Category: Historical Fiction

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

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Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter had a lot of success last year, being shortlisted for the Booker Prize and winning the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. It also appeared on a lot of people’s end of year ‘best of’ lists so I had high hopes for it, particularly as I’ve previously enjoyed two of his other books, Pure and Now We Shall Be Entirely Free.

The novel is set in the winter of 1963, one of the coldest winters on record in the UK. Beginning in late December 1962 and lasting until March, temperatures plummeted, blizzards blanketed most of the country in deep snow and rivers and lakes froze over. Against this backdrop, we see the stories of two married couples play out. Dr Eric Parry has recently moved to rural Somerset with his wife, Irene, who is pregnant. Eric is enjoying being a country doctor, but Irene is finding it hard to adapt; it’s so different from her life in London and she misses her sister, who has gone to live in America. Despite her pregnancy, she feels that she and Eric are growing apart – and she’s right to feel that way because, unknown to Irene, Eric is having an affair with one of his patients.

Bill and Rita Simmons, who live at a nearby farm, are also newly arrived in the countryside. To the disappointment of his wealthy father, who wanted him to join the family business, Bill has chosen to follow a very different path and become a dairy farmer. It’s proving to be more difficult than he expected, but he’s sure that with new ideas and investment, he’ll be able to turn things around. He just needs to convince the bank to lend him the money! His wife Rita, like Irene, is pregnant and, also like Irene, she feels lonely and out of place, so it’s probably not surprising that the two women quickly form a bond and a friendship begins to develop.

Apart from a long chapter in the middle of the book in which Irene hosts a Boxing Day party and several other key characters converge on the Parrys’ house, the main focus is on the two couples, their daily lives and the relationships between them. All four characters are believable and strongly drawn, but I think Rita is the one I found most interesting. Before marrying Bill, she had been a dancer in a Bristol nightclub, so the transition to life as a farmer’s wife in a small, quiet community is particularly difficult for her. She has started hearing voices in her head, a sign of her vulnerable, fragile mental state, but Bill isn’t able to give her the support she needs, feeling that he doesn’t truly know who his wife is and preferring to ignore her past.

Although I did enjoy following the stories of Eric and Irene, Rita and Bill, I felt that I was held at a distance for most of the book and never quite connected with the characters on an emotional level as much as I would have liked to. Maybe it was just me, or maybe it was a result of the bleak, frozen setting reflecting their troubled, isolated lives and the coldness of their marriages. Still, this is an impressive novel overall and despite not quite managing to love it I can see why it’s so highly regarded.

A Slow and Secret Poison by Carmella Lowkis

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It’s 1925 and Vee Morgan is on her way to Harfold Manor in Wiltshire to take up the position of gardener. She knows she’s lucky to get the job; although she loves being outdoors and was a Land Girl on a farm during the war, she has no horticultural qualifications and no references, not to mention that women gardeners are not at all common and not exactly in high demand. After arriving at her new workplace, however, she learns that none of the local men wanted the job and are reluctant to come anywhere near Harfold Manor and its strange inhabitant, Lady Arabella Lascy.

Arabella, alone in the world apart from her estate manager and cousin, Maurice Reacher, believes she and her family have been cursed. First her parents died, then all four of her brothers, each within three years of the one before, leaving only Arabella to inherit the family estate. Now another three years have passed and Arabella is convinced that she will be the next victim. But are the Lascys really under a curse or is there a more human explanation for what has been happening?

A Slow and Secret Poison is the second novel by Carmella Lowkis; I had mixed feelings about her first, Spitting Gold, a retelling of a Charles Perrault fairy tale, but I found this one more enjoyable. Vee interested me from the beginning – she’s a very flawed heroine, as we discover as the story unfolds and secrets from her past come to light – but I liked her as a character and I thought her practical, no-nonsense personality provided a good counterpart to the reclusive, fanciful Arabella. I was intrigued to learn from the author’s note at the end of the book that the character of Arabella was inspired by Stephen Tennant, one of the Bright Young Things of the 1920s.

The book has a lot of Gothic elements: the crumbling old house and its eccentric owner, the supposed Lascy family curse, sightings of a mythical hare and, of course, the poisonings hinted at in the title. I was reminded very much of Laura Purcell’s books, although this one isn’t as dark as those. I did find some of the secrets and twists quite easy to predict and some parts of the plot felt a little bit implausible (particularly regarding property ownership, which becomes an important part of the story later on), but otherwise it was a quick, entertaining read.

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

The House of Barbary by Isabelle Schuler

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A few years ago I read Isabelle Schuler’s debut novel, Lady MacBethad, which is set in 11th century Scotland and imagines the early life of Gruoch, the ‘real’ Lady Macbeth. Her second book, The House of Barbary, is set in a very different time and place – 17th century Switzerland – and this time it’s inspired by the Bluebeard fairy tale.

Our heroine is Beatrice Barbary, the only child of Jakob Barbary, one of the two mayors of Bern. Beatrice has never known her mother, who died when she was a baby, and has had an unusual upbringing, with her father encouraging her interest in natural science, keeping her away from other children and, now that she’s a young woman, preventing her from marrying. As a result, the people of Bern think she is strange and she has no friends her own age. When Jakob is killed, brutally murdered in his own home, Beatrice is determined to find out who is responsible and why, but as she begins to investigate she becomes aware of just how vulnerable and alone she is. The only person who may be able to help is Johann Schorr, an artist who lived with the Barbary family during Beatrice’s childhood, working on a portrait of Jakob; the problem is, for some reason, Beatrice has no memory of him at all.

Beatrice’s narrative alternates with Johann’s story, which is set more than a decade earlier during his time in the Barbary household. As a Catholic in a largely Protestant city, Johann is grateful for the support and patronage of Jakob Barbary and begins to consider him a friend. However, their friendship is tested when Johann makes a gruesome discovery in Jakob’s cellar and he must decide whether he can continue working for the man or whether he should get as far away as possible, even if it means sacrificing his career and leaving Beatrice, an innocent young child, in danger.

If you’re familiar with the Bluebeard folktale, you can probably guess what’s hidden in the cellar – and if you’re not, I won’t spoil things by telling you. It’s only a loose retelling of Bluebeard anyway and whether or not you know other versions of the story should make no difference to your enjoyment of this one. And did I enjoy it? Yes, I did, for the most part – but I felt that some of the developments in the second half of the book let it down. Beatrice, who has set out to investigate and avenge her father’s death, ends up doing things that I found disproportionate and difficult to justify, so that I lost most of the sympathy I’d had for her earlier on. The ending was not what I’d expected or hoped for either.

I’ve never been to Bern and loved the descriptions of the city, as it was in the 1650s, with its cobbled streets, sandstone arcades and famous bear pits. I’ve read very few books set in Switzerland and even less about 17th century Switzerland, so everything was new to me; it was interesting to read about the political system in place at that time, with Bern having two mayors at once – they would alternate each year, one ‘acting’ and one ‘sitting’ – and four powerful officials known as Venners, who would each oversee one district of the city. This political system is important to the story, with Beatrice’s father being one of the two mayors and all four Venners being part of his inner circle.

Schuler’s historical note at the end of the book was fascinating; I discovered that, although Beatrice is a fictional character, she’s based on the real life German entomologist and naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian, a woman I previously knew nothing about. It’s always good to learn something new!

I think the only other Bluebeard retellings I’ve read are two short stories: Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and Nalo Hopkinson’s The Glass Bottle Trick. If you can recommend anything else, please let me know.

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

The Silver Branch by Rosemary Sutcliff

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After reading Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth a few years ago, the first book in her Dolphin Ring Cycle, I wasn’t sure which one to read next. I was advised that it wouldn’t really matter as the books are all separate stories, but as I’m interested in reading all of them anyway, I decided to continue with the one listed next chronologically, which is The Silver Branch.

First published in 1957, The Silver Branch is set in Roman Britain more than a century after the events of The Eagle of the Ninth. The two main characters, Justin and Flavius, are descendants of Marcus Flavius Aquila, which provides the link between the two books. Towards the end of the 3rd century, Justin (Tiberius Lucius Justinianus) completes his apprenticeship as an army surgeon and is posted to Britain for the first time. Arriving at the fort of Rutupiae in Kent, he meets the centurion Flavius (Marcelus Flavius Aquila) and the two discover that they are distant cousins.

The Roman military commander Carausius has recently declared himself emperor of Britain and North Gaul. When the cousins overhear Allectus, the finance minister, plotting against Carausius, they try to warn the emperor but he seems reluctant to believe them and instead they find themselves sent north to Magnis, a fort near Hadrian’s Wall, apparently in disgrace. Worse still, they have now made an enemy of the powerful Allectus, who still has his sights set on the throne…

Although I thought The Eagle of the Ninth was the stronger book, I enjoyed this one as well. I knew nothing at all about this particular period of Roman history so I was able to learn a lot from it, not just about the historical and military events, but also about life in general in Roman Britain during and after Carausius’s reign. This is all described in vivid detail, making the novel completely immersive, and Sutcliff never talks down to the reader – it’s marketed as a children’s book, but it doesn’t actually feel like one and it definitely has a lot to offer readers of all ages.

Not all of the characters are Roman – for example, we meet Evicatos of the Spear, an exiled Dalriad hunter (Dalriada was an ancient Gaelic kingdom from western Scotland/north-eastern Ireland) – and although it’s a very male dominated story, Flavius’s great-aunt Honoria has an important role to play. The main focus of the book, though, is always on our two young protagonists and I found both of them very easy to like, particularly the shy, quiet Justin who grows as a person through his relationship with the more confident Flavius. It’s as much a story of male friendship as it is of the politics of Roman Britain.

If you’re wondering about the ‘silver branch’ of the title, it refers not to a tree but to an unusual musical instrument with silver apples on it belonging to Cullen, the emperor Carausius’s Fool, an eccentric man who calls himself a hound and wears a dog’s tail. The silver branch is a motif that appears several times throughout the novel, along with the dolphin signet ring, an Aquila family heirloom, and the lost eagle standard of the Ninth Legion.

This is book 50/50 from my second Classics Club list. Yes, I’ve completed it at last!

Venetian Vespers by John Banville

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So far my experience of John Banville’s writing has been limited to Prague Nights, one of his mystery novels published under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. I’ve been meaning to try more of his books and when I saw this one, I was immediately drawn to it by the title and the beautiful cover (I love a Venetian setting).

Venetian Vespers is set at the turn of the 20th century and begins with writer Evelyn Dolman and his wife Laura on their way to Venice for a belated honeymoon – the reason for the delay is that Laura’s father died just after their marriage. Evelyn had been expecting Laura to inherit her father’s fortune, but due to some sort of conflict that Evelyn doesn’t fully understand, his father-in-law left everything to his other daughter instead. This is disappointing for Evelyn – but then, their whole marriage has been a disappointment so far and isn’t showing any signs of improving.

On their first night in Venice, Evelyn meets Frederick FitzHerbert, a man who claims to have been at school with him, although Evelyn can’t remember him at all. He doesn’t like to admit this, though, so falls into conversation with Freddie and is introduced to his beautiful sister, Francesca. Returning drunk to the palazzo near St Mark’s Square where he and Laura are staying, Evelyn behaves so badly towards his wife that when he wakes up in the morning she has disappeared. Despite feeling ashamed of himself, he makes no real attempt to find Laura, too distracted by thoughts of Francesca. But are Francesca and her brother really who they say they are and what do they want with Evelyn?

It’s obvious to the reader from early on that the FitzHerberts are con artists of some sort, but what we don’t know is what they’re hoping to achieve or why they’ve picked Evelyn as their target. We also don’t know what has happened to Laura, so there’s plenty of tension and mystery. However, the whole novel is narrated by Evelyn from a point in the future, which means there’s lots of foreshadowing and comments like “looking back, I can see” and “If I’d known then what I know now” and I found this a bit annoying. Also, all the foreshadowing and hinting meant I spent most of the book waiting for something dramatic to happen and when it eventually did, very late in the book, I felt slightly let down.

The book is beautifully written, though! Banville uses language appropriate to the period, with every word and phrase carefully chosen so that you could almost imagine it was written in an earlier time. It’s also extremely atmospheric. I love Venice but have only been there in the summer, in hot, sunny weather; Evelyn is there in the winter and the Venice he describes is a gloomy, sinister, forbidding place – “that place of glancing lights, distorting reflections, looming shadows”. It’s the perfect backdrop for the unpleasant, unlikeable characters (even our narrator is an awful person).

Although I couldn’t quite manage to love this book, I enjoyed it more than the other one I read by Banville and was captivated by the haunting portrayal of Venice and the tense, unsettling atmosphere. An ideal read for cold, dark evenings.

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

The Book of Human Skin by Michelle Lovric – #DoorstoppersInDecember

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I loved Michelle Lovric’s The True and Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters – it was one of my books of the year in 2014, the year it was published – and I’ve always intended to read more of her work. I finally picked up her 2010 novel, The Book of Human Skin, in the summer, but when I saw how long it was (512 pages) I decided to save it for Laura’s Doorstoppers in December event instead!

I didn’t love this book quite as much as Harristown Sisters, but it’s still a fascinating story. Set in Venice and Peru around the turn of the 19th century, it has five very different narrators. The character around whom everything else revolves is Marcella Fasan, a young woman from an aristocratic Venetian family. From birth, Marcella has been the subject of her brother’s hatred and envy – being twelve years older, Minguillo has always expected to be the sole heir to the family fortune and he resents the arrival of a baby sister who poses a threat to his inheritance.

As the years go by, Minguillo’s treatment of Marcella becomes increasingly cruel and brutal, until her friends decide it’s time to intervene. One of these is Gianni, a servant in the Fasan household. Minguillo believes him to be stupid and illiterate, but this is far from the truth and Gianni uses Minguillo’s misconceptions to his advantage. There’s also Santo Aldobrandini, a young surgeon who develops his skills treating the wounded in Napoleon’s army before making his way to Venice where he falls in love with Marcella. When he hears of what Marcella has suffered at her brother’s hands he’s determined to do whatever he can to rescue her.

