Category: Historical Fiction

Farewell, the Tranquil Mind by RF Delderfield

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Farewell the tranquil mind! Farewell content!
Farewell the plumed troops and the big wars
That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!

These lines from Othello inspired the title of Ronald Frederick Delderfield’s 1950 novel about a period of history that was anything but tranquil – the French Revolution. Having loved Delderfield’s A Horseman Riding By trilogy (which begins with Long Summer Day), I’ve been keen to read more of his books. This one wouldn’t necessarily have been my first choice – it’s currently out of print and with very few reviews online – but I came across a copy in a charity shop and thought I would give it a try.

Farewell, the Tranquil Mind is narrated by David Treloar, a young man from a family of Devon smugglers. From an early age, David has been different from the other male Treloars; while his brothers work with their father, bringing in shipments of contraband cargo, David stays at home and helps his mother run the family farm, Westdown. He is also the only one who has learned to read and write, having been taken under the wing of the agent, Saxeby, who introduces him to French politics through Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man. However, when a smuggling operation goes wrong and an exciseman is shot dead, the blame falls on David and he is forced to flee England.

Arriving in France in the middle of the Revolution, he is befriended by André Lamotte, the nephew of a Parisian wigmaker and perfumier known as Papa Rouzet. It is through his friendship with André and the Rouzet family that David becomes involved with various revolutionary groups including the Brissotins and the Cordeliers – and falls in love with Charlotte, Rouzet’s niece. With the situation in France becoming increasingly dangerous, David and Charlotte consider escaping to England – but not only is David still wanted for the murder of Exciseman Vetch, the English also now suspect him of being a French spy.

I found this book interesting, but certainly not as enjoyable as the Horseman Riding By trilogy, and I can see why it hasn’t been reissued like most of his other novels. The blurb made it sound quite exciting – and it is, in places, but in between there’s lots of exposition and political detail and this slows the plot down, making it less entertaining than I’d expected. Despite having read other books set during the French Revolution, I had to concentrate to keep track of all the different groups and who was on which side. It wasn’t just a case of royalists versus republicans; within the republican movement there were many separate factions – as well as the two I’ve mentioned above, there were Jacobins, Girondins, Montagnards, Dantonists and several others, each with their own ideas on the goals of the Revolution and how the country should be run.

I liked David, but I felt that Charlotte’s role in the book was too small and understated for me to get a clear sense of who she was or what she was like and this meant that I didn’t feel fully invested in the romance element of the book. It’s disappointing when I think of how well defined even the minor characters were in the other books of Delderfield’s I’ve read. This novel was written very early in his career, though, which maybe explains why it doesn’t feel as accomplished. It’s worth hunting down and reading if you’re particularly interested in learning more about the political side of the French Revolution, but otherwise probably not the best place to start with Delderfield! I’m still looking forward to reading more of his books and would welcome any suggestions as to which one I should read next.

This is book 18/50 read for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Music in the Dark by Sally Magnusson

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This is the third novel by Scottish author Sally Magnusson and although I had a few problems with her first two – The Sealwoman’s Gift, the story of an Icelandic woman sold into slavery in Algeria, and The Ninth Child, about the construction of the Loch Katrine Waterworks – I still wanted to read this one because it sounded so interesting.

It begins in 1884 in a tenement in Rutherglen, a town near Glasgow, where the widowed Jamesina Bain is taking in a new lodger. The lodger is a man, newly arrived from America, where he has lived for many years. At first he has no idea who the Widow Bain is, but as he and Jamesina spend more time together, they discover that they have a shared past – they both lived through the forced eviction of Greenyards in Strathcarron.

The eviction was part of the Highland Clearances, the period when landowners in Scotland removed tenants from their estates so the land could be used for more profitable purposes – which, in the case of Greenyards, meant sheep farming. The clearances of Greenyards in 1854 and nearby Glencalvie a few years earlier, were particularly shocking, for reasons I won’t go into here as the novel will probably have more impact if you don’t already know what happened.

