Category: Historical Fiction

Mother Naked by Glen James Brown

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Durham Cathedral’s records show that the smallest amount paid to an entertainer was the one groat (four pence) received by Modyr Nakett, who performed there in 1433-34. Modyr Nakett – Mother Naked in the Middle English used at the time – was a gleeman, or wandering minstrel, but nothing else is known about him or his performance. In this novel, longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Glen James Brown imagines Mother Naked’s story.

The whole novel is written in the form of a monologue delivered by Mother Naked in front of an audience of some of Durham’s most powerful men. He begins by promising them the tale of the Fell Wraith, a ghostly monster who laid waste to the village of Segerston (now called Sacriston), destroying the crops, burning down the manor house and killing the villagers. However, it becomes clear that what he really wants to tell is more than just a simple ghost story and that the legend of the Wraith is rooted in reality. He goes off on several tangents and at times it’s not clear to his audience (or to the reader) what significance any of these digressions have. It all comes together in the end, though, and we’re left in no doubt as to the purpose of Mother Naked’s tale!

Most of Mother’s story is set in Segerston in 1396 and deals with a feud between two local families, the Paynes and the Deepsloughs. Both families are villeins – serfs who are able to own land, but are also expected to work on their lord’s land for no payment, which greatly restricts the time they can spend tending their own crops. This is one of several reasons why anger and frustration with the feudal system has been spreading throughout the country, as shown by the Peasants’ Revolt just a few years earlier. The story Mother tells illustrates the unfairness of this system, the various hardships and challenges faced by the different classes of peasant and the privileges held by those higher up such as the reeve, the bailiff and the lord.

As he builds towards the story of the Fell Wraith, Mother talks about other myths and legends, such as the Woodwose (or ‘wild man of the woods’). He also discusses his own childhood and his relationship with a fellow gleeman, Pearl Eye, who starts him on his path to becoming an entertainer. I won’t tell you Mother’s real identity, though, as it would spoil the story!

Those of you who are regular readers of my blog will know that I dislike the way so many modern authors are choosing not to use quotation marks to indicate speech. I’ve said that I always find it irritating, but this book seems to be the exception to the rule. There are no quotation marks, but dialogue is put in italics which at least makes it easier to see that someone is speaking – and as the entire novel is presented as one long speech, it makes sense not to use internal speech marks as well. Brown also writes in a sort of pseudo-medieval language and I thought this would be distracting at first, but it actually works very well.

The combination of the language, the setting and the level of research makes the book feel very authentic and believable. I could easily imagine I was sitting in the hall at Durham Cathedral listening to Mother Naked’s story! This book is a good example of why I like to follow the Walter Scott Prize, as I don’t think I would have come across this one otherwise. The shortlist is due to be announced next week.

The Eights by Joanna Miller

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Although women had been able to study at Oxford University since the 19th century, October 1920 marked the first time they were able to matriculate (or be formally admitted). In her new novel, The Eights, Joanna Miller imagines the stories of four fictional women who were part of this historic moment.

Beatrice Sparks, Theodora Greenwood, Marianne Grey and Ottoline Wallace-Kerr refer to themselves as the Eights because they occupy the four rooms on corridor eight of St Hugh’s, one of the Oxford colleges that is admitting female students. They also each have a name with eight letters, something which pleases Otto, who is a mathematician and loves the number eight. Otto’s family and friends, who are wealthy socialites, are surprised by her decision to study for a degree rather than concentrate on making a good marriage, but Otto is desperate to prove herself after feeling that she failed as a VAD nurse during the war.

Beatrice is the daughter of a suffragette and has grown up in the shadow of her formidable, overbearing mother. For her, university means independence, freedom and a chance to lead her own life at last. Theodora – known as Dora – is also grateful for the opportunity she has been given, but at the same time she feels a sense of guilt knowing that her brother, who was killed in the war, was supposed to be the one to go to Oxford. Dora also lost her fiancé in the war and she’s still struggling to come to terms with both tragedies. The final member of the Eights is Marianne, the quiet, clever daughter of a widowed vicar. Marianne seems to have led a sheltered life compared to some of the other girls at St Hugh’s, but she has a secret that she’s determined to keep hidden.

The Eights describes the experiences of these four young women during their first year at Oxford. There’s not really an overarching plot – more a series of episodes – but I didn’t have a problem with that as I was so absorbed in the lives of the four main characters. My favourite was probably Marianne, but I liked and admired all of them and enjoyed watching their friendships develop over the course of the year. The women all face a different set of challenges and struggle with self-doubt – about fitting in, coping with the work or living up to expectations – and it was good to see them grow in confidence and overcome some of the obstacles in their way. I liked the use of flashbacks to provide background information about each woman and the very different paths they followed that led them to Oxford.

Obviously I wasn’t at Oxford in 1920, so I have no idea how accurate the book is – all I can say is that the setting feels very authentic and it’s clear that Joanna Miller has done her research. She weaves historical detail throughout the novel, often beginning chapters with a real newspaper excerpt or a set of university rules and regulations (which illustrate the double standards in the way male and female students were treated). There’s a glossary at the end, as some readers may be unfamiliar with the academic terms used in the book, many of which are unique to Oxford. There are also some cameo appearances from real-life authors Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby, who are attending Somerville College, one of Oxford’s other women’s colleges.

My only real criticism is that I found Marianne’s secret far too easy to guess and would have preferred to have been surprised by it, like the other students were. Otherwise, I really enjoyed this book and loved getting to know the Eights. It would be good to meet them again when they return for their second year at Oxford!

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

The Queen and the Countess by Anne O’Brien

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I’ve been looking forward to reading Anne O’Brien’s new novel as it’s set in one of my favourite periods of history, the Wars of the Roses. O’Brien has written about this period before, from the perspectives of Anne Neville in Virgin Widow (which I haven’t read) and Cecily Neville in The Queen’s Rival, but this book is slightly different because it focuses on not just one woman but two: Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI, and Anne Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick.

The two women take it in turns to narrate their story, alternating chapter by chapter throughout the book and beginning in 1458 with the Loveday Parade – a procession through London intended to promote peace between York and Lancaster, the two feuding branches of the royal House of Plantagenet. In the parade, Queen Margaret walks hand-in-hand with the powerful Duke of York, while Anne watches her husband, Richard, Earl of Warwick, walk with his rival nobleman, the Duke of Exeter. The peace is very short-lived, however, and the following year York and Lancaster are at war again.

As the mental health of the Lancastrian king, Henry VI, goes into decline and he gradually retreats from real life into a world of prayer, Margaret does her best to rule in his place, aiming to keep the throne safe for Prince Edward, their young son. When Margaret’s army is defeated in battle and Warwick helps to put the Yorkist heir, Edward IV, on the throne, it seems that her life is in ruins, but it’s not long before Warwick falls out of favour with the new king and comes to her ready to form a new alliance with Lancaster. Meanwhile, Anne stays loyal to her husband throughout all of this but, with no real influence over his decisions, she can only hope that he’s picked the right side this time…

I was intrigued by O’Brien’s decision to pair Margaret of Anjou’s story with the Countess of Warwick’s in this book. There are so many other interesting women from this period – Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry Tudor; Edward IV’s wife Elizabeth Woodville and her mother Jacquetta, to name a few – it seemed like a bit of an arbitrary choice to put these two together, but as I read on and saw the shape the novel was starting to take it did make sense. Margaret and Anne are at first on opposite sides of the conflict, then on the same side, but in the difficult position of never fully being able to trust each other, which is an interesting dynamic for O’Brien to explore. Although they are two very different women, there are some parallels between them which begin to emerge as the novel progresses.

This is an eventful and dramatic period of history, so there’s always something happening in the novel – a battle to be fought, a marriage to be negotiated, a plan for invasion to be put into place. Using two narrators rather than one gives O’Brien a wider scope instead of being limited to one character’s personal experiences. However, the two threads of the story come together now and then through a series of fictional letters sent between Margaret and Anne. I’ve no idea if they really corresponded or not (I don’t think there’s any evidence of it, and if they ever did, I doubt it would have been as often as depicted in the book) but it’s a nice touch and makes the lives of the two characters feel less separate and disconnected.

