The Queen’s Man by Sharon Penman

October 16, 20154 Comments

Having read and loved three of Sharon Penman’s historical fiction novels – The Sunne in Splendour, Here Be Dragons and Falls the Shadow – I’ve been interested in trying her series of historical mysteries set in medieval England. I downloaded the first in the series, The Queen’s Man, when it was offered as the Kindle Daily Deal on Amazon a while ago and have been waiting for the right time to read it.

The Queen’s Man introduces us to Justin de Quincy who, as the novel begins in December 1192, has just discovered that he is the illegitimate son of the Bishop of Chester. Furious that his father will not acknowledge their relationship, Justin sets out on a journey to London where he hopes to start a new life. Before he reaches London, however, he witnesses a murder on a snowy road just outside Winchester. As the killers flee the scene, the dying man – a goldsmith called Gervase Fitz Randolph – gives Justin a letter and makes him promise to deliver it to Queen Eleanor in London.

Eleanor of Aquitaine, widow of Henry II, is anxiously awaiting news of her son, King Richard I, who has disappeared while on crusade. As the weeks go by with no word of the missing king, it’s starting to look likely that he is dead and Eleanor’s youngest son, John, Count of Mortain, is getting ready to claim the throne for himself. Justin de Quincy’s arrival at court in possession of a bloodstained letter gives the Queen a clue as to Richard’s fate – but she still wants to know more.

As Justin was the only witness to the murder and the only person able to identify the killers, the Queen commissions him to investigate. Who was responsible for Gervase’s death? Was it a member of the goldsmith’s own family who wanted him dead or could it have been John who paid the murderers to steal the letter before it could reach Eleanor?

I enjoyed The Queen’s Man; it doesn’t compare with Penman’s straight historical novels – it lacks the depth and the emotional impact – but I didn’t mind that as I knew from the beginning that this would be a different type of book. While the plot and characters (with some obvious exceptions) are fictional, the historical background is as accurate and detailed as you would expect from Penman, with lots of interesting snippets of information that bring the 12th century to life: a visit to both a lazar house (hospital for lepers) and a medieval horse fair are incorporated, for example, and there’s a fascinating description of ‘trial by ordeal’ using hot cauldrons.

As a murder mystery, the plot is quite complex with plenty of suspects and some red herrings – although it’s slightly disappointing that some important information is withheld from the reader until near the end, so it would have been difficult to have guessed the solution before it was revealed.

The Queen’s Man has an interesting variety of supporting characters, ranging from innkeeper’s widow, Nell, and the under-sheriff of Winchester, Luke de Marston, to one of Queen Eleanor’s ladies, the beautiful Claudine. My only concern is that I found Justin de Quincy himself very bland. Based on this first novel, I wouldn’t have thought he was a strong enough character to build a whole series around. I could be wrong about him, though, and I’m still interested enough to want to read the next book, Cruel as the Grave, at some point to see how his story continues.

A God in Every Stone by Kamila Shamsie

October 12, 201516 Comments

When choosing what to read for this year’s #Diversiverse event, A God in Every Stone was the obvious choice as it also counts towards my Reading the Walter Scott Prize project (it was shortlisted for the 2015 prize). It’s the sixth novel by Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie, but the first one I have read.

The novel opens in July 1914 in Turkey, where twenty-two-year-old Vivian Rose Spencer is working on an archaeological dig led by Tahsin Bey, a friend of her father’s. Vivian is intrigued by tales of Scylax, the ancient Greek explorer who sailed down the Indus River from the city of Caspatyrus (now Peshawar in modern-day Pakistan) and was rewarded by King Darius I with a circlet decorated with figs. As Tahsin Bey tells her of his mission to find the legendary circlet, she finds herself falling in love with him, despite the age difference. Soon, though, she and Tahsin Bey are separated; war has broken out in Europe and Vivian must return home to serve as a VAD nurse in a London hospital.

Another thread of the novel follows a young Pashtun soldier from Peshawar, Qayyum Gul, who has been injured while fighting with the British army at Ypres in 1915. Qayyum is on his way home when he briefly meets Vivian on a train. Having been traumatised by her experiences of wartime nursing, Vivian has decided to travel to Peshawar to continue Tahsin Bey’s search for the Circlet of Scylax. In Peshawar, she gets to know a twelve-year-old boy called Najeeb and awakens in him a passion for archaeology and ancient history.

The stories of these three people – Vivian, Qayyum and Najeeb – come together again fifteen years later in 1930s Peshawar. I think I’ve said enough about the plot now, so I won’t tell you how their characters have developed in the intervening years or the circumstances that lead to their paths crossing again. What I will say, though, is that 1930 is a very significant year in the history of Peshawar, as a group known as the Khudai Khidmatgar campaign to end British rule in India through non-violent means. The novel reaches a dramatic conclusion on the Street of Storytellers during one of the defining moments of the Indian independence movement – and one that I confess to knowing nothing about before reading this book.

A God in Every Stone is an ambitious book, spanning three decades, crossing two continents and tackling some big themes, such as the rise and fall of empires and the loyalties of the people living within those empires. The settings – which include Turkish archaeological sites and the old walled city of Peshawar – are vividly described and I loved the way in which the story of Scylax was worked throughout the novel, its relevance not immediately clear but soon becoming obvious.

Although I found a lot to admire about A God in Every Stone, I still felt that there was something missing: an emotional connection to the characters. I found that the only one I really cared about was Najeeb – his innocence and enthusiasm as a twelve-year-old meant he instantly became my favourite character – but I struggled to feel anything for Qayyum and Vivian, despite the ordeals they both go through. It didn’t help that towards the end of the novel they are pushed into the background as two more characters – Zarina and her sister-in-law, Diwa – are introduced. Choosing to focus on new characters at such a late stage of the book meant that the final scenes set on the Street of Storytellers lacked the impact they should have had.

I did enjoy this book but I couldn’t help feeling that the author had tried to include too much in what is really quite a short novel. I think I would have preferred a longer book giving the characters more emotional depth and exploring the themes in more detail – or maybe a shorter book concentrating on just Vivian’s story or just Qayyum’s. Looking at other reviews of this novel, it was possibly the wrong Kamila Shamsie book for me to have started with; I’m looking forward to trying one of her earlier books and I think Burnt Shadows will be the next one I read.

The Moor’s Account – and a Shiny New Books Q and A

October 8, 2015January 18, 20225 Comments

Just a quick post to let you know that Issue 7 of Shiny New Books is out today!

Shiny New Books is an online magazine for book lovers and is packed with book reviews, news and other features. In this issue, I have provided a Q & A with author Laila Lalami. Below you can read my review of her Man Booker longlisted novel The Moor’s Account.

In 1527, the Spanish conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez embarks on an expedition to the New World. With five ships and six hundred men, there’s every reason to hope that the voyage will be a success and will result in the area now known as the Gulf Coast of the United States being claimed for Spain. Within a year, however, most of the men have succumbed to disease, lack of food, extreme weather and encounters with Native American tribes. Eventually, only four of the original party remain: the treasurer of the expedition, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca; the nobleman Alonso del Castillo Maldonado; Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, an explorer; and finally, Estebanico, a Moroccan slave in the service of Dorantes.

The story of the disastrous Narváez expedition is told in a chronicle written by Cabeza de Vaca, yet Estebanico – one of de Vaca’s three fellow survivors – is only very briefly mentioned. Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account gives Estebanico a voice of his own and an opportunity to tell his side of the story, including details which were omitted from the ‘official’ records.

As well as his account of the expedition, Estebanico also tells us about his early life in Azemmour, Morocco, and how his fortunes rose and fell. Born Mustafa ibn Muhammad ibn Abdussalam al-Zamori, he was once a trader, selling men into slavery – before, ironically, becoming a slave himself. The two threads of Estebanico’s narrative are told in alternating chapters and I found that as I learned more about his background I gained a deeper understanding of the sort of person he was and of the qualities which helped him to survive when so many others did not.

Unlike most of his fellow explorers, Estebanico has not come to the New World in search of fame or fortune; all he wants is to be given his freedom and a chance to return to Azemmour. He is in a unique position, being part of the Castilian party yet not fully accepted as ‘one of them’ – at least until his intelligence and his gift for learning languages make him indispensable to the group and the barriers between slave and master begin to break down. His status as slave means that he offers a different perspective on events and also a more sympathetic view of the tribes of indigenous people they encounter.

Lalami very successfully conveys the strangeness and newness of the world in which Estebanico has found himself; the landscape, the plants and animals, the native tribes and their customs – all of these are described through the eyes of someone to whom everything is fascinating and unfamiliar. It would have been interesting to have been able to trace the progress of the journey on a map. On the other hand, this is a journey into the unknown and Estebanico and his companions only have a very vague idea of where they are headed, so I was happy to wait until I’d finished the novel before looking up more details of the expedition online.

Although Estebanico’s account does not really exist and Lalami is simply imagining how he may have chosen to tell the story, the novel is written in such a way that I could easily believe everything in the book happened exactly as described. I appreciated the author’s efforts to make the novel feel like an authentic sixteenth century manuscript – while it isn’t entirely convincing, it never feels inappropriately modern either and strikes a good balance between readability and historical accuracy. I also liked the names the Spaniards have for the places they pass through: for example, the Land of the Indians, the Ocean of Fog and Darkness, the Island of Misfortune and the Bay of Oysters. A strange reptile discovered near the beginning of the expedition is given the name El Lagarto because it looks like a giant lizard. Names, of course, are very important to Estebanico, having had his own name – and with it part of his identity – taken from him.

Another major theme of the novel is the power of storytelling and the right we all have to tell our own story and make sure our voice is heard. It’s fortunate, then, that Laila Lalami is such a talented storyteller herself. The Moor’s Account is an educational read (unless you’ve read about the Narváez expedition before, you should find, as I did, that there’s something new to learn on almost every page) but it’s also a fascinating travelogue and a gripping adventure novel which kept me turning the pages wondering where Estebanico’s journey would take him next.

Oswald: Return of the King by Edoardo Albert

October 6, 201515 Comments

One of my favourite reads from the first half of this year was Edwin: High King of Britain, the first in Edoardo Albert’s Northumbrian Thrones trilogy which tells the stories of three seventh century kings. On a visit to the library a few weeks ago I was pleased to find a copy of the second book, Oswald: Return of the King – and I was delighted to discover that it was just as good as the first.

It’s not necessary to have read Edwin: High King of Britain before starting this book – the key events of the previous book are given in a summary at the beginning of this one – but those of you who did read Edwin may remember Oswald as the young boy who fled into exile with his family after his father, Æthelfrith, King of Northumbria, was killed in battle.

During the years of Edwin’s reign, Oswald remains in the northern kingdom of Dal Riata, living amongst the monks on the island of Iona, where he is converted to Christianity. When news of Edwin’s death reaches the island, Oswald is reluctant to take action; he has no real desire to claim the throne for himself and would prefer to stay on Iona and enter the monastery. Abbot Ségéne, however, has other ideas – he wants Oswald to become king so that he can spread the new religion to his people – and a sequence of events follows which will leave Oswald with little choice other than to return to Northumbria and regain his father’s throne.

Oswald’s story is as exciting and engrossing as Edwin’s was. If the title, Return of the King, has made you think of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, that’s not a coincidence: Tolkien is thought to have taken the historical Oswald as the inspiration for his fictional character, Aragorn. Edoardo Albert lists Tolkien as a favourite author and there is a definite influence here, though it would be difficult to say how much. This tale of treachery and betrayal, stolen thrones and warring kingdoms does sometimes feel like fantasy – but of course, it isn’t; Oswald was a real person and Albert’s novel is based on historical fact (except where some imagination was clearly needed to fill in the gaps).

Oswald himself is a fascinating character and I thought his internal struggle between his desire to become a monk and his duty to become king was very well written. I also loved the portrayal of his relationship with his younger brother, Oswiu, who is going to be the subject of the third book in the trilogy. The brothers have very different temperaments, and while the loyalty and love they have for each other is plain to see, there’s also a tension which is always there below the surface.

Other characters include friends such as the monk, Aidan, who brings Christianity to the island of Lindisfarne, and enemies such as Cadwallon, King of Gwynedd, and Penda, King of Mercia – and I was pleased to see the return of Coifi, the pagan priest whom we first met in Edwin: High King of Britain, now a lost and lonely character having had his faith in the old gods shaken. I should also mention Oswald’s wonderful pet raven, Bran, who seems to have a personality all of his own (I wasn’t aware until after finishing the book that there are stories associating the real Oswald with a raven).

Before reading this book I had very little knowledge of Oswald or this period of history, so I found it a very informative novel as well as an entertaining one. Albert includes a lot of useful additional material: there’s a map showing the various kingdoms that made up Britain in the year 635, a character list, a glossary of unfamiliar words and a pronunciation guide – which was very helpful as I would otherwise have had no idea how to pronounce a name like Rhieienmelth!

I’m now looking forward to the third book in the trilogy – and while I await its publication I think I would like to read The King in the North by Max Adams for a non-fiction view of Oswald.

The Heart of Midlothian by Sir Walter Scott

October 2, 2015October 2, 201515 Comments

In 2012 I read my first Walter Scott novel, Ivanhoe, and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Having found Scott less difficult to read than I’d expected, I decided to add another of his books to my Classics Club list and something drew me to this one – possibly memories of the Scottish football results being announced on the television on a Saturday afternoon (Heart of Midlothian is the name of an Edinburgh team).

The novel – which predates the football team, being published in 1818 – takes its title from the Old Tolbooth Prison in Edinburgh, which was in the heart of the county of Midlothian. Scott based his plot on two real historical events: the Porteous Riots of 1736 and the story of a young woman who walked all the way to London to obtain a royal pardon for her sister who had been wrongly charged with infanticide. In Scott’s version, the young woman’s name is Jeanie Deans and she lives on a dairy farm at St Leonard’s Crags with her father, Davie, a strict Cameronian (a Presbyterian faction).

Jeanie’s younger sister, Euphemia – known as Effie – is in the Tolbooth facing the death penalty, having been accused of giving birth in secret and murdering her newborn child. Jeanie is sure Effie is innocent, but with no witnesses to the pregnancy or the birth and no way to prove what happened to the baby, she is guilty in the eyes of the law. If Jeanie would only tell the court that she had known her sister was pregnant, Effie could be freed, but she is unwilling to tell a lie and instead she decides to go to London to ask Queen Caroline for a pardon. Armed with a letter of introduction to the Duke of Argyll and some money borrowed from an admirer, the Laird of Dumbiedikes, Jeanie sets off on foot to save her sister’s life.

The first half of the novel sets the scene, describing a riot that breaks out in Edinburgh during a protest over the hanging of two smugglers. When Captain John Porteous orders the city guard to fire into the crowd, causing the deaths of several people, he himself is imprisoned in the Tolbooth. The prison is then stormed by a mob and Porteous is lynched and killed. These events become entwined with Effie’s story and provide the historical backdrop for the novel. The second half of the book concentrates on Jeanie’s journey to London, which includes encounters with some characters we previously met in Scotland: George Robertson, the father of Effie’s child; and Meg Murdockson and her mentally ill daughter, Madge Wildfire, two women who could hold the key to the mystery of the missing baby.

Well, The Heart of Midlothian was not the relatively easy read that Ivanhoe was! I found it much more challenging, for several reasons. First, as the novel is set mainly in Scotland, the dialogue is written almost entirely in Scots. I wouldn’t normally have a problem with this, but added to the fact that the book was written in the early 1800s, it did slow down the pace of my reading quite a lot. I find that whenever a book uses a large amount of dialect – even one you’re familiar with – a little more effort is required to read it and that was definitely the case here. If you think you might struggle with the dialect, I would recommend choosing an edition of the book with a good glossary!

Also, unlike Ivanhoe, which is a medieval adventure story packed with sword fights, sieges, villainous knights and feuding noblemen, this is a very different type of novel. While Jeanie’s personal story was gripping, I have to admit I had very little interest in the long passages describing the religious situation in eighteenth century Scotland and the discussions between Jeanie’s father, Davie Deans, and his neighbours on their different moral beliefs. I also thought the plot relied too heavily on coincidence, with Jeanie meeting people from her own small community in Scotland hundreds of miles away in England – and I felt that the final few chapters of the book were unnecessary as the story had already reached a more natural ending point.

I did enjoy parts of The Heart of Midlothian, though. Jeanie is a strong heroine who behaves with honesty and integrity throughout the novel, and although some of her choices were frustrating, I did like her. There is a romantic interest for Jeanie too – the schoolmaster, Reuben Butler – but this only forms a small part of the story. I was also interested in the descriptions of eighteenth century life and the relationship between Scotland and England in the years following the union of 1707. And there are plenty of memorable scenes, from the storming of the Tolbooth near the beginning to Jeanie’s meeting with Queen Caroline, wife of George II, towards the end.

I certainly didn’t love this book the way I loved Ivanhoe, but I’ll still read more of Scott’s novels and will hope that the next one I pick up is more to my taste than this one was!

The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

September 24, 201516 Comments

Egdon Heath, part of Hardy’s fictional Wessex, is a wild and haunting place, steeped in history and superstition. Many of the people who live and work there love the heath and appreciate its beauty, but there are some – including Eustacia Vye – who find the loneliness oppressive. Eustacia, who lives with her grandfather in an isolated cottage on the heath, is desperately looking for a way to escape and believes she has found it in Clym Yeobright.

Clym is the returning native of the title, home for Christmas from Paris where he has been working as a diamond merchant. Clym, who dislikes the diamond trade, is planning to stay at home and become a schoolmaster, but Eustacia sets her sights on marrying him in the hope that she can persuade him to take her back to Paris. After all, there is nothing to keep her on Egdon Heath now that her former lover, the innkeeper Damon Wildeve, has married Clym’s cousin, Thomasin.

Clym’s mother, Mrs Yeobright, is opposed to the idea of both marriages – her son’s with Eustacia and her niece’s with Wildeve – but although she reluctantly accepts Thomasin’s decision, a series of misunderstandings and disagreements damages her relationship with Clym and this will have tragic consequences.

I have mentioned five of the novel’s six main characters so far: the sixth is Diggory Venn, a reddleman (a seller of red ochre, which farmers use to mark their sheep). Diggory is in love with Thomasin and remains quietly devoted to her even after she marries Wildeve. The lives of these six people will draw closer together, with the actions of each one impacting on all of the others. For some, there will be a happy ending, but for others there will be only unhappiness and tragedy.

The Return of the Native was Thomas Hardy’s sixth published novel and first appeared as a serial in 1878. I’ve read almost half of his novels now and always enjoy my visits to Wessex and my glimpses of rural life in the 19th century. This book has a very memorable and atmospheric setting, with the heath itself being at the centre of the story. The way in which the lives of the characters are shaped by the heath is one of the driving forces of the plot, particularly as Clym and Eustacia have such different feelings about it:

Take all the varying hates felt by Eustacia Vye towards the heath, and translate them into loves, and you have the heart of Clym.

A common theme in Hardy’s novels is the progress of the industrial revolution and nostalgia for a way of life that, even in Hardy’s day, was rapidly disappearing. An example of this in The Return of the Native is the character of Diggory Venn, the reddleman, whose skin and clothes are stained with the red dye that he sells.

The traveller with the cart was a reddleman — a person whose vocation it was to supply farmers with redding for their sheep. He was one of a class rapidly becoming extinct in Wessex, filling at present in the rural world the place which, during the last century, the dodo occupied in the world of animals. He is a curious, interesting, and nearly perished link between obsolete forms of life and those which generally prevail.

We also meet some of the local people who live on Egdon Heath – many of whom work as furze (gorse) cutters. These characters provide some moments of comedy and also allow Hardy to explore some of the superstitions, customs and traditions of the region (one of the most memorable scenes occurs near the beginning of the book when dozens of bonfires are lit all around the heath).

As I mentioned above, not all of the characters in the novel are rewarded with a happy ending – but this is something you have to be prepared for with Hardy. The story does finish on a more positive note, although it was interesting to read the footnote at the end explaining that the ending was originally going to be slightly less positive and was changed during the serialisation of the novel.

I loved The Return of the Native, though not as much as some of the other Hardy novels I’ve read. I have one more to read on my Classics Club list – The Woodlanders – which I’m looking forward to reading.

Nelly Dean by Alison Case

September 21, 201514 Comments

I have always loved Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Not everyone does, I know – it seems to be a book that people either love or hate – but ever since I first read it at the age of twelve it has remained one of my favourites. That’s why, when I heard about Alison Case’s new book, Nelly Dean, I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist reading it despite my usual dislike of prequels, sequels and re-tellings of classic novels.

Nelly Dean, as those of you who have read the Brontë novel will remember, was the housekeeper at Thrushcross Grange who entertained Mr Lockwood with the story of Cathy, Heathcliff and the other inhabitants of Wuthering Heights. This new novel is written in the form of a letter to Mr Lockwood in which Nelly tells the parts of the story that weren’t told or that were brushed over in Wuthering Heights.

Nelly begins by talking about her childhood and her relationship with her parents. To keep her away from her abusive father, her mother is happy for her to spend most of her time at Wuthering Heights with the Earnshaw children, Hindley and Cathy. Later, Nelly becomes housekeeper for the Earnshaws, but by this time life at Wuthering Heights is changing significantly. First, Mr Earnshaw comes home from a trip to Liverpool with an orphan boy called Heathcliff, and then Hindley – with whom Nelly is falling in love – goes away for several years and breaks her heart when he returns.

The rest of the novel follows Nelly as she struggles with her feelings for Hindley and her own change of status in the Earnshaw household from friend to servant. The major events of Wuthering Heights are covered, but in far less detail than in the original; Heathcliff and Cathy are pushed into the background so that the focus is on Nelly and her personal story. And this, I think, is why I had a problem with this book. There’s a reason why Emily Brontë chose to write about Heathcliff and Cathy rather than Nelly: it’s because Nelly’s story is just not as interesting. The novel started off promisingly enough but by the time I’d read several chapters devoted to Nelly’s attempts to find a wet nurse for baby Hareton, I was bored. Even the hints of a shocking family secret in Nelly’s past failed to interest me, mainly because it was far too easy to guess what that secret was.

There were things that I liked, of course. I liked the overall concept of the book – the idea of taking a beloved classic and reading between the lines to fill in the gaps and to bring a new interpretation to a well-known story. I liked Nelly herself; she is much easier to warm to than the Nelly of Wuthering Heights, and while the original character can be seen as an unreliable narrator, there’s a sense that this Nelly is being more open and honest with the reader. And I liked some of the minor characters, particularly Bodkin (Robert Kenneth), the doctor’s son who befriends Nelly. But the novel lacked the drama and the Gothic atmosphere I associate with Wuthering Heights and, although it was well written, there was none of the passion I admire so much in Emily Brontë’s writing.

Having finished this book and written my review, I decided to have a look and see what other readers thought of it. It seems that most people loved Nelly Dean and some even prefer it to Wuthering Heights, so I am clearly in the minority and wouldn’t want to put anyone off trying it for themselves. I couldn’t help feeling that I would have enjoyed this novel more if it had been presented as an original work of historical fiction with the names of the characters changed and the references to Wuthering Heights removed. The Victorian period is a big favourite of mine and if Alison Case decides to write a second book set in that era – one that is not based on another book – I will happily read it.