Category: Historical Fiction

The Darkening Globe by Naomi Kelsey

8 Comments

Naomi Kelsey is a new author for me – I haven’t read her debut novel, The Burnings – but I was drawn to this book by the cover and title, which hinted at an atmospheric Gothic story.

The Darkening Globe is set in 1597, towards the end of the Elizabethan period. It’s a time of travel and adventure, of great explorers like Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh – and the fictional Sir Hugh Radclyffe. As the novel opens, Sir Hugh is returning to England from a voyage to the New World and his wife, Beatrice, is both happy and apprehensive. She’s pleased to have him back, but afraid he’ll find out she’s been having an affair with one of the male servants. However, Hugh doesn’t come home alone – he is accompanied by Catalina, a beautiful woman with dark hair and skin. Because Hugh refuses to explain who she is, Beatrice comes to the conclusion that he has also been unfaithful and her resentment grows as Catalina settles into their home and shows no sign of leaving.

There’s also another new addition to the Radclyffe household: an enormous painted globe, decorated with mermaids, serpents, lions and a multitude of other illustrations. Other courtiers have been commissioning them for their houses and Hugh is very proud of his. Beatrice, though, is less impressed – in fact, she finds the globe threatening and creepy. Her fear of it appears justified when she sees it start to spin one night and then a sinister new drawing appears on its face. Not long afterwards, a death takes place in a way that seems to resemble the picture. Beatrice is sure she’s not imagining things and is determined to uncover the truth. Has someone been tampering with the globe – and could it start to rotate again? What really happened on Hugh’s expedition? And why has he brought Catalina home with him?

I enjoyed The Darkening Globe, particularly the parts of the story involving the globe itself – it’s quite eerie every time it starts to spin and a new picture appears, hinting that another death will happen soon. It’s not immediately obvious what is going on with the globe, as it really does seem to have a mind of its own. The other mystery, involving Catalina, is also interesting. I jumped to a conclusion about her very early in the book, but I was wrong and her connection with Hugh Radclyffe was not what I’d expected. I was pleased to be wrong as the real explanation for her presence was much more intriguing than I had assumed.

Although I felt that Beatrice, as our heroine, could have been a stronger character and the villains could perhaps have been given more depth, this was an entertaining novel with an imaginative plot. I’ll have to find time to read The Burnings and will also look out for future books by Naomi Kelsey.

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

Carrion Crow by Heather Parry

9 Comments

Freedom always comes at a price, that much she had learned, and a confinement was a small sacrifice for the reward of being able to set the rest of her life exactly as she wanted it.

I’ve never read anything quite like this book and am not sure I’ll be able to describe it adequately, but I’ll do my best! It’s not Heather Parry’s first novel – she has written a previous one, Orpheus Builds a Girl – but it’s the first I’ve read and I didn’t really know what to expect.

Marguerite Périgord, who lives in London with her mother, Cécile, has just become engaged to George Lewis, a man thirty-five years her senior. Although he’s a respectable solicitor and Marguerite is sure he’ll make her happy, Cécile disapproves of the engagement because Mr Lewis comes from a humble background and doesn’t have a lot of money. Telling her that if she really must go ahead with the marriage, she first needs an education on how to be a good wife, Cécile locks Marguerite in a tiny attic room with a sewing machine and a copy of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. Although it seems obvious to the reader that Cécile’s true intentions are simply to keep her daughter hidden away to prevent the marriage, Marguerite is sure she’ll be released as soon as she has made enough progress.

The rest of the novel follows Marguerite through the period of her confinement in the attic, while also giving us some glimpses into Cécile’s own history and her relationship with the man who was Marguerite’s father. The Cécile sections of the book do help to explain how she became the woman she is and why she so desperately wants to stop her daughter from making the same mistakes she did – but at the same time, her treatment of Marguerite is inhumane and cruel. Even more chilling is the way Marguerite just seems to accept that she has been sent into the attic for her own good and makes no attempt to escape. She tells herself that it will all be worth it in the end when she completes her ‘training’ and can become the perfect wife to Mr Lewis.

If Marguerite already seems mentally unstable when she enters the attic, she becomes even more so as her confinement continues. With little to occupy her mind and only a crow nesting in the roof above for company, she becomes obsessed with her own body and the changes she sees in it as she remains shut away from the fresh air outside and the meals delivered to the attic become smaller and more sporadic. The book gradually becomes stiflingly claustrophobic, as well as increasingly disturbing and uncomfortable to read. It reminded me at times of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper or Virginia Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic, although more gruesome than either. As Marguerite is an unreliable narrator and it’s sometimes difficult to know what’s real and what’s imaginary, the ending of the book both confused and surprised me, and I was left with the overall impression that I’d read something very powerful.

This is not a book that I could really say I ‘enjoyed’, but I do recommend it as long as you’re prepared for something very, very dark and unsettling!

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

The Versailles Formula by Nancy Bilyeau

5 Comments

Having loved Nancy Bilyeau’s The Blue and The Fugitive Colours, I was excited to read the new book in the Genevieve Planché series. The Versailles Formula is published this week by Joffe Books and I’m pleased to say that I found it as good as the first two. If you’re new to the series, I would recommend reading the books in order if you can, but there’s enough background information in this one to allow you to start here if you wanted to.

The Versailles Formula is set in 1766 and, like the other books, is narrated by Genevieve Planché, a Huguenot woman who grew up in London after her family left France due to religious persecution. She’s also an aspiring artist who is finding it frustratingly difficult to be taken seriously in a field still dominated by men. As the novel opens, Genevieve is teaching watercolours to a group of young ladies while her husband, the chemist Thomas Sturbridge, is away from home working on a new research project with a scientist friend. Several years earlier Thomas had created a formula for a beautiful new shade of blue – an invention that powerful people in both France and Britain would stop at nothing to obtain. The race for the blue led to murder and treason before an agreement was finally reached that both sides would stop attempting to develop the colour.

Genevieve’s painting lesson is interrupted by the arrival of Under-Secretary of State Sir Humphrey Willoughby, husband of her friend, Evelyn. Sir Humphrey’s appearance sets in motion a chain of events that lead Genevieve to Strawberry Hill, home of the author Horace Walpole. Here she and Sir Humphrey make the shocking discovery that someone has begun producing the blue once more. Have the French broken the treaty they agreed to or is this someone acting alone? How did the blue find its way into Walpole’s home? Accompanied by an army officer, Captain Howard, Genevieve travels to Paris in search of answers.

This book definitely lived up to my expectations and was worth the three year wait since the last one! It was good to catch up with Genevieve again and although I would have liked to have seen more of other recurring characters such as Thomas Sturbridge, there’s a wonderful new character to get to know in the form of Captain Howard. Genevieve is wary of Howard at first, disliking him on sight and unsure as to why Sir Humphrey is entrusting him with such an important mission, but her opinion gradually begins to change and I loved watching their relationship develop as they travel across France.

Although many of the characters in the novel are fictional, there are also some who are real historical figures, most notably Horace Walpole, author of The Castle of Otranto. I particularly enjoyed the section of the book where Genevieve visits Strawberry Hill, his Gothic-style mansion in Twickenham and experiences its ‘gloomth’ – a term coined by Walpole himself to describe his home’s atmosphere of gloom and warmth.

The book is well paced, with tension building as Genevieve begins to wonder exactly who can and can’t be trusted – and whether anyone will see through the false identity she has adopted for her return to France. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, but I did feel that some things were left unresolved at the end, so I hope that means there could be a fourth Genevieve Planché book to look forward to. If so, I’ll certainly be reading it.

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

Mother Naked by Glen James Brown

6 Comments

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

16 Comments

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

27 Comments

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

16 Comments

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.