Category: Historical Fiction

Sugar Money by Jane Harris

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When I discovered that there was a new Jane Harris book coming out last year, I couldn’t wait to read it. It had been a long time since the publication of her last one, Gillespie and I, in 2011, but I could still remember how much I loved that book – and her previous one, The Observations, which I read a few months later. I’m not sure why it has taken me until now to get round to picking up Sugar Money, then, but it’s probably just been a combination of too many other books to read (as usual) and a fear that, after anticipating a third Jane Harris book for so long, I might be disappointed by it.

While Gillespie and I and The Observations are both set in 19th century Scotland, Sugar Money takes us to a very different time and place: the Caribbean in the year 1765. Our narrator, teenage Lucien, and his older brother Emile were brought up on the island of Grenada before being taken to nearby French-controlled Martinique as slaves. Their French masters need more workers to labour on the sugar plantations, so the brothers are entrusted with a secret mission: to return to Grenada, once also a French colony but now ruled by the British, and bring a group of forty-two slaves back to Martinique.

Emile and Lucien are the obvious choices to be given this task, with their prior knowledge of Grenada and its people, as well as Lucien’s ability to speak English. It’s not going to be easy, though; there is no guarantee that they will be able to persuade the slaves to join them, when they cannot offer freedom but only the exchange of one master for another – and even if the slaves do agree to come, will they be able to escape from the island without being caught?

Sugar Money, however unlikely it may seem, is based on real historical events which are described in the Afterword at the end of the book. The true story of slaves being involved in the smuggling of other slaves is certainly an interesting idea to base a novel around. Jane Harris grew up in Scotland and she highlights both the Scottish and English involvement in the slave trade, as well as drawing comparisons with slavery in the French colony of Martinique. She doesn’t shy away from describing the brutality of slavery and there are some quite graphic details of the ways in which slaves are treated by their masters and the horrific punishments given to them for the most minor of ‘crimes’, but she writes about all of this in a matter-of-fact sort of way, showing us the evils of slavery without preaching about it, which is something I liked and found quite effective.

I also loved the relationship between Emile and Lucien. Lucien has all the enthusiasm and sense of adventure you would expect in a boy of his age and, of course, it sometimes leads him into danger. Emile, who is much older and wiser, protects him as far as he can, but understandably loses patience at times, while Lucien admires and respects his big brother but doesn’t always understand his actions! I liked them both, but we naturally feel closer to Lucien because he is our narrator. Jane Harris really excels at giving her narrators strong, distinctive voices of their own. To immerse us more fully in the Caribbean of the 18th century, she has Lucien narrate in a sort of Creole mixed with French and English, and an explanation for his unusual speech is given towards the very end of the book. He couldn’t be more different from Bessy Buckley and Harriet Baxter, the narrators of her previous two novels!

I found this a very entertaining read, but it didn’t impress me quite as much as the other two Jane Harris novels. It works well as an adventure novel (Robert Louis Stevenson is mentioned as an inspiration in the acknowledgements), but it lacks all the clever twists and turns that I loved in Gillespie and I. It has impressed the judges of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, though, and has been included on this year’s shortlist. The winner will be announced in June; if Sugar Money wins, I’ll be very happy for Jane Harris, but as I haven’t read the rest of the shortlist yet I don’t know whether there’s another book that is more deserving.

Tomorrow by Damian Dibben

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There are two things which make the narrator of Tomorrow one of the most unusual I have ever encountered. One is that he is over two hundred years old. The other is that he is a dog. We all know how loyal dogs can be, but this dog takes his loyalty to exceptional levels. Having been separated from his master, the chemist Valentyne, in 1688, our narrator has spent two centuries sitting patiently outside the church in Venice where they parted.

“If we lose one another,” Valentyne had told him, “wait for me on the steps. Just here, by the door.” The dog has no doubt that he and Valentyne will be reunited one day and so he sits obediently by the door and waits. Then, one day in 1815, he catches a glimpse of Vilder, a man whose path has crossed many times with Valentyne’s…and he sets off in pursuit, sure that this is the clue which will lead him to his master.

Tomorrow is a book that raises questions immediately. What has happened to Valentyne? How have he and his dog lived for so many years? Who is Vilder and what is his connection with Valentyne? All of these questions are answered eventually, as the story moves backwards and forwards in time, alternating between the dog’s search for his master in 19th century Venice and his memories of their early days travelling Europe together.

Their adventures take them from 17th century London to the court of Versailles and the battlefield of Waterloo and along the way they meet kings and queens, famous poets and musicians and great military leaders. Valentyne falls in love and the dog forms some special relationships too – with Sporco, a puppy he finds abandoned in Venice, and with a female dog called Blaise. However, this is where they discover that living forever is not much fun when it means having to watch your loved ones grow old and die.

I do like the idea of writing from the point of view of a canine narrator and I can appreciate both the opportunities this must give an author and also the restrictions. The dog in Tomorrow is a real dog, despite his apparent immortality – he is not a magical, talking dog and although he listens and reports on the human conversations around him he cannot take part himself. On the other hand, he is so intelligent and his internal thought processes and logic feel so human that there were times when I could almost forget that he was a dog. I’m not sure that I found all of this entirely successful, but it was certainly imaginative and different.

Finally, in case you’re wondering, the dog does have a name but I haven’t mentioned it here as it is only revealed near the end of the book and I thought it was a nice surprise!

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

The Winter Prince by Cheryl Sawyer

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After reading Charles Spencer’s biography Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier a year or two ago, I mentioned that I wanted to read more books, either fiction or non-fiction, about Rupert of the Rhine, surely one of the most interesting and colourful characters of the English Civil War and Restoration period. The suggestion I was particularly drawn to was The Stranger Prince by Margaret Irwin, but with another of Irwin’s books already unread on my shelf (The Galliard) I wanted to read that one first before buying another one. Meanwhile I came across The Winter Prince by Cheryl Sawyer and decided to give it a try.

The Winter Prince is the first in a trilogy which continues with Farewell, Cavaliers and The King’s Shadow. It opens in 1642 with conflict building between King Charles I and his Parliament. When Mary Villiers is informed by her husband, the Duke of Lennox and Richmond, that the King is planning to arrest five members of Parliament in the House of Commons, she thinks she is doing the right thing by warning the five men of his intentions. Mary is a royalist – the Duke is one of the King’s closest advisers – but she believes it will send out the wrong signal if the men are arrested.

Around this time, the King’s nephew, Prince Rupert, arrives on England’s shores having recently been released from imprisonment in Germany. Charles needs all the loyal support he can get and, when civil war does inevitably break out, Rupert (accompanied by his beloved white poodle, Boy) is given the task of leading the Royalist cavalry. Mary Villiers was only fourteen the last time Rupert had come to Charles’s court and they don’t have very fond memories of each other. Meeting again now, as adults, they are instantly drawn to each other and a friendship quickly forms which could develop into something more – except that Mary is already married and Rupert is her husband’s friend.

The Winter Prince is written partly from Mary’s perspective and partly from Rupert’s. There is no actual evidence to prove that they were involved in a romantic relationship, but there are rumours to suggest that it may have happened and Cheryl Sawyer expands on this to create a romance for Rupert and Mary that runs throughout the novel. Because Rupert is away with the army so much of the time and because Mary doesn’t want to hurt her husband (whom she likes but doesn’t love), our hero and heroine don’t often have the opportunity to be together which makes the occasions when they do meet more significant. For me, though, there was something slightly lacking in the romantic aspect of the story. Although Cheryl Sawyer’s writing is very good in other ways, I thought the characters felt a little bit lifeless and because I couldn’t fall in love myself with her version of Rupert I couldn’t entirely believe in Mary’s feelings for him and his for her.

As far as I could tell, the book had been well researched, although as I am definitely not an expert on Prince Rupert or Mary Villiers (or this period in general) it’s hard for me to judge the historical accuracy. I did notice that on the first page the king is referred to as Charles the First whereas at the time he would have been simply King Charles as at that point there had not been a second, but I didn’t pick up on anything else like this. I just don’t have the knowledge to be able to comment, though. Anyway, it is not a light or fluffy novel – in fact, I felt as though I was being overloaded with information at times.

The romance is only one element of the novel; a large part of the book is also devoted to the Civil War itself and there are pages and pages of detailed descriptions of each battle, the tactics and strategies used and the role played by Rupert and his cavalry. I struggled to stay interested through these long military accounts, but this was probably my fault rather than the fault of the author as it’s not very often that I do enjoy reading battle scenes!

My feelings about this book were mixed, then, but it was good to have an opportunity to learn a little bit more about Rupert. I probably won’t read the other books in this trilogy, but I do still want to read Margaret Irwin’s The Stranger Prince.

This book counts towards this year’s What’s in a Name? Challenge: A title containing a season.

Six Tudor Queens: Jane Seymour, the Haunted Queen by Alison Weir

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While Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were getting married at Windsor Castle yesterday, I have spent the weekend absorbed in reading about the lives of a much earlier royal couple…Henry VIII and his third wife, Jane Seymour. Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen is the third book in Alison Weir’s Six Tudor Queens series which aims to retell, in fictional form, the stories of all six of Henry’s wives. Having read the first two novels on Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, I have been looking forward to this new one; I’ve read about Jane less often than Katherine and Anne so I was interested in learning more about her and curious to see how she would be portrayed.

The novel begins by introducing us to Jane as a young girl, living with her parents and brothers and sisters at Wulfhall, the Seymours’ manor house in Wiltshire. For several years, Jane is convinced that she would like to become a nun but eventually she discovers that she has no true vocation for a religious life and she decides that her future lies at court instead. With the help of Sir Francis Bryan, a courtier and family friend, she obtains a place in the household of Katherine of Aragon as one of the queen’s maids-of-honour. Jane is devoted to the queen, but when Henry puts Katherine aside so that he can marry Anne Boleyn, she finds herself in the unwelcome position of having to serve Anne instead of Katherine.

When Jane catches the king’s eye, her ambitious brothers see this as an opportunity to make the Seymours the power behind the throne, while Jane herself is keen to use her new influence with Henry to help reinstate Katherine and her daughter, the Lady Mary. But then comes Anne Boleyn’s downfall and suddenly Jane, who has watched her younger sisters marrying before her and has almost given up hope of ever finding a husband herself, is elevated to the highest position of all: Queen of England, as Henry’s third wife. With only two daughters from his first two marriages, Henry is desperate for a son, but can Jane succeed where her two predecessors failed?

I have given a basic outline of the plot of The Haunted Queen in the two paragraphs above, but I’m sure none of it will be very surprising to anyone who already knows their Tudor history. Weir sticks closely to historical fact as far as possible although, as she explains in her author’s note, the information we have on Jane is limited and there are areas where she has to use her imagination and historical knowledge to fill in the gaps – for example, the possibility of Jane contemplating taking religious vows, the question of whether she could already have been pregnant at the time of her marriage to Henry, and the probable cause of her death shortly after giving birth in October 1537. There were enough new ideas and interpretations here to make this, for me, a worthwhile and compelling read.

Jane Seymour often comes across as one of the less interesting wives, particularly following Anne Boleyn, but I liked the way she was portrayed in this novel. Was Jane used as a pawn by Thomas Cromwell and her ambitious family, or was she as manipulative as they were in bringing down Anne Boleyn and taking her place as queen? Different authors and historians have different views on this, but Alison Weir’s version of Jane is somewhere between the two and I found it a realistic, convincing portrait of a quiet, compassionate young woman who did not set out to become queen but who seized the opportunity when it arose in the hope of using the power it would give her to help those she loved and to restore the ‘true religion’. Henry is depicted in quite a balanced and nuanced way too; we see a more loving side of him in his relationship with Jane, as well as his cruelty towards his previous two wives and his daughter, Mary. We also get to know some of the other characters who play a part in Jane’s story, including her brothers Edward and Thomas; I particularly liked the portrayal of Sir Francis Bryan, who is a good friend of the Seymour family, despite his reputation as ‘the vicar of Hell’.

I enjoyed reading about Jane’s early life at Wulfhall (marked by the scandal caused by her father’s affair with his daughter-in-law Catherine Fillol – something I have previously read about in Suzannah Dunn’s The May Bride) and, later in the book, her brief reign as queen, but the section in the middle which covers Henry’s attempts to divorce Katherine of Aragon and then his marriage to Anne Boleyn, was less interesting to me. This is because it’s the third time in this series that I’ve read about those same events. Obviously, the three women involved – Katherine, Anne and Jane – have very different views on the matter, but I still found it just a little bit tedious to read it all again. I was also not a fan of the supernatural elements which are suggested by the title, The Haunted Queen, but I’m sure other readers will disagree.

I am now looking forward to the fourth book in the series which will tell the story of Anne of Cleves, definitely the wife I know the least about!

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

Church of Marvels by Leslie Parry

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Church of Marvels, published in 2015, is Leslie Parry’s first and, so far, her only novel but I enjoyed it so much I hope she will be writing more. It’s a dark, complex and unusual story set in New York City in 1895 and, despite comparisons with The Night Circus, I think it’s a very different sort of book.

There are three main characters to get to know. First there’s Sylvan Threadgill, a ‘night-soil collector’ who makes his living from cleaning privies, as well as fighting in the occasional amateur boxing match. One night, Sylvan finds a newborn baby girl who has been abandoned and left to lie in the dirt of the street. He rescues the baby and, as an orphan himself, resolves to find out what has happened to her parents.

Next, there’s Odile Church, who performs in a Coney Island sideshow as the girl on the wheel of death – spinning in circles as a blindfolded man throws knives in her direction. Odile is trying to come to terms with the tragic death of her mother in a fire and the disappearance of her twin sister Belle, a sword-swallower and contortionist, who has run away to Manhattan with no explanation. Worried about her sister’s state of mind, Odile decides it’s time to go and look for her.

Finally, we meet Alphie, an undertaker’s wife, who has found herself imprisoned in Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum. She can’t remember how she came to be there, but she’s sure it’s part of a plot dreamed up by her mother-in-law who has never liked her and wants her out of her son’s life.

At first these felt like three completely separate storylines and I couldn’t see how they could be connected in any way. Of course they do eventually come together and then I could appreciate how cleverly structured the whole novel is, with things being revealed only when we really need to know them and the biggest plot twists kept until near the end of the book. For this reason, I can’t discuss some of the most intriguing aspects of the novel, but I will say that there is a lot going on and that there is much more to each of the characters above than meets the eye!

The circus element, which is probably one of the things that draws a lot of readers to this novel, is actually a fairly small part of the story and only a few scenes are set at Coney Island. Most of the action takes place in New York and, more specifically, in the dark side of New York, a world of asylums, opium dens and underground tunnels. The people who populate these dark and unpleasant places are those who are considered to be social outcasts; misfits; men, women and children who are ‘different’ in some way. Odile, Belle, Sylvan and Alphie all fit into this category and I had a lot of sympathy for each of them – life has not been easy for them and all they want is to have a chance of happiness.

Although it is certainly not the most cheerful or uplifting of novels, I found Church of Marvels a fascinating read and, as I’ve said, I would love to read more by Leslie Parry.

Friday’s Child by Georgette Heyer

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This Heyer novel was published in 1944 and as it’s a particularly lively and humorous one, I expect it provided her wartime readers with some welcome escapism. It’s still an entertaining read in the twenty-first century too and although it hasn’t become a favourite, I did enjoy it.

“Friday’s child is loving and giving” says the famous rhyme and that is how the heroine of the novel, seventeen-year-old Hero Wantage, is described by her friends. As an orphan treated as a poor relation in her cousin’s household, Hero’s marriage prospects are not good and she is facing a future as a governess when she receives a surprise proposal from her childhood friend, Lord Sheringham. Hero is under no illusions that Sheringham – or Sherry, as he is known – is actually in love with her; she knows that he needs to marry in order to receive his inheritance and that he has already been rejected by the beautiful Isabella Milborne. It will be a marriage of convenience only, but even this is so much more than Hero could ever have hoped for that she has no hesitation in accepting.

Hero may be young and naïve, but Sherry is only a few years older and no more mature. He has no intention of changing his lifestyle just because he now has a wife, so he continues his reckless spending, gambling and womanising without considering the bad example he is setting for Hero. I don’t think it’s spoiling too much to say that Sherry does gradually come to love and appreciate his wife, but not without a lot of misunderstandings and ‘getting into scrapes’ along the way! And when he does eventually admit to himself how he really feels about Hero, will he have left it so late that he risks losing her to another man?

Although the relationship between Hero and Sherry is at the heart of the novel, with both characters slowly developing and maturing as time goes by, there is also a secondary romance which involves Isabella Milborne (known as the Incomparable) and George, Lord Wrotham, a passionate, hot-headed young man who is always ready to fight a duel. George, along with Gil Ringwood and Ferdy Fakenham, forms Sherry’s little circle of friends – and they become Hero’s friends too, providing most of the humour in the book as they give her some dubious guidance in the social etiquette of Regency London and try to help her out of the disastrous situations she finds herself in.

Friday’s Child has just about everything you would expect from a Heyer novel: duels, card games, gambling, balls and parties, elopements and attempted elopements. It reminded me of two of her other books, The Convenient Marriage and April Lady, which also have storylines revolving around a newly married couple learning to love each other. Although I enjoyed this book much more than April Lady, The Convenient Marriage is my favourite of the three, mainly because I preferred the hero in that one, the Earl of Rule. I do tend to prefer her older, wiser heroes rather than the young, irresponsible ones like Sherry. I also thought this book felt slightly longer than it really needed to be and the constant misunderstandings became a bit repetitive towards the end.

There are other Heyer novels that I’ve liked better than this one, then, but her books are always a lot of fun to read and this is no exception. There are plenty of funny moments, usually involving Sherry’s three friends (I particularly loved the hilarious Ferdy). I have The Corinthian, An Infamous Army and Faro’s Daughter to choose from for my next Heyer. If you have read them, which one would you recommend I read first?

The Tower is Full of Ghosts Today by Alison Weir

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This is one of several e-shorts – short stories published exclusively in ebook format – which form part of Alison Weir’s new series on the wives of Henry VIII, Six Tudor Queens. I hadn’t had much interest in reading them until I noticed that this one, The Tower is Full of Ghosts Today, was (and still is, at the moment) free to download from Amazon. It seemed a good opportunity to see what they were like.

Having read the first two full-length novels in the series (on Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn) and with the third one, Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen, on my NetGalley shelf ready to start soon, this was the perfect time to read The Tower is Full of Ghosts Today because, chronologically, it provides a sort of bridge between the Anne Boleyn book and the Jane Seymour book.

The story is set in the modern day and is written from the perspective of historian Jo Maddox, who is taking a group of tourists around the Tower of London. Jo has arranged for a special guide to lead part of the tour and provide some history on Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife, who was of course imprisoned and beheaded at the Tower. When the guide arrives, Jo is impressed by her resemblance to Anne herself – right down to the authentic Tudor costume and French accent. But then another dark-haired young woman catches her eye and Jo begins to feel as though she is seeing Anne Boleyn everywhere she looks.

This really is a very short story! I had expected it to be longer as the book was seventy pages long, but most of those seventy pages are actually devoted to the opening chapters of the first three Six Tudor Queens novels. I didn’t need to read these as I’ve already read the first two and am about to start the third, so the story itself is disappointingly short and can literally be read in just a few minutes. Maybe the other e-shorts in the series have more substance, which could explain why this one is being offered for free.

Having said that, the story is quite entertaining, providing some information on the history of the Tower and separating the facts about Anne Boleyn from the myths. There’s even some humour:

‘Didn’t Thomas Cromwell play a large part in bringing down Anne Boleyn?’ a guest asked.

‘Cromwell!’ The guide’s eyes flashed. ‘Oh yes! He hated me, for he feared I would ruin him. So he pre-empted me. He was a man without scruples.’

‘Not if you read Hilary Mantel!’ muttered one of the group.

The other e-shorts in the series so far are Arthur: Prince of the Roses, The Blackened Heart, The Chateau of Briis, The Grandmother’s Tale and The Unhappiest Lady in Christendom, all of which fit before or after one of the three main novels. It seems that they are currently not available outside the UK, although according to Alison Weir’s website her US publisher is including some of the stories in the paperback editions of the novels. I think that’s a better idea anyway as if all of the stories are as short as this one I don’t think it’s really worth spending money on buying them all separately. I’m not planning to read any more of them, but I’m looking forward to starting Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen.