Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee

May 9, 2014May 9, 201414 Comments

Laurie Lee was a British novelist and poet most famous for his autobiographical trilogy which begins with Cider with Rosie and continues with As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and A Moment of War. Published in 1959, this first volume looks back on Lee’s childhood in the small Cotswold village of Slad in Gloucestershire. Lee moved there at the age of three with his mother and siblings at the end of the First World War. In Cider with Rosie he writes about his family and friends, his school days and the eccentric characters who lived and worked in Slad.

I had never considered reading this book until now, partly because it reminded me of being at school (we never actually read the whole book, but I remember having to study excerpts from it for English comprehension exercises) and I think that was enough to put me off! The scene that I particularly remembered was the one where Laurie’s sisters send him off for his first day at school wrapped in scarves with a hot potato in his pocket. When he comes home he tells the family about his disappointing day:

“They never gave me the present!”
“Present? What present?”
“They said they’d give me a present.”
“Well, now, I’m sure they didn’t.”
“They did! They said: ‘You’re Laurie Lee, ain’t you? Well, just you sit there for the present.’ I sat there all day but I never got it. I ain’t going back there again!”

I’m glad I waited until now to read this book, as I don’t think I would have appreciated it when I was younger. It’s not the most exciting book to read – it doesn’t seem that anything particularly dramatic happened to Lee in his early years and being an autobiographical work (or semi-autobiographical, as Lee admits at the start that “this is a recollection of early boyhood and some of the facts may be distorted by time”), it is not a book with a ‘story’ or a plot. However, it is still worth reading for the beauty of Lee’s descriptions and imagery and because it paints a portrait of a world that has gone and will never come back again.

The book has quite an interesting structure with each chapter devoted to a different theme with titles such as ‘Village School’, ‘The Kitchen’ and ‘Mother’. Laurie does age gradually throughout the book, so that the earlier chapters are seen through the innocent eyes of a small child and the later ones are more mature (including the famous scene drinking cider under a hay wagon with the Rosie of the title), but otherwise the book doesn’t follow strict chronological order.

Some chapters are more enjoyable than others (I loved ‘Grannies in the Wainscot’, which describes two of the Lees’ elderly neighbours) but my favourite is actually the final chapter, which shows how life in the village starts to change with the coming of progress. With the arrival in Slad of cars and electricity, for example, the world suddenly becomes a different place and the simple life Laurie Lee has always known begins to disappear forever.

Cider with Rosie has been reissued by Vintage Classics in a beautiful new edition and I received a copy for review via NetGalley. The book includes drawings by John Ward and although I don’t think you really get the full benefit of them when you’re reading an ebook version, it’s always nice to see illustrations!

The Gondola Maker by Laura Morelli

May 8, 2014May 8, 20142 Comments

The Gondola Maker is set in Venice in the 16th century and tells the story of Luca Vianello, the son of a gondola maker. As the novel opens in 1581, Luca’s future seems secure – he will marry Annalisa Bonfante, the blacksmith’s daughter, and on his father’s death he will inherit the family business. However, when a tragedy unexpectedly tears the Vianello family apart, Luca is forced to leave the squero (boatyard) behind to seek a new life and career for himself.

I was lucky enough to visit Venice for the first time last year and reading The Gondola Maker reminded me of what a beautiful, unique city it is and how I would love to go again. The author’s descriptions are so vivid that whether or not you’ve been to Venice you’ll be able to picture the grand palazzos of the rich merchants and noblemen lining the Grand Canal, the sun setting behind the basilica of San Marco, the view across the lagoon to the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, and the inside of a prison cell in the Doge’s palace.

Being a novel about a family of gondola makers, it’s no surprise that we are given lots of information on the art of gondola making. And it really is an art! As we accompany Luca on a mission to restore one of his grandfather’s old gondolas, we see how many different people are involved in the process, from the remèri who make the oars and the fórcole (rowlocks which secure the oar) to the blacksmiths who construct the ferri (the metal decorations at the prow). Each of these artists pours their skill, knowledge and love into their work so that each complete gondola is an object of beauty and perfection.

This was all much more interesting to read about than I had expected, but of course there is more to this story than just the making of boats. While it’s true that most of Luca’s time is spent among fellow craftsmen and gondoliers, after he leaves the family squero his adventures also bring him into contact with a successful portrait painter, a maker of costumes for balls and carnivals, and a beautiful young woman who becomes his love interest. Luca himself is a character I found easy to like, which is fortunate as he is narrