Category: Historical Fiction

Simon the Coldheart by Georgette Heyer – #1925Club

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This week, Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon of Stuck in a Book are hosting another of their very popular clubs, where we all read and write about books published in the same year. This time it’s 1925! When deciding what to read for the clubs, I usually start by looking to see whether any of my favourite authors had a book published in that year. Georgette Heyer had such a long career there’s nearly always something suitable for whichever year it is and she didn’t disappoint this time.

Simon the Coldheart, published (obviously) in 1925, is one of several straight historical novels Heyer wrote, rather than one of the Georgian or Regency romances for which she’s most famous. It does feel very different and I don’t think it will necessarily appeal to fans of her other books, but I still liked it.

We first meet Simon in the early 1400s when, at the age of fourteen, he presents himself at the castle of Fulk of Montlice, demanding to join his service. Simon is the illegitimate son of Fulk’s bitter enemy, Lord Geoffrey of Malvallet, but Fulk is impressed by his confidence and determination and offers him a position as page. As the years go by, Simon repays Fulk’s faith in him, serving him well for several years before being knighted by the King and gifted lands of his own.

Now known as Sir Simon of Beauvallet (a play on the name of his father, Malvallet, and on the name of his lands, Fair Pastures), Simon has his life in order, exactly as he wants it. His friend Alan, Fulk’s son, and his half-brother Geoffrey, however, believe there’s still something missing from Simon’s life: a wife. Simon insists that he has no interest in women and no plans to get married. But when he meets Lady Margaret of Belrémy, it seems he may have met his match.

I’ve been meaning to read Simon the Coldheart since I read Heyer’s Beauvallet a few years ago – technically a sequel to this book, although it’s set several generations later and features completely different characters. I didn’t find this one as much fun as Beauvallet, which is an Elizabethan pirate novel, but I still found it quite enjoyable. Simon is a strong character, if not particularly easy to like at first – he becomes known as Coldheart for a reason – but later in the book we start to see a more human side to him, first in the close friendships he forms with Alan and Geoffrey, then in his kindness to children and finally his romance with Margaret, which forms a relatively small part of the novel. I also loved his relationship with Fulk, who comes to love him like a son (sometimes, it seems, more than his real son).

As she always does, Heyer attempts to write using language appropriate to the era, which in this case means lots of ‘thees’ and ‘thous’. Today’s historical fiction authors tend not to do this, so it does make the book feel dated – which again won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I didn’t have a problem with it. I didn’t find the romance element of the book particularly satisfying, though; Margaret is introduced quite late in the novel and Heyer’s usual witty dialogue between hero and heroine isn’t much in evidence here. I found Margaret a more interesting character when she’s away having adventures on her own than I did in her scenes with Simon.

Apparently Simon the Coldheart was one of six books Heyer tried to suppress in the 1930s (the others were another historical novel, The Great Roxhythe, and four contemporary novels) as she considered them inferior early works. In 1977, a few years after her death, her son gave permission for this one to be republished. In general I believe an author’s wishes should be respected, but I also think she was maybe being too hard on Simon the Coldheart – it obviously isn’t one of her best, but it’s not a bad book at all. It got my 1925 Club reading off to a good start and I hope to post another review later in the week, as well as looking at some of my favourite reads from previous club years.

A Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Solving a Murder by F. H. Petford

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Twenty-two-year-old Alma Timperley is stunned when she learns that her Aunt Gladys has died, leaving her hotel in Cornwall to Alma in her will. The news comes as a particular surprise as Alma didn’t even know that Gladys existed in the first place! Still, she accompanies her lawyer, James Nascent, to Falmouth on the Cornish coast to inspect her inheritance and likes what she sees. The Timperley Spiritualist Hotel overlooks the town below and has a very special clientele. The people who come to stay are hoping to make contact with loved ones beyond the grave and their reservation fee includes three sessions with one of the hotel’s two mediums, George Weaver and Valentine Wragge.

Alma has always believed she has psychic abilities herself, so she’s intrigued and decides to immediately take ownership of the hotel. She soon finds that she has more than ghosts to worry about, however, because it’s 1914 and war has recently broken out with Germany. Why has a book written in German been hidden inside a cooking pot in the hotel kitchen? And who turned on a light in the tower, guiding an enemy Zeppelin in from the shore? Is someone in the hotel spying for the Germans?

This is the first book in a planned series of novels starring Alma Timperley and based on this one I’ll definitely be looking out for more. It wasn’t really what I’d expected, though; the title and cover gave me the impression this would be a humorous cosy mystery set in a haunted house, but it’s actually something very different. There’s no ghost hunting (unless you count mediums trying to contact spirits) and there’s not really a mystery either. The identity of the German spy – referred to as Excalibur – is revealed to the reader very early in the book and although Alma and the police don’t know who it is, I would have preferred to be kept in suspense as well, wondering who it was.

Despite the book not really being as advertised – which is a shame, as it seems to have resulted in the book receiving worse reviews than it deserves – I still enjoyed it. I particularly loved the Cornish setting: Petford does a great job of bringing Falmouth to life, with its bay and harbour and local landmarks such as Pendennis Castle, which played a part in the town’s defences during the war, and the King’s Pipe, a chimney used to burn tobacco illegally smuggled into the country. We also learn a lot about PK Porthcurno, once the world’s largest telegraph station where many cables from overseas came ashore and now a museum open to the public.

I think this book has a lot to offer, as long as you approach it as historical fiction about German spies in the First World War and not a ghost story or a detective novel. It covered some aspects of the war I hadn’t read much about before and it held my interest from beginning to end. I liked Alma and her friends and hope to meet them again soon.

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

Book 4 for RIP XX

Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon

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This is another book that I probably wouldn’t have read if it hadn’t been shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize this year (I have an ongoing project where I’m attempting to read all of the shortlists for that particular prize). I’m glad I decided to read it, because after a slow start I ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would at first.

Glorious Exploits is set in 412 BC during the Peloponnesian War. An attempt by Athens to invade Sicily has ended in failure and thousands of defeated Athenian soldiers have been imprisoned in a disused quarry in Syracuse where they are slowly starving to death. Gelon and Lampo, two out of work Syracusan potters, occasionally take food to the quarry and in return the prisoners recite lines from plays by the Athenian tragedian Euripides. Gelon loves Greek theatre and when he discovers that some of the prisoners are familiar
with Medea and, even better, Euripides’ newest work, The Trojan Women, he comes up with a plan to stage both plays in the quarry, with the Athenians as actors.

Lampo is our narrator and tells his story using lots of modern Irish vernacular (Lennon is an Irish author) and lots of swearing. He also has a dry sense of humour and I know many people have found the book hilarious, although it didn’t quite work as a comedy for me. Whether or not you’ll like the writing style is entirely down to personal taste, I suppose. I tend to get irritated by historical novels written in very modern, anachronistic language, although as I said when I read Natasha Pulley’s The Hymn to Dionysus earlier this year, it bothers me less when the book is set in the ancient world. I got used to Lampo’s voice after a while and accepted it.

The relationship between Lampo and Gelon forms an important part of the novel. They are very different people but their friendship has endured since childhood. Lampo is illiterate and directionless but always seems cheerful and ready with a joke – until we start to see signs that there’s more to him than meets the eye and we see another side when he falls in love with a slave girl, Lyra. Gelon has a more serious nature and has taught himself to read, developing a love of Greek plays. He’s afraid that the defeat of Athens could mean that the work of great Athenian playwrights like Euripides become lost to history, which is why he comes up with his idea to keep the plays alive. Gelon knows that it’s possible for warring nations to appreciate each other’s art and culture, even if not everyone would agree.

Towards the end, things take a surprisingly dark turn and I found the final part of the book quite moving. It seemed I was more emotionally invested in the story than I thought! I’m not sure if I would rush to read more books by Ferdia Lennon, but I’m glad I stuck with this one despite initially thinking it wouldn’t be for me.

The Predicament by William Boyd

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After finishing last year’s Gabriel’s Moon, I was pleased to learn that William Boyd was writing a second book about Gabriel Dax. I’ve now read it and enjoyed it even more than the first.

The Predicament begins in March 1963 with travel writer Gabriel trying to lead a peaceful life in a small East Sussex village. However, his parallel life in the world of espionage just won’t leave him alone. His Russian contact, Natalia Arkadina of the KGB, still believes he is a double agent working on behalf of Russia and has requested a meeting with him to give him his latest assignment. Meanwhile, Faith Green of MI6 has also approached him with a new mission: to go to Guatemala and interview Padre Tiago, the man expected to win the upcoming presidential election there.

Gabriel is not thrilled about getting involved in spying again, but agrees to the Guatemala plan as he’ll be able to combine the trip with some research for his new book on the world’s rivers. Unfortunately, things go badly wrong and he leaves the country in a hurry, having made himself the target of some unscrupulous people. It’s not long before he is given a new task, though – this time he must go to Germany and try to prevent an assassination attempt on President Kennedy, who is visiting West Berlin.

I don’t often choose to read spy thrillers, but one of the things I find compelling about this series is that Gabriel is such a reluctant and accidental spy. He never intended to get mixed up in international espionage and is really not very good at it! We do see him adding to his skill set in this book, though, being trained on how to lose someone who is trying to follow him and how to use everyday items as weapons. And although his Guatemala mission is disastrous, he does play a part in foiling the conspiracy to kill JFK in Berlin (I’m sure it’s not a spoiler to say that it was foiled as everyone knows that he wasn’t assassinated in Germany). Boyd does a good job of creating tension in the Berlin sections, despite it already being obvious what the outcome is going to be!

Gabriel’s Moon probably had slightly more depth, as it also featured a storyline about a childhood trauma that affected Gabriel’s mental health, but I preferred this book overall – possibly because when I read the first one I was comparing it unfavourably with Boyd’s previous and very different novel, The Romantic, which I loved. And although the mental health storyline is pushed into the background in this book, Gabriel does find himself facing some other personal predicaments: he is being accused of plagiarism by another travel author, who is not pleased that Gabriel has written about the same group of islands; his ex-girlfriend Lorraine is trying to rekindle their relationship; and Gabriel himself is continuing to struggle with his feelings for his MI6 handler, Faith Green. Faith is an enigmatic character – is she really romantically interested in Gabriel or is she just stringing him along for her own purposes?

The Predicament is an entertaining read with some fascinating settings – Guatemala on the brink of a political revolution and post-war Berlin shortly after the construction of the Berlin Wall. Throughout the book, Gabriel’s Russian contacts, Natalia and Varvara, keep pushing for him to also visit Moscow, so maybe that will finally happen in the next book! This is apparently intended to be a trilogy, so hopefully we’ll get answers to some of the other questions in the final novel too. Something to look forward to.

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

The Elopement by Gill Hornby

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This is the third novel Gill Hornby has written based on the lives of members of Jane Austen’s extended family. I loved Miss Austen and Godmersham Park, so I was looking forward to reading The Elopement, which focuses on Jane’s niece, Fanny Knight, and Fanny’s stepdaughter, Mary Dorothea Knatchbull.

Fanny’s father is Jane’s brother Edward, who was made the legal heir of their wealthy Knight relatives and inherited three estates at Steventon, Chawton and Godmersham (Fanny appears as a secondary character in Godmersham Park). For a long time it seems likely that Fanny is going to remain a spinster until, in 1820, she marries Sir Edward Knatchbull of Mersham-le-Hatch at the age of twenty-eight. She doesn’t love him and he doesn’t love her, but Fanny has always been a practical person and decides that it could still be a marriage that works well for both of them.

Sir Edward has five children from his previous marriage and Fanny is sure she can be a good stepmother to them. However, there’s tension between Fanny and the only daughter, Mary Dorothea, from the beginning. Fanny is not a naturally loving or compassionate person and Mary finds it impossible to warm to her, viewing her as aloof and distant. Things come to a head when Mary falls in love with a man her father considers unsuitable. She knows she can expect no empathy or understanding from Fanny, so is forced to do something drastic.

It took me a while to get into this book. The pacing is uneven, with the first half being very slow and the second much more gripping. The title is maybe slightly misleading, as the elopement doesn’t happen until late in the book and doesn’t really play a big part in the story, although the buildup and consequences do. I think I would have preferred not to have known there was going to be an elopement so I wouldn’t have spent most of the book wondering when it was going to happen.

Hornby focuses less on Mary Dorothea’s romance and more on the relationship between stepmother and stepdaughter, which gets off to a bad start and worsens throughout the book. I went from feeling sympathetic towards Fanny to disliking her more and more as she tries to align herself with her husband’s views and closes her mind to Mary’s feelings. Still, the portrayal of Fanny and Sir Edward’s marriage illustrates the limited options available to 19th century women who would often marry out of duty, necessity or to meet society’s expectations. Mary is trying to do something different and marry for love.

In her author’s note at the end of the book, Hornby explains that she has based the novel on Fanny Knight’s own diaries which she kept from 1804 to 1872. I haven’t read the diaries so I don’t know how the personality of the real Fanny compares to the fictional one, but I was sorry not to have liked her more considering that Jane Austen apparently described her as her “favourite niece”.

I’ve learned that following the recent TV adaptation of Miss Austen which was shown earlier this year, The Elopement is also going to be adapted under the title Miss Austen Returns (I’m not sure why they’ve missed out Godmersham Park). Cassandra Austen, the star of Miss Austen, only appears once or twice in this book so I imagine she’s going to be given a much bigger role in the new adaptation. I’ll be interested to see what Gill Hornby’s next book will be about; I’m sure there’s still more she could write about the Austen family and there seems to be a never-ending appetite for it by readers and TV viewers!

Thanks to Random House UK, Cornerstone for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The House of Seymour by Joanna Hickson

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I’ve enjoyed some of Joanna Hickson’s previous historical fiction novels, so I was looking forward to reading her latest one, The House of Seymour, which is the first in a new trilogy. Sadly, I found it disappointing and I probably won’t be continuing with the next two books, but there were still enough things to like that I don’t feel I’ve wasted my time.

This book is not about Henry VIII’s wife Jane Seymour as you might expect, but her ancestors – specifically her great-great-grandmother, Isabel Williams, and her husband, John Seymour. We first meet Isabel, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, in 1424 when she becomes betrothed to John, the ambitious Lord of Wolf Hall in Savernake Forest, Wiltshire. From very early in their marriage, it becomes clear that their relationship is not going to be a happy one. John is a cruel and ruthless man preoccupied with political advancement and winning the support of the Duke of Gloucester, protector of the young king, Henry VI.

Isabel finds some solace in her relationship with John’s young cousin Edmund, a much kinder man than her husband, and also a new friendship with Jess, a shepherdess who has been forced to leave her home near the village of Avebury. Jess and a farm hand, Addy (Adhelm), had taken shelter from a storm in the Long Barrow – an ancient burial chamber – only for Addy to disappear without trace. Accused of witchcraft, Jess takes refuge at Easton Priory where she meets Isabel and is given a position in her household.

The narrative is divided mainly between Isabel and Jess, although we also occasionally see things from the perspective of John and other characters. The voices and attitudes of both women felt too modern for my taste – I prefer to feel fully immersed in the period when I read historical fiction – so I couldn’t quite manage to believe in them as convincing 15th century people. As my blogging friend Jessica of The Bookworm Chronicles explains in her review, even using the name Jess is an anachronism.

I did love the setting – or rather settings, as there are two main ones. The first is Wolf Hall, or Wulfhall to use the spelling of the time, which becomes home to Isabel’s family after John inherits the wardenship of Savernake Forest. The other is Avebury, an atmospheric place with its Neolithic stone circles, ancient barrows and monuments. Although the characters do sometimes cross paths with members of the royal court, most of the book takes place in these two settings and the surrounding areas so the focus is mostly on Isabel’s household and Jess and her family. The problem here is that none of the characters really came to life for me and most of them lacked depth. The book as a whole felt a lot lighter and less substantial than Hickson’s other recent ones.

Although I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I would have liked, it was still good to learn a little bit about the Seymour family and their history. I’m probably not going to read the second book when it comes out, but I’ll be interested to hear whether it’s stronger than this one.

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

The Portrait Artist by Dani Heywood-Lonsdale

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Dani Heywood-Lonsdale’s debut novel, The Portrait Artist, is an art mystery set in Victorian England with hints of the supernatural and some similarities to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

When a portrait of a Kunekune pig is left on the steps of the National Gallery in London one morning in 1890, it sends the art world into turmoil. Both the signature and the technique point to the artist being the mysterious Timothy Ponden-Hall, thought to have been dead for the last fifty years. Ponden-Hall, an explorer and painter, caused a sensation earlier in his career, when rumours spread that he had discovered the elixir of life during a sea voyage and was using it to bestow immortality on those who sat for his portraits. Does this new portrait mean the artist is still alive – and why has he started to paint again after so many decades of silence?

Art historian and Ponden-Hall expert Solomon Oak is brought in to investigate, but as he tries to interpret the new painting and its meaning, he makes some discoveries that cause him to question everything he thought he knew about the reclusive artist. Meanwhile Solomon’s daughter Alice has been befriended by Lou, the coachwoman, who gives her a job helping to deliver parcels. But why do their deliveries always take place under cover of darkness – and could Alice’s new job and new friend lead her to solve the mystery of Ponden-Hall before her father gets there first?

I enjoyed The Portrait Artist. My only problem with the book came towards the end, when the truth about Ponden-Hall was revealed. It wasn’t exactly a surprise – I had already at least partly guessed it – but it required a huge suspension of disbelief which was just too difficult for me to accept. Still, the story up to that point had been fascinating to follow. Solomon and Alice Oak are both characters I liked and I thought the complex relationship between them was handled well, with Alice feeling that she can never quite live up to the memory of her late sister Emma, who had been the closest to their father. Solomon, for his part, has to come to terms with Alice growing into a woman and not wanting to follow the path through life he has mapped out for her. Another interesting character is Grace, an artists’ model from a humble background who longs to be part of the world of academia and sees a possible route to that by involving herself in the Ponden-Hall mystery.

Heywood-Lonsdale explores a lot of different issues throughout the novel, including the idea of the dead being immortalised through art, both literally and figuratively; how adding to our knowledge of the artist and the sitter can change the way we view and appreciate a painting; and the difficulties of being of mixed race heritage in Victorian society. The supernatural element involving the question of whether youth can be preserved in a painting is mainly there to explain the level of mystique that has formed around Timothy Ponden-Hall and we can choose how much we want to believe.

Apart from my problems with the ending, I think this is an impressive first novel and I hope Dani Heywood-Lonsdale will write more.

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