She Rises by Kate Worsley

May 16, 201312 Comments

She Rises begins in 1740 when Louise Fletcher, a young dairymaid from Essex, is offered a position as lady’s maid in a sea captain’s house in Harwich. Louise has never been more than a few miles away from home, so arriving at the Handleys’ prosperous household in the busy port town is like entering a different world. As Louise settles into her new job and gets to know her selfish, spoiled young mistress Rebecca Handley, she also decides to see if she can find out what happened to her brother, Luke, who went away to sea and has never been seen or heard from again.

In the other main thread of the story we learn how Luke was pressed into the Royal Navy from a tavern in Harwich and found himself taken aboard the warship, the Essex. Luke has never been on a ship this size before and soon discovers that life at sea is harsh and dangerous. Things improve when he is befriended by an older, more experienced seaman, Nick Stavenger, but still Luke wants nothing more than to escape and get back home to the girl he loves.

Louise’s story and Luke’s are told in alternating chapters and both narratives have a distinctive voice and style of their own. Luke’s is in the present tense and is filled with nautical terminology and slang; Louise’s is addressed to a mysterious ‘you’ – though we don’t have to wait long before we learn who ‘you’ is. Having finished the book, I think I can see why Kate Worsley chose to write the story in this way, but I’m not a fan of unusual or experimental writing styles in general and couldn’t help thinking that it made the book harder to read than it really needed to be!

The book was so atmospheric, though! The chapters set at sea felt realistic and gave me a good idea of how hard life could be for a pressed man in the navy, though as usual I struggled with all the references to mizen yards, main-topsails and other seafaring terms. But the descriptions of eighteenth century Harwich were particularly vivid: the labyrinths of dark alleys and smugglers’ tunnels, the smell of fish, the sailors standing in tavern doorways, the way the streets become flooded with sea water when the tide rises.

So, there were some aspects of this book that I loved and others that I didn’t like very much. I found it too slow at the beginning, but when Louise’s and Luke’s stories finally come together, the effect is amazing. I had been starting to get impatient, wondering how the two of them would be linked, but when it happened it was definitely worth waiting for! Things that had confused me earlier suddenly made perfect sense and some of the revelations in the final section of the book made me want to go back and read earlier chapters again.

She Rises reminded me of Sarah Waters, particularly Tipping the Velvet, due to the way both authors deal with themes such as gender and identity within a historical setting – so I wasn’t surprised to read that Sarah Waters was Kate Worsley’s mentor. As a first novel this was a very clever and ambitious book and although I had too many problems with it to be able to say that I loved it, I will be hoping for more books from Kate Worsley in the future.

Meeting Katherine de Valois

May 12, 20136 Comments

I have read two historical fiction novels recently both on the subject of the fifteenth century French princess, Katherine of Valois, the wife of King Henry V of England. The Forbidden Queen by Anne O’Brien and The Agincourt Bride by Joanna Hickson both tell Katherine’s story but in very different ways and as I’ve read them so close together, I thought it would be interesting to combine my reviews into one post.

Let’s start with The Forbidden Queen by Anne O’Brien, my favourite of the two books. The novel is narrated by Katherine herself and covers most of the significant events of her life. The youngest daughter of King Charles VI of France and his wife, Isabeau of Bavaria, Katherine is married to Henry V several years after the English victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Queen Isabeau has agreed to a settlement with Henry that would make him heir to the throne of France in place of Katherine’s own younger brother, the Dauphin.

When Henry dies just a few years into their marriage, Katherine falls in love with his cousin, Edmund Beaufort – but does Edmund love her in return or is he more interested in the power he would gain as husband of the Queen Dowager? It’s not until Katherine gets to know her Welsh Master of Household, Owen Tudor, that she finally has a chance of true happiness.

This is quite a romance-based novel, but maybe that’s to be expected as Katherine sadly didn’t seem to have much of a part to play in politics or in the reign of her son, the young Henry VI. O’Brien did such a good job of making me see how Katherine was desperate for love and affection and how disappointed she was when she realised that she was going to get neither of these from the King. Henry V was not portrayed as a cruel or deliberately unkind husband, just one who was insensitive and indifferent, and it was so sad when Katherine realised the true nature of the man she was married to. But while I could have a lot of sympathy for the young, naïve Katherine I did start to wish that, as she got older, she would become more mature and independent. It was sad and frustrating to see her making the same mistakes again and again, looking for love where there was obviously none.

Although Katherine sometimes irritated me, I did like her. I also thought O’Brien’s characterisation of the three very different men in Katherine’s life was very well done: the distant, preoccupied King, interested only in battle strategies and military campaigns; the charismatic but ambitious and untrustworthy Edmund Beaufort; and the proud, quiet Welshman Owen Tudor. This is the first Anne O’Brien book I’ve read and I was quite impressed with the overall quality of her writing and her ability to tell a good story.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley for review.

Now for The Agincourt Bride by Joanna Hickson. In this book, the author has used the alternative spelling, Catherine, rather than Katherine, so I have done the same in this review. This is actually the first of two volumes and covers only the early part of Catherine’s life, from her childhood until shortly after her marriage to Henry. The sequel, The Tudor Bride, is due out later this year.

This novel is narrated by Catherine’s nursemaid, Guillaumette Dupain (known as Mette). Mette, the daughter of a baker, is brought to the royal household to act as wet nurse for the baby Catherine, having recently had a stillborn child of her own. With Catherine neglected and ignored by her parents, Mette becomes almost like a mother to the princess. They are separated during Catherine’s years in the convent at Poissy but are reunited when Catherine is thirteen. Despite the attempts of others to part them again, Mette is devoted to Catherine and manages to stay with her, becoming her Mistress of the Wardrobe and her friend and confidante.

While both this book and the one above are at the lighter end of the historical fiction range (as you would probably expect from the cover designs and titles) this one was a bit too light for me. I also thought it was too long and I’m not sure there was really enough material for a book this length focusing on only the first years of Catherine’s life. Mette’s own personal story didn’t interest me much; her main function in the novel is to provide the perspective of someone close to Catherine, and there have been so many historical fiction novels published in recent years narrated by a conveniently placed servant that I think it’s becoming boring and formulaic. Seeing Catherine only through Mette’s eyes, I couldn’t engage with her the way I did in Anne O’Brien’s book and as a result I didn’t like this version of Catherine very much.

Joanna Hickson does go into a lot of depth in areas of Catherine’s early life that O’Brien didn’t have time to explore. I was intrigued by the storyline involving John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, who is portrayed here as a violent monster and I would be interested to know if there’s any evidence that he really behaved like this. We also get to know Catherine’s brothers and sisters much better than in the O’Brien book. None of them are particularly endearing characters, but Mette, having known them all since they were children, displays an amazing amount of patience and understanding with each of them. Their mother, Isabeau, comes across as completely selfish and heartless, and their father, Charles VI, suffers from a mental illness that causes him to believe he is made of glass and will shatter if anyone touches him. I got a real feeling for the sadness and loneliness Catherine and her siblings may have experienced as children, and could also see how France had been left in a vulnerable position without strong leadership.

The Agincourt Bride ends as Catherine travels to England for her coronation. It’s quite an abrupt ending, but presumably the next book is going to pick up the story from this point.

Having read both of these novels I’m glad to have had the opportunity to learn about a period of history I previously knew very little about. If you only want to read one book about Catherine (or Katherine) of Valois, I would say read The Forbidden Queen as it covers Catherine’s whole life and I enjoyed it a lot more than The Agincourt Bride. I would be happy to read more books by Anne O’Brien but I’m not sure about Joanna Hickson yet and will have to decide whether or not I want to continue with The Tudor Bride.

Heading Out to Wonderful by Robert Goolrick

May 9, 201312 Comments

“When you’re young, and you head out to wonderful, everything is fresh and bright as a brand new penny, but before you get to wonderful, you’re going to have to pass through all right. And when you get to all right, stop and take a good, long look, because that may be as far as you’re ever going to go.”

