Category: Historical Fiction

The Rebel Daughter by Miranda Malins

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In The Rebel Daughter, Miranda Malins returns to the family at the heart of her previous novel, The Puritan Princess: the Cromwells. However, where The Puritan Princess told the story of Frances, Oliver Cromwell’s youngest daughter, in this second novel we get to know Bridget – or Biddy – the eldest of his four daughters.

In 1643, nineteen-year-old Bridget is living at home in Ely, Cambridgeshire with her mother and younger brothers and sisters while her father and eldest brother are away fighting in the civil war that is currently tearing England apart. Bridget longs to join the men in shaping the future of their country, and although she watches with envy as her younger sister Betty falls in love, she knows she wants more from life than just to be a wife and mother. When she receives a marriage proposal from General Henry Ireton, a fellow commander of her father’s in the Parliamentarian army, she decides to accept in the hope that this marriage will provide the opportunities she’s been hoping for.

The relationship between Bridget and Henry is not a passionate or romantic one, but they get on well together and Bridget is able to involve herself in politics, offering opinions and advice as the war begins to come to an end and her husband and father must decide what happens next. The majority of the novel is set during this period, when with the Royalists defeated, the question of what to do about the King arises and Parliament and the army split into opposing factions, each with their own views on this very important question.

Bridget’s position as a member of the Cromwell and Ireton families leads her to cross paths with other important historical figures of the period such as Thomas Fairfax, commander of the New Model Army, and his wife Anne, and political activist Elizabeth Lilburne and her husband John Lilburne, one of the leaders of the movement known as the Levellers. Bridget herself doesn’t have a large role to play in politics, but Oliver and Henry value her input and she feels she is able to have a small amount of influence on their decision-making.

As well as the political situation, the novel also explores the human cost of war. Bridget experiences this for herself with the deaths of her brother and cousin and later, on a wider scale, when she sees the devastation of besieged Colchester, filled with crumbling buildings, smoke-filled streets and starving children – and this is nothing compared to the horrors she witnesses when she crosses the Irish Sea to join Henry after his appointment as Lord Deputy of Ireland. I wished we had seen more of life away from Parliament and the constant wrangling over the fate of the King, which did get a bit tedious at times.

Of the two books, I think I preferred The Puritan Princess, but I did find this one interesting and am pleased to have had the chance to learn more about Bridget Cromwell. I wonder whether Miranda Malins will write about the other two Cromwell sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, or whether she’ll be moving onto a new subject for her next novel.

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

This is book 6/50 read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2022.

The Leviathan by Rosie Andrews

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I was drawn to this book, Rosie Andrews’ debut, by the title, the cover and the comparisons to other books I’ve read, such as The Essex Serpent, Once Upon a River and The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock – comparisons which for once turned out to be quite accurate!

It’s 1643 and Thomas Treadwater is on his way home to the family farmhouse in Norfolk. England is currently torn apart by civil war but Thomas has been summoned home from the fighting by his sixteen-year-old sister, Esther, who has accused a new servant of seducing their widowed father. Arriving back at the farm, Thomas finds the sheep dead in their field, with no visible signs of violence – and there are bigger shocks to come. Entering the house, he learns from Esther that their father has suffered a stroke and is dying, and the servant, Chrissa, has been arrested on suspicion of witchcraft.

What follows is a story which at first appears to be a tale of witch hunting in the 17th century, but eventually develops into something even darker and more unusual as Thomas discovers links with a shipwreck that occurred years earlier. The narrative moves back and forth between the 1640s and the year 1703, where Thomas is now living in ‘a place far from the sea’ and is trying to come to terms with what happened in the past and the impact it is still having on his life in the present.

I loved the first half of The Leviathan. The atmosphere is wonderful and the author creates an authentic sense of time and place through attention to detail and careful research. The pace is slow as characters are introduced and the scene is set, but I quickly became drawn into the story, intrigued by the mystery surrounding the ‘witch’ Chrissa Moore and the strange events at the Treadwater farm. There’s a real aura of mystery as Thomas begins to investigate, speaking to the witchfinder, the magistrate and the witch herself in an attempt to find out what is really going on.

In the second half of the book, the magical realism elements of the novel come to the forefront and the story then goes too far in that direction for my taste. The pace speeds up and things become more exciting, but the sinister, slowburning sense of foreboding that I loved in the earlier chapters was gone. I was still invested enough in this part of the book to read on to the end and I was interested to see that John Milton (author of Paradise Lost) makes some appearances as Thomas Treadwater’s former tutor and has some input into the unfolding of the story, taking it into the territory of biblical allegory. This is a novel with lots of layers, and although it wasn’t a complete success for me, I think other readers will love it much more than I did.

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

This is book 5/50 read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2022.

I, Mona Lisa by Natasha Solomons

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Many of us will, on a trip to Paris, have stood in the Louvre in front of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. We may also know some of the details of the painting’s history – its creation in Renaissance Italy, its theft from the Louvre in 1911. However, this new novel by Natasha Solomons adds a whole new dimension to the Mona Lisa story, taking us inside the mind of the painting itself and showing us the world through the eyes that look out from the portrait. Whether or not you enjoy this book will probably depend on whether you can accept that a painting is narrating the story. If you’re happy with that idea, then I think you’ll find I, Mona Lisa an interesting and entertaining read.

Most of the novel is set in 16th century Florence, during the period when Leonardo is working on his most famous masterpiece. From the painting’s own perspective, we get to know some real historical figures such as Lisa del Giocondo, the woman who sits for the portrait; Michelangelo and Raphael, da Vinci’s rivals; Niccolò Machiavelli, who approaches da Vinci with a scheme to divert the Arno River; and Salaì, a student in Leonardo’s workshop who is jealous of his master’s relationship with Mona Lisa. Although Mona is an inanimate object, she is portrayed in the novel as having the thoughts and feelings of a real woman, with an emotional attachment to her creator Leonardo.

When Leonardo eventually dies, leaving her vulnerable and unprotected, Mona embarks on the journey that will lead her to France. As the centuries go by, she spends time at the court of the Sun King in Fontainebleau and then at Versailles during the French Revolution, before finding her way to the Louvre where, as the 20th century dawns, she forms a new friendship with another great artist.

I, Mona Lisa is an unusual novel and a unique way of exploring some key moments in history. However, because so much time is spent in Renaissance Italy, the parts of the novel set in France feel more rushed and the characters less well developed. This was maybe the author’s intention, as Mona finds it difficult to bond with the people she meets after Leonardo’s death and makes it clear that her heart will always be in Florence, but it also meant that I felt less engaged with these sections of the book.

I do think that if you’re going to write a book about a painting with human emotions, the Mona Lisa is a perfect choice as it’s such a realistic and iconic portrait. The Mona of the novel is obviously very limited in what she can see and experience (and with whom she can communicate – just Leonardo and a handful of other painters and paintings), but Natasha Solomons does a great job of bringing Mona and her world to life. This is the third of her books I’ve read – the others are The Novel in the Viola and House of Gold. Three very different books, but I would recommend any or all of them.

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

This is book 4/50 read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2022.

The Silver Wolf by JC Harvey

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The Silver Wolf is the first in a new series, Fiskardo’s War, set in Europe during the Thirty Years’ War. This conflict, which took place between 1618 and 1648, is one I’m not very familiar with, so I thought it would be interesting to read a book set in a period that I don’t know much about.

This novel has quite a simple premise: an orphan, Jack Fiskardo (also known as Jacques or Jag to various people at various times) sets out on a quest to find his father’s killers and take revenge. However, the plot is anything but simple! Jack’s adventures take him from the French countryside to the home of an Amsterdam merchant and then to the battlefields of Germany and along the way we meet a huge cast of characters ranging from army scouts and soldiers to tavern keepers, farmers and noblemen. All of these people interact with Jack in one way or another and many of them have intriguing stories of their own, but it’s a lot to keep track of, so be aware that this is certainly not a quick, light read.

The Silver Wolf is divided into three sections: in the first, which begins in 1619, we meet Jack for the first time on the docks of Amsterdam; the second part takes us back several years to fill in some of the details of Jack’s childhood in the village of Belle-Dame near La Rochelle; and finally, in the third section we find Jack in Germany, playing his part in the events of the war while carrying out his private mission of revenge. My favourite was the middle section as it answered some of my questions and gave me a better understanding of what was going on. But although I thought the way the book was structured was quite effective, it did mean that lots of new characters were still being introduced very late in the novel, which I found slightly overwhelming.

The book is written in a lively, often playful style, and the author has opted to use modern speech and slang; I personally prefer dialogue in historical fiction to feel more ‘historical’, but I can see that the choice of language here probably suited the gritty, sometimes brutal, wartime setting. As for the Thirty Years’ War itself, as I’ve said, I previously knew very little about it, so it was good to learn more. The author’s note at the beginning of the book provides a basic outline of the war, why it was fought and the effect it had on the population of Europe, which I found very helpful!

Although I didn’t enjoy The Silver Wolf as much as I’d hoped to, for the reasons I’ve described above, I do think it’s an impressive and ambitious debut novel. I’m not sure whether I will read the second book, but I suspect it will be easier to follow than this one now that the scene has been set, so maybe I’ll be tempted!

Thanks to Allen & Unwin for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 3/50 read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2022.

A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe

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The Welsh village of Aberfan is a place many of us associate with the 1966 mining disaster where a landslide of coal waste collapsed onto the village school, killing 116 children and 28 adults. Among the many volunteers who arrived in Aberfan to help deal with the aftermath of the tragedy were several hundred embalmers. A Terrible Kindness imagines the story of one of these embalmers, the fictional William Lavery.

William is just nineteen years old and newly qualified when the disaster happens, but he works tirelessly alongside older and more experienced embalmers to help identify and tend to the bodies of the victims. Not surprisingly, this will have a profound effect on him and leave him psychologically damaged for years to come. It also brings back memories of other traumatic moments that occurred earlier in William’s life – including one particular incident that led to the breakdown of his relationship with his mother. This incident is only hinted at throughout the book and it’s not until the final chapters that we find out what happened.

The Aberfan disaster is something that is still within living memory for a lot of people, so it’s important that authors handle things like this with care and sensitivity – and I think Jo Browning Wroe does this very well. These scenes are naturally very sad and moving, but also filled me with admiration for these people who voluntarily carried out such an unpleasant, difficult but essential task. However, Aberfan is only the starting point for William’s story and apart from two or three chapters, the rest of the book is set elsewhere.

A lot of time is spent on William’s years as a young chorister at a choir school in Cambridge, the friendships he made there and the events that made him abandon his promising singing career and go into the family embalming business instead. The complex relationships between William, his mother, his uncle and his uncle’s partner are also explored and this is the real focus of the book rather than what happened at Aberfan. I did have a lot of sympathy for William, who was clearly struggling, but I wished he had been able to get help and find a way to move on rather than making life so unhappy for himself and his loved ones for so many years. His mother, Evelyn, also frustrated me with her inability to consider other people as well as herself and I felt that the revelation of the incident that caused her estrangement from William was a bit of an anticlimax.

I think the inclusion of the Aberfan storyline will draw a lot of readers to this book, but will also put other readers off and I do wonder whether a fictional tragedy would have served the purpose of the plot just as well. As an exploration of grief and forgiveness, though, it’s an excellent read and an impressive first novel by Jo Browning Wroe.

Thanks to Pigeonhole for the opportunity to read this book.

This is book 2/50 read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2022.

A Fatal Crossing by Tom Hindle

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I was drawn to A Fatal Crossing first by the cover, then when I saw that it was a Golden Age-style mystery novel set at sea in the 1920s, I was even more interested. I read the book in October and loved it, but have waited to post my review until publication day, which is today (here in the UK).

The whole story takes place over a four day period in November 1924 as the cruise liner Endeavour approaches New York from Southampton with two thousand passengers and crew on board. When an elderly man is found dead at the bottom of a staircase, the ship’s captain assumes – and hopes – that it’s an accident. However, James Temple, a Scotland Yard inspector, happens to be one of the passengers on the voyage and, after examining the body, he is convinced that the old man has been murdered. The captain gives Temple permission to investigate the crime, but only if he agrees to be accompanied by one of the ship’s officers, Timothy Birch.

Birch has no experience as a detective but follows Temple around the ship as he looks for clues, speaks to suspects and establishes alibis. They quickly discover a link between the dead man and a priceless painting stolen from another passenger, but the mystery deepens when more deaths occur and Temple and Birch find themselves racing against time to uncover the truth before the ship reaches its destination.

This is a complex and engaging mystery novel, with plenty of suspects, lots of red herrings and a strong sense of time and place. Although I felt that there were times when the plot was starting to become quite convoluted and I was struggling to keep track of who was who and who did what, I kept going and was rewarded by some spectacular plot twists near the end which I thought I had worked out in advance, but most definitely hadn’t!

Temple and Birch make an interesting partnership, particularly as it’s a very reluctant one! As an intelligent, competent and experienced detective, Temple is not at all happy about having an inept and bumbling ship’s officer shadowing his every move, saying the wrong things and interfering with the investigation. Birch is our narrator, and as we only see things from his point of view, Temple comes across as bad-tempered, rude and hostile, but there are hints that there’s more to each character than meets the eye. While Temple’s past and his reasons for boarding the Endeavour are shrouded in mystery, we learn that Birch is haunted by the disappearance of his young daughter Amelia and the breakdown of his marriage.

As well as the unusual detecting duo and that unexpected ending, I also loved the setting and the atmosphere. A ship on a long sea voyage is the ideal location for a murder mystery, as all of the suspects are confined in one place with nobody able to arrive or depart until the destination is reached. There’s some wonderful attention to detail as the action moves around the ship from the elegant first class decks to the less luxurious third class areas and the officer’s quarters.

A Fatal Crossing is Tom Hindle’s first novel; having enjoyed it so much, I’m already looking forward to his next one!

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

The Key in the Lock by Beth Underdown

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The Key in the Lock is Beth Underdown’s second novel. Her first, The Witchfinder’s Sister, was a fascinating historical novel set during the Manningtree witch trials of 1645; this new book sounded very different, but I still wanted to give it a try.

The novel opens in 1918, with Ivy Boscawen trying to come to terms with the death of her son, Tim, shot dead in the trenches of the Western Front. Ivy is desperate to know exactly what happened to Tim, but after speaking to some of his fellow soldiers what she discovers about her son’s death makes her feel even more distressed. Worse still, the loss of Tim triggers memories of another boy, William Tremain, who died thirty years earlier in a fire at the Great House in Polneath, Cornwall. Ivy, whose father was the Polneath doctor at the time, has been haunted by William’s tragic death ever since and has never been able to shake off her feelings of guilt about her actions in the aftermath of the fire.

With Ivy as the narrator, the novel moves back and forth in time between 1918 and 1888, gradually shedding light on the mysteries surrounding both deaths. Family secrets are uncovered, wills are read, inquests are held, clandestine meetings take place and identities are revealed – yet this is not really the exciting, suspenseful Gothic novel I had been hoping for. It moves along at a very slow pace and although I was enjoying it enough to want to read on to the end, I never felt fully engaged with either the plot or the characters.

There is an advantage to the slow pace, however, which is that it gives the reader a chance to try to solve some of the mysteries and guess some of the secrets before Ivy does. It’s a complex story, with lots of pieces that only begin to fall into place towards the end and there were points where I felt confused, particularly as the two timelines often seem to merge together. A chapter heading may indicate that we are in 1918, but after a few paragraphs Ivy starts to remember the events of 1888 again and it’s not always clear which period we are reading about. Also, the ‘key in the lock’ of the title turns out to be several keys to several locks in several doors and I struggled to keep track of the significance of them all.

I did like the atmosphere Beth Underdown creates and the attention to period detail; I never felt that the language or attitudes were too modern. She also writes very convincingly about Ivy’s grief for her lost son, her sense of guilt over what happened at the Great House, and the terrible misunderstandings and assumptions that have persisted for thirty years. It’s a very sad story, where lives are taken too early, acts of kindness go unappreciated until it’s almost too late and wicked deeds go unpunished for too long. An interesting read, but with a tighter focus I think it could have been a much better book.

Thanks to Pigeonhole for the opportunity to read this book.

This is book 1/50 read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2022.