Category: Reviews

House of Gold by Natasha Solomons

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It’s been a long time since I read my first Natasha Solomons book, The Novel in the Viola. Although I enjoyed it, for some inexplicable reason I had never really thought about reading any of her other books until I spotted her new one, House of Gold, which was published in the UK last month. I think it was the simple, elegant cover that caught my attention, at a time when covers in general are becoming increasingly intricate and brightly coloured, but the story sounded appealing too…and it was. I loved it.

House of Gold tells the story of a fictional banking family, the Goldbaums, who are loosely based on the real-life Rothschilds. When we first meet the family in 1911, they are fabulously wealthy and hugely influential, with branches in five European capital cities. In a move intended to strengthen the ties between the Austrian and the British branches, a marriage has been arranged between Greta Goldbaum and her cousin Albert. This is nothing new – Greta has grown up with the knowledge that “the Goldbaum men were bankers, while the Goldbaum women married Goldbaum men and produced Goldbaum children”, but she has no desire to marry Albert and is sure they won’t be compatible. Of course, the wedding must go ahead anyway and Greta is forced to leave her parents’ home in Vienna to start a new life as a married woman in England.

The relationship between Greta and Albert is at the heart of the novel and I enjoyed watching them get to know each other, trying each in their own way to make their marriage work but not always succeeding. It’s not always easy, especially not for Greta, but even when things are at their worst she finds some fulfilment in transforming the gardens of Temple Court, the British Goldbaums’ estate in Hampshire, and as a result of taking on new responsibilities and developing new interests, she is able to grow as a person.

There is much more to the novel than this, though. Within a few short years of Greta’s marriage to Albert, the First World War begins, bringing with it new challenges, new difficulties but also new opportunities. With European governments desperate for money to fund their war efforts, the services of the Goldbaums are as much in demand as ever, but as a Jewish family they find that their position is no longer as secure as it has been in the past. For Greta, there is the additional problem of being stuck in the middle, with different branches of her family on opposite sides of the conflict.

Natasha Solomons takes us right to the centre of the action, with characters such as Greta’s beloved brother Otto and her French cousin Henri becoming directly caught up in the war that is tearing Europe apart. We also learn a lot about the role of money in war; to quote Otto, “Money has no passport and every passport…it has little respect for borders. Money, like water, finds a way.”

There’s so much going on in this novel…so many characters to meet and so many interesting stories to follow. Maybe that’s why, after being completely gripped by the lives and adventures of the Goldbaums, I was slightly disappointed by the unexpectedly abrupt ending and by subplots which seemed to lack a proper resolution. I hope that means Natasha Solomons might be planning a sequel. It would certainly be possible, but if not I will just have to go back and read her earlier novels. I have Mr Rosenblum’s List, The Gallery of Vanished Husbands and The Song Collector to choose from.

The Corinthian by Georgette Heyer

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When I posted my review of Friday’s Child a few weeks ago, I mentioned that I had a choice of three Heyer novels to read next and asked for some help in deciding which one to choose. The Corinthian received more recommendations than Faro’s Daughter and An Infamous Army so I knew it would have to be my next Heyer…and what a great choice it was! Published in 1940, it’s one of her earliest Regency novels and although I think she wrote better books, I did find this one thoroughly entertaining and fun to read.

Are you wondering what a Corinthian is? Well, it is defined in the dictionary as “a man about town, especially one who lives luxuriously or, sometimes, dissolutely”. The Corinthian of the title is Sir Richard Wyndham, a twenty-nine-year-old ‘Man of Fashion’ who, at the beginning of the novel, is under pressure from his mother and sister to marry the Honourable Melissa Brandon. Despite their insistence that she will make the ideal wife, Sir Richard knows that Melissa is only interested in his money – a thought which makes him so depressed he goes out and gets drunk (or ‘a trifle disguised’ as Heyer likes to call it).

On his way home, he looks up to see a young man attempting to descend from a window down a rope of knotted bed-sheets. Going to offer his assistance, Richard makes the discovery that the young man is actually a young woman: seventeen-year-old Penelope – or Pen – Creed. Like himself, Pen is being forced into a marriage not of her own choosing and has decided to escape by dressing as a boy and running away to the home of her childhood friend in Somerset. Because he is drunk and because it gives him an excuse to avoid Melissa, Richard finds himself volunteering to accompany her – but he is not prepared for the drama and adventure that awaits them on the journey!

I won’t say too much more about the plot, but you can expect a wonderful blend of comedy, action and mystery as Richard and Pen stumble from one farcical situation to another. Not only do they become entangled with jewel thieves, murderers and Bow Street Runners, they also have several encounters with various members of Pen’s family, as well as Melissa’s brother, the hilarious Cedric. As for Pen and Richard themselves, I found them both very likeable. Richard is sophisticated, bored and cynical, but also kind hearted, intelligent and competent, while Pen may be young and innocent but she’s not lacking in courage and is less silly than some of Heyer’s other very young heroines.

One of the great things about Heyer’s Regency novels is how fully they immerse us in the period. This one is no exception but it does have a different feel from the last Heyer Regency I read, Friday’s Child – that one was set mainly in London, in a whirlwind of masquerade balls, high-stakes card games, visits to the theatre and evenings at Almack’s Assembly Rooms, but this one takes us out of the city, with a lot of time spent on the road travelling towards Somerset. I loved the descriptions of what it was like to undertake a long journey by public stagecoach and the various coaching inns Pen and Richard stayed at along the way.

Having enjoyed this book so much, I am now about to start Faro’s Daughter and hoping it’s going to be another good one!

The Cursed Wife by Pamela Hartshorne

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Having previously read Pamela Hartshorne’s time-slip novel The Edge of Dark, I found her latest book, The Cursed Wife, both similar and different. Similar in that they both explore the lives of women in Elizabethan England; different because this one is set entirely in the past, with no modern day storyline and no form of time travel.

The Cursed Wife is written from the perspectives of two women, Mary and Cat, who are both friends and rivals. When we first meet Mary in 1590 she appears to be leading a happy and contented life; she is married to the merchant Gabriel Thorne, and lives with him, their children and their servants in a comfortable house in London. Mary is devoted to her family and her household and has almost – but not quite – managed to forget that she was cursed as a child and predicted to die by hanging.

However, Mary’s whole life is built around lies and deception and she knows that if the truth is ever revealed she could lose everything. One rainy day she sets out to do some shopping in Sopers Lane to replenish her stocks of herbs and medicines, and is shocked to see a face from her past – a face she had expected never to see again. It’s Cat, her childhood friend, who was once as close to her as a sister, but who now possesses the secrets that could ruin Mary’s life…

As I’ve said, I found this a very different sort of book from The Edge of Dark; it doesn’t have such an eerie atmosphere and lacks the touches of the supernatural – although Mary does have a very creepy one-armed wooden doll called Peg. Instead the focus is on the relationship between Mary and Cat. It’s a relationship which changes and transforms itself over the years as the roles of the two women in each other’s lives are reversed, but the links between them are seemingly unbreakable and their stories are very closely entwined.

Cat and Mary take turns to narrate in alternating chapters and although their narrative voices are very similar, the author does use a few techniques to distinguish between the two – for example, Cat’s thoughts are often aimed directly at Mary (‘you say this’ and ‘you do that’). Cat is also a more bitter person than Mary, who can often seem quite naive and slow to understand things that are obvious to the reader. Neither woman is very likeable and although Cat is nastier, I can’t really say that my sympathies were with Mary either.

Pamela Hartshorne has written about the Elizabethan period before, not just in The Edge of Dark, but in other novels too, and she obviously knows it well. We are given lots of little details on domestic life in the late 16th century – the food people ate, the clothes they wore, the tasks carried out by servants in the home – and although historical events happening in the wider world have little direct effect on the story, there’s a sense of how precarious life could be in this period when hanging is a punishment for crime and when the most minor of illnesses can result in death. The novel also looks at the roles of women and the expectations that were placed on them regarding marriage.

The Cursed Wife is an interesting read and the storyline was compelling enough to hold my attention until the end, but I did prefer The Edge of Dark and as her earlier books all seem to be time-slip novels like that one I think I’ll have to investigate them at some point.

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

Diary of a Provincial Lady by E M Delafield

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Today would have been E M Delafield’s birthday – and she is the next author to be featured in Jane at Beyond Eden Rock’s Birthday Book of Underappreciated Lady Authors. I wasn’t planning to join in with this one but, during last weekend’s Mini Persephone Readathon, having finished Monica Dickens’ The Winds of Heaven, I wanted something else to read and remembered that Diary of a Provincial Lady is also published by Persephone. My copy is not the dove-grey Persephone edition, but I was still pleased to have found a book that would count for both the Readathon and today’s celebrations!

Diary of a Provincial Lady, first published in 1930, is exactly what you would expect from the title: a novel written in the form of the diary of a ‘Provincial Lady’. The Lady, whose name we never learn, lives with her husband Robert in a village in the south of England. Their young son, Robin, is away at school much of the time, but there is also a daughter, Vicky, who is educated at home by Mademoiselle, her French governess. Several more servants, including a temperamental cook and a series of dissatisfied parlourmaids, complete the household.

The Provincial Lady’s days are always busy and varied. As well as being responsible for managing the servants, there are tea parties and garden fetes to attend, dinners to host and visitors to entertain – including the formidable and snobbish Lady Boxe, and Our Vicar’s Wife who, once she arrives, often forgets to leave again! The Provincial Lady records all of these things in her diary over a period of about a year, writing in short, concise sentences interspersed with notes, queries and memos to herself.

I have been putting off reading Diary of a Provincial Lady for a long time, because I wasn’t convinced that it sounded like my sort of book, but I was actually very pleasantly surprised. One of the things that surprised me was how often I found I was able to relate to the Provincial Lady and her problems. In fact, I think a lot of the situations she describes are things that most of us would probably identify with…saying something stupid and then wondering why on earth we said it; pretending we understand what somebody is talking about and then being caught out later in the conversation; agreeing to do something and immediately wishing we hadn’t!

I couldn’t relate to everything, of course. The Lady’s lifestyle is entirely different from my own – I don’t have servants to worry about, for example, and if I found myself in financial trouble my solution wouldn’t be to buy myself some expensive new dresses then go off to the South of France for a holiday. I can appreciate, though, that she belonged to a certain time and a certain class and that her position in society meant that she was expected to behave in a particular way.

I was also surprised by how funny the book was! A sense of humour is often a personal, individual thing and sometimes when someone else says that a book is hilarious I’m disappointed when I don’t find it very funny at all (and I’m sure this probably happens the other way around too). But the Provincial Lady’s observations are so witty and the things that happen to her are so amusing I couldn’t help but laugh.

I am aware that there are more books in the Provincial Lady series. A question to those who have read them – are they as good as this one or is there another E M Delafield book you think I should read instead?

The English Girl by Katherine Webb

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One of the things I love about reading is that it gives me the opportunity to learn about places I have never visited and am probably never likely to. Katherine Webb’s The English Girl is set in Oman, which is not a country I’ve ever read about before. Having previously read only The Misbegotten by Webb, I found this one a very different novel, not least because of the fascinating setting.

The ‘English girl’ of the title, Joan Seabrook, has grown up listening to her father’s stories of Arabia and longing to explore this magical, mysterious land for herself. Now, in 1958, her dreams have come true and she is on her way to Oman with her fiancé, Rory. Foreign tourists are not usually welcome in Oman, but Joan has obtained special permission – with the help of a family friend who happens to be the foreign minister – to visit her brother Daniel, who is stationed there with the British army. Having recently finished studying for her degree in archaeology, Joan is looking forward to investigating some of the sites she has heard so much about.

Arriving in the city of Muscat, Joan is disappointed to discover that the places she really wants to see – Fort Jabrin and Jebel Akhdar (the Green Mountain) – are off limits because of the war which is currently being waged in the mountains of Oman between the supporters of the Sultan and the Imam. She consoles herself with visits to Maude Vickery, the famous explorer who was the first woman to cross the desert known as the Empty Quarter and who has made Muscat her home. Maude was Joan’s childhood heroine and she is thrilled to have the chance to get to know her. Now an elderly woman, Maude is bitter, sharp-tongued and resentful, and not at all what Joan had expected, but when Maude asks her to carry out an important mission on her behalf, Joan is unable to refuse – even if it means putting her own life in danger.

