Category: Reviews

Vile Lady Villains by Danai Christopoulou

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Literature is full of villains, many of them women. Sometimes they are based on real people and sometimes they are purely fictional. Sometimes their reputations for villainy are deserved and sometimes they’re not. But what would happen if two female villains from two very different works of literature crossed paths, got to know each other and worked together to write new endings to their stories? This is what Danai Christopoulou sets out to explore in Vile Lady Villains.

Our first lady villain is Lady Macbeth. We meet her after she and her husband have carried out their plot to murder King Duncan and she is trying to wash the blood from her hands. She asks the three witches for help and is given a potion to drink, but it doesn’t have the effect she hopes for – instead of removing her burden of guilt, it transports her to an endless corridor lined with doors. Drawn to one with a bloodstained handle to match her bloodstained hand, she opens it and finds herself in a room where another murder has just taken place…

Klytemnestra has just killed her husband, Agamemnon, and is standing over his dead body. The murder was revenge for the death of their daughter, Iphigenia, whom Agamemnon sacrificed in return for winds to sail to the Trojan War, and for bringing his concubine Cassandra home with him. Suddenly a door in the wall appears and a woman dressed in black stumbles onto the scene of the crime…

This is how Christopoulou brings together Lady Macbeth and Klytemnestra (spelled with a K in the book rather than the more common C), two women from different times and different worlds. Together they become lost in a realm of stories, pursued by a mysterious goddess known as the Shepherd, or the Mistress of the House of Books. The Shepherd holds the keys to reopen their doors, but the more time our two villains spend together the more they begin to question whether they really want to return to their own stories and if so, is there anything they can do to redeem themselves first?

This is a difficult book to classify – it’s fantasy and also metafiction; there’s an element of historical fiction where Lady Macbeth’s story intersects with the real woman who inspired her character, Gruoch; there’s Greek mythology with Klytemnestra’s storyline; and there’s a thread of romance running through the novel as well. To be honest, although I could tell from the blurb that this would be an unusual story, I wasn’t really prepared for quite how bizarre it actually was. I enjoyed the beginning and the end but felt lost for a while in the middle. Also, the two women are referred to throughout the book by nicknames they give each other: Lady Macbeth becomes Anassa (the ancient Greek word for queen) and Klytemnestra becomes Claret, a reference to the colour of blood. I found this unnecessarily confusing, although I understand the thinking behind the two women wanting to choose their own names rather than the ones given to them by their creators.

The book is beautifully written, if a bit too flowery at times, which is particularly impressive as Christopoulou explains in her acknowledgements the extra challenges she faced due to English not being her first language. She also gets around the problem of an Ancient Greek woman and an 11th century Scottish woman being able to understand each other by making it one of the rules of the realm of stories, under the control of the three witches (who appear to Claret as the Three Fates, or Moirai). I don’t think it’s essential to have any knowledge of either Shakespeare or mythology, but it certainly helps! This is a very imaginative book with a lot of layers and a lot going on; ultimately it was just a bit too strange for me, but I’m sure the right reader will love it.

Thanks to Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Fourth Queen by Nicola Cornick

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The title of Nicola Cornick’s latest novel, The Fourth Queen, refers, as you may have guessed, to the fourth wife of Henry VIII – Anne of Cleves. However, although she does feature in the book, this is really the story of a fictional character, Marris North, the former prioress of Winterhill Priory, who loses her home and her position in 1539 due to the dissolution of the monasteries. When Marris falls in love with Sir William Sharington, the commissioner sent to oversee the closure of the priory, he finds new roles for Marris and her sisters at court in the household of the new Queen Anne (called Anna in the book). Sadly, Anna’s marriage is not a success and when she finds herself in trouble she approaches Marris for help in concealing a secret that could put them both in danger.

Like all the other Nicola Cornick novels I’ve read, this one also has a present day storyline and in this case it follows Jenna Bergin, a woman in her thirties who owns a bookshop in Wantage, not far from Winterhill Hall and the ruined priory. For as long as she can remember, Jenna has been able to remember a former life as Marris North, while her younger sister, Bree, also believes she is the reincarnation of Marris’s sister, Bridget. When Jenna learns that an archaeological dig is taking place at Winterhill, she becomes concerned that Anna’s secret is going to be uncovered after all these years – and she decides that she’ll do whatever it takes to stop that from happening.

I liked the portrayal of Anne of Cleves in this book; of all Henry VIII’s wives, she’s the one who tends to get the least attention, which is understandable as their marriage only lasted a few months before being annulled and was less dramatic than some of the others. She’s shown here as a kind-hearted, loyal, sensible woman who can also be naïve and unworldly at times. Her big secret is something that was rumoured at the time but there’s no evidence that it actually happened; if true, it could have changed history so it’s an interesting idea to explore in a novel. I also liked Marris but found her less convincing as a character as she seemed to adapt far too quickly to the loss of the priory and no longer being a nun. In case you’re wondering, Winterhill Priory never existed but is based on Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, which really was dissolved in 1539 and bought by Sir William Sharington.

In the modern day, Jenna shares a lot of Marris’s character traits and her relationship with Bree mirrors the one between Marris and Bridget. I haven’t mentioned yet that there’s a third sister: Molly, or Rose as she was in her former life. Although Molly is aware of her reincarnation, she doesn’t embrace it the way her sisters do and when you see how her story plays out, both as her present and past self, it’s easy to understand why. There are one or two other characters who also existed in both timelines, but I won’t give any more details as I don’t want to spoil too much (although you’ll probably guess one of them almost as soon as they appear). If you’re someone who doesn’t believe in reincarnation, you’ll need to just suspend your disbelief here and not ask too many questions!

This isn’t one of my favourite Nicola Cornick books, but when you’ve read a lot of an author’s books (this is my eighth) it’s inevitable that you’ll like some more than others. I did enjoy it, particularly the historical sections, and will be looking out for her next one.

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

Dead Men Don’t Ski by Patricia Moyes

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This is the first in a series of mysteries published between 1959 and 1993 and featuring Inspector Henry Tibbett. I had never come across them, or their author Patricia Moyes, until now, but I really enjoyed this one and will definitely be looking for more.

Dead Men Don’t Ski begins with Henry Tibbett and his wife, Emmy, setting off on a skiing trip to Italy. It’s a much-needed holiday for the two of them, but Henry is also planning to mix business with pleasure. The hotel they’ll be staying at in Santa Chiara is suspected of being the centre of operations of a ring of drug smugglers and Henry has been asked by Scotland Yard to work with the local Italian police to find out who the culprits are. Of course, he doesn’t admit this to his fellow guests as he wants them to speak and act freely around him. These guests include a party of young English tourists – Jimmy, Roger and Caro; a retired military man, Colonel Buckfast and his wife; a beautiful Italian baroness and her possessive Austrian husband; and a German couple with their daughter and her prospective husband, as well as an assortment of hotel staff, skiing instructors and local residents.

At first, Henry and Emmy manage to blend in with everyone else, enjoying the scenery, attending skiing lessons and relaxing around the hotel. But when one of the guests boards the ski lift at the top of the mountain and is found dead by the time he reaches the bottom, Henry’s detective skills are needed to solve the crime and he will no longer be able to stay undercover.

This is an entertaining novel with a beautiful setting. Santa Chiara is described as a small village close to Chiusa near the border of Italy and Austria and drawing from the cultures of both countries. There are lovely descriptions of snow-covered peaks and valleys, pine trees and pink rock, Alpine houses with wooden balconies – and the Bella Vista Hotel perched high in the mountains. I was reminded of another ski resort mystery, Death in Kashmir by M.M. Kaye, although I thought that book was darker than this one.

I liked Henry Tibbett and it was also good to see so much of Emmy. Often the detective’s wife is kept very much in the background, maybe popping up now and then to make a cup of tea or answer the phone, but in this book Emmy is present from beginning to end. It would have been nice to see her play a bigger role in helping to actually solve the mystery, but maybe she will in one of the later books in the series. The other characters are also interesting; with such a mix of different nationalities you do need to be prepared for some slightly dated attitudes, but no worse than in most other books of this period. I was particularly drawn to Maria-Pia, the Baroness, and her cold, controlling husband Hermann, who turns out to have hidden depths.