Sally Magnusson doesn’t delve too deeply into the politics surrounding the clearances or the reasons behind them – although Jamesina and her friends believe it was due to the Celtic people being considered inferior – and she acknowledges in her author’s note that it’s a very complex subject. Instead, she concentrates on exploring the long-term effects of the clearances, physically, emotionally and mentally, on the evicted people.

The novel is written from the perspectives of both Jamesina and her lodger, moving between the two as well as jumping backwards and forwards in time between 1884 and 1854. This structure is ultimately quite rewarding as things do eventually fall into place and we come to understand what happened during the Greenyards eviction and the sequence of events that sent Jamesina to Rutherglen and her lodger to America. However, it also means that the first half of the novel is slightly confusing and lacks focus, something that isn’t helped by the style in which Jamesina’s sections are written – often descending into a jumble of thoughts, word association and stream of consciousness. There was a reason for that style, which I understood later on, but it didn’t make this an easy book for me to get into.

I found this book very evocative of time and place, whether I was reading about Jamesina’s childhood in Greenyards or her life in the Rutherglen tenement, taking in laundry to earn a living and sleeping in the ‘kitchen bed’ to keep the bedroom available for lodgers. Magnusson also incorporates lots of other interesting issues, such as the healing power of music, the devastating impact of dementia and the joys of education. I found it very sad that the adult Jamesina, who had been such a bright child and was being taught Latin by the local minister, questions the point in being educated if you’re only going to be leading a life of drudgery.

I have deliberately not provided the name of Jamesina’s lodger, as we don’t immediately know who he is or how he fits into her life and I thought I would leave you to make that discovery for yourself. This is a fascinating novel in many ways and I did enjoy it once I got past the halfway point, which is why I don’t like abandoning books too early!

Thanks to John Murray Press for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 17/50 read for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman

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The Ghost Theatre, Mat Osman’s second novel, is the story of two young people who meet on the rooftops of Elizabethan London. One of them is Shay, a teenage girl who dresses as a boy and belongs to a community of bird-worshippers. As the novel opens, Shay has released some caged birds from captivity in a shop and is being chased by the angry owner; with the instincts of a bird herself, she flees upwards to the roof and here she has her first encounter with Nonesuch. Taking his name from Henry VIII’s grand palace, Nonesuch claims to be the abducted son of a great lord, forced into performing at the Blackfriars Theatre, dressing as a woman to play leading female roles such as Cleopatra.

As Shay begins to fall in love with Nonesuch, she helps him to create the Ghost Theatre, a troupe of young actors who stage special plays in secret locations all over London. But it is another talent of Shay’s – her ability to tell fortunes – that brings her to the attention of Queen Elizabeth I and leads her into danger.

Mat Osman is the brother of the author and TV presenter Richard Osman and also the bassist in the British rock band Suede. I haven’t read his first novel, The Ruins, and had no idea what to expect from this one, but I can tell you it’s a very unusual book – not purely historical fiction but not quite fantasy either. It’s set in a city we can recognise as the London of the late Elizabethan period – there are outbreaks of plague, attempted rebellions, references to popular Elizabethan sports such as cock-fighting and bear-baiting – but there are also some imagined elements. As far as I know there was no community of Aviscultans living in Birdland and predicting the murmurations of starlings!

I have to be honest and say that this book wasn’t really for me. Perhaps because of the blend of alternate history with real history, it didn’t have the strong period feel I prefer – the dialogue was too modern, for example. I also found it quite difficult to focus on the plot; the imagery and descriptions were lovely but slightly distracting and sometimes I read several pages without really absorbing any of the words. If I had to compare this book to anything, it would be Megan Campisi’s The Sin Eater, another novel set in an alternate Elizabethan world and which I had some similar problems with. Incidentally, there is a sin eater in Osman’s novel too, although only mentioned in passing!

It would seem that Osman’s own love of music has influenced this story, with a lot of emphasis placed on the power of song, performing on stage and entertaining an audience. The novel as a whole is imaginative, creative, dreamlike and completely original. I wish I had been able to enjoy it more, but the right reader will love it.

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

This is book 16/50 read for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Homecoming by Kate Morton

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‘People who grow up in old houses come to understand that buildings have characters. That they have memories and secrets to tell. One must merely learn to listen, and then to comprehend, as with any language.’

The Christmas Eve of 1959 is a hot summer’s day in South Australia. Isabel Turner takes her four children out into the grounds of their Adelaide Hills home for a picnic – and this is where they are found later that day by a man delivering groceries. At first he thinks they are asleep in the sun but, sensing an unnatural stillness, he comes closer and makes the shocking discovery that the Turners are all dead. The local police are convinced that Isabel, who is believed to have been depressed, must have poisoned herself and the children, but the case is never fully solved and becomes the subject of a true crime book, As If They Were Asleep, written by American journalist Daniel Miller.

Almost sixty years later, in 2018, Jess Turner-Bridges is living in London when she receives a call from a hospital in Sydney informing her that her beloved grandmother, Nora, has had a fall and is in a serious condition. Jess hasn’t been back to Australia for years, but her grandmother is the person who raised her when her own mother was unable to, so she leaves for Sydney immediately to be by Nora’s side. Alone in Nora’s house, Jess discovers Daniel Miller’s book in her grandmother’s bedroom and is drawn into the story of the Turner Family Tragedy. Having been unaware until now of her own connection with this tragic incident, Jess is shocked by what she reads, but now that Nora is dying it seems that her chance to find out the truth could be slipping away.

Homecoming, like the other books I’ve read by Australian author Kate Morton, is deeply layered, containing stories within stories, multiple viewpoints and alternating timelines. It’s a long novel and I felt there were things that could probably have been left out without affecting the story too much – Jess’s life in London at the beginning and the backgrounds of some of the minor characters, for example – but otherwise I was completely gripped and read it much more quickly than I would usually read such a long book.

I loved the descriptions of rural Australia and the portrayal of 1950s Tambilla, the small town where the story takes place. As the title suggests, the theme of ‘homecoming’ plays an important part in the story: what it’s like to come home after a long absence and the idea of ‘home’ being not just the opposite of ‘away’ but also of ‘loneliness’. And for forty-year-old Jess, despite living in London for most of her adult life, Australia is still the place where she feels most at home.

The mystery at the heart of the novel – the deaths of Isabel Turner and her children – is not resolved until the end of the book and although the clues were all there, I didn’t pick up on them so didn’t work out what happened. However, there’s another family secret which has big implications for Jess and I found that one very easy to guess, which took away some of the fun. Maybe I’ve just read too many books like this one, but I thought it was very obvious! I did very much enjoy reading Daniel Miller’s As If They Were Asleep (not a real book, of course) which is reproduced in full, a few chapters here and there. It sheds some light on both mysteries, as well as allowing us to see the Turners and their friends and neighbours from a different perspective.

I do wonder whether this book might have worked just as well as a straightforward crime novel set in the 1950s, without the additional family secrets and the Jess and Nora storylines, but I know that’s not what Kate Morton does and probably not what her readers would expect from her! Anyway, apart from guessing the twist too soon, I did love this book and still have one or two of her earlier ones to look forward to.

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

This is book 15/50 read for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Prize Women by Caroline Lea

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Caroline Lea chooses such interesting subjects and settings for her novels. The first one I read, The Glass Woman, was a Gothic novel set in 17th century Iceland, and the second, The Metal Heart, explored the building of a chapel in the Orkney Islands by Italian prisoners of war. In her latest novel, Prize Women, she takes us to Canada in the early 20th century and introduces us to two women who are taking part in a very unusual contest: the Great Stork Derby.

When Canadian millionaire Charles Vance Millar dies in 1926, he leaves behind a very controversial will. He bequeaths shares in a brewery to a group of teetotal ministers, a house in Jamaica to three men who hate each other, jockey club stocks to anti-horse racing campaigners – and in the strangest bequest of all, he leaves a large sum of money to the Toronto woman who gives birth to the most children in a ten year period.

Lily di Marco is trapped in an unhappy marriage so when her town is hit by an earthquake, she sees a chance to escape and flees to Toronto with her young son. Arriving in the city tired and homeless, Lily meets Mae Thebault, the wife of a wealthy factory owner, who agrees to let Lily stay with them in return for helping to take care of the Thebaults’ five children. Despite their differences in background and social status, Lily and Mae quickly become close friends – but then comes the Wall Street Crash and the start of the Great Depression.

By this point Lily already has several babies who will count towards the Great Stork Derby and decides to enter the contest in the hope of winning the money and improving the lives of herself and her children. But the Thebaults’ financial situation has also changed and Mae finds herself in desperate need of money too. Soon the former best friends are competing against each other, but with the outcome due to be decided by a jury, which of the women – if either – will be declared the winner?

Lily’s story is very moving and often heartbreaking. It’s so sad to see the way she is treated by her violent, alcoholic husband, the racism and discrimination she faces due to her Italian background, the squalid, impoverished surroundings she lives in and the impact all of this has on the health and wellbeing of her children. I was in tears several times, so be prepared – this is not exactly a cheerful, uplifting read! Mae also has obstacles to overcome and suffers some personal traumas, but her story didn’t affect me the way Lily’s did and the way she behaved during the later stages of the contest annoyed me, even while I understood her reasons. Maybe because the two women end up in direct competition with each other, it makes it difficult to side with both of them at the same time.

The Great Stork Derby itself – something that really happened, by the way – is a cruel and irresponsible concept in many ways, but even more cruel were the modifications made to the will by the courts, stating that children who were stillborn or born outside of wedlock wouldn’t count. Also, there was no consideration given to the effect on women’s bodies of so many pregnancies in a short space of time, or how poor families would afford to feed so many children if they didn’t win the prize money. Naturally, the contest received a lot of media attention at the time and also caused a lot of debate around contraception and women’s rights.

I enjoyed this book, despite the sadness, and I enjoyed getting to know Lily and Mae. However, there was one aspect of their storyline that I found unconvincing and slightly contrived; it wasn’t enough to spoil the book for me, but it was the only thing I didn’t like in this otherwise excellent novel.

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

This is book 14/50 read for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Rivers of Treason by KJ Maitland

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This is the third book in KJ Maitland’s 17th century mystery series and continues Daniel Pursglove’s search for the mysterious Spero Pettingar. If you haven’t read the first two (The Drowned City and Traitor in the Ice) I strongly recommend that you do so before starting this book. Even though I’ve read both of them, the plot is so complex I found it difficult to keep track of what was happening at times, so I think coming straight to this book could be quite confusing.

The series is set in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a failed attempt by Catholic conspirators to blow up the Houses of Parliament and assassinate the King (James I of England and VI of Scotland). In the first book, Daniel Pursglove was released from Newgate Prison by the King’s advisor, FitzAlan, on the condition that he would hunt down and identify one of the escaped conspirators, a man known only as Spero Pettingar. As Rivers of Treason opens, Daniel has still not caught Spero but the mystery surrounding his whereabouts continues to deepen.

It’s now 1607 and the Great Frost that has held England in its grip during the winter is beginning to thaw. Without FitzAlan’s permission, Daniel has headed north to his childhood home in Yorkshire, not on the King’s business this time, but hoping to find answers about his own past. When an old woman is found murdered, however, Daniel finds himself under suspicion and is forced to flee across the country, pursued by a sinister man with a distinctive black and white beard. Has Daniel stumbled upon the trail of Spero Pettingar at last or has he become caught up in another, even bigger conspiracy?

I enjoyed this book, despite feeling that there was too much going on, a criticism I’ve had of the first two books in the series as well. I would have preferred a tighter focus on the central mystery, which often seems to get lost under the numerous subplots Maitland throws into the story. Having said that, some of the subplots were quite fascinating, such as one involving a London apothecary commissioned by the King to make an antidote to poison. After narrowly avoiding death in the Gunpowder Plot, it’s understandable that James has developed a paranoia about further attempts on his life! During Daniel’s time in Yorkshire, meanwhile, we learn a little bit more about our protagonist’s past and although I still don’t feel that we know him very well, it was good to have some questions answered.

I also love the atmosphere Maitland creates in this series, making it easy to feel immersed in the early 17th century, particularly where she describes the lives of the ordinary people Daniel meets on his travels but also in her descriptions of the Jacobean court. In this book, we follow the preparations for an elaborate masque (play or entertainment) written by the playwright Ben Jonson, with the set and costumes designed by the architect Inigo Jones. Jonson and Jones really did collaborate on many court masques, but this is the first time I’ve read about their work together, so I found that aspect of the story interesting.

Rivers of Treason finishes on something of a cliffhanger, leaving us wondering what Daniel is going to do next. I hope we won’t have to wait too long for the next book so that we can find out!

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

This is book 13/50 read for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

The Spanish Bride by Georgette Heyer – #1940Club

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My final read for this week’s 1940 Club, hosted by Simon and Karen, is by an author you can nearly always count on to have had at least one book published in the relevant year! Two Georgette Heyer novels appeared in 1940 – The Corinthian, which I read a few years ago and loved – and this one, The Spanish Bride. I did try to read The Spanish Bride once before and couldn’t get into it, but I thought this would be a good opportunity to attempt it again.

The first thing to say is that this is not a typical Heyer novel at all, which I think is partly why I struggled with it the first time; being very new to Heyer then and enchanted by her witty dialogue, entertaining plots and portrayal of fashionable Regency society, I had expected more of the same and been disappointed to find that this book was so different. This time I was prepared and managed to finish it, but it certainly hasn’t become a favourite.

The Spanish Bride is set during the Peninsular War, the conflict fought on the Iberian Peninsula by the British, Spanish and Portuguese armies against the French, forming part of the Napoleonic Wars. The novel begins with the siege of Badajoz which ended in a French surrender in April 1812. With the victorious troops on the rampage, drinking, looting and raping, fourteen-year-old orphan Juana and her sister seek refuge outside the city at the camp of the 95th Rifles. It is here that Juana meets Brigade-Major Harry Smith, who falls in love with her instantly, and the two are married within days.

Refusing to be parted from her new husband, Juana remains with Harry for the rest of the campaign, riding with him from camp to camp, from battlefield to battlefield. She finds life in the Duke of Wellington’s army challenging – the terrain can be difficult, particularly under the blazing summer sun or in the depths of a freezing winter – but she’s determined not to complain and in the process she wins the hearts of not just Harry but the rest of the regiment as well.

Harry Smith and Juana María de los Dolores de León Smith were both real historical figures. Harry’s life and career is well documented, including in his own autobiography published posthumously in 1901, while Juana is commemorated in the name of Ladysmith, the city in South Africa where Harry later served as the governor of Cape Colony. However, this book doesn’t cover any of that period, concentrating mainly on the Peninsular campaign (with a brief interlude in England where Juana is sent while Harry takes part in the War of 1812 in America) and ending at Waterloo in 1815. In her Author’s Note, Heyer describes her research for the novel, which involved reading the diaries and writings of various members of the Light Division, as well as officers of other regiments and even the Duke of Wellington himself.

The age difference between the two main characters could be a problem for some readers – Harry is twenty-five when he marries Juana, who is eleven years younger – but that’s how old they were in real life and it must have been considered acceptable in nineteenth century Spain even if not today. The ‘romance’ aspect of the book is quite understated compared to the military aspect (and as they get together so early in the story, it’s more of a portrait of an unconventional marriage than a traditional romance in any case). Juana does feel very young and often immature, but at other times she displays wisdom, compassion and courage beyond her years and it’s easy to see why she was so well liked and respected.

No, Harry thought, remembering long marches under molten skies, bivouacs in streaming woods, the fording of swirling rivers, mattresses spread in filthy, flea-ridden hovels, the washing of gangrenous wounds which would have made an English miss swoon with horror: she was not like the girls at home.

This book is as well written as you would expect from Heyer and, as I’ve said, amazingly well researched; my problem with it is entirely down to personal taste and no reflection on the quality of the book itself. I’m just not very interested in military history and while I can cope with a few battle scenes and some brief discussion of tactics and strategies, there was so much of that in this book that I struggled to stay interested at times. But books like this one and An Infamous Army show that Heyer was a much more versatile author than she is often given credit for and I think anyone who has avoided her because they don’t like romantic fiction would be surprised if they tried one of these. And don’t forget she also wrote several mystery novels – although I haven’t read all of them, the three I have read were very enjoyable.

This is book 12/50 read for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.