Heading Out to Wonderful is set in Brownsburg, Virginia, a small town where people live quiet, peaceful lives, where everyone goes to church on a Sunday and where no crime has ever been committed. Then one day in 1948, a stranger, Charlie Beale, arrives in the town with a suitcase full of money and another containing a set of butcher’s knives. Deciding that Brownsburg is where he wants to stay, Charlie gets a job working for the butcher, Will Haislett, and soon settles into his new life, getting to know Will, his wife Alma, and their five-year-old son, Sam. He and Sam become particularly close friends, with the little boy accompanying Charlie everywhere he goes.

Things begin to change when Charlie meets the beautiful Sylvan Glass. Sylvan is not like the other women in Brownsburg – she models herself on the Hollywood actresses she admires so much, wearing lipstick, earrings and glamorous dresses – and Charlie is instantly drawn to her. But Sylvan is the wife of the town’s richest man, Boaty Glass, and it’s obvious from the beginning that her relationship with Charlie can only lead to trouble. And when Sam, who is never far from Charlie’s side, witnesses something he really shouldn’t have seen, his loyalty to Charlie will be tested.

I really enjoyed the first half of this book. From the very first chapter there is an atmosphere of mystery. Who is narrating this story? Who is Charlie Beale and where did he come from? Where did he get his money? We learn almost nothing about his background – and maybe that’s the point, as he has come to Brownsburg to start a new life – but we still can’t help wondering what might have happened in his past. Other characters are intriguing too; one of my favourites was the dressmaker, Claudie Wiley. Claudie and Sylvan become friends due to their shared love of pretty clothes, but Claudie fears that it will never be a true friendship because this is Virginia in the 1940s and she is black while Sylvan is white.

In the second half, the tone of the novel becomes a lot darker. I thought I knew where things were heading, but it turned out I was wrong: what actually happened was more shocking and more devastating than I had expected. It’s the combination of the idyllic setting and the feeling of impending disaster that makes this novel so unsettling and causes what seems at first to be a pleasant, gentle story to become something else entirely.

This book wasn’t perfect – there were things that I didn’t understand, actions that didn’t make sense and storylines that could have been developed further – but overall I was impressed and I really liked Robert Goolrick’s writing style. Although the pace was slow, the story was compelling and I loved the portrait Goolrick painted of a small 1940s town and the people who lived there. My verdict is not quite ‘wonderful’ but definitely more than just ‘all right’!

I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Shadow on the Crown by Patricia Bracewell

April 29, 2013April 29, 201318 Comments

When King Æthelred II of England loses his wife Ælfgifu, he looks across the Narrow Sea to Normandy for his next bride. Duke Richard of Normandy has two unmarried sisters and it’s the younger, fifteen-year-old Emma, who is chosen. In return, Æthelred requests that Richard closes the harbours of Normandy to Swein Forkbeard and his Vikings, the enemies of the Anglo-Saxons.

From the moment Emma arrives in England in the year 1002 and learns that her new husband has not bothered to come and meet her, she knows her marriage is not going to be a happy one. Soon Emma hears of the rumours surrounding Æthelred’s claim to the throne and the older half-brother who died under suspicious circumstances and she begins to understand that she has married a troubled, paranoid man. But dealing with her husband is not the only problem she faces; she also has to cope with the hostility of her stepsons, the æthelings (heirs to the throne) Athelstan, Ecbert and Edmund. Because she has actually been crowned Queen of England, any children of Emma’s will inherit the throne ahead of the æthelings – the children of Æthelred’s previous wife, who was never crowned.

Another person unhappy with Emma’s arrival is Elgiva, daughter of the Northumbrian ealdorman Ælfhelm, who was hoping to become Queen herself. Elgiva soon becomes one of the villains of the novel, consumed with jealousy and plotting Emma’s downfall. The only bright spot in Emma’s life is her relationship with Athelstan, the eldest ætheling, whose feelings for her are changing as he gets to know her better. But with a brutal, violent husband and a woman who will do anything to steal her crown, Emma comes to realise that the only way she will be able to wield any power is to have a child of her own as quickly as possible, a son who will be the future King of England.

I loved Shadow on the Crown. The writing is beautiful and it’s hard to believe it’s Patricia Bracewell’s first novel. It also made a nice change to find an author choosing to write about a period of history that isn’t covered in historical fiction very often. Before reading this book I had only a vague knowledge of this period and I enjoyed learning more about life in the early years of the eleventh century – an era that is fascinating to read about, but definitely not one I would have wanted to live through myself! It’s difficult to comment on the accuracy of a novel when you know so little about the period concerned but the book does include an interesting author’s note explaining which parts of the story are based on fact. Bracewell has used the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as one of her sources and includes some excerpts throughout the novel, which adds to the feeling of authenticity.

Sometimes historical fiction can work well when it’s written in the first person but this one is written in the third person from several different viewpoints and I think it was the right decision. It allowed us to see events from more than one perspective – from Emma’s, Elgiva’s, Athelstan’s and Æthelred’s – and while I liked Emma from the beginning, being able to get inside the other characters’ heads meant I could understand them better. Æthelred’s feelings of guilt and terror, haunted by the death of his older half-brother, Edward; Athelstan’s inner conflicts, torn between love for Emma and his desire to be king; Elgiva’s envy of Emma and her bitterness at not becoming queen – being given some insights into all of these things helped me to see why these characters behaved the way they did.

Shadow on the Crown is the first in a trilogy of books about Emma of Normandy and I’m already looking forward to the second one. This book only covers the period between 1001 and 1005, so there is still a lot more of Emma’s story to come!

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley for review

The Scent of Death by Andrew Taylor

April 24, 20139 Comments

I’ve been looking forward to reading this book, having enjoyed some of Andrew Taylor’s previous novels, including The American Boy (An Unpardonable Crime in the US), so I was pleased to find that The Scent of Death was a similar type of historical mystery, though set in a different time and place.

The story begins in 1778, during the American War of Independence. Our narrator, Edward Savill, is an English clerk who has been sent to Manhattan (an area still under British rule at that time) to investigate the compensation claims of Loyalists who have been dispossessed of their property. Before Savill’s ship even arrives in the port, he sees a dead body being lifted out of the water. Soon another body is discovered – the body of Mr Pickett, a man who has connections with the Wintours, the family Savill will be staying with during his time in New York.

While Savill worries about the people he has left behind in England – his cold, distant wife and his beloved daughter – he also finds himself becoming embroiled in the lives of the Wintour family. As he gets to know Judge Wintour, his invalid wife and his beautiful daughter-in-law Arabella, whose husband is missing in action after the Battle of Saratoga, he starts to suspect they are covering up some secrets. Who killed Mr Pickett and why? Whose is the child Savill hears crying in the night? And what is the mysterious ‘box of curiosities’ he has heard so much about?

One of the things I like about Andrew Taylor’s historical novels is that he makes a real effort to use language appropriate to the time period throughout both the dialogue and the narration. I read a lot of historical fiction and there are a surprising number of authors who make no attempt to do this at all; there are very few who do it as convincingly as Taylor. He doesn’t use any jarring modern words or phrases and it all adds to the atmosphere and authenticity of the story, so that I could almost believe Edward Savill really was an 18th century English gentleman narrating his adventures to us. Remembering that this novel is set in the 1770s, we are also given a range of different opinions on slavery rather than the author just projecting 21st century views onto all of his characters, which would have been unrealistic.

As with Taylor’s other novels, you can never be sure which characters can and can’t be trusted. From Mr Townley and his clerk, Mr Noak, who nursed Savill through his seasickness on the long voyage from England, to the enigmatic Arabella Wintour herself, some of these people turn out to be friends and others enemies. I didn’t actually like any of them apart from Savill himself, but that wasn’t a problem at all – I’m sure we weren’t supposed to like them and were intended instead to get a feel for the hostility and suspicion Savill encountered everywhere he went.

The vivid, atmospheric settings are another strong point of Taylor’s novels. I don’t have much knowledge of the American Revolutionary War and Taylor does such a great job of portraying life in New York during this period: the variety of different people, including soldiers, spies, refugees and slaves, who had made the city their home; the overwhelming heat of summer and the intense cold of winter; and all the danger and intrigue of a city at war. Savill’s investigations take him into the heart of Canvas Town, an area of slums where many of the city’s criminal gangs have settled after it was destroyed by fire, and also away from New York, to the ruins of Arabella’s family plantation, Mount George.

But this was not a perfect book: while parts of it were exciting and absorbing (especially Savill’s journey into the dangerous, lawless ‘Debatable Ground’) and the short chapters made it easy to keep reading, the story moved forward very slowly and at almost 500 pages it felt too long – although admittedly it would be hard to see what could have been taken out. I did enjoy it, though, and while I did come close to solving the mystery, there were still some surprises and plot twists towards the end of the book. So, this was not my favourite Andrew Taylor book and unlike The American Boy will not be one of my books of the year, but it was definitely still worth reading and I hope it’s true that we are going to meet Edward Savill again in a future novel.

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (re-read)

April 22, 2013November 6, 201721 Comments

One of my goals for 2013 was to re-read more of my favourite books, something I’ve been neglecting in recent years. Well, here we are in the middle of April and so far I’ve only re-read one!

The Three Musketeers may be the title, but our hero is not a musketeer when we first meet him at the beginning of the novel, in the year 1625; his name is d’Artagnan and he’s a young man from Gascony in France, on his way to Paris where he hopes to join the King’s Musketeers under the command of Monsieur de Tréville. On his arrival in Paris, d’Artagnan encounters three of the musketeers – Athos, Porthos and Aramis – in one of those wonderful openings to a book that once you’ve read you’re unlikely ever to forget.

Soon d’Artagnan and the three musketeers become the best of friends, and when d’Artagnan meets and falls in love with Constance Bonancieux, one of the Queen of France’s ladies, all four of them are drawn into the intrigue surrounding the Queen’s affair with the powerful English nobleman, the Duke of Buckingham. With the King’s advisor, Cardinal Richelieu, hoping to expose the affair, Constance, d’Artagnan and his three friends become targets of the Cardinal and his spy, the beautiful Lady de Winter. But Milady, as she is known, is hiding a secret of her own and if d’Artagnan discovers the truth, he and Constance could find themselves in even greater danger.

I first read The Three Musketeers five years ago and when I finished it I had intended to read the other books in the trilogy (the second is Twenty Years After and third is the three-volume The Vicomte de Bragelonne/Louise de la Valliere/The Man in the Iron Mask) but as so often happens other books got in the way and I never did get around to continuing with the d’Artagnan series. And so when I made my list for the Classics Club I put all of them on there – along with a re-read of The Three Musketeers as I thought it would be a good idea to remind myself of the characters and story before embarking on Twenty Years After – and anyway, I never need an excuse to re-read a book that I enjoyed so much the first time!

I love Alexandre Dumas and although The Three Musketeers is not my favourite of the three novels of his that I’ve read (that would be The Count of Monte Cristo) I still think it’s a wonderful book with some great characters. The musketeers all have such different personalities: the aristocratic, melancholy Athos, the loud, brash Porthos, the fastidious would-be priest, Aramis, and of course, the brave, passionate d’Artagnan. Everyone will be able to pick a favourite musketeer, and mine is Athos. In her recent post on The Count of Monte Cristo, Lisa compared the character of Edmond Dantes with Francis Crawford of Lymond from the Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett (two other great fictional characters, by the way); I agree, but I can also see some of Athos’ character traits in Lymond too, especially during one of the most memorable set pieces in the book, where the four friends eat breakfast in a fortress surrounded by enemy soldiers because it’s the only place they can find to talk in private.

It seems five years is a good length of time to wait between re-reads of a book. I had forgotten enough so that I could be surprised by the twists and turns of the plot, but remembered just enough to be able to look forward to some of my favourite parts: the breakfast scene I mentioned above, the episode with the Queen’s diamond studs, and especially the sequence of chapters in the middle (entitled Porthos, The Thesis of Aramis and The Wife of Athos) which is just a joy to read. The friendship between d’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis is so inspiring and heartwarming (all for one, one for all!) and this is why, for me, there’s a change in the tone of the book when towards the end, the focus switches from the musketeers to Milady and I don’t enjoy the final third quite as much as the first two thirds.

Now, a note on the translation. I read the Wordsworth Classics edition of The Three Musketeers which uses the first English translation by William Barrow in 1846 (I think this is also the one used by Oxford World’s Classics). I would be interested to try a newer translation, such as Richard Pevear’s, to see how it compares – and also because I’m aware that the older translations altered certain parts of Dumas’ original text because they considered it too sexually explicit for Victorian readers. I can see that some readers today would probably find the Barrow translation too literal and antiquated but I didn’t have a problem with it at all; I actually quite like the way the sentences are constructed and I think it has a certain romantic, old-fashioned quaintness about it.

I’ll be moving on to Twenty Years After very soon!

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

April 19, 2013April 19, 201336 Comments

Do you ever look back on your life and wish you had done something differently? Do you sometimes regret the decisions you’ve made and wonder what would have happened if you’d chosen another path through life? I’m sure we would all answer ‘yes’ to those questions, but unfortunately most of us only have one chance to get things right. But Ursula Todd is not like the rest of us. If things don’t work out the first time, she does have the chance to go back and try again…and again…and again.

Ursula is born one snowy night in February 1910 with the umbilical cord around her neck. Darkness falls and she dies before the doctor has time to arrive. We turn the page and it’s that same night in February 1910 again. This time the doctor is present and she survives, but this is only the beginning of Ursula’s journey through life. Every time she reaches a turning point, she must be sure to make the right decision – otherwise darkness will soon fall once more and Ursula must return to the night of her birth in 1910 and have another attempt.

As we follow Ursula again and again through some of the major events of the twentieth century – including both the First and Second World Wars (there are some very atmospheric scenes set in London during the Blitz) – she slowly grows in wisdom and learns from her previous mistakes, even without being fully aware of what is happening to her or why. Gradually she develops a sort of intuition or déjà vu that allows her to draw on her past experiences, and this is used to particularly good effect in an early sequence of chapters in which she has several attempts at preventing the maid, Bridget, from going to London and catching Spanish flu.

Apart from Ursula herself, the characters who are almost always there throughout every version of the story are the members of the Todd family – Ursula’s brothers Maurice, Teddy and Jimmy, sister Pamela and parents Hugh and Sylvie – and the servants, Mrs Glover and Bridget. Izzie, Ursula’s wild and irresponsible aunt, also plays a significant role in many of the storylines. Other characters come and go; people who are an important part of Ursula’s life in one existence barely appear at all in another and it’s fascinating to see how something as simple as a chance encounter in the street (and the way she reacts to it) could completely alter the course of her future. Sometimes Ursula is unable to change the outcome of a particular event no matter what choices she makes; on other occasions even a small action has huge consequences.

Life After Life is a very clever, complex novel; I was so impressed by it! With such an unusual and complicated plot it could have been a disaster, but it wasn’t; I thought everything worked perfectly and although I found it confusing at first, after the first few chapters I knew I was going to love the book. It’s actually much less repetitive than you might think and fortunately we don’t have to go right through the entire story from the beginning each time Ursula is reborn! I sometimes felt a bit distanced from Ursula, maybe because in each of her lives she makes different choices, has different ambitions and motives, so is not exactly the same person she was in a previous existence – but that didn’t stop me liking her and hoping things would work out better for her the next time darkness fell and she went back to that snowy February night yet again.

This is the first Kate Atkinson book I’ve read and having enjoyed it so much I will be looking out for her other books now. I understand that her earlier novels are very different to this one but I would still like to read them and would welcome any recommendations.