As for the mystery itself, it’s a good one with plenty of suspects, although my heart sank when Spezzi, the Italian policeman working with Henry, draws up a detailed timetable of events, which is reproduced in the book. I find mysteries that focus on timings and alibis to be tedious and difficult to follow, so I was pleased that this book didn’t dwell too much on that after all – it was just part of Spezzi’s approach to crime solving and although his timetable did prove very useful, the interviews he and Henry conduct with the witnesses and suspects were just as important.

The first two books in this series are available now in attractive new editions from Farrago Books and with the next two advertised for publication later this year I hope that means they’ll be reissuing the whole series. I suspect it’s probably not essential to read them in order but I’m planning to try the second one, The Sunken Sailor, soon.

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

The Shapeshifter’s Daughter by Sally Magnusson

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I’ve read a lot of Greek mythology retellings but only one or two Norse ones, so I was curious about Sally Magnusson’s most recent novel, The Shapeshifter’s Daughter, described as a reimagining of the story of Hel of the Underworld. I’ve read all of Magnusson’s previous books and mostly enjoyed them; I hoped this would be another good one!

Hel is one of the three children of the Norse god Loki (the shapeshifter of the title) and Angrboda, a frost giant. She grows up in Utgard – a world on the peripheries of Asgard, home of the gods, and Mitgard, land of the humans – where she lives happily with her brother and sister, a wolf and a serpent, until Odin sends his gods to hunt them down and bring them to him. Hel finds herself sent by Odin to rule over the icy realm of Niflheim, where she welcomes the souls of the dead into the underworld – until one day she is drawn back to the surface by the memory of one of the dead she has guided.

Meanwhile, in the modern day, we meet Helen Firth, a woman in her fifties who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Helen has led a lonely, troubled life since the death of her father when she was a teenager. Believing that nobody cares about her, she decides to return to Orkney, her childhood home, so she can die on her own terms. However, she hadn’t expected to be reacquainted with an old friend, Thorfinn Coffin, who reminds her that maybe she’s not completely alone in the world after all.

Not only do our two main characters have similar names, their stories also mirror each other in several other ways and eventually begin to intersect. I couldn’t help thinking, though, that Helen’s story on its own would have been enough to form a compelling novel. Her life has clearly been a sad and isolated one, so I found her relationship with Thorfinn very moving, as well as bittersweet coming when she knows she only has a short time left to live. Magnusson writes quite sensitively on the topics of loneliness, bereavement and healing and I was completely drawn into Helen’s sections of the novel.

The Norse myth parts of the book were much harder for me to connect with. Hel, Loki and the others didn’t seem ‘real’ and I felt that I just watching their story unfold from a distance. I had similar feelings about A.S. Byatt’s Ragnarok (based on the same myths) and I remember in her author’s note Byatt said that characters in myths don’t have personalities the way characters in novels do – they only have attributes. Maybe that’s what Magnusson was trying to show here as well, but if so it didn’t really work for me and I would have been happy just to read a whole book about Helen and Thorfinn!

I’ll be interested to see what Sally Magnusson writes next, as her books so far have covered such a range of different subjects – although always with a Scottish or Nordic connection. And if you can recommend any good Norse myth retellings, I’d love to hear about them!

The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch

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I’ve read very little of Iris Murdoch’s work – her Booker Prize winner The Sea, The Sea many years ago, which I can barely remember but know I struggled with, and a lesser known novel, A Word Child, which I really enjoyed. When picking another book by Murdoch for my new Classics Club list, then, I had plenty to choose from and decided on The Black Prince almost at random. I started to read it in March for Reading Ireland Month (although the book is set in England, Murdoch is an Irish author) but I had too many other books needing to be read at that time, so I put it aside and came back to it last week.

Published in 1973, The Black Prince is presented as a manuscript written by Bradley Pearson who has recently retired from his job as Inspector of Taxes to concentrate on his writing. Bradley’s book – an account of some life-changing events which occurred when he was fifty-eight years old – is framed by a foreword from his editor, P. Loxias, and a series of postscripts written by the other characters in the story. Although it’s easy to become absorbed in Bradley’s narrative and forget that it’s a book-within-a-book, the different perspectives we see at the end are a reminder that Bradley isn’t necessarily the most reliable of narrators and may not have been entirely honest with us. Of course, there’s no guarantee that the other characters are telling the truth either, so be prepared for a novel that’s ambiguous, thought-provoking and doesn’t tie everything up neatly at the end.

