piranesi is quite content with his solitary existence, exploring the enormous halls and passageways, studying the impressive statues he finds there and recording his discoveries in a series of notebooks. Then one day, everything changes. Could there be a sixteenth person in the world – and if so, who are they and what do they want?

I’m not going to say any more about the plot than that, partly because it’s a story that I don’t want to spoil for anyone who hasn’t read it yet but also because I found the plot secondary to the setting and the sense of place. The atmosphere Clarke creates really is wonderful; from the first chapter I felt fully immersed in the majestic, watery world of Piranesi’s House, a world that is somehow simultaneously both vast and claustrophobic. The book was published during the first year of the pandemic in 2020 and I’m sure if I’d read it then the themes of solitude and a life cut off from the outside world would have resonated with me even more than they did now. It’s no coincidence that Piranesi was also the name of an 18th century Venetian architect and artist famous for his etchings of ‘Imaginary Prisons’ showing huge subterranean vaults complete with staircases, arches and towers.

Towards the end of the book, as we finally began to learn more about the House and how Piranesi and the Other came to be there, I felt that the story started to slightly lose its magic. I had loved the eerie, otherworldly feel of the first half of the book and was less interested in the revelations that came at the end. Still, Piranesi is a very impressive novel and one that I would probably have to read again to fully appreciate everything Susanna Clarke was trying to say.

The Graces by Siobhan MacGowan

July 19, 2023July 19, 202312 Comments

I found Siobhan MacGowan’s first novel, The Trial of Lotta Rae, a very powerful, emotional read and I was hoping for something similar from her new book, The Graces. I’m pleased to say that I thought this one was even better.

The novel opens on an August evening in 1918, as a group of pilgrims make their way to the bell tower of Mount St Kilian Abbey in Dublin. As Brother Thomas and Father Sheridan watch the candlelit procession weaving through the trees below the abbey, they remember the woman to whom the pilgrims are paying homage – Rosaleen Moore, known as The Rose, who died just three years earlier. On her deathbed, Rosaleen revealed a terrible secret to Father Sheridan, something which has left him so disturbed he decides to discuss it with Brother Thomas tonight.

In a series of long flashbacks, Rosaleen’s story unfolds, beginning with her childhood in rural County Clare, where she first discovers that, like her grandmother, she has been ‘touched by the Graces’ and is blessed – or cursed – with the sight. When her gift gets her into trouble in the village, she is sent away to live with an aunt in Dublin. Here she finds herself befriended by a group of spiritualists and healers who encourage her to use her special talents to help others. However, Rosaleen will learn that meddling in things she doesn’t fully understand is not a good idea and could have disastrous results.

The Graces is a fascinating, moving story, exploring the clashes between superstition and science and the consequences of thinking we know best. It reminded me of Hannah Kent’s The Good People and Emma Donoghue’s The Wonder, which have similar themes and are also set in Ireland, but although it’s bleak at times, the book is also very gripping and leaves you with a lot to think about after reaching the final page. Rosaleen herself is not always an easy character to like – her arrogance leads her to make poor decisions and I was disappointed in the role she plays in a love triangle with two different men, Lorcan and Rian – but I could still have sympathy with her situation because the whole thing is so desperately sad.

Away from the central plot, the political developments in early 20th century Ireland also form an important part of the story. Rosaleen is in Dublin during the time of the Easter Rising, the formation of the Cumann na mBan (an Irish republican women’s paramilitary group) and the move towards independence. Through her relationship with Lorcan, who is involved in all of these things, Rosaleen is exposed to new ideas and new ways of thinking, but she doesn’t fully embrace them herself and feels caught in the middle between two extreme views.

Having enjoyed both of Siobhan MacGowan’s novels (although I always feel that ‘enjoyed’ isn’t quite the right word to use with this sort of book), I’m already hoping for a third!

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

This is book 5/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2023

This is book 27/50 for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Historical Musings #81: Exploring Canada

July 16, 202319 Comments

Welcome to this month’s post on all things historical fiction!

Earlier this year, I read Prize Women by Caroline Lea, a fascinating and moving novel about the Great Stork Derby, a contest to see who can give birth to the most children in a ten year period (yes, it really happened). The story takes place in 1920s Toronto and it occurred to me that I’ve read very little historical fiction set in Canada.

A quick look through my review archives shows that since I started blogging I’ve only read five historical (or partly historical) novels with a Canadian setting. One of these was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction a few years ago: A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale, the story of an Englishman who decides to start a new life in Winter, a small, remote settlement in Saskatchewan. I enjoyed it and really need to read more books by Patrick Gale! Touch by Alexi Zentner is also set in a remote part of Canada – the fictional gold rush town of Sawgamet – and is part historical/part magical realism. It’s a beautifully written book and the descriptions of life in a harsh, wild landscape are very well done.

Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace is another book based on a true story – the story of Grace Marks, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in 1840s Canada. It’s probably my favourite of the Atwood novels I’ve read so far. There’s also Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, the first in his Deptford Trilogy, which begins in 1908 with our narrator Dunstan Ramsay growing up in the Canadian town of Deptford. The book was published in 1970 and by the end we have been brought up to date in the 1960s, but enough of the story takes place earlier in the century for it to be classed as historical, I think! Finally, I’ve read Perdita by Hilary Scharper, a dual timeline novel about a woman who claims to be 134 years old. This unusual novel moves backwards and forwards in time between the 19th century and the modern day and is set on the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario.