Category: Historical Fiction

The King’s Curse by Philippa Gregory

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The Kings Curse This is the sixth and final volume in Philippa Gregory’s Cousins’ War series which explores the Wars of the Roses from a female perspective. The books can be read in any order, although I would recommend reading them in the order of publication. Previous novels in the series have introduced us to Elizabeth Woodville, Margaret Beaufort, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, Anne Neville and Elizabeth of York; this one, The King’s Curse, tells the story of Margaret Pole, another woman with an important part to play in the history of the period.

Margaret is the daughter of George, Duke of Clarence, brother of the last two Plantagenet kings, Edward IV and Richard III. With a new dynasty – the Tudors – now on the throne of England, Margaret’s Plantagenet blood means that she and her family are seen as a threat. At the point when the novel opens, her brother has already been executed on the order of Henry VII and Margaret herself has been married off to a minor knight, Richard Pole – a man she respects but does not love.

When the King and his wife, Margaret’s cousin Elizabeth of York, send their son and heir, Prince Arthur, into Margaret’s care at Ludlow Castle, she becomes a friend and confidante of the Prince’s Spanish bride, Katherine of Aragon. Arthur dies following a sudden illness and Katherine is left a widow – but not for long, as his younger brother, the newly crowned Henry VIII, decides to marry the Princess himself.

Margaret is by Katherine’s side as she tries and fails to give Henry a male heir, losing one baby after another. But when Henry finally tires of Katherine and turns his attention to Anne Boleyn, Margaret discovers that her loyalty to the Queen has cast suspicion on the Plantagenets once again. Can Margaret convince the King that she and her family can be trusted, while still continuing to offer friendship to Katherine and her only surviving child, Princess Mary?

After the disappointment of the previous novel, The White Princess, I was pleased to find that I enjoyed this one much more. I thought the writing was better, the story was more interesting and Margaret was a much stronger character than Elizabeth of York. I got the impression that Gregory herself had enjoyed writing this novel, perhaps more than some of the others in the series.

I’ve read the story of Henry VIII, his marriage to Katherine of Aragon and subsequent divorce many times before, but it was interesting to see familiar events retold from a different point of view. Margaret is perfectly placed to know what is going on, being a cousin to the King’s mother, friend to Katherine and governess to Princess Mary. Through Margaret’s eyes we watch Henry’s transformation into a cruel tyrant unable to tolerate anyone disagreeing with him, we see how the people of England respond to Thomas Cromwell’s dissolution of the monasteries, we witness the public reaction to Anne Boleyn, and we learn how Mary feels about being cast aside and disinherited.

As well as being an observer of the royal court, however, Margaret has her own problems to deal with away from court as she works to keep herself and her children safe. Two of her sons – Lord Montague and Arthur – have positions at court and another, Reginald, is sent to Padua to study and is given the job of researching the theological argument behind the King’s divorce. It’s difficult for Margaret and her children to regain the power and influence they believe is due to them as Plantagenets without making themselves appear a direct threat to the Tudor throne. But unlike her cousin Elizabeth in The White Princess, Margaret is portrayed here as a very capable woman with strength, dignity and spirit. I did sometimes find her annoying, though, especially every time she showed such blatant favouritism to her youngest son, Geoffrey, who did nothing to deserve it as far as I could tell.

I still had a few problems with the book – one of them being Gregory’s insistence on referring to every character by his or her full name, title and relationship to the narrator almost every time they appear in the text. Would a mother having a private conversation with her son really address him as “Son Montague”? Is this really necessary when Montague (Henry Pole) is one of the main characters in the story? We’re not likely to forget that he is Margaret’s son, after all. I also thought the book felt much longer than it really needed to be; some of the scenes started to feel quite repetitive.

I haven’t mentioned the ‘curse’ of the title yet, but I can tell you that it refers to the curse Elizabeth of York and her mother, Elizabeth Woodville, supposedly placed on the Tudor line in the previous novel. The subject of the curse is raised every time a child or heir to the throne dies, but I was pleased to see that it never becomes a major part of the plot. In her author’s note at the end of the book, Gregory offers a scientific alternative to the curse, which I found interesting.

On the whole, then, I found this to be one of the better Cousins’ War novels. It was also the perfect way to end the series, tying in with her previous series of Tudor novels. Now I’m wondering which period of history Philippa Gregory will turn to next.

Fair Helen by Andrew Greig

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Fair Helen Last year I started a little project of my own – which I don’t think I ever actually blogged about – to work through the titles shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction since it began in 2010. So far I’ve discovered some great books including An Officer and a Spy, Harvest and The Garden of Evening Mists. This book, Fair Helen, is another one that I’ve enjoyed and might never have thought about reading otherwise.

Fair Helen, by Scottish author Andrew Greig, is a beautifully written novel based on the Border ballad, Fair Helen of Kirkconnel Lea which begins:

“O that I were where Helen lies!
Night and day on me she cries;
O that I were where Helen lies,
On fair Kirkconnel Lea.”

The ballad goes on to tell of two rivals for Helen’s love, a shot being fired and Helen falling dead into her lover’s arms. In Fair Helen, Andrew Greig offers one possible interpretation of this ballad, retelling some of its events and expanding on it to include other aspects of Scottish history and Border folklore.

In the late 16th century, when the novel is set, ‘Jamie Saxt’ (King James VI) is on the throne of Scotland, while England’s Queen Elizabeth is approaching old age with no heir of her own. Soon the two thrones will be united under James, bringing some sort of peace and order to the Border region. In the meantime, though, the Borders remain a wild and dangerous place where clans of reivers on both sides of the English-Scottish border fight and feud, steal cattle and conduct raids.

Adam Fleming, whose stepfather is ‘heidsman’ (leader) of the Flemings, has fallen in love with the beautiful Helen Irvine of Annandale. Unfortunately, Helen has already been betrothed to another man, Robert Bell, because the Irvines are keen to form an alliance with the Bell family. Adam has no intention of ending his romance with Helen and summons an old friend from his student days, Harry Langton, to help arrange their secret trysts.

Harry is the narrator of Fair Helen, looking back on the events of the past from several decades into the future, and he is the ideal person to tell the story, being Adam’s best friend and Helen’s cousin. But Harry is also working for another, more powerful patron – someone who has plans of his own for the Borders and will have no sympathy for two young lovers who get in the way of his plans.

I was surprised by how much Andrew Greig managed to pack into the story. I was expecting a tragic romance (according to the cover, the ballad is sometimes described as the Scottish Romeo and Juliet) but it was so much more than that. In fact, the story of Adam and Helen is only one part of the story, no more or less important than the Border politics, the complex feuds and alliances between the clans, and the plotting and scheming going on behind the scenes. There’s a lot happening in this book, yet the pace never feels too rushed.

I always enjoy reading about the Border Reivers, as I live quite close to the Borders (on the English side), but so far I’ve found very few novels that deal with the subject. As I read Fair Helen I kept thinking of Dorothy Dunnett’s The Disorderly Knights – some of the same Borders families appear in both books, such as the Scotts of Buccleuch, and in both there is a dramatic Hot Trod (a lawful pursuit of a raiding party). I wish more authors would choose to write historical fiction based on this fascinating time and place in history – or maybe there are lots of books already and I just haven’t discovered them yet. I do have some non-fiction books on my list for future reading!

I’ve already mentioned how beautiful Andrew Greig’s writing is but I think it deserves to be mentioned again as it really is lovely and poetic, filled with feeling and emotion. The language used is suitable for the 16th century, with no inappropriately modern phrases finding their way into the dialogue to spoil things (one of my pet hates with historical fiction). Harry’s narration is written in the Scots dialect, which also adds to the authenticity. Definitions of unfamiliar words are not given directly in the text – you can usually work them out from the context of the sentence or if not, you can look them up in the glossary at the end of the book. Unless, of course, you’re Scottish in which case it shouldn’t be a problem at all!

Andrew Greig has written six other novels as well as some non-fiction and poetry. If you’ve read any of his other books, please let me know which you would recommend.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

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The Book Thief I know what you’re thinking: how could I possibly have not read The Book Thief until now? My answer is that I really don’t know. My excuse is that I wasn’t paying much attention to new releases at the time when the book was published in 2005 so I missed all the hype surrounding it. Since then I have just never felt like reading it; there has always been another book calling to me more loudly. Now that I’ve finally read it, of course, the next question is: was it worth waiting for? And my answer to that is, sadly, no. Not only am I one of the last people in the world to have read The Book Thief, it seems that I’m also one of the only people not to have loved it.

The novel is narrated by Death, who is experiencing one of the busiest times of his career – World War II. Death is everywhere during the war, but he has chosen to focus on the story of a nine-year-old German girl called Liesel Meminger. Liesel’s parents are communists and as the novel begins in 1939, Liesel and her brother, Werner, are being sent to live with a foster family in the small town of Molching. Werner dies during the journey and this is when Death has his first encounter with Liesel – and when he first witnesses her stealing a discarded book, which happens to be called The Grave-Diggers Handbook.

Liesel can’t read but she is fascinated by books and words and this is what sustains her as she faces the challenges of settling into a new home. Her kind-hearted foster father, Hans Hubermann, teaches her to read and with the help of her new friend, Rudy Steiner, Liesel soon begins to add to her small library, becoming the ‘book thief’ of the title. Despite the atrocities going on in the world around her, Liesel’s life on Himmel Street, Molching, is relatively peaceful until the arrival of Max Vandenburg, a Jew in need of help – and a basement to hide in.

I said that I didn’t love the book, but this doesn’t mean I didn’t like it at all, because I did. My problem was the writing style – or I should say, styles, as there are so many all incorporated into one book. There are some very short sentences, some partial sentences, nouns used as verbs, dictionary definitions dropped into the text, and parts of the story told in the form of illustrations and cartoons. Sometimes Death interrupts his narration to talk directly to the reader, to make an observation or to hint at something that will happen later in the book.

It’s certainly creative and unique – I’ve never read anything quite like it – and I can see that a lot of readers will absolutely love it, but I am just not a fan of writing that feels experimental or gimmicky. I don’t even like it when a book is written in the present tense! I find that when a novel is written in an unusual way I end up being distracted by the writing instead of being drawn into the story and the lives of the characters. While I was reading The Book Thief I felt that I was never quite there on Himmel Street with Liesel and Rudy and the others; I could never forget that I was reading a book.

I did like the idea of the story being narrated by Death. I’m aware that this is not a very original concept and that there are other books that also use Death as a narrator (some of Terry Pratchett’s, for example) but I haven’t personally read any so it was something different as far as I was concerned! There were other things that I liked – the development of Liesel’s relationship with her foster parents; the stories Max writes while he’s hiding in the basement; watching Liesel discover the joys of reading – and by the time I started to approach the final chapters of the book, I found that Zusak had made me care about the characters and their fates. There’s no doubt that this is a very moving book and I was close to tears once or twice near the end.

Despite being a little bit disappointed by this book, I completely understand why it is so popular and why so many people love it. I know I’m in a tiny minority, so please, if you haven’t read it yet don’t let me put you off – try it for yourself and see what you think!

Lady of Hay by Barbara Erskine

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Lady of Hay As a university student in Edinburgh in the 1970s Jo Clifford agrees to take part in a study into regression and past lives. She allows herself to be hypnotised, not really expecting anything to happen, but she proves to be such a good subject that both the Professor and his assistant, Sam Franklyn, are alarmed. They lie to her, telling her that they’d failed to hypnotise her, and then send her home.

Fifteen years later, now a journalist living in London, Jo is working on a series of magazine articles, one of which will be about hypnotism. As part of her research she agrees to undergo hypnosis again herself to prove that it doesn’t work. Jo has just split up with her boyfriend – Sam’s brother, Nick Franklyn – so when he and Sam try to warn her of the dangers, she doesn’t want to listen. Going ahead with the regression, she makes a shocking discovery: hypnotism does work and it seems that in a previous life she was Matilda de Braose, a 12th century noblewoman.

Intrigued by Matilda’s story, Jo spends more and more time in the past, reliving the events of Matilda’s marriage to the powerful baron William de Braose, her affair with the handsome Richard de Clare and her turbulent relationship with King John. As she learns more about Matilda, it becomes clear to Jo that there are some frightening similarities between her previous life and her current one – and that events from the past could be about to be replayed again in the present.

Barbara Erskine’s books always sound very intriguing to me, yet I’ve now tried three of them and have had mixed feelings about all three. There were some things I liked about Lady of Hay but other things that I really disliked, and overall I wish I hadn’t bothered with this one.

Let’s get the negative points out of the way first. My biggest problem with this book was the modern day storyline…the characters were so difficult to like! It seemed that they were all either cheating on their partners, betraying their friends or plotting and scheming against family members. There was also a lot of domestic violence and abuse which the women just seemed to accept and view as normal. I’m aware that this book was published in 1986 but I don’t think things have changed all that much since then and I wanted to see Jo stand up for herself and let the men in her life know that the way they were behaving was wrong. In some cases I couldn’t understand why the police weren’t called.

I did find it interesting to read about the theories behind reincarnation and the various methods of hypnotism and regression but it was difficult to believe that so many people in the novel were experts on the subject. Jo was constantly meeting people at random who just happened to be trained hypnotists! There was also a suggestion that other people in Jo’s present had also lived in the 12th century, but I felt that this was never fully resolved. In particular, I struggled to understand what was going on with Sam Franklyn, whose personality seemed to change entirely within the space of a few chapters; it wasn’t clear whether this was supposed to be the result of a past life, a mental illness or something else.

I really enjoyed the historical sections of the book, which didn’t surprise me as I almost always do prefer the historical parts of a multiple time period novel. I have heard of Matilda de Braose before (mainly in Sharon Penman’s Here Be Dragons – although she was known as Maud, a variation of Matilda, in that book) but I have never read about her story in any detail. It was fascinating…so much more interesting than the modern day storyline; I was always disappointed when we had to leave medieval Wales and return to 20th century England.

I did feel a bit cheated when I turned to the author’s note at the end and saw that Erskine had actually invented a lot of the things that happened to Matilda in the novel. The affair with Richard de Clare, which forms such a big part of the story, was entirely imaginary, and so was the nature of Matilda’s relationship with King John. Not a problem if you already know a lot about the period, but if you don’t then it could be confusing as you would come away thinking that things really happened which actually had no basis in reality. Despite this, I would still have preferred this book to have been set purely in the past!

The edition of Lady of Hay that I read includes an additional short story at the end, written specifically for the 25th anniversary edition and following on from the ending of the original novel. I didn’t like the story and didn’t think it was necessary, though I suppose people who read the book years ago and have been desperate to know what happened next may feel differently! My advice if you’re reading the novel for the first time is to leave it at the original ending, which is fine the way it is.

Lady of Hay was not a great success with me, then, as the negative points probably outweighed the positive. If nothing else, though, it reminded me of the very similar Green Darkness by Anya Seton, which I enjoyed a lot more and would like to re-read one day!

Winter Siege by Ariana Franklin and Samantha Norman

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Winter Siege I hope everyone had a good Christmas! I have an appropriately wintry book to tell you about today before I get round to posting my end-of-year list, probably on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Ariana Franklin (a pen name of Diana Norman) was the author of the Adelia Aguilar mystery series, of which I’ve still only read the first, Mistress of the Art of Death. As you may know, she sadly died in 2011, leaving Winter Siege unfinished, but the book has now been completed by her daughter, Samantha Norman. Winter Siege is not part of the Adelia Aguilar series, but a standalone novel set during the period of English history known as the Anarchy.

It’s 1141 and the country is in the grip of a civil war as King Stephen and his cousin, the Empress Matilda, are battling for the English crown. In the Cambridgeshire Fens, an eleven-year-old girl is captured by a passing band of soldiers, raped and left for dead. The child’s way of dealing with her trauma is to wipe the whole incident entirely from her mind, so that by the time she is discovered by Gwil, a kind-hearted mercenary, she can’t remember her name, where she lives or anything about her past. Gwil renames her Penda and allows her to accompany him, disguised as a boy, while he builds a new career for himself as a travelling entertainer.

Moving from place to place, the two of them impress the crowds with their displays of archery while Gwil continues to search for any signs of Penda’s attackers – his only clues being a scrap of parchment carrying a message in Greek and the knowledge that the soldiers were accompanied by a monk smelling strongly of an unusual herb. Eventually, fate will take Gwil and Penda to Kenniford Castle, home of Maud, a sixteen-year-old ward of King Stephen.

To ensure the safety of her castle and her people, Maud has been forced to marry a man much older than herself – the brutal, drunken Sir John of Tewing, a supporter of Stephen’s. But when Sir John is struck down by illness and the Empress Matilda arrives at Kenniford asking for protection, Maud must decide whether to switch sides. This is a decision that will place the castle at the heart of the civil war and all of Gwil’s and Penda’s archery skills will be needed to help defend it.

I really enjoyed this entertaining medieval novel. As with Mistress of the Art of Death, I found it very atmospheric and evocative of the time period. The mystery aspect of the novel following Gwil’s search for the evil monk was slightly disappointing, but there was a second mystery that I found more interesting – and this involved the identity of an old abbot who is dictating the story of the Anarchy to his scribe, several decades into the future (in 1180). These sections provide a sort of framework for the rest of the novel and help to explain some of the historical background, while also making us curious as to who the abbot really is and how he knows so much about what happened at Kenniford Castle.

The book is called Winter Siege and so far I haven’t mentioned either winter or sieges, but I can assure you that both do play a part in the story. Snow is falling throughout much of the novel and one particularly snowy night forms the backdrop for one of the book’s most memorable scenes, when Gwil and Penda meet Matilda for the first time. Later in the book, our characters find themselves trapped in a besieged castle, which is when the various threads of the story are brought together.

Bearing in mind that this novel was written by both Ariana Franklin and Samantha Norman, it all seemed like the work of one author to me; it never felt uneven or disjointed. I don’t know how much Franklin had managed to complete before her death or if she would have taken the story in a different direction…but I think she would be pleased if she could read the finished version.

The Girl Who Couldn’t Read by John Harding

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The Girl Who Couldn't Read Three years ago I read John Harding’s Florence and Giles and loved it, so I was pleased to find a copy of The Girl Who Couldn’t Read in the library. It’s a sequel and will make more sense if you’ve read Florence and Giles first, but don’t worry if you haven’t because it should still work perfectly well as a standalone.

The story is set in the 1890s and is narrated by Doctor Shepherd, who has just arrived at his new job in a women’s mental hospital on an isolated island in New England. Taking a tour of the hospital’s facilities with his new colleague, Doctor Morgan, he is appalled by some of the methods being used to control the patients. When he tells the other doctor of his concerns, Morgan agrees to an experiment: Shepherd can choose one of the women to work with using his own methods in an attempt to prove whether gentle, humane treatment can be as effective as harshness and brutality.

The patient Doctor Shepherd picks for his experiment is a young girl known as Jane Dove – she says she can’t remember her real name, her age or anything about her past. She is also unable to read (and claims that she has never been allowed to learn) and, according to Doctor Morgan, she can’t even use the English language correctly. It seems Shepherd’s task could turn out to be a lot harder than he’d expected! After spending some time with Jane, though, he begins to realise that while the girl’s speech is unconventional, the way she uses nouns and verbs actually makes perfect sense.

She invented new words from old, often by changing the way they were used. She said “we outsided” rather than “we went outside”, or “I downstairsed” in place of “I went downstairs”, both of which I found perfectly clear and actually more economical than the conventional expression.

Jane immediately reminded me of a character from Florence and Giles – another girl who used language in a creative and unusual way. As Doctor Shepherd continues to work with her, encouraging her to search her memory and giving her books to look at, the connection between Jane and that other girl becomes clear. But what about Shepherd himself? It’s obvious from the very first chapter that he is not who he says he is either…and possibly not even a doctor at all!

I love books with unreliable narrators and Doctor Shepherd is a very intriguing one. We know that he is unreliable, we know that he is not being honest with us – but we don’t know why and we don’t know who he really is. The truth about Shepherd isn’t revealed until near the end of the novel, but along the way there are plenty of plot twists and surprises! And to make things even more interesting, Doctor Shepherd and Jane Dove aren’t the only people in the story with secrets to hide; there’s also a third mystery and this one made me think of a classic Victorian novel – an impression that grew stronger as the story progressed.

The Girl Who Couldn’t Read is a great book – it’s maybe not quite as good as Florence and Giles but it comes very close! I did wonder whether the setting might make it too similar to The Asylum by John Harwood, which I read just a few weeks ago, but fortunately they are two very different novels with very different plots and characters. I thoroughly enjoyed them both!

Sanctuary by Robert Edric

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Sanctuary Set in Haworth, West Yorkshire, in 1848, this is the story of a frustrated, unhappy young man whose life has been a series of disappointments, rejections and unfulfilled promise. In poor health, with no job and mounting debts, he has returned to the family parsonage where he remains completely dependent on his father, the only person who still sees his potential. To make things worse, his three sisters have succeeded where he has failed, having had some of their poems and stories published (under male pseudonyms). Disillusioned and miserable, he turns to alcohol for comfort.

The young man’s name, as you may have guessed by now, is Branwell Brontë and his sisters are Charlotte, Emily and Anne. Sanctuary is a fictional account of the final months of Branwell’s life leading up to his death in September 1848 at the age of thirty-one. Branwell himself is the narrator of the story, giving us some insight into his state of mind as he tries to come to terms with seeing the success of his sisters while his own literary ambitions come to nothing.

As a fan of the Brontë sisters I have always been intrigued by Branwell and the possible influence he may have had on their work. Earlier this year I read Daphne du Maurier’s biography, The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë, which I thought was quite a sympathetic portrayal. It was much more difficult to have any sympathy for the Branwell we meet in Sanctuary; he spends the whole book feeling sorry for himself and wallowing in self-pity without making any attempt to change things. However, I didn’t need to like Branwell to appreciate that his character was well written, complex and believable. As a portrait of an intelligent, talented man who had wasted his potential and thrown away opportunities through his own self-destructive behaviour, it was very convincing.

Unfortunately, none of the other characters in the book were as well developed as Branwell. Charlotte, Anne and Emily all felt like the same person rather than three strong, separate personalities, which was very disappointing (especially when compared with their portrayal in Jude Morgan’s excellent The Taste of Sorrow). For the same reason, I thought it was hard to distinguish between Branwell’s friends, several of whom appeared in the story and, like his sisters, felt bland and lifeless. On a more positive note, I did like the setting – we learn a lot about life in a small Yorkshire community in the middle of the 19th century.

Because of my love for the Brontës, I found this an interesting and worthwhile read, even though the slow pace and weak secondary characters meant that I didn’t particularly enjoy it. I like the sound of some of Robert Edric’s previous novels, though, so I would consider reading another one at some point.

I received a copy of Sanctuary for review via NetGalley.