Category: Historical Fiction

West by Carys Davies – #ReadingWales26

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This month Karen of Booker Talk and Kathryn of Nut Press are hosting Reading Wales, celebrating the work of Welsh authors. I have chosen a book by Carys Davies, an author born in Llangollen, North Wales. Last year I read and enjoyed her most recent book, Clear, which is set in Scotland during the Highland Clearances. West, published in 2018, was her first novel and the setting and subject matter are very different, but the two books do share some similar themes.

West is set in America in the early 19th century, a few years after the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition, and revolves around Cy Bellman, a widowed mule breeder who lives in Pennsylvania with his ten-year-old daughter, Bess. Inspired by stories of the expedition and by an article he reads in the newspaper describing the discovery of huge animal bones found in a Kentucky swamp, Cy decides to set out on a journey west to find the giant animals he believes must still be roaming in the wild. Everyone else thinks he’s a fool, including his sister Julie, but Cy is determined to prove them all wrong.

As well as following Cy Bellman’s journey into the wilderness, Davies explores the effects his departure has on Bess, left behind on the mule farm with Aunt Julie as her father rides off into uncharted territories. He tells her he’ll back in a year, or maybe two, but that’s a very long time for a ten-year-old girl and she thinks about her father daily. Unlike the others, Bess doesn’t think he’s being foolish – she’s proud of him and thinks of him as a brave, noble figure. She has no doubt that he’ll find the animals he’s searching for and will return safe and well. Her own wellbeing, however, is a different matter, as in Bellman’s absence, their scheming neighbour Elmer Jackson has set his sights on the farm and the women who live there.

Davies writes from the perspectives of both Cy and Bess, with occasional sections from other characters’ points of view. The passages describing the landscape Cy passes through as he travels west are vivid and feel authentic, stressing the vastness of the land, the harshness of the winters and the sense of isolation as he moves further away from civilization. Along the way he acquires a guide, a Shawnee boy with the unflattering name of Old Woman from a Distance, who helps him hunt for food and navigate dangerous river crossings in return for gifts of ribbons, beads and other small items. Cy’s attitude towards his guide is as you would expect, given the time period, and now and then we also get a glimpse of the guide’s thoughts about Cy. The fact that neither speaks the other’s language adds another obstacle to their relationship and despite spending so much time in each other’s company, neither makes the attempt to learn. Instead, they communicate through looks and gestures and through showing emotion. This idea of communication without a common language is explored in more depth in Davies’ later book, Clear.

West is novella-length, which makes it a quick read, but it’s also a powerful, gripping story and I don’t think it needed to be any longer. I’m looking forward to reading Davies’ other novel, The Mission House, and her two short story collections.

Appointment in Paris by Jane Thynne

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This is a sequel to Jane Thynne’s Midnight in Vienna, which I read in 2024 and enjoyed. That book was set just before the beginning of the Second World War and followed two characters – former MI5 spy, Harry Fox, and a gifted linguist, Stella Fry – who team up to look into the suspicious death of a famous crime writer. Appointment in Paris brings Harry and Stella together again to investigate a second murder, but this one is a separate mystery so if you haven’t read the first book yet, it’s not completely essential.

The novel opens in April 1940 at Trent Park, a country house in Cockfosters, north London. The house has been requisitioned by the government as a facility for holding captured German pilots who have no idea that their rooms are bugged with microphones while a team of ‘listeners’ eavesdrop on their conversations. One night, a man in a Luftwaffe captain’s uniform is found dead in the grounds and the next morning, it’s discovered that one of the listeners has disappeared. Assuming that the missing man killed the German captain and then fled, the people in charge are desperate to catch him in case he gives away any of Trent Park’s secrets. This is where Harry and Stella come in…

Since the events of the previous novel, Stella Fry has settled into a new job making documentaries for the GPO Film Unit and is not very happy when she’s summoned by Maxwell Knight of MI5 who orders her to go and work at Trent Park as a listener. Stella is reluctant to go but her fluency in German and the fact that the suspected killer is an old friend from her university days means she’s the ideal choice to go undercover and try to find out what really happened. Meanwhile, Harry Fox has also been given orders by Knight – his mission is to stay in London and look for any information that could lead them to the missing man.