The narrative voices of the two women sound almost identical, so I had to pay attention to the section headings, otherwise it sometimes took me a few paragraphs to decide which of them was narrating. Margaret of Anjou never really seems to be portrayed in a very positive light and she’s not very likeable here either, but I could at least have some sympathy for her. She was in a very challenging situation, trying to hold onto the throne for Lancaster with a husband who didn’t understand what was going on and who was by now completely incapable of ruling. Anne is a much easier character to like, but then, she doesn’t have the difficult decisions to make that Margaret does. Things aren’t easy for Anne either, though, as her fate is determined by the actions of her husband, Warwick, and while she does involve herself in politics to a degree, she has very little say in the course her life will follow.

This is ultimately quite a sad story – anyone familiar with the Wars of the Roses will know what happens to Margaret, her husband and her son, and how Anne’s later life plays out (at one point she’s declared legally dead while still alive in order to settle an inheritance dispute) – but I enjoyed reading it. It was nice to see some links to O’Brien’s previous novel, A Court of Betrayal, whose heroine, Johane de Geneville, was an ancestor of Anne Beauchamp’s – something I wasn’t aware of until I started reading this book and Anne mentioned her great-great-grandmother! I’ll look forward to O’Brien’s next book, whatever it may be, but I should probably try to find time to go back and read the earlier ones that I’ve missed as well.

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

The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry – #ReadingIrelandMonth25

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When I first heard about The Heart in Winter last year, despite seeing some very positive reviews I decided I wasn’t interested in reading it as it didn’t sound like my sort of book. After it was longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize earlier this year, I wondered if I’d been too quick to dismiss it and as Kevin Barry is an Irish author, I decided to try reading it for Reading Ireland Month (hosted this month by Cathy of 746 Books).

When I started reading, it seemed that my fears about it were justified. It’s a western, set in 1890s Montana, with lots of drinking, lots of swearing and lots of sex. Worse, there are no quotation marks to indicate speech, something I always dislike and find distracting. Still, I was prepared to give it a chance and persevere…

Tom Rourke is an Irishman living in Butte, Montana, where he works as a photographer’s assistant and a writer of love letters for illiterate men hoping to find wives. He’s also a drunk and an opium addict, drifting through life with no real aim or direction. Everything changes for Tom when Polly Gillespie arrives in town. Polly is newly married to an older man, Anthony Harrington, the fanatically religious captain of a copper mine. She’s already having doubts about her marriage, so when she and Tom fall in love, they decide to run away together. Stealing a horse, they head out across Montana and Idaho, hoping to make it all the way to California, but Harrington won’t let his bride escape that easily and soon a posse of gunmen are in pursuit.

Once Tom and Polly left Butte and set out on their journey, I started to feel much more engaged with the story. Although their romance was very sudden (literally love at first sight, with no time to show how their relationship developed), I still found it convincing and could easily believe that these two flawed, lonely people would form an instant connection. The narrative is split between Tom and Polly on the run and Harrington’s men who are hunting them down and although it seems that the odds are against the young lovers, I still hoped things would work out for them and they would find the happiness they deserved.

I wish I could say I loved this book the way everyone else has, but that wouldn’t be true. However, I did find a lot of things to admire in it, particularly the way Barry’s use of language brought the setting so vividly to life. There are also some very colourful supporting characters, both in Butte and among the people Tom and Polly meet on their travels. As I mentioned earlier, though, I really hate the current trend for not using punctuation correctly. If the idea is to make the prose feel more immersive, it does the exact opposite for me. Apart from that, I think I’m just not a fan of westerns in general. I did enjoy Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers, but the other westerns I’ve tried since then haven’t really worked for me, not even Days Without End by Sebastian Barry, whose work I usually love.

I won’t be at all surprised if this book is shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize next month or even if it turns out to be the eventual winner. I just wasn’t the right reader for it, but I’m still glad I tried it and got to know Tom and Polly.

Moonfleet by John Meade Falkner

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I added Moonfleet to my Classics Club list after seeing some very positive reviews from other bloggers and thinking it sounded like something I might enjoy. It’s an adventure story and was apparently very popular when it was published in 1898, although it seems to have been overshadowed by similar books like Treasure Island and Kidnapped. Modern authors are still influenced by it, though, such as Alex Preston, who named it as the inspiration for his 2022 novel, Winchelsea.

Moonfleet is set in the 18th century and is narrated by John Trenchard, a fifteen-year-old orphan who lives with his aunt in the village of Moonfleet on the south coast of England. The village takes its name not from the moon but from a prominent local family, the Mohunes. Generations of Mohunes are buried in the family vault under the church, including the notorious Colonel John ‘Blackbeard’ Mohune who once stole a diamond from King Charles I and hid it in a secret location. According to legend, his ghost now walks the churchyard trying to find the hidden jewel.

One night, John Trenchard finds himself accidentally locked in the Mohune vault where he discovers a locket containing a scrap of paper with what appear to be clues to the location of the missing diamond. He also makes another discovery: a group of local smugglers are using the vault as a hiding place for their contraband. He is rescued by two of the smugglers – the innkeeper Elzevir Block and Master Ratsey, the church sexton – and now that he knows their secret, he becomes involved in their smuggling operations. When an encounter with the excisemen ends in violence, John and Elzevir are forced to flee and as they’re unable to return to Moonfleet, they decide to go off in search of Blackbeard’s diamond.

Although this is usually described as a children’s book, like most classics it can also be enjoyed by adults. As it was published in the 19th century, the writing style is naturally very dated now, but I think there should still be enough to keep both older and younger readers interested – as well as the smugglers, hidden treasure and haunted churchyards, there are sea voyages, shipwrecks, coded messages, curses and even a touch of romance (John is in love with Grace, daughter of the novel’s villain, the magistrate Maskew). Later in the book, there’s also a surprising amount of emotional depth as a relationship forms between John, who has grown up without a father, and Elzevir, who has lost a son.

Moonfleet itself is a fictional village, but is based on East Fleet near Chesil Beach in Dorset. The geography of the area plays a big part in the book, with descriptions of the high cliffs, secluded bays and hidden coves that make the coastline ideal for smuggling. It’s just as important to the story as the characters and the plot. I enjoyed the book, although I don’t think it would have been a favourite classic even if I’d read it as a child. Still, I found it entertaining and perfect escapism, which is something I think most of us need now and then! It seems Falkner only wrote two other novels, The Lost Stradivarius and The Nebuly Coat; if you’ve read them, I’d love to know what you thought.

This is book 46/50 from my second Classics Club list.

Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd

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I’ve read three books by Jess Kidd and so far they’ve all been completely different. This new one, though, is described by the publisher as ‘the first in a sparkling new 1950s seaside mystery series’, so presumably she’s going to stick with one style and genre for her next few books. The series stars Nora Breen, a former nun who has left the convent that has been her home for the last thirty years. She’s an interesting and unusual character and I enjoyed meeting her in this first novel, Murder at Gulls Nest.

Gulls Nest is a guest house in the seaside town of Gore-on-Sea on the southeast coast of England. It’s also the last known address of Frieda, who was once a novice at Nora’s convent before leaving the order and promising to keep in touch. Frieda had been a good friend of Nora’s and when her letters stop arriving, Nora becomes so worried that she also decides to leave and travel to Gore-on-Sea to find out what has happened. Once at Gulls Nest, Nora learns that Frieda disappeared one night without explanation, yet no one else seems to be concerned about it, including the police. Convinced that something bad must have happened to her friend, Nora takes the room that was once Frieda’s and begins to investigate.

As Nora gets to know the other lodgers, she discovers that some of them are not what they seem and appear to be hiding secrets. Then a murder takes place, which may or may not be linked to Frieda’s disappearance. Nora is sure that if she can solve one crime it could provide clues to the other, but Inspector Rideout makes it clear that the police don’t want or need the assistance of a middle-aged ex-nun. Of course, Nora isn’t going to give up that easily!

Murder at Gulls Nest is as entertaining as I’ve come to expect from Jess Kidd’s books, with her usual array of colourful, quirky characters. Some of the most memorable are Professor Poppy, an elderly puppeteer who runs a Punch and Judy show; Dinah, the young daughter of the Gulls Nest landlady, who never speaks but sees everything that’s going on; and the exasperated Inspector Rideout, who wants Nora kept away from his investigation at all costs. I loved Nora’s relationship with Rideout and look forward to seeing how it continues to develop in the next book. As for Nora herself, although I couldn’t quite believe that she had until recently been a nun, I did like her as a character and enjoyed seeing her interacting with the other residents of Gore-on-Sea. I particularly loved the chapter where she’s invited to afternoon tea with the vicar and his ‘family’ – and I won’t spoil the fun by telling you what happens there!

At times this felt like a parody of a mystery novel rather than one to be taken too seriously, but at other times it became surprisingly dark, which kept things interesting all the way through. There’s also a good sense of time and place, bringing the 1950s British seaside setting to life. I hope we don’t have to wait too long for the second book.

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

Clear by Carys Davies – #ReadingWales25

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Clear is a book I hadn’t really considered reading until it appeared on the Walter Scott Prize longlist in February and I was pleased that I was still able to get a copy through NetGalley. Carys Davies is also a Welsh author, which is perfect for Reading Wales Month ’25, hosted this year by Karen at BookerTalk.

Clear is a beautifully written novella set in 1843 and telling the story of a friendship that forms between two men who should be enemies. John Ferguson is one of many evangelical ministers who have broken away from their church to form the Free Church of Scotland. Having given up his job and his home to establish this new church, John is struggling financially and, out of desperation, accepts an offer of work from a landowner who wants him to travel to a remote Scottish island and evict the last remaining tenant from the land. Forced evictions like these, known as Clearances, have been happening all over the Scottish Highlands as landlords remove the people living on their estates so that they can use the land for other purposes such as sheep farming. It’s a traumatic and often cruel process and not something John is looking forward to being part of.

The man John will have to evict is Ivar, who has lived alone on his island in the far north of Scotland since the deaths of his remaining family members. It’s an isolated life, but Ivar is content and has his horse, Pegi, for company. One day, he finds a man unconscious on the beach under the cliffs and takes him to his home to nurse him back to health. This is John Ferguson, who has met with an accident soon after arriving on the island. Ivar finds a picture of John’s wife, Mary, in his belongings and becomes infatuated with her, the first woman he’s seen for a long time – but as the injured man begins to recover, Ivar switches his affections to John himself. He has no idea why John is there, however, and because the two men speak different languages, he’s unable to ask.

Language forms an important part of the novel. Ivar speaks only Norn, a now extinct language once spoken in Shetland and Orkney, and John speaks English with a small amount of Scots. Over the course of the book, we see how two men unable to communicate in words are still able to bond and connect until eventually they do begin to learn each other’s language. In her author’s note Davies explains how the novel was inspired by Jakob Jakobsen’s Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland and she scatters Norn words throughout the book with a glossary at the back. Norn appears to have been a fascinating language; John is surprised to discover how descriptive it is and how many different words there are for mist, fog, wind and other types of weather.

Some parts of the novel are written from the perspective of Mary, John’s wife, who becomes concerned about the work her husband has been sent to do – she’s heard that the evictions can be unpleasant and violent – and decides to follow him to the island. I enjoyed reading Mary’s story and thought her sections of the book perfectly complemented Ivar and John’s. Mary’s thread of the novel comes together with the others near the end, and although I’m not going to tell you how the book ends I can say that it wasn’t what I expected but I was quite happy with it!

Carys Davies’ writing is beautiful and also very readable and I found this a quick, absorbing read. For such a short book, there’s a lot packed inside it. It reminded me a lot of Claire Keegan’s novella Small Things Like These, so if you enjoyed one book I would recommend trying the other.

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