The perspective switches between these four characters – and a fifth I haven’t mentioned yet – as they take turns to tell the story. The strongest and most unusual narrative voice is Gianni’s; although he’s far more intelligent than Minguillo assumes and has learned to read and write, his grasp of the written language is still not very good and he spells words phonetically or uses the wrong word in place of the right one. I found this annoying and distracting at first, but eventually got used to it – and it does result in some amusing spelling mistakes, such as hair for heir, aunts for ants or storks for stalks. Minguillo’s narration is also very distinctive due to him being so malicious, spiteful and sadistic. Despite this, as a storyteller he’s clever and charming, which makes his parts of the novel very compelling as well as horribly disturbing.

The fifth narrator is Sor Loreta, a nun at the convent of Santa Catalina in Arequipa, Peru. Sor Loreta is a religious fanatic, convinced that she has been chosen by God and that she is on the path to sainthood. She despises anyone who stands in her way or tries to reason with her – and this includes the prioress, who believes Sor Loreta is deluded and insane. This storyline seems very separate from the others, particularly as it’s taking place in a completely different country, but they do all come together in the end!

You may be wondering about the title of the novel. Well, one of Minguillo’s interests is collecting books bound in human skin. Gruesome as it may sound, there really was a demand for these books, which peaked in the 19th century, and it’s not surprising that a character as wicked and cold-blooded as Minguillo would be drawn to a hobby like this.

Finally, I need to mention the historical note at the back of the book. It’s so long it’s practically a whole non-fiction book in its own right! Lovric tells us which characters were fictional and which were based on real people, before going into a lot of depth on various historical aspects of the book, particularly the history of Venetian and Peruvian nuns and what it was like to live in a convent. It’s much more detailed than you would usually expect an author’s note to be and it was very interesting to read.

As it turns out, this was the perfect time for me to read this book because a sequel, The Puffin, has recently been announced for publication in 2026. I was also interested to learn that one of the characters in the book, the painter Cecilia Cornaro, is the subject of one of Lovric’s earlier novels, Carnevale, so I’ll have to look for that one as well.

The Twelve Days of Christmas by Susan Stokes-Chapman

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I’ve previously only read one short story by Susan Stokes-Chapman (in the anthology The Winter Spirits) and I was interested in reading more of her work. This seemed like the perfect time of year to read her new book, The Twelve Days of Christmas!

The book is loosely based on the Christmas carol of the same name, with each chapter inspired by one of the gifts traditionally mentioned in the song – for example, Chapter 1 features pear trees and a character called Miss Partridge (“a partridge in a pear tree”) and Chapter 6 revolves around a game involving hidden goose eggs (“six geese a-laying”). In some cases this is done quite subtly, but in others it’s more heavy-handed; I can appreciate that it’s probably not easy to work all of these references into a novel without it beginning to feel unnatural!

Each chapter feels almost like a separate story (a few of them probably would work as standalones), but they are also linked together through shared characters and a shared setting. That setting is the little English village of Merrywake during the Regency period, with the Napoleonic Wars playing out in the background. Beginning on Christmas Day and ending on Twelfth Night, we join Viscount Pepin of Wakely Hall and his family, friends and servants as they celebrate the festive season. There’s a lovely Christmassy atmosphere as we watch the characters decorate the house, kiss under the mistletoe, open gifts, write and solve riddles, and prepare for the grand Twelfth Night Ball. But although it may all sound idyllic, not everyone at Wakely Hall is having a happy Christmas…

Stokes-Chapman explains in her author’s note that this book is her tribute to Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer and you can definitely see the influence of both. The Viscount and Viscountess Pepin (the name also has links to the song The Twelve Days of Christmas) with their five daughters immediately made me think of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice – the chapter based on “five gold rings” deals with the five girls and their hopes of marriage. The servants, though, are given just as much attention as the upper classes: there are stories about Loveday Lucas, the new kitchen maid, who can’t seem to do anything right; Will Moss the under-gardener, who appears to have fallen in love with someone completely unsuitable; and Mrs Wilson, the cold, strict housekeeper who is shocked to find that her staff consider her heartless.

I loved the world Stokes-Chapman created at Wakely Hall, but it was also nice to get some insights into the lives of the other residents of Merrywake, such as the village toymaker whose son, a drummer in the British army, has failed to come home from France. The toymaker’s story was one of the highlights of the book for me and together with the chapter that follows, about another army musician (a piper, as you may have guessed), it shows that the impact of the Napoleonic Wars is being felt all over the country, in even the smallest of communities.

The Twelve Days of Christmas is a lovely book and despite it obviously being very contrived in places, I found it completely absorbing. I particularly liked the way so many different characters from such varied backgrounds are all given their chance to shine, while each chapter also cleverly builds on the one before. I was sorry to say goodbye to the people of Merrywake and would love a sequel so we could catch up with them again in the summer!

Thanks to Random House UK, Vintage/Harvill for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.