I enjoyed Appointment in Paris just as much as the first book, although I would have liked to have seen Harry and Stella working together more closely – they have very separate storylines in this book and their paths only cross occasionally. Stella’s story was the one that interested me most. I loved learning more about Trent Park and the work of the listeners, many of whom were German-Jewish refugees who had fled persecution and were assisting the British war effort. It was an emotionally difficult, often unpleasant job as the listeners would overhear all kinds of disturbing conversations between the German prisoners. As the title suggests, Stella’s investigations eventually take her to Paris, where she meets Noël Coward, who is running Britain’s Bureau of Propaganda. Although most of the characters in the book are fictional, inserting a real person here didn’t feel too forced or unnatural, especially as Coward had already been referenced several times via Stella’s actress friend, Evelyn, who is performing in one of his plays.

As she does in the previous novel, Thynne evokes the time period perfectly, describing the mood of the public during the eight months known as the Phoney War and how things abruptly changed in May 1940 with the invasion of France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, and the increased threat to Britain. It’s the little details that give the novel its colour – people hurrying home earlier than usual in the evenings because the blackout made it difficult to walk in the dark; newspapers shrinking in size because Scandinavian pulp supplies had been cut off; Parisian waiters taking payment before serving food because they are often interrupted by air raid sirens and the patrons forget to pay. The strong sense of time and place makes everything feel real and convincing.

Having enjoyed both books about Stella and Harry, I’m now hoping there’s going to be a third. The way this one ended definitely made me think that there will be – and as we’re still in 1940, there’s a lot more of the war to cover. I would also like to read some of her earlier novels, which also sound interesting.

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

The Night Hag by Hester Musson

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Have you ever suffered from sleep paralysis – the feeling that you’re awake but can’t move your body? Maybe it’s accompanied by a sensation of pressure on your chest, as if something is pinning you to the bed, or the impression that someone is in your room. It’s more common than you may think – many people will experience it at least once or twice in their life – and it inspired the famous painting, The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli. In fact, the word ‘nightmare’ itself (originally hyphenated as night-mare) comes from the idea of a mythological female demon (a ‘mare’ or ‘hag’) sitting on the chest of a sleeping person. Someone who has had a lot of experience of these terrifying night-mares is Lil Vincent in Hester Musson’s new novel, The Night Hag.

It’s 1886 and Lil Vincent has been free of the night-mares, as she calls them, for many years, but recently they have started again and are becoming increasingly intense. Frightened and desperate, Lil writes a letter to the renowned Edinburgh doctor, Dr Lachlan. Relieved to be able to open her heart to somebody at last, even somebody she’s never met, she finds herself telling him all about her childhood, growing up as the daughter of a medium who forced her to participate in fraudulent séances.

Her childhood has left scars that still persist, even today as she tries to build a new life for herself as an archaeologist. Lil is assisting Nils and Effie Jensen with a dig on what they believe is a Bronze Age burial mound in the fictional Scottish village of Pitcarden. When they come across two cinerary urns and a bronze knife, Lil thinks they are on the verge of a significant discovery, but it seems that the villagers are unhappy with their presence and they may not be allowed to complete their excavations.

This is the second novel I’ve read by Hester Musson, the first being The Beholders. Although I found this one a more original and intriguing story, I did have some of the same problems I had with the other book – mainly that the first half is very slow and it took me a long time to become immersed in it. It didn’t help that there are several different threads to the story – Lil’s sleep disturbances, the séances and the archaeological dig – and they all feel very separate, never really coming together until the end.

Once I did get into the story, I found it interesting. There’s a good sense of time and place, with the community of rural Pitcarden steeped in superstition and folklore. The second half of the book drew me in much more than the first half did, and I began to have a lot of sympathy for Lil as she discovers that almost everyone in her life has been lying to her or deceiving her in one way or another. The way one particular character betrays her trust is quite shocking and Lil is deeply affected by it all. But although it’s a dark book, there are some glimmers of hope in the final chapters and the ending is satisfying, so I’m glad I persevered with it.

If you read this book and enjoy it, I would also recommend reading The Hill in the Dark Grove by Liam Higginson, another book about archaeology and superstition in a rural setting. It has a similar tone and atmosphere and I think it may appeal to the same readers.

Thanks to 4th Estate and William Collins for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Strawberry House by Rachel Burton

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It’s February 1952 and journalist Henry Aldridge is planning an article on the recent death of King George VI when his editor approaches him with a completely different assignment. He wants Henry to report on the restoration of Montagu Manor, a country house near Oxford that was partially destroyed by fire in the summer of 1938 and later requisitioned by the army after the outbreak of war. Henry reluctantly accepts the job, but doesn’t admit that he himself had been a guest at the house during that fateful summer.

In 1938, Montagu Manor was home to Sir Philip Kerrigan, his wife and four children. It was the son, Anthony, who invited Henry to spend the summer with them, relaxing, fishing in the river and contemplating their next steps, having both recently graduated from Oxford University. Henry, the son of a factory owner, is expected to go into the family business, but what he really wants to do is become a newspaper reporter, something he knows his father will never agree to. When he meets Anthony’s sister, Camilla, he discovers that she is in a similar position – she desperately wants to attend Oxford and study for a degree like her brother, but Sir Philip has refused, believing a woman’s duty is to marry and have children. Camilla is determined that she will never marry, but when she and Henry fall in love she begins to reconsider.

The 1952 thread of the novel tells us that something went wrong between Henry and Camilla and they haven’t seen each other since the year of the fire, but we won’t find out what happened until much later in the book. And there are other questions to be answered too. What caused the fire and what was the significance of the unfinished painting that went missing during it? Who exactly were the Kensington Circle, the group of artists staying at the house at the same time as Henry? By moving backwards and forwards between 1952 and 1938, the answers begin to emerge.

I really enjoyed The Strawberry House. I seem to have read a lot of historical novels about English country houses with secrets and at first I thought this one was going to be very similar. What set it apart, though, is how much I liked and cared about the characters, particularly Henry, who seemed like a genuinely nice person torn between following his own heart and trying to keep everyone else happy. I was also fond of his photographer friend, Frank, and Camilla’s little sister, Cassie, who has a talent for writing. Because I was so invested in the characters and their lives, it made me more eager to see how everything would unfold as the truth about the summer of 1938 started to become clear.

In case you’re wondering, the title of the book is inspired by Strawberry Thief, a beautiful design by William Morris. Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement are referenced throughout the book and the fictional Montagu Manor is located close to Morris’s home, Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire. Although this is the first Rachel Burton novel I’ve read, many of her others seem to have a house at the heart of the story and I’ll look forward to exploring more of them.

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

The Three Witches by Elena Collins

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I’ve read other novels inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth, but this is the first one that has focused specifically on the characters of the three witches. Although Shakespeare’s witches aren’t thought to have been based on any individual people (he took the idea from Holinshed’s Chronicles which refers to the ‘Weird Sisters’ or ‘nymphs or fairies’), Elena Collins imagines them here as three young women growing up in 11th century Scotland. They are the daughters of Sidheag, a wise woman or healer, and their names are Isobel, Ysenda and Merraid.