As I’ve said, this is the first book I have read set in Oman, and I loved the beautiful descriptions of the deserts, the mountain ranges, the valleys and forts, and the streets of Muscat. It’s the perfect backdrop for Katherine Webb’s story of adventure, mystery and romance! This is also the first time I’ve read about the Jebel Akhdar War of the 1950s and the conflict between the interior of Oman (the Imamate) and the Sultanate of Muscat. The British army supported the Sultan in the war and as Joan’s brother Daniel is a soldier, this gives the characters in the novel a personal connection to events taking place around them.

Although I found a lot to enjoy, it took me a while to really get into this book and I think that was partly because Joan just didn’t appeal to me as a character. I wasn’t very interested in her relationships with Rory and Daniel and I felt that she kept putting herself into dangerous situations unnecessarily. I hoped I would warm to her eventually, but I didn’t. However, this is not just Joan’s story – it is also Maude’s, and while she is not the most likeable of characters either, she is a fascinating one.

As soon as I began to read about Maude, I thought of the real-life explorer Gertrude Bell, and after finishing the book I wasn’t surprised to see that the author’s note at the end confirmed that she had been the inspiration for the character. About half of the novel is written from Maude’s perspective, taking us back in time to her exciting journey through the Empty Quarter and her determination to get across the desert before her friend and rival Nathaniel Elliot. By the time I reached the end of Maude’s story, I admired her for what she had achieved but I also understood what had shaped her into the bitter, unhappy old woman Joan meets in Muscat.

The English Girl could be thought of as a novel of secrets as everyone seems to be hiding something. Maude, betrayed by someone she thought she could trust, has been trying to hide her pain and heartbreak for most of her life, while Nathaniel has also been concealing something that happened on his own expedition. Both Rory and Daniel are keeping secrets from Joan and there are hints of further mysteries as far back as Joan’s childhood too. Most of all, there are the secrets of Oman and of the desert and seeing these unfold as the setting is brought to life will be my lasting memory of this book.

Templar Silks by Elizabeth Chadwick

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In her latest novel, Templar Silks, Elizabeth Chadwick returns to the hero of her earlier books The Greatest Knight and The Scarlet Lion: William Marshal, knight, soldier, statesman and adviser to kings of England. Unlike those other two books, which took us right through William’s life and career, from youth to death, Templar Silks concentrates on one specific episode – William’s journey to the Holy Land – which was mentioned only briefly in The Greatest Knight.

The novel opens in April 1219 with William on his deathbed, surrounded by family and friends at his home in England, Caversham Manor. Before he dies, he asks his squire to bring him the silk burial shrouds he was given by the Templars in the Holy Land thirty years ago. As he waits the arrival of the silks, he looks back on the long-ago adventure that shaped the rest of his life.

In 1183, William was in the service of Henry II’s eldest son, known as the Young King. In need of money to pay his soldiers, the Young King gives orders to raid the shrine of Rocamadour, but falls ill with dysentery shortly afterwards. Aware of the sacrilege he has committed, his dying wish is for William to atone for his sins by taking his cloak to Jerusalem and placing it on Christ’s tomb. Still unmarried at this point and free from the greater responsibilities he will hold in later life, William is happy to undertake the pilgrimage, but the journey proves to be even more eventful and dramatic than he had expected.

William spent three years on his pilgrimage but historians know very little about what actually happened during this period of his life. This allows Elizabeth Chadwick to use her imagination to create William’s story – and with her own knowledge of the medieval world and the political situation in 12th century Jerusalem, she is able to make his actions feel plausible and realistic.

William is accompanied on his journey by a small party of fellow knights and squires, two Templar Knights who act as guides, and his younger brother Ancel. There is no historical evidence that Ancel took part in the pilgrimage – in fact, he is barely mentioned in historical records at all – but the relationship between the brothers was one of my favourite aspects of the book. Ancel and William are very different people, with Ancel depicted as more sensitive, more cautious, and not as quick to learn when it comes to fighting, jousting and other knightly pursuits. There are times when they become frustrated with each other, but the love and loyalty between them is always plain to see.

And William needs all the loyal friends he can find if he is going to survive this difficult mission. After a traumatic experience in Constantinople, he and his men arrive in Jerusalem to find this most holy of cities approaching a moment of crisis. King Baldwin is dying of leprosy and his nephew, his only heir, is too young to rule. Baldwin’s brother-in-law, Guy de Lusignan, is the next most logical contender, but Guy has many rivals and Jerusalem desperately needs strong, united leadership to deal with the threat of Saladin. William has more reason than most to dislike Guy, who was responsible for his uncle’s death several years earlier, but choosing to support another claimant could lead him into even more danger.

Due to the nature of the story, the setting and the focus on politics and the military, most of the main characters in this particular novel are male, but there is one female character who has a large role to play during William’s time in Jerusalem. She is Paschia de Riveri, the beautiful concubine of the Patriarch Heraclius. It is never very clear what Paschia’s motives are or how she truly feels, but as William became more entangled in her schemes, I couldn’t help thinking that it would all end unhappily for him – while hoping, for his sake, that I was wrong.

I enjoyed Templar Silks, with all of its adventure and intrigue, but it does feel a bit different from Elizabeth Chadwick’s other recent novels such as her Eleanor of Aquitaine trilogy and Lady of the English, which are more biographical and cover much longer time periods. It seems that Chadwick is not ready to leave the Marshals behind just yet; her next novel, The Irish Princess, is going to be about the parents of William’s wife, Isabelle de Clare.

Thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Winds of Heaven by Monica Dickens

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When I saw that Jessie of Dwell in Possibility was hosting a Mini Persephone Readathon this weekend, I knew I wanted to take part and I knew exactly what I would be reading: The Winds of Heaven, a book published by Persephone which I had originally been planning to read for Jane’s Monica Dickens Day last month but didn’t have time. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Monica Dickens as I’ve never read any of her books before, but I loved this one and will now be looking for more.

The Winds of Heaven (1955) follows the story of Louise Bickford, whose husband, the controlling and oppressive Dudley, dies a year or two before the novel opens. Left alone with no money to support herself, Louise cannot afford anywhere to live, so is forced to rely on the hospitality of her daughters. Although Louise has shown her three daughters nothing but love and affection, they each make it very clear that they don’t really want her staying with them and see her as a burden to be moved on to the next sister as quickly as possible.

Louise is a lovely person – generous, selfless and sensitive to the feelings of others; I had a lot of sympathy for her and for the situation in which she finds herself. The logical solution would be to get a job, but a combination of factors – her age (approaching sixty), her class, her lack of experience at any type of work and the disapproval of her daughters – mean that this is never considered as a realistic option for Louise. All she can do is continue to move from one household to the next, trying to make herself useful but knowing that she is unwanted and unappreciated.

The three daughters seem to have inherited none of their mother’s good qualities. They are three very different people, but in their different ways they are all as unpleasant and selfish as each other. Miriam is a snob, obsessed with appearances and her place in the community. Her marriage is not a particularly happy one, but as Arthur is rich enough to pay for holidays abroad and ponies for the children, she’s not complaining too much! Eva, the middle sister, is an aspiring actress who lives in London and is too preoccupied with her career and her affair with a married man to give any thought to her mother’s problems. Anne, the youngest, is a farmer’s wife but does very little to help out on the farm – she is a lazy, sullen, resentful woman who thinks only of herself and her own comfort.

For a novel with so many unlikeable characters, I found this a surprisingly enjoyable and entertaining read. Louise’s story is obviously a very sad one at times, but Monica Dickens writes with enough humour and lightness that it never becomes completely depressing. And although her relationships with Miriam, Eva and Anne are difficult, Louise does have two special people in her life who make things much more bearable. One is her young granddaughter Ellen, with whom she forms a close bond. Ellen is Miriam’s eldest daughter and, like Louise, she often feels like an outsider in the family. The other is Gordon Disher, a man she meets while sheltering from the rain in a London tea shop.

Mr Disher is the most unlikely of romantic heroes – he is overweight, sells beds in a department store and writes cheap paperback thrillers with titles like The Girl in the Bloodstained Bikini. He is also a lovely, kind, gentle man who sees that Louise is unhappy and does all he can to make things better for her. Their meetings are few and far between – Louise is sure she’s too old for romance and she doesn’t spend a lot of time in London anyway – but I found their relationship quite moving and always looked forward to the moments when they were together.

Towards the end of the book, events take a more dramatic turn and if I have a criticism it would be that I’m not sure whether this was really necessary. The final sentence, though, was perfect! I wish Monica Dickens had written more books about these characters, but I enjoyed this one enough to know that I will be investigating the rest of her novels anyway!

The Winds of Heaven endpapers