Category: Historical Fiction

Island Song by Pepsi Demacque-Crockett

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Pepsi Demacque-Crockett has had a successful career in music as a backing singer for Wham! and then as a member of the duo Pepsi and Shirlie. Although she was born in London, her parents came to England from St Lucia in the Caribbean, and this forms the inspiration for Island Song, her debut novel.

Island Song is set in the 1950s. Agnes Deterville and her sister, Ella, who live in the village of Canaries on the island of St Lucia, are two very different people. As the quiet, cautious older sister, Ella can’t imagine leaving her island home and knows that she’ll never want to live anywhere else. Agnes is bolder and more adventurous, ready to follow her dreams and seize new opportunities. Working as a housekeeper for an English family, the Chesters, Agnes is captivated by Mrs Chester’s descriptions of her home country and longs to see it for herself. Hearing that people from the Caribbean have been invited to help rebuild post-war Britain, she decides to use her savings to travel to London.

Agnes has two young children from a failed relationship, whom she leaves behind with Ella, and her intention is to return to St Lucia as soon as she’s made enough money to improve the lives of the whole family. However, everything changes when, soon after arriving in England, she falls in love with another new immigrant, Raphael Toussaint. Agnes and Raphael come from the same village and she knows him by his bad reputation, but meeting him again in London he seems to be a different person and assures her that he has changed. Agnes wants to believe him, but how can she know he’s telling the truth?

Island Song is a fascinating exploration of the experiences of immigrants and the way in which people often build up an image of something in their mind that isn’t matched by reality. Having listened to Mrs Chester’s idyllic tales of her life in Dorset, Agnes expects something similar when she arrives in London and is shocked to find that this isn’t the case. Rather than sipping tea in elegant drawing rooms, she’s working in a kitchen making tea for other people, while being bullied by her boss. Similarly, Raphael comes to London hoping to make a fortune, but instead spends several months unemployed before eventually finding a lowly job painting walls for a construction company. They – like the rest of the Caribbean community – face racism, discrimination and even violence, but also make new friends amongst both immigrants and white British people who give them the confidence that not everyone in their new country wants them to leave.

Agnes is a strong character and I did like her, but I found Raphael more interesting because he goes through more growth and development throughout the novel. He has a drinking problem and is easily influenced by his friends, but he also has a kind heart and does genuinely seem to want to change and be a good partner to Agnes. I really wanted them to find happiness, both in their relationship and in their working lives. Ella is another character who grows as a person as the book progresses. Although most of the focus is on the characters who have left the island, we do catch up with Ella now and then and see how she’s gradually able to move on from some bad experiences in her past and gain the confidence to take control of her own life.

Demacque-Crockett writes beautifully about St Lucia and her love for her own heritage shines through in the London sections of the novel as well. The English spoken by her St Lucian characters is peppered with Kwéyòl, a French-based Creole language, and we see the immigrants trying to adapt to British culture while at the same time trying to retain parts of their own culture, such as their favourite foods and music. I really enjoyed this book and I hope Demacque-Crockett will write another one!

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

Woman in Blue by Douglas Bruton – #ReadIndies

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There’s clearly something about the paintings of Johannes Vermeer that inspires novelists; first, Tracy Chevalier’s Girl With a Pearl Earring and now Douglas Bruton’s excellent Woman in Blue, which is published today. This is the second of Bruton’s books I’ve read, the first being 2021’s Blue Postcards and apart from the shared word in the title (Bruton certainly seems to like the colour blue!) and the shared theme of art and artists, I found this one very different in style and structure.

The novel begins in the present day with our unnamed narrator, referred to only as ‘a man in Amsterdam’, visiting the Rijksmuseum to look at a painting. Just one painting, which he has become so obsessed with that he barely notices any of the others. The painting is Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter and the narrator returns to the museum day after day to study the colours and the composition, but most of all just to spend time in the woman in blue’s company and to imagine the human being who inspired the picture. He’s transfixed by this particular painting for its own sake, but also because the woman reminds him in subtle ways of both his wife and another woman he once loved.

In 17th century Delft, we meet the woman in blue herself – or rather, the young woman who sits for Vermeer as he paints her portrait. Her chapters alternate with the present day ones, slowly building up a history of the woman in blue, her life in Delft and her relationship with the artist. In reality, the true identity of the sitter has never been confirmed (Vermeer’s wife, Catharina Bolnes, has been suggested as a likely candidate, but it seems there’s no actual evidence to prove it), so Bruton has the freedom to create his own fictional story for the woman, whom he names Angelieke.

Although the book is set in two different time periods and narrated by two different characters, the lines dividing the two are blurred. Angelieke is a real woman in 1663, but in the modern day sections, she’s aware that she is a painting in a museum and that the male narrator comes to see her every day. She looks forward to his visits and feels a connection with him, just as he feels one with her. This is not the first novel to give a painting a mind of its own (I, Mona Lisa by Natasha Solomons does the same and I’m sure there must be others) but I really liked the way Bruton handles that element of the story, giving it a dreamlike feel and merging the two narratives so that they don’t feel too separate or disconnected.

With it being a real painting rather than a fictional one, it’s easy to google it so you can refer to the picture itself as you read. The narrator’s observations, made during his repeated viewings, helped me to see things in the painting that I probably wouldn’t have noticed for myself. With each chapter, he finds new details to study and focus on – the map on the wall, the letter in the woman’s hand, the blue bed jacket she’s wearing and the question of whether or not she could be pregnant. At times, Bruton returns to a theme he also touched on in Blue Postcards: the idea that a painting offers something different to each individual who views it and that the viewers themselves can almost ‘become’ part of the painting:

What I like about the painting – one of the many things I like – is how cleverly the artist has included me in it and made me complicit in the looking. It is an intimate and private moment and Vermeer intrudes on it without at all breaking it, and we – Vermeer and me – stand silent, breath held, just looking at this young woman turned in on herself.

For a short book – a novella at 144 pages – there’s so much packed into it that I’ve probably only scratched the surface in this review. I would recommend Woman in Blue to anyone who loves art, but even if you don’t, there’s still a lot here to enjoy.

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

As this is an independent publisher, I am counting Woman in Blue towards this year’s #ReadIndies event hosted by Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Lizzy’s Literary Life. You can find out more about Fairlight Books by visiting their website here.

The Secrets of the Rose by Nicola Cornick – #ReadIndies

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I like Nicola Cornick’s books because you always know what to expect from them, but at the same time each one is different and has something new to offer. With The Secrets of the Rose, her latest novel published this month, I got exactly what I knew I would get: a dual timeline narrative, strong female protagonists, a search for an historic relic that has found its way into the present, cameo appearances by characters from other Cornick novels, and hints of the supernatural. However, I also had the opportunity to learn about a woman I’ve never read about before – Dorothy Forster of Bamburgh Hall.

In the present day, we meet Hannah Armstrong, an author working on a new book about Grace Darling, the lighthouse keeper’s daughter who became a 19th century celebrity after helping her father to rescue the survivors of a shipwreck. In order to research the biography, Hannah has returned to Bamburgh, the village on the Northumberland coast where she grew up and which she can use as a base for visiting the Darlings’ lighthouse in the nearby Farne Islands. Unfortunately, Hannah is finding that she has very little interest in Grace and her life – the woman she really wants to write about is another local heroine, Dorothy Forster.

Dorothy’s story unfolds in 1715, the year of the Jacobite Rising when supporters of the exiled James Edward Stuart attempted to restore him to the throne. Dorothy, who is living at Bamburgh Hall with her ailing father, is alarmed when she learns that her two brothers, Thomas and Nicholas, have been persuaded by one of the Jacobite leaders, the Earl of Derwentwater to join the rebellion. As the nephews of Lord Crewe of Bamburgh Castle, not only will their involvement put their own lives at risk, it could also leave the whole family in danger. Then Dorothy discovers that the Forsters are the keepers of the Rose, a legendary talisman that both sides in the conflict believe could be the key to victory. Can Dorothy hide the Rose from their enemies and keep her brothers safe?

These two storylines start to come together when Hannah goes to stay at Bamburgh Hall, her stepmother Diana’s home, while researching her Grace Darling book. Here she finds a portrait of Dorothy Forster which appears to be full of Jacobite symbolism. As Hannah digs into Dorothy’s past, she learns about the Rose and its powers and begins to suspect that it may have survived into the 21st century. However, she’s not the only one who has come to that conclusion – it seems that someone else is also on the trail of the Rose and is prepared to go to any lengths to get their hands on it.

As is often the case with dual narrative books, I found that one storyline interested me more than the other and this time it was the Dorothy Forster one. There were a lot of things I liked about Hannah’s story as well – her relationship with her stepmother, a mystery surrounding her brother who seems to have fallen out with everyone in the village, a romance that begins to form with an old friend – but Dorothy’s was more exciting. Legend states that Dorothy rode to London on horseback to rescue her brother Thomas from Newgate Prison after the failed rebellion and Cornick does incorporate this episode into the novel, but also shows that there’s a lot more to Dorothy’s story than that. The Jacobite aspect of the novel plays out mainly in the background, far away from Bamburgh (although I did enjoy the brief appearances of the Earl of Derwentwater whom I first met in Anya Seton’s Devil Water) so the focus is more on Dorothy’s personal life and her relationships with family and friends.

I thought the novel was interesting enough without the magic talisman element and I’m not sure if it really added much to the plot. Still, Nicola Cornick’s books do usually have some supernatural touches and they’re not as strong here as in some of her others. I did love the setting – although I wouldn’t say I know Bamburgh well, I’ve been there a few times and enjoyed seeing it through the eyes of Hannah and Dorothy in two different centuries. And I was intrigued to find when I read the author’s note that Dorothy’s uncle, Guy Forster, and his wife also appear in Cornick’s previous book, The Other Gwyn Girl, which I haven’t read yet. The relationship between them is fictional, although they share the Forster name, but I do want to read that book anyway.

I really enjoyed The Secrets of the Rose, then, and would probably rank it in my top three Nicola Cornick novels so far, along with The Last Daughter and The Phantom Tree.

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

As Boldwood is an independent publisher, I am counting this book towards this year’s #ReadIndies event hosted by Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Lizzy’s Literary Life.

The Resurrectionist by A. Rae Dunlap

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It’s 1828 and James Willoughby has just arrived in Edinburgh to begin his medical studies at the university. Having found himself completely unsuited to the career in the church that his parents had planned for him, James has decided that medicine is his true vocation. After speaking to some of his fellow students, he discovers that due to the large class sizes the university can only offer very limited opportunities for practical experience. In order to gain the surgical knowledge he desires, it will also be necessary to attend one of the city’s private anatomy schools where he’ll be able to dissect and study the human body for himself.

Although James comes from a wealthy family, they have fallen on hard times since his father’s death. There’s enough money to pay for his lodgings at the Hope and Anchor Inn, but not much else. If he wants to go to anatomy school, he’ll have to find a way to pay the fees himself. Signing up for Dr Malstrom’s prestigious school, James confides in the doctor’s apprentice, Aneurin MacKinnon, explaining his financial difficulties. Aneurin – or Nye, as he prefers to be called – tells him he may have a solution to the problem. And with that, James finds himself drawn into the secretive, macabre world of body snatching – taking corpses from graves under cover of darkness and selling them to anatomists for study and research purposes.

I loved this book! As a debut novel it’s very impressive and I’ll certainly be looking out for more by A. Rae Dunlap. From the very first page she captures the formal feel of the 19th century novel and manages to avoid using the sort of inappropriately modern language that could have so easily pulled me out of the historical setting. As with Ambrose Parry’s Raven and Fisher series, there are lots of insights into the medical world of 19th century Edinburgh, with the focus here being on the study of anatomy and surgery and how progress was hampered by the lack of human cadavers for students to work with. Edinburgh itself provides an atmospheric setting for the novel, especially as most of the action, for obvious reasons, takes place at night. There are lots of suitably Gothic descriptions of lonely cemeteries, dark alleys and disreputable inns, all forming the backdrop to the trade of body snatching.

The Resurrectionist is narrated by James Willoughby, whom I really liked and believed in as a character. He begins the novel as an innocent, well-meaning young man who has led a somewhat sheltered life and who gradually grows as a person as he has his eyes opened to things and experiences he had never imagined. Over the course of the novel, we see a friendship form between James and the more worldly Nye, which eventually develops into something more. I thought the story was already interesting enough without adding a romance, but it does seem to arise naturally from the characters’ interactions rather than being forced in for the sake of it. It also provides an extra sense of danger, as both men are under no illusions as to the importance of keeping their relationship secret and what could happen to them if they are found out.

Although James and Nye and their friends are fictional, several other characters in the book really existed, most notably the infamous Burke and Hare, probably the best known body snatchers – or ‘resurrectionists’ – in history. As competition amongst the city’s anatomists increases and tasked with providing a steady supply of corpses for their employer Dr Knox, Burke and Hare decide that in addition to grave robbing, there could be another way to meet the demand for bodies. I knew very little about Burke and Hare before reading this book, so I enjoyed seeing how things played out for them and how Dunlap seamlessly worked them into James and Nye’s fictional story while also staying true to the historical facts.

The end of the novel wraps things up enough to make this a satisfactory standalone, but also sets up a potential sequel. This one felt very much like a coming of age novel for James, so I would be interested to see what the future has in store for him. If Dunlap has decided to move on and write something different, though, I will be equally interested to read whatever it is!

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

The Queen of Fives by Alex Hay

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The Queen of Fives. They breathed the title with reverence on the docks, down the coastline. A lady with a hundred faces, a thousand voices, a million lives. She might spin into yours if you didn’t watch out…She played a glittering game: lifting a man’s fortune with five moves, in five days, before disappearing without a trace.

I enjoyed Alex Hay’s first novel, The Housekeepers, about a group of servants staging a heist during a ball in a grand London house. I hoped for something similar from his next book – and that’s what I got! If anything, this one is more complex, ambitious and inventive.

It’s 1898 and Quinn Le Blanc has five days to convince the Duke of Kendal to marry her and trick him out of his fortune. Why five days? Because Quinn is the ‘Queen of Fives’, the leader of a network of London con artists based at a house known as The Château who play by a specific set of rules. Their current game is called False Heiress and there are a number of steps that have to be carried out on each day of the con. The Château has been operating for generations and there have been many previous Queens. During Quinn’s eight-year reign, however, things have started going wrong: debts are mounting and the house is falling into disrepair. She desperately needs this latest scheme to be a success.

Quinn is assisted by Mr Silk, whose job is to serve the Queen and to guard the all-important Rulebook, which contains the instructions for the Château’s various games. But watching from the shadows is the mysterious Man in the Blue Silk Waistcoat – and also the equally mysterious Woman in the Cream Silk Gown – who will do whatever it takes to stop Quinn in her tracks.

As you can see, this is an unusual story based on an unusual premise and, to be honest, I was never fully convinced by it. I didn’t really understand why it was so important to complete the game within five days and to stick so rigidly to the Rulebook, when allowing more time or adapting the rules to fit unforeseen circumstances could have made it easier to win. Still, I managed to just suspend disbelief and go along with it! After a slow start, with time spent introducing the characters and the history of the Château, things gradually pick up pace and by the middle of the book I was gripped.

As with The Housekeepers, the reader is in the rare position of wanting the villains, in this case Quinn and her friends, to succeed. However, we also get to know the victims, the Duke of Kendal and his sister, Tor (short for Victoria). Tor is a single woman in her thirties who still lives with her brother and their stepmother and she is worried about losing her home should the Duke decide to marry. Tor is immediately suspicious of the woman who appears out of nowhere and introduces herself as Miss Quinta White, but the Duke himself seems unsuspecting. Later, we discover that he has reasons of his own for wanting to marry quickly, so Quinn’s attentions aren’t unwelcome to him – though, of course, he has no idea who she really is or what her plans are.

There are some great twists towards the end of the book and although in hindsight I feel I should probably have seen them coming, I didn’t and was taken by surprise. I think overall I preferred The Housekeepers, but both books are fun and I’m already looking forward to a third book by Alex Hay, whenever and whatever that may be.

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

The Ghosts of Rome by Joseph O’Connor

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The story of our Roman Escape Line has been characterised as a tale of courage. But it was always a story of friendship, first and last. The friends we knew and those we did not, some fleetingly encountered, others never at all. I am no sentimentalist, but I call it a love story.

This is the second book in Joseph O’Connor’s new trilogy inspired by the true story of the Rome Escape Line, a secret network that smuggled thousands of Jewish refugees and Allied soldiers out of Nazi-occupied Rome. The first novel, My Father’s House, introduces us to the work of the Escape Line who meet in the neutral Vatican under the guise of a choir to avoid the attentions of the Gestapo and focuses on one member in particular – Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, the Irish Catholic priest who is the leader of the network.

The Ghosts of Rome continues the story, beginning in February 1944, six months into the Nazi occupation. Although Hugh O’Flaherty is still part of the group, we see very little of him in this book as he steps into the background to let other characters’ stories be told. The main focus this time is the widowed Contessa Giovanna Landini, known as Jo, whose palazzo is commandeered by Gestapo officer Paul Hauptmann. Hitler isn’t satisfied with Hauptmann’s performance in Rome so far and he is under pressure to produce results. If he could obtain evidence of the Choir’s activities he’s sure that would help to improve his reputation with the Führer. Hauptmann hopes that the Contessa, whose house he is living in, will lead him to her fellow Escape Line members, but Jo is a resourceful woman and decides to take advantage of Hauptmann’s interest in her to try to protect herself and the Choir.

Another significant storyline revolves around a Polish airman who is shot down over Rome. Some members of the Escape Line want to help him, but others are more cautious. How can they be sure he is who he says he is? What if he betrays them? When it becomes obvious that he has life-threatening injuries and will die if not treated, they are faced with an important decision to make.

Of the two books, I think I preferred My Father’s House because it was more suspenseful, describing the countdown to a major mission on Christmas Eve, and because I found Hugh O’Flaherty such an interesting character. This is an excellent book as well, though, and I’m sure other readers will like it better than the first one. Although Jo Landini is at the forefront of the story, most of the characters we met in the previous book also reappear, including British Envoy Sir Francis D’Arcy Osborne, diplomat’s wife Delia Kiernan and escaped soldier Sam Derry. We also see a lot of Delia’s teenage daughter, Blon, who is angry when her mother leaves the Escape Line and insists on trying to take her place, which not everyone is happy about! These are all people who really existed, but O’Connor includes an author’s note to explain that the way they are portrayed in the book is just his interpretation and shouldn’t be relied on as fact.

If you haven’t read the previous novel, you’re probably wondering whether it’s necessary to have read it before starting this one. I would say it’s not really essential, but it would make it easier to follow what’s happening in this book. There are a lot of characters and O’Connor constantly switches between different perspectives throughout the novel, as well as inserting passages written in other styles – such as transcripts of (fictional) BBC interviews – which means you do need to pay attention otherwise it would be easy to lose track of things. As with My Father’s House, I was particularly interested in the insights we get into the mind of Paul Hauptmann – a very human villain, which just makes him all the more unsettling to read about. It’s the brave and tireless work of the Escape Line, however, that makes these novels so compelling; in this book, I loved the way they managed to hide hundreds of people inside a derelict old theatre right under the noses of the Gestapo.

This is a planned trilogy and although I can’t see any details of the third book yet, I know it will be something to look forward to!

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

Absolutely and Forever by Rose Tremain

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I’ve had mixed experiences with Rose Tremain’s books, enjoying some and struggling with others. Absolutely and Forever was shortlisted for last year’s Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and as it’s a personal project of mine to try to read all of the shortlisted titles, I decided to read this one despite it not sounding particularly appealing to me. It’s a short book (under 200 pages), so at least it wouldn’t be too big a commitment if I didn’t like it.

Here’s how the book begins:

When I was fifteen, I told my mother that I was in love with a boy called Simon Hurst and she said to me, ‘Nobody falls in love at your age, Marianne. What they get are “crushes” on people. You’ve just manufactured a little crush on Simon’.

What Marianne Clifford has manufactured, however, is more than just a little crush. It’s an obsession. She knows she’s going to love Simon Hurst ‘absolutely and forever’ and at first it seems that he feels the same way about her – but when he leaves for Paris to study at the Sorbonne and never returns, Marianne’s heart is broken. As the years go by, Marianne tries to move on and build her own life, but she can never quite let go of her love for Simon and the dreams she once had.

The book is set in the 1950s and 1960s and Marianne narrates the story of her life during and after her relationship with Simon. A lot happens to her over the years – she attends secretarial college in London, has several jobs, gets married and makes new friends – but all the time she’s pining for Simon, which holds her back from finding happiness and contentment. It’s understandable that she would be upset for a while, but when she continues to grieve for years and years afterwards, it quickly becomes frustrating, particularly as it’s so one-sided and Simon clearly doesn’t care as much as she does. But Marianne herself is naïve, innocent and childlike, never really seeing the world as other people see it, so it’s maybe not surprising that she reacts the way she does. Although she grows from a teenager into an adult over the course of the book, she doesn’t develop very much as a person and the Marianne at the end is not a lot different from the Marianne at the beginning.

Although I didn’t dislike Marianne and found her story quite sad, it was Hugo, the man she marries, who had my sympathy. Hugo is completely devoted to Marianne and she does like him very much, but her feelings for Simon prevent her from loving anybody else. At least Marianne is lucky enough to have a close female friend in Petronella, a sensible, practical Scottish woman she’s known since their school days, and Petronella does her best to help her move on with her life, but ultimately she can’t control whether Marianne chooses to take her advice.

The time period the story covers is the period when Rose Tremain herself was a teenager and young adult and I’m sure she’ll have drawn on some of her own personal memories and experiences of that era. Having read her memoir, Rosie: Scenes from a Vanished Life, however, this novel seems to be only partly autobiographical – Marianne’s life follows a different course from Rose’s own, but there are also some similarities, such as Marianne’s desire to be an author (for much of the book she’s working on a novel narrated by an Argentinian horse).

As I’ve mentioned, Absolutely and Forever appeared on the Walter Scott Prize shortlist in 2024, but it didn’t win and I think I can see why. Although I found it quite an easy, enjoyable read (despite Marianne being a bit irritating), sometimes the more readable books aren’t the ones that win prizes and this one doesn’t really tackle important or topical issues like the others on the list. I have the final shortlisted title, The New Life by Tom Crewe, to read soon.