The Chosen Queen by Joanna Courtney

May 28, 20157 Comments

In 1066, one of the most famous years in English history, three men were fighting for the throne of England: Harold Godwinson, the powerful Earl of Wessex; Harald Hardrada, the king of Norway; and William, Duke of Normandy. All three men had wives and in this new historical fiction trilogy, Joanna Courtney explores the lives of these three Queens of the Conquest.

The Chosen Queen is the first book to be published in the trilogy and follows the story of Edyth Alfgarsdottir, daughter of Alfgar, Earl of Mercia, and granddaughter of Lady Godiva. When Alfgar falls out of favour with the current King of England, Edward the Confessor, in the year 1055, the family are exiled to Wales. It is here that the fourteen-year-old Edyth meets and falls in love with the man who becomes her first husband – Griffin, King of all Wales. With unrest in the south of Wales, the chance of Viking invasions and the constant threat from the English side of the border, Griffin’s life is dangerous and uncertain – as he says to Edyth, he could be king for another twenty years or for just a few more hours.

When Edyth’s time as Queen of Wales eventually comes to an end, she finds herself back in England where she becomes caught up in the battle for the English crown. The childless King Edward has died, leaving Harold Godwinson as his successor, but neither Harald Hardrada of Norway nor Duke William of Normandy is willing to accept this. The new king needs a strong queen by his side, and Edyth, with her experience of the Welsh court and her family ties to both Mercia and Northumbria, is the ideal choice. The only problem is, Harold already has a wife…Edyth’s beloved friend, Svana.

The Chosen Queen is a fairly light historical novel and some readers may feel that there’s too much focus on Edyth’s romantic relationships, but I still found it quite an emotional and gripping read. It probably helped that I know very little about the Norman Conquest so most of Edyth’s story was new to me. With the story being told from a feminine perspective, I particularly enjoyed the portrayal of Edyth’s relationship with Svana, Harold’s handfast wife who befriends her as a child. Svana’s marriage to Harold took place outside the Catholic Church, which meant there was nothing to prevent Edyth from also marrying him, and the novel explores how both women may have felt about this.

Whenever I read historical fiction, I like to know how much of the book is based on fact and how much has been invented, so an author’s note is always appreciated. At the end of The Chosen Queen there’s not only an author’s note, but also a section giving further details on some of the historical figures, events and terms mentioned in the book (this is in addition to a map and two family trees at the front of the novel). It seems that some artistic licence has been taken (there is no evidence of a friendship between Edyth and Svana for example), but this is understandable when writing about a time period so far into the past; only a limited amount of factual information is available, so some imagination is obviously needed to fill in the gaps.

What I don’t understand was why it was necessary to change so many of the characters’ names. The original names are listed in an appendix together with the modernised forms found in the book and while I can maybe see the sense in referring to Harold’s first wife as Svana rather than Eadyth Swanneck (to avoid confusion with the story’s other Edyth), changing Gunnhild, Siward and Burgheard to Hannah, Ward and Brodie felt unnecessary and pulled me out of the 11th century. I like to feel fully immersed in the time period I’m reading about and that never really happened while I was reading this book. Accuracy is important to me, but it’s not the only thing I look for in a novel – I also look for a good story, and I do think Joanna Courtney has a lot of talent as a storyteller. She made me care about Edyth and she kept me turning the pages until I reached the end.

After finishing this book, I checked Joanna Courtney’s website for details of the other two novels in the trilogy. The second will be about Harald Hardrada’s wife Elizaveta of Kiev and the third will be about Matilda of Flanders, wife of William the Conqueror – two more women I know nothing about!

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

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

May 26, 201517 Comments

It seems that everyone is talking about Kate Atkinson’s new novel, A God in Ruins, at the moment – and that’s definitely a book I would like to read soon, as I loved Life After Life – but I’m also still working through her Jackson Brodie series, of which this book, When Will There Be Good News?, is the third.

The story opens with a tragedy: the murder of a mother and two of her three children as they walk home through the countryside on a beautiful summer’s day. Six-year-old Joanna, who witnesses the brutal attack, is the sole survivor. Thirty years later, Joanna is living in Edinburgh where she is now a doctor with a successful practice and mother of a beloved baby son. She has managed to put the horrors of her childhood behind her and build a new life for herself, but how will she react when she hears that the man who murdered her family is about to be released from prison?

Another character with a troubled past is sixteen-year-old Reggie (short for Regina) Chase, Joanna’s ‘mother’s help’. Reggie is alone in the world apart from her criminal brother, Billy, and the only bright spots in her life are her friendship with Joanna and her love of ancient literature (she has left school but is continuing to study Greek and Latin in private sessions with an eccentric retired teacher, Ms MacDonald). When Joanna and her baby disappear, Reggie is sure something terrible must have happened and she can’t understand why nobody else seems to be worried.

Like the previous two books in this series (Case Histories and One Good Turn), the plot is built around coincidences, chance encounters and interlinking storylines. This is how our old friend Jackson Brodie is brought into the story; accidentally boarding a train heading north towards Edinburgh instead of south to London, he finds himself caught up in a rail disaster which brings him into contact not only with Reggie but also with Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe, one of his love interests from One Good Turn. It was nice to meet Jackson and Louise again, but the real star of this book is Reggie, possibly my favourite character to appear in the series so far.

I find Kate Atkinson’s books very quick, addictive reads – despite enjoying them so much that I don’t really want to reach the end, I just can’t seem to read them slowly! As I’ve mentioned before, her books are not conventional crime novels. Crimes are committed and investigated, but the focus tends to be on the impact the crimes have on the characters, and the events and relationships that arise as a result. Each time I’ve finished a Jackson Brodie novel I’ve found that it’s not the plot I remember, but the characters. They are so well developed and so human, with hopes and dreams, likes and dislikes, doubts and worries that any reader will be able to identify with.

This is probably the darkest book of the series so far, with so many tragedies, disasters and accidents that I could certainly understand why it was given the title When Will There Be Good News? The book is not without some humour and lighter moments, though, so don’t let that put you off reading it! I now have only one more Jackson Brodie novel to read (Started Early, Took My Dog), but I may be tempted to read A God in Ruins first – or is there another Kate Atkinson book you think I really need to read without delay?

Girl at War by Sara Nović

May 24, 201515 Comments

When I visit another country I like to read something, if possible, set in the place I’m going to. I read Girl at War on my recent trip to Dubrovnik and while the Croatia portrayed in the novel was (thankfully) very different from the one I was visiting, it was good to learn a little bit about its history and what it was like to live there during one of the most turbulent periods in the country’s past.

The story begins in 1991, just as Croatia declares independence from Yugoslavia and becomes a country at war. Our narrator is ten-year-old Ana Jurić, who lives in Zagreb with her parents and baby sister; just a normal child whose life revolves around going to school and playing football with her best friend, Luka. With the outbreak of civil war comes big changes and suddenly Ana finds herself running for shelter during air raids, coping with food and water shortages, and wondering how her little sister will get the medical treatment she so desperately needs. But things are about to get even worse, and when a tragedy tears Ana’s world apart, she is forced to experience unimaginable atrocities that no child should ever have to face.

Ten years later, the war is over and Ana is living in New York where she is studying literature at university. She has chosen not to reveal the truth about her childhood to anyone – not even to her boyfriend – but her painful memories are still very close to the surface. Ana finally makes the decision that before she can move on with her life she will have to return to Croatia…but what will she find when she gets there and how will she come to terms with the horrors of her past?

It’s hard to believe that Girl at War is Sara Nović’s first novel; I found it a very compelling, moving and emotional story. I particularly enjoyed the early chapters, describing Ana’s life at the onset of war – child narrators don’t always work for me, but in this case seeing war through the eyes of a ten-year-old girl was very effective and the perfect way to tell the story. The end of the first section was unforgettable and one of the most harrowing moments I’ve read in fiction for some time. Jumping forward ten years to Ana’s life as a student in America was slightly disappointing as I really wanted to stay in Croatia and follow Ana’s wartime experiences, but I understood why the author chose to do that and I was pleased that the gaps were filled in later.

Before starting this novel, I knew very little about the war in Yugoslavia; I was still at school when it began and although I can remember seeing it on the news, I think I was just too young to have really understood what it was all about. Reading Girl at War hasn’t added very much to my knowledge of the reasons for the war or the politics behind it, but what it did do very successfully was show me what it’s like to be an innocent child caught up in conflict and how the emotional effects of those experiences never completely go away.

As I approached the final chapters of this novel, I was prepared to say that this was one of the best books I’d read so far this year. Sadly, though, I thought it was let down by a poor ending which felt abrupt and unresolved, and I finished the book feeling sorry that Ana’s story hadn’t been given a more satisfying conclusion. Despite this, I would still recommend reading Girl at War for its emotional impact and fascinating insights into a traumatic period of history. I’ll be looking out for future novels by Sara Nović.

An Accidental Tragedy: The Life Of Mary, Queen Of Scots by Roderick Graham

May 14, 2015December 3, 201712 Comments

The death of Mary, Queen of Scots, executed in 1587, could certainly be considered a tragedy. Was it also an accidental one? Could Mary’s fate have been avoided if she had only been a different type of person and if she had made different choices in life? This is the starting point for Roderick Graham’s 2009 biography of one of Scotland’s most fascinating monarchs, which claims ‘neither to blacken her character by portraying her as a murderess of husbands, nor to sanctify her as the lonely champion of her faith, but to recount the circumstances which formed her character and to explain the events which determined her fate’.

The book begins with Mary’s birth at Linlithgow Palace in 1542 and her rapid accession to the throne when her father, James V of Scotland, died just six days later. Mary was not Scotland’s first child monarch – James V himself and all of the four kings before him also came to the throne at an early age – and the Scottish people had become used to long periods of regency. As Graham explains, this led to an increase in the power and independence of the nobility and caused division and a lack of unity.

After a marriage treaty between Mary and Henry VIII’s son, Prince Edward, was rejected by the Scots, the five-year-old queen was sent to France where she would eventually marry the French king’s heir, the Dauphin Francis. Mary grew up in France rather than Scotland and she and Francis were strongly influenced by her mother’s relatives, the Guises. This meant that when Mary returned to Scotland to rule in 1561 following her husband’s death, she had very little knowledge of the country of her birth. At a time of increasing religious and political conflict among the Scottish noblemen a strong leader was needed.

Roderick Graham does a good job of showing how poorly equipped Mary was for her role as Queen of Scots and how she was unable to provide the sort of leadership the country required. Despite the presence of three influential women in her life – her mother, Mary of Guise; the Queen of France, Catherine de’ Medici; and the King of France’s mistress, Diane de Poitiers – Mary appeared to learn very little from any of them regarding the management of court intrigue and politics. The years that followed her return to Scotland were dominated by murders, plots, rebellions and two disastrous marriages, the first to Lord Darnley and the second to the Earl of Bothwell, finally ending in her abdication and imprisonment in England.

I found it interesting that Graham had chosen to write a book about someone for whom he seemed to have so little admiration, sympathy or liking. He never misses an opportunity to compare Mary with that other queen south of the border – Elizabeth I – and to point out how much stronger, cleverer and wittier the Queen of England was. In contrast, he paints a picture of Mary as immature, incapable of making good decisions and driven by passion and emotion. I’m not sure how fair or unfair his treatment of Mary is, but despite his preference for Elizabeth, he still made me feel sad for Mary as her life drew closer to its tragic end.

An Accidental Tragedy is the first book I’ve read that is specifically about Mary, Queen of Scots. Of course, I’ve come across her in other non-fiction books about the Tudor/Elizabethan period and she has been a secondary character in some of the historical fiction novels I’ve read, but this is the first time I’ve read a comprehensive biography of her entire life. I was particularly interested in reading about this period in Scotland’s history because my favourite historical fiction series, the Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett, is set during the first part of Mary’s reign, but this just added another layer of interest to what was already a fascinating and very readable biography.

If anyone has any other biographies of Mary to recommend, please let me know. I would love to read another one.

A Country Doctor’s Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov

May 8, 20158 Comments

A Country Doctor’s Notebook is the book that was selected for me in the last Classics Club Spin. I was happy when I discovered that I would be reading this one, not only because it’s much shorter than most of the others on my Classics Club list, but also because I loved Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita which I read four years ago in 2011. I knew this book was going to be very different from The Master and Margarita, but I hoped I would still enjoy it…and I did.

A Country Doctor’s Notebook is a collection of semi-autobiographical short stories originally written in Russian in the 1920s (the edition I read uses Michael Glenny’s English translation from 1975). Like the protagonist of this book, Mikhail Bulgakov was a ‘country doctor’. After graduating from Kiev University he became a physician and from 1916-1918 he worked at a small hospital near a remote village in the province of Smolensk.

The fictional doctor in the book, Vladimir Bomgard, is clearly based on Bulgakov himself and in the first story we see him as a young, newly-qualified doctor of twenty-four arriving at Muryovo Hospital, a full day’s drive from the nearest town. He is pleased to find that the hospital is clean and well equipped, but with no practical experience and nobody to turn to for advice (apart from a feldsher, or partly-qualified assistant, and two midwives) the thought of bearing sole responsibility for the lives of his patients terrifies him.

During his first weeks and months at Muryovo, the country doctor faces all sorts of problems for which his university education had completely failed to prepare him. With no electricity, no telephones, poor roads, the risk of being cut off from the world during snowstorms, and the ignorance of peasants regarding simple medical matters, life at Muryovo is primitive and isolated. Most of all, the young doctor lives in fear of encountering a strangulated hernia, a case of peritonitis or a difficult birth and he comes to dread hearing a knock on the door in the middle of the night.

“It’s not my fault,” I repeated to myself stubbornly and unhappily. “I’ve got my degree and a first class one at that. Didn’t I warn them back in town that I wanted to start off as a junior partner in a practice? But no, they just smiled and said, ‘You’ll get your bearings.’ So now I’ve got to find my bearings. Suppose they bring me a hernia? Just tell me how I’ll find my bearings with that?”

As the book progresses the doctor slowly begins to gain confidence and discovers that true knowledge comes with experience.

It was fascinating to read about conditions in a remote Russian hospital at the start of the twentieth century and the medical procedures and treatments that were used. I had a lot of sympathy for the doctor, being thrown in at the deep end with so little experience and being expected to operate on patients with no supervision and no advice other than illustrations in his textbooks. If you’re squeamish I should probably warn you that some of the operations he performs are described in full, gory detail (the tracheotomy particularly sticks in my mind). But this is also a book with a lot of humour and there are some very funny moments as the doctor panics, guesses and muddles his way through each crisis.

As I mentioned above, I read the Michael Glenny translation which I was quite happy with and found perfectly readable. I enjoyed all of the stories in A Country Doctor’s Notebook and I’m so pleased the Classics Spin motivated me to pick up this book at last.

Dark Fire by C.J. Sansom

May 5, 2015May 5, 20154 Comments

This is the second in CJ Sansom’s Shardlake series set in Tudor England and following the investigations of hunchbacked lawyer Matthew Shardlake. The action in Dark Fire takes place a year or two after the events of the first book, Dissolution, which I loved, but although I would recommend reading the books in order it’s not essential and this is a complete story in itself.

Dark Fire is set during the summer heatwave of 1540 as Henry VIII prepares to cast aside his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, and marry Catherine Howard. Thomas Cromwell, the man who was instrumental in arranging the marriage to Anne, has fallen out of favour with the King and needs to regain Henry’s trust as quickly as possible. When he witnesses a demonstration of Greek Fire (sometimes called Dark Fire), a legendary Byzantine weapon capable of destroying a ship in minutes, Cromwell thinks he has found the perfect way to impress Henry. The problem is, only a tiny amount of Greek Fire remains and the secret formula to produce more has gone missing.

Meanwhile, Shardlake has been approached by a client, Joseph Wentworth, whose niece, Elizabeth has been arrested for murder. Shardlake is convinced she is innocent, but as the girl refuses to say a word in her own defence it seems that even our hero’s skills as a lawyer will not be enough to save her. At the last minute Cromwell intervenes; Shardlake can have more time to investigate and to attempt to clear Elizabeth’s name – but in return he must help to discover the ancient secrets of Greek Fire, which Cromwell has promised to present to the King in twelve days’ time.

I enjoyed Dark Fire; everything I remembered from the previous book was here again – the thorough research, the atmospheric descriptions and the insights into 16th century society. Where this book is even better than Dissolution, in my opinion, is in the characterisation of Jack Barak, the rough, outspoken young man whom Cromwell chooses to assist Shardlake in his task. Barak and Shardlake are such different personalities, with such different strengths and weaknesses, that they form the perfect partnership. Watching their relationship develop was one of my favourite things about this novel.

The first Shardlake novel, Dissolution, was a murder mystery set almost entirely within the confines of a monastery. Dark Fire has a wider scope, with Shardlake and his new assistant, Barak, embarking on a race around London as they try to locate the ancient formula and prove Elizabeth’s innocence before their time runs out. Their journey takes them from prison cells and taverns to law courts and churches, and along the way they experience the best and the worst Tudor London has to offer: one day Shardlake is attending a ‘sugar banquet’ at the elegant home of the aristocratic Lady Honor, the next Barak is climbing down a well in the middle of the night to look for evidence.

Both of the novel’s central mysteries were intriguing, particularly the Greek Fire one – and both present their own set of difficulties and dangers to Shardlake and Barak. It appears that the Wentworth family (with the exception of Joseph) are more than happy for Elizabeth to take the blame and don’t want outsiders trying to interfere, while the Greek Fire mystery seems to result in death for anyone who gets too close to the truth. The appeal of this book for me, though, was not so much the plot as the wonderful portrayal of Tudor life. I’m pleased that I still have another four Shardlake novels to read, beginning with the third in the series, Sovereign.

The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse by Piu Marie Eatwell

May 3, 2015May 3, 201514 Comments

How could I resist reading a book with a title like that? Luckily, the story between the covers proved to be as intriguing as the title; I was completely engrossed in The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse from beginning to end. I don’t often choose to read non-fiction but I’m very glad I decided to read this one!

In The Dead Duke, Piu Marie Eatwell gives a thoroughly researched account of one of the most bizarre legal cases of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. In 1897, Anna Maria Druce approached the courts to request the exhumation of her father-in-law’s grave. She sensationally claimed that her father-in-law, T.C. Druce, was actually the 5th Duke of Portland and had been leading a double life until deciding to kill off his alter ego. Druce had faked his own death, she said, and if his coffin was opened it would be found to be empty. This would leave Anna Maria’s son as the true heir to the Portland fortune.

This was only the beginning of a fascinating legal battle that would continue for years, attracting a huge amount of media attention and capturing the imaginations of the public. Of course, I’m not going to spoil any of the book’s surprises by telling you whether the grave was ever opened or whether Anna Maria’s claims were proved to be true, but along the way some shocking revelations were made and some dark secrets were uncovered!

With tales of secret wives and illegitimate children, fraud and forgery, stolen evidence and unreliable witnesses, lies and deception and double identities, this could have been the storyline of a Wilkie Collins or Mary Elizabeth Braddon novel (and Eatwell does draw some parallels with the lives and works of these authors and others). As a fan of Victorian sensation novels, it’s not surprising that I enjoyed this book so much.

I particularly loved reading about the eccentric lifestyle of the 5th Duke of Portland. Becoming increasingly reclusive in his later years, he rarely went out in daylight and constructed a labyrinth of underground tunnels beneath his estate. He often wore six coats at the same time, had a large collection of wigs and only ate in the mornings and evenings. His alleged alter ego, T.C. Druce, who ran a London department store, was said to have some similar habits, which added some support to the theory that the two men were one and the same.

I was impressed with the huge amount of research the author must have carried out while she was writing this book, drawing on newspaper articles, letters, photographs, census records and other documents to build up a full and balanced picture of the case. Every time a new character is introduced we are given details of their family history, personal background, appearance and personality, all of which helps to bring them to life rather than being just names on the page. Further notes are provided at the back of the book, along with a list of primary and secondary sources.

In the final three chapters, set in 2013, Piu Marie Eatwell describe some of the new evidence she was able to discover during her investigations and her enthusiasm for the subject really shines through here. It must have been a fascinating book to research and it was certainly a fascinating book to read!

Thanks to Midas PR for providing a review copy of this book.