Bradley’s story begins as he decides to leave London for the summer and rent a cottage by the sea where he can work on his book in peace. Before he manages to depart, however, he is repeatedly delayed by a sequence of frustrating and unwelcome incidents. First, there’s an urgent telephone call from his friend and rival, Arnold Baffin, a much more successful and popular author than Bradley himself. Arnold is convinced he has killed his wife, Rachel, so Bradley rushes to their house only to find that it’s a false alarm and Rachel is not dead after all. Bradley’s involvement in the Baffins’ domestic disputes, though, leads to Rachel believing she’s in love with him. Then, Bradley’s sister, Priscilla, arrives at his flat tearful and distraught; her marriage has broken up and she’s depressed and homeless. And a third woman has also reappeared in Bradley’s life – his ex-wife, Christian, who has just returned from America along with her annoying brother, Francis.

The first half of the novel deals with Bradley’s relationships with these people as he tries to disentangle himself from the various situations he’s become caught up in and I have to admit, at this point I was finding the book a bit tedious and didn’t think I was going to enjoy it. That changed halfway through when Bradley falls in love with the Baffins’ twenty-year-old daughter, Julian, who has been pleading with him to tutor her in classic literature, particularly Shakespeare. Needless to say, Arnold and Rachel are not happy when they find out – there’s a thirty-eight year age difference – but the ensuing drama makes the second half of the novel much more compelling than the first.

Before I started reading, I wasn’t sure of the relevance of the title. In history, the Black Prince refers to Edward of Woodstock, the eldest son of Edward III, but in the context of Murdoch’s novel, the reference is actually to Hamlet. The play is alluded to many times during the novel and specifically discussed by Bradley and Julian (it’s while Julian is describing how she once dressed in black to play Hamlet that Bradley discovers he’s in love with her). I’m sure it’s no coincidence that Bradley Pearson himself shares initials with the Black Prince. Other names are also significant, including P. Loxias, the name of the fictional editor – Loxias is another name for Apollo, the Greek god of truth and prophecy, very appropriate in a book that makes us question what is true and what isn’t. And I spotted other examples of symbolism throughout the novel, such as the bronze water buffalo lady, an ornament which is passed from one character to another and is broken and mended at various points in the story.

This is a fascinating novel, then, and although I found it slow to start, I had been drawn in by the middle of the book and was glad I’d persevered. I’ve also been left with a lot to think about; as I said, it’s all very ambiguous and there are lots of unanswered questions at the end. If you’ve read it, let me know what you thought.

This is book 3/50 from my third Classics Club list.

Pixie by Jill Dawson

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I was drawn to this book first by the title and the cover, then I remembered that I’d read and enjoyed one of Jill Dawson’s other novels, The Bewitching, a few years ago. That book was about witch trials in the 16th century, but this one is on a very different subject: the life of Pamela Colman Smith, an important and influential artist in her time who has been largely forgotten today. Pixie was the nickname given to Pamela by the famous actress Ellen Terry and I’ll keep things simple by referring to her by that name for the rest of this review. The book is a work of fiction, but closely based on what we know of the life and career of the real woman.

Born in England in 1878 to American parents, we first meet Pixie as an eighteen-year-old living in Jamaica due to her father’s job. Her mother has just died and Pixie is heartbroken, particularly when she learns that she and her father will be leaving her beloved Jamaica behind to return to New York. At least she has her love of art to sustain her and when her father also dies a few years later, leaving her alone in the world, Pixie decides to travel to London to pursue her dream of becoming an artist.

In London, Pixie is taken under the wing of Ellen Terry and is introduced to the other actors, artists and writers who form her social circle, including Henry Irving, Bram Stoker, William Butler Yeats and his brother Jack Yeats. She works on stage design for the Lyceum Theatre group, writes and illustrates books on Jamaican folklore and attempts to start her own magazine, but even when she begins to have success as an artist, she struggles to get people to take her seriously. She’s forced to hear herself described as ‘strange’ and ‘odd-looking’ and to listen to speculation over her racial background; it seems that people are determined to find a way to label her, but all Pixie wants is to be accepted for who she is and regarded as the talented artist she knows herself to be.