In modern day Bristol, Ruthie Reed is attending an audition for a new documentary about Macbeth and the historical Mac Bethad mac Findláech, King of Alba (Scotland), on whom the play is based. Acting is all Ruthie has ever wanted to do, but her career seems to be going nowhere and she’s desperate for a decent role. When she’s offered the part of one of the three witches in the documentary, she hopes this is the opportunity she’s been waiting for and will lead to bigger things. On arriving at Forres in the north of Scotland, however, things don’t go quite according to plan. The cast and crew are plagued with bad luck and disaster – and then Ruthie herself starts to catch glimpses of a mysterious young woman who seems to provide a link between past and present.

Ruthie’s story alternates with the story of Isobel and her sisters, left alone in the world after their mother’s death. Isobel, the youngest, has inherited her skills with herbs and potions, as well as her ability to see the future in the flames of the fire, but in a world where women who are different are viewed with suspicion, these talents could be a curse rather than a blessing. When Isobel falls in love with Lulach, Mac Bethad’s stepson, she believes she has found the security she needs, but Lulach’s mother, Gruoch, has other ideas…

As with most dual time period novels, there was one narrative that I enjoyed more than the other, and in this case it was the historical one. I liked the way the focus was on the fictional characters of Isobel, Ysenda and Merraid and their daily lives in the village rather than on the real historical figures such as Mac Bethad and Gruoch, who appear only occasionally. It was easy to see where Isobel’s story was heading, particularly as we get a hint of it in the prologue, but that didn’t make it any less impactful. Although widespread witch trials and burnings peaked in Scotland in the 16th and 17th centuries, women were obviously being accused of witchcraft much earlier than that, so it’s not impossible that the historical Macbeth could have met women like Isobel and her two sisters – and this is something Ruthie and her friends in the modern day narrative begin to research, believing that the witches (both in the play and in history) deserve to be given more attention after centuries of being interpreted through the lens of misogyny.

I liked Ruthie and enjoyed following the filming of the documentary, but it did feel that her storyline was there mainly to add more context to the historical one and I didn’t become quite as invested in her chapters as I did in Isobel’s. The supernatural element of the book is well done – although it’s not a time travel or timeslip novel, there are moments where past and present seem to merge – but I wasn’t convinced that everyone else would have been so ready to believe Ruthie when she told them what she’d been experiencing! There’s also a romance for Ruthie which seemed to happen very suddenly and not with the person I’d expected it would be with.

Overall, I found this an interesting, engaging read. It’s the first I’ve read by Elena Collins, so I’m looking forward to reading some of her other books.

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

The Wandering Queen by Claire Heywood

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Dido, Queen of Carthage, also known as Elissa, is a character who has always interested me, particularly since I had the chance to visit Carthage myself during a trip to Tunisia in 2004. The most famous depiction of Dido is obviously in Virgil’s epic poem, the Aeneid, but in this new retelling, Claire Heywood brings her to the forefront of the story and gives her a voice of her own.

The Wandering Queen begins in Tyre with the young Elissa being summoned by her father, the King of Tyre, who believes he is dying and is composing his will. Elissa has a close relationship with her father, who has instilled in her the qualities he considers important in a future queen – fairness, honesty and a desire to see justice done. His son, Pygmalion, Elissa’s half-brother, is still just a young child, so the king decrees that Elissa and Pygmalion will succeed him as joint rulers. Not everyone at court is pleased about that, however, and when the king dies and the will is read, Elissa is shocked to find that her name is not even mentioned – a new will has been forged and Pygmalion will rule alone.

At first, Elissa tries to guide her brother, but the influence of the men around him is too strong. As the years go by and both Elissa and her husband Zakarbaal find themselves targets of Pygmalion’s cruelty, Elissa decides that the only option left open to her is to flee Tyre altogether and start a new life somewhere else. The story of her time in Tyre alternates throughout the novel with the story of the older Elissa, now known as Dido, as she settles in Carthage and encounters a Trojan called Aeneas whose ship has been blown off course by a storm…

This is the first book I’ve read by Claire Heywood and I was very impressed. It’s well written and Heywood made me really care about the characters and connect with them on a personal level, something that doesn’t always happen when I read mythology retellings. I also liked the way she keeps this a very human story, not introducing supernatural elements or having gods and goddesses intervening and controlling Dido’s fate. It reminded me of Babylonia by Costanza Casati, which is written in a similar way and which I also enjoyed.

I think I would have preferred a chronological format, but having said that, the way the two storylines were intertwined worked well, with the use of Dido’s two names helping to distinguish between the young Elissa and the queen she would become. The portrayal of Aeneas is fair and balanced; he is shown as having some good qualities, which explains why Dido falls in love with him, but there are also signs from the beginning that their romance is probably doomed (such as Aeneas’s account of abandoning his wife, Creusa, during the fall of Troy, his growing sense of pride causing him to become increasingly dissatisfied with taking second place to Dido in the hierarchy of Carthage, and his talk of wanting to visit Italy).

There are two different endings to Dido’s story suggested by the two main sources, Virgil and Justinus, but the way Claire Heywood chooses to end her story here is not quite the same as either of those. I won’t say any more about that as I wouldn’t want to spoil it! In her author’s note, Heywood also explains some of the other choices she made in the book, including using the name Zakarbaal for Elissa’s husband rather than the usual Sychaeus or Acerbus and moving the setting back to the Late Bronze Age to make the timelines work.

I really enjoyed The Wandering Queen and will have to look for Claire Heywood’s previous two books. Also, if anyone can recommend any other retellings of Dido’s story, I would love to hear about them.

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

The House of Fallen Sisters by Louise Hare

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Louise Hare has written several historical novels set in various periods, but this is the first one I’ve read. I’ll probably be looking for her others as I enjoyed this one – it has an interesting setting and an engaging heroine and it explores a little-known episode from British history.

It’s December 1765 and Sukey Maynard is running away from home – home being Mrs Macauley’s brothel in Covent Garden. It used to be her mother’s place of work, until she died when Sukey was very young, and since then Sukey has been cared for by Mrs Macauley and her family. Now that she’s fourteen, her virginity is about to be auctioned off to the highest bidder and she’s decided to flee rather than stay and go through with it. Before she gets very far, she encounters a young man who has been badly beaten and wounded, and she helps him reach a doctor, who agrees to treat him. However, this delay means that Sukey finds herself captured and taken back to Mrs Macauley.

The rest of the novel follows Sukey after she returns to the brothel and prepares to face whatever life has in store for her. At first her position is better than she expected as she catches the eye of a wealthy client whom she hopes will become her ‘keeper’, but what will she do if he changes his mind? The lives of Sukey and the other girls in Mrs Macauley’s establishment are difficult, uncertain and often unpleasant, but Hare shows us how even in the bleakest of circumstances, small acts of friendship and kindness can make a big difference. Although Sukey makes some enemies, she also makes some good friends and I enjoyed watching her various relationships develop.

There’s a mystery element to the story, which unfolds as young women begin to go missing, both from Mrs Macauley’s house and from the surrounding area, thought to have been lured away by a mysterious figure known only as the Piper. We find out what’s happening to the women earlier than I expected, but this allows Hare to take the story in some interesting directions as Sukey and her friends look for revenge.

Another subplot revolves around Jonathan Strong, the young man Sukey rescues after he is beaten almost to death. Strong really existed and his story is a fascinating one as he was a slave whose owner brought him to London from Barbados and he became the subject of an important legal case regarding slavery and the abolitionist movement in Britain. Sukey herself is mixed race, which gives her an added interest in his fate, and she and her friends try to help Jonathan in any way they can throughout the book. William Sharp, the doctor who treats him, and his brother Granville Sharp are also real people. This is the first time I’ve read a novel in which the Sharps and Jonathan Strong appear, so I found that aspect of the story fascinating.

Although I’ve read other novels about women in Sukey’s position (I highly recommend Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White and Elodie Harper’s The Wolf Den), the addition of the Jonathan Strong storyline made this one well worth reading as well. The book is published in the UK tomorrow, 12th February.

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