Category: Historical Fiction

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

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First of all, this is probably my last post until after Christmas, so whether you celebrate it or not I hope you all have a great weekend! Now, back to my thoughts on Remarkable Creatures…

Remarkable Creatures is set in the town of Lyme Regis on the south coast of England during the early part of the nineteenth century. It’s the story of two very different women who are brought together by a shared love of collecting fossils. Mary Anning is a young working-class girl who has lived in the town all her life and hunts for fossils for her family to sell to tourists. Elizabeth Philpot, twenty years older than Mary and from a middle-class background, moves to Lyme Regis with her two unmarried sisters. Her interest in fossils begins when she discovers an unusual stone on the windswept beach. Eager to have someone to share her new passion with, Elizabeth finds an unexpected friend in Mary.

Before I started this book I had no interest in fossils; I still don’t, unfortunately. I found the whole fossil aspect of the book pretty boring, but that’s not the fault of the author. I could still enjoy the story even though the subject bored me, and it did raise some interesting questions regarding the theory of evolution (the book was set several decades before Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species).

I do admire Tracy Chevalier for creating a story based around such an unusual topic and real-life characters who aren’t very well known. Mary Anning (pictured here with her dog, Tray) and Elizabeth Philpot are both real historical figures who contributed to the science of palaeontology, and as I knew nothing about either of them it was good to have the opportunity to learn about their lives. It was only after finishing the book and looking up the real-life Mary and Elizabeth that I realised how many details Chevalier had included that were based on fact.

I could sympathise with two women trying to gain recognition in a male-dominated field and the difficulties they faced in getting people to take notice of their work and give them the credit they deserved. They were unable to join the Geological Society of London, for example, because it was open only to men.

“That is all she will get, I thought: a scrap of thanks crowded out by far more talk of glory for beast and man. Her name will never be recorded in scientific journals or books, but will be forgotten. So be it. A woman’s life is always a compromise.”

Although I can’t say I loved Remarkable Creatures, it was enjoyable enough and a gentle, easy read. I do think it’s great though that this book has helped to bring two very important but little-known women back into the public eye.

The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Penman

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“And what of those who didn’t know him? What happens, too, when all who knew him are dead, when people know only what they’ve been told?”

When I read The White Queen by Philippa Gregory earlier in the year, I became intrigued by Richard III, the Wars of the Roses and the mystery of the Princes in the Tower. The Sunne in Splendour was recommended to me as the best fictional account of Richard III, so I immediately bought a copy – and it has taken me until now to pick it up and read it. I think one of the things that was putting me off was the sheer size of the book; it’s one of those books that is physically difficult to hold because it’s so thick and heavy. But as soon as I started reading I knew I was going to love this book. Not only did it turn out to be the best historical fiction book I’ve read for a long time, it was also one of the best books of any type that I’ve read this year.

The Sunne in Splendour tells the complete life story of Richard III from childhood to death. Penman portrays Richard as a sympathetic figure who has been unfairly treated by history. Sadly, he is often thought of today as the villain of Shakespeare’s Richard III: the evil hunchback who murdered his nephews. It’s worth remembering though, that Shakespeare lived in Tudor England – and it was Henry Tudor who defeated Richard, the last of the Plantagenet kings.

The Wars of the Roses is the term used to describe a series of battles and rebellions that took place between two branches of the English royal family, the House of York and the House of Lancaster, during the late fifteenth century. I already had some basic knowledge of the period before I started reading this book, but even if you don’t I think Penman makes it easy enough to understand. Sometimes a story can suffer from the author’s attempts to include every little bit of interesting information they’ve uncovered in their research, but that’s not actually a problem here. Yes, there’s an enormous amount of detail, but everything feels necessary and helps to build up a vivid picture of Richard’s world.

The author really brought the characters to life and made them feel like real people who I could understand and care about rather than just names on the pages of a school history book. The number of characters with similar names could have caused confusion but I thought Penman handled the problem very well making them easy to identify by using nicknames (Ned, Dickon, Bess etc) or titles (Warwick, Clarence, Montagu) and Edward of Lancaster is given the French version of his name, Edouard, to distinguish him from Edward of York.

The story is told from multiple viewpoints, with surprisingly little of the story being from Richard’s perspective. Much of what we learn about Richard we learn through the eyes of his family, friends and enemies. A lot of time is devoted to the romance between Richard and Anne Neville, but what really fascinated me was the complex relationship between the York brothers, Richard, Edward and George.

As you might expect, there are a number of battle scenes – something that I don’t usually enjoy, but these were so well written that I was able to follow exactly what was happening and could even form mental pictures of the battlefields and the positions of the two opposing armies. The Battle of Barnet kept me up late on a work night and the Battle of Tewkesbury was even more compelling. I loved the way we got to see the human side of the battles, the emotions of the people on the battlefield, rather than just descriptions of the military tactics. While Richard and Edward are clearly supposed to be our ‘heroes’, it’s a testament to Penman’s writing that I could also cry at the deaths of their ‘enemies’.

Being almost 900 pages long, it took me a long time to read this book, but that was mainly because it was so emotionally intense in places that I couldn’t read too much at once. And also, I was dreading reaching the end. The problem with a book like this is that you know what’s ultimately going to happen (at least you do if you have some background knowledge of the period or have read about it before) so I knew what the eventual fate of the characters was going to be.

This is one of the best books I’ve read this year and I can’t believe I’ve never read anything by Sharon Penman before now. At least I know I’ll have hours of reading pleasure ahead of me as I work through the rest of her novels!

The Wilding by Maria McCann

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The Wilding is set in England in 1672, just after the end of the Civil War. Our narrator is Jonathan Dymond, a young man who works as a cider-maker. Jonathan lives with his loving parents and leads a quiet, happy life, travelling around the neighbouring villages with his mobile cider-press. But when Jonathan’s father receives a mysterious letter from his dying brother, Jonathan grows suspicious and decides to visit his uncle’s widow to investigate. At his Aunt Harriet’s house he meets Tamar, one of his aunt’s servants, and begins to unravel the circumstances surrounding his uncle’s death.

Due to the fast pace and the plot twists, I would recommend reading this book in as few sittings as possible. I had started off reading it in small portions alongside another book and found it difficult to get into the story; when I decided to put my other book to one side for a while and concentrate solely on this one, I found that I flew through the rest of the novel. The story was entertaining, very compelling and kept me turning the pages.

McCann evokes the period very well. I liked the way she portrayed a small rural community in 17th century England. I also learned more than I could ever wish to know about cider-making and apples…

What does Solomon say? ‘Comfort me with apples.’ Everything about them is kind and comforting: the mild eating apple, the sharp or bitter fruit that crushes to a miraculous sweetness, the homely apples, like tried and trusted friends, that serve all purposes.

But to me, the difference between a good book and a great book is having strong characters that I can connect with – and unfortunately I felt that most of the characters in The Wilding had very little depth. As the narrator, Jonathan was boring and not very engaging. Tamar and her mother were both interesting, well-drawn characters, but as we only saw them through Jonathan’s eyes, I didn’t get to know them as well as I would have liked to. It would have been nice to have had part of the story told from Tamar’s perspective, because Jonathan was just too weak and I felt no emotional involvement with him at all.

So, I thought The Wilding was a good book but not a great one. I would recommend it to people who like well-written, fast moving historical fiction with plenty of twists and revelations.

Review: The Saffron Gate by Linda Holeman

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Linda Holeman’s books are perfect comfort reading for me. She writes the kind of historical fiction I love, with just the right combination of romance, history and adventure. One of the things I like about her books is the way she chooses such interesting settings (19th century Afghanistan in The Moonlit Cage, for example, or British-ruled India in In a Far Country). The Saffron Gate is set in 1930s Morocco, a time and place I know very little about, but Holeman really makes the setting come alive, from the noise and bustle of the souks in Marrakesh, the taste of hot couscous and mint tea, the vibrant colours of the trees and flowers.

But Morocco in the 1930s can be a dangerous place for a woman on her own, as our narrator soon discovers. Her name is Sidonie O’Shea and she’s travelling to North Africa from her home in Albany, New York in search of her fiancé Etienne Duverger, who disappeared without word, leaving behind a mysterious letter from his sister in Marrakesh. When Sidonie arrives in Morocco she realises the enormity of her task – she has no idea where to start looking for Etienne and it seems that certain people are determined to stop her from finding him at all costs. As Sidonie continues to search, she begins to fall in love with Morocco and at the same time uncovers some important truths about both Etienne and herself.

There were times when I wanted to throw this book across the room in disgust, not because it was badly written, but because one of the characters was just so horrible and so cruel to Sidonie I didn’t think I could bear to read any more. Not only that, but Sidonie is far too innocent and trusting, which started to frustrate me after a while. Somewhere in the middle of the book though, the story began to go in a different direction to what I was expecting and I started to feel more hopeful of a happy ending. Whether I got one or not I’ll leave you to find out for yourself.

I learned a lot from this book about the role of women in 1930s Morocco, how they lived, and how they were scorned and looked down upon if they didn’t have a husband. There was also a lot of information about their fashions, customs, superstitions – and some fascinating details, such as the rituals of the hammam (public baths).

I’ve enjoyed all of the Linda Holeman books that I’ve read, but I think this one has been my favourite so far. I would highly recommend The Saffron Gate to anyone who likes to read long historical fiction novels that allow you to immerse yourself in another culture for a while.

Review: The Glass of Time by Michael Cox

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This is the sequel to Michael Cox’s The Meaning of Night, which I read earlier in the year. Although I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary to read the books in the correct order, it would make sense to do so. You’ll definitely get the most out of this book if you’ve read the previous novel first and are already familiar with the plot and the characters.

The way The Meaning of Night ended had left me feeling dissatisfied, but The Glass of Time provides the perfect continuation to the story. Our narrator is Esperanza Gorst, an orphan who has been raised in France by her father’s friend Madame L’Orme and her tutor Mr Thornhaugh. When she is nineteen years old, she is sent by her guardians to the beautiful estate of Evenwood in England, where she will work as lady’s maid to Emily Carteret, the 26th Baroness Tansor. At first Esperanza doesn’t know why she has been sent to Evenwood and is told only that it is part of Madame L’Orme’s ‘Great Task’. As she learns more about her mission, however, Esperanza begins to unravel the mysteries of both her own past and Lady Tansor’s.

I enjoyed The Meaning of Night but I loved The Glass of Time even more. I thought Esperanza was a more likeable character than Edward Glyver (the narrator of The Meaning of Night), and the story also seemed to move at a faster pace. I literally didn’t want to put this book down and finished it in two days (considering it’s over 500 pages long that should indicate how much I was enjoying it).

While I was reading this book there were times when I could almost have believed it really had been written in the 19th century, as the setting, atmosphere and language are all flawlessly ‘Victorian’. Charles Dickens was clearly one of Cox’s biggest influences. In my review of The Meaning of Night I mentioned the Dickensian names Cox gave his characters, and there are more of them in The Glass of Time, from Armitage Vyse and Billy Yapp to Perseus Duport and Sukie Prout. But this time I also noticed lots of similarities to Dickens’ Bleak House: the young orphan searching for the truth of her parentage; the noblewoman with a dark secret; the way the story moves between an idyllic country house and the dark, dangerous streets of Victorian London; the intricate plot and the cleverly interlocking storylines.

I could also recognise elements of various Wilkie Collins novels including Armadale and No Name (Esperanza Gorst is even seen reading No Name at one point). In both writing style and structure this book does feel very like one of Collins’ sensation novels, filled with cliffhangers and plot twists – and with parts of the mystery being revealed through letters, diary entries and newspaper clippings. I did find some of the twists very predictable but that didn’t matter to me, because it was actually fun to be one step ahead of Esperanza, waiting for her to discover what I had already guessed.

It’s so sad that there won’t be any more books from Michael Cox, as he died of cancer in 2009, but together these two novels are the best examples of neo-Victorian fiction I’ve read: complex, atmospheric and beautifully written.

Highly Recommended

Review: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

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I’ve had a copy of this book on my shelf for a few months now but I kept putting off reading it because, after seeing so many glowing reviews, I was afraid I wouldn’t like it. Eventually I decided I would have to just get on with it, before I really was the only person left on earth who still hadn’t read it!

Somehow I had managed to avoid coming across any spoilers (and hadn’t seen the TV adaptation either) so was able to go into Fingersmith knowing almost nothing about the plot. As I don’t want to spoil the book for any of you who haven’t read it yet, all I will tell you is that Fingersmith is the story of Sue Trinder, an orphan raised by Mrs Sucksby in a den of thieves in Victorian London, and Maud Lilly, a young heiress who lives with her uncle at their country house, Briar. When an acquaintance of Mrs Sucksby’s, known as ‘Gentleman’, comes up with a plan to cheat Maud of her inheritance, Sue agrees to pose as a lady’s maid and help him with his scheme. And that’s all I’m going to say about it!

I was expecting a complex plot with lots of twists, and that was what I got. Unfortunately, I guessed what the first big plot twist was going to be! I was disappointed because I would have loved to have been shocked by it. (Actually, I think if only I’d read this a few years ago before I started reading so many Victorian sensation novels, it probably would have come as a shock.) I’m envious of those of you who didn’t see the twist coming because I can imagine it must have been stunning. Although this did have a slight impact on my enjoyment of the book, luckily there were plenty of other things that I did enjoy!

As I’ve probably mentioned before, the 19th century is one of my favourite periods to read about. I love the original Victorian classics and I love Victorian historical fiction too. Having read both this book and Affinity now, I can say that Sarah Waters has a real talent for portraying the atmosphere of Victorian London: the dark alleys, the narrow streets, the fog, the Thames. The locksmith’s shop at Lant Street, where Sue lives, is described particularly vividly.

Although I thought many of the characters in the book were very unlikeable, I could still find every one of them interesting, which must be a testament to Sarah Waters’ skills as a writer. I thought Gentleman was fascinating (funny how the word gentleman can be made to sound so sinister!). I liked the relationship between Sue and Maud too and the way the book switches perspective between the two girls, giving us an insight into each of their emotions, thoughts and motives, and allowing us to sympathise with them both.

I was really hoping I’d be able to gush about how much I loved this book, like the majority of people have. However, although I did enjoy it and couldn’t put it down at times (it didn’t feel like a 550 page book at all – I got through it in half the time it would normally take me to read a book this length), I don’t think it’s going to be one of my top reads of the year. Maybe it’s just that my expectations were a bit too high, which is not the fault of the book. Having enjoyed this one and Affinity, I’m looking forward to reading the rest of Sarah Waters’ books, starting with The Little Stranger for the RIP challenge.

Review: The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory

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This is the second book in Philippa Gregory’s new series set during the Wars of the Roses, a tumultuous period of English history in which the rival houses of York and Lancaster struggled for power. In The White Queen we met Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward IV of York, sister-in-law of Richard III and mother of the two young princes who mysteriously disappeared in the Tower of London in 1483. The Red Queen is the story of another woman who also played an important part in the Wars of the Roses: Margaret Beaufort of Lancaster, the mother of King Henry VII.

Although this is the second book in the series, I wouldn’t really describe it as a sequel – that is, The Red Queen doesn’t just pick up where The White Queen left off. The two books overlap somewhat and cover some of the same events, but from opposing sides of the conflict. You don’t really need to have read the first book to understand this one, although it would probably make sense to read them in the correct order. I really like the concept of two books each telling the story from a different perspective; throughout much of The White Queen, Margaret Beaufort and the Tudors were shadowy characters in the background, plotting and scheming from afar, so it was good to have them take centre stage in The Red Queen.

One of the themes running throughout the book is Margaret’s belief that God has chosen her to be another Joan of Arc, who will lead the House of Lancaster to victory, and that God’s will is for her son Henry Tudor to be crowned King. Margaret was not very likeable – in fact she came across as a very cold, ambitious and unpleasant person – but as far as I can tell, this is probably true of the historical Margaret. I was surprised that I could still enjoy this book despite the narrator being so unsympathetic; sometimes obnoxious characters can be fun to read about, and I found Margaret’s uncharitable thoughts about the House of York and the Woodville family quite funny at times.

I can’t really comment on the historical accuracy of this book because I have never studied the period in any depth – however, my lack of knowledge meant that I could just concentrate on enjoying the story! The Wars of the Roses were a complex and long-running series of conflicts, during which many of the key players changed their allegiances several times (and just to confuse things further, many of them also had the same names – lots of Henrys and Edwards, for example) but Philippa Gregory has made it easy to understand and follow what’s going on. I do think a more detailed family tree would have been helpful though – the one provided in the book was incomplete and I didn’t find it very useful.

The book is written in the same format as The White Queen, with most of the story being told in the first person present tense, occasionally switching to the third person to relate important events at which Margaret was not present, such as the Battle of Bosworth Field. I really like the way Philippa Gregory writes battle scenes using language that I can understand, as I often find reading about battles very confusing! The whole book is written in quite simplistic prose and can be repetitive at times, but it always held my attention and drew me into the story.

If you are new to the Wars of the Roses – a fascinating period of history – then I would recommend either The Red Queen or The White Queen as an excellent starting point. I also think that if you’ve tried Philippa Gregory in the past and didn’t find her books to your taste, it could be worth giving her another chance as these newest books are quite different from the Tudor ones that I’ve read.

Recommended

I received a copy of this book from Simon & Schuster UK for their Red Queen Blog Tour