I knew absolutely nothing about Pixie before reading this book, so I resisted the temptation to look her up online until I’d finished and just let the story unfold. Pixie’s biggest achievement and the thing she is probably most remembered for today is the 1909 illustrated Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck and the later chapters of the book concentrate mainly on this (the fact that for decades it was usually referred to as simply the Rider-Waite Tarot shows the struggle Pixie has faced in getting the recognition she deserves), but I also enjoyed learning about her other projects and interests outside of the art world. For example, she joins a secret society known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and meets famous occultists such as Aleister Crowley.

Pixie’s personal life is also interesting to read about. Dawson strongly implies that she’s a lesbian and although that doesn’t seem to have been officially confirmed, it’s considered likely due to the fact that she never married, lived for twenty years with her companion Nora Lake, and was friends and, at one point, housemates with Ellen Terry’s daughter Edith Craig and her partner Christabel ‘Christopher’ Marshall. There’s also the question of Pixie’s appearance, which seemed to confuse everyone she met; although both of her parents were white, she was described at various times as Japanese, Jamaican or a Gypsy, and Dawson provides a theory to try to explain this.

I found Pixie a fascinating character. She’s given a distinctive narrative voice – naive, sensitive and almost childlike – which suits her personality perfectly without being irritating. I enjoyed getting to know her and am pleased Jill Dawson has chosen to write this book and give Pamela Colman Smith the attention she deserves.

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

A Deadly Episode by Anthony Horowitz

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The Word is Murder, the first book in Anthony Horowitz’s series chronicling his partnership with the detective Daniel Hawthorne, is being adapted for film. Although Anthony, to his disappointment, has not been asked to write the script or participate in any other way in bringing his own story to life, both he and Hawthorne have been invited to visit the set in Hastings. Here they meet the cast and crew, including the two actors in the main roles – David Caine, playing Hawthorne, and Ralph Seymour, playing Horowitz himself. It’s clear that there are tensions between the two, so when Caine is found stabbed to death, Ralph is one of the prime suspects. However, it quickly emerges that almost everyone else on the set also has a motive for the murder. It seems that Hawthorne and Horowitz have found themselves with yet another crime to solve…

None of the above is true; it’s entirely fictional, but part of the fun (at least for me – I know not everyone likes it) is that Anthony Horowitz uses himself as a character throughout this series, in a clever blend of reality and imagination. Hawthorne is not a real person and neither are most of the others, but Horowitz occasionally refers to his real-life wife, Jill, his own books, and other aspects of his own life and career. He’s very self-deprecating and portrays himself as the Watson to Hawthorne’s Sherlock Holmes, often completely missing important clues and coming up with theories that turn out to be entirely wrong. A Deadly Episode is the sixth book in the series and although I would recommend reading them all in the correct order to fully understand the relationship between Horowitz and Hawthorne, it’s not really essential and each book has a self-contained plot.

The mystery in this book is an interesting one, with plenty of suspects as David Caine has made enemies of everyone involved with the film: his co-star Ralph Seymour, with whom he’s had a long professional – and often personal – rivalry; the screenwriter Shanika Harris who has known Caine since they were both young eco-warriors; his agent James Aubrey whom he’s been threatening to break ties with; and the runner (production assistant) Izzy Mays, who has lost her job because of Caine. Even the director and the producer have good reasons to want him dead, so there’s a lot for Anthony and Hawthorne to untangle here. The real Horowitz has had experience of working in film and television and I think it shows in his descriptions of life on set.

Halfway through the book, a second mystery begins to unfold, revolving around a crime that took place more than a decade earlier. I found this a bit jarring at first, as it meant getting to know a whole new set of characters, but eventually connections between the two mysteries start to form and the eventual solution gives an explanation for both.

After the previous book, Close to Death, where our two main characters were separated for most of the novel, it was good to see them spending more time together again in this one. Hawthorne has never been the most pleasant of people – he’s secretive, prickly and tactless – but I do think he’s a fascinating character, partly because we know so little about him. In this particular novel, Anthony tries to dig into Hawthorne’s past, in a diversion that takes him to the village of Reeth in the Yorkshire Dales, but still doesn’t manage to shed a lot of extra light on things. Will we ever know the full story? Well, it seems there will be more books in the series, so there’s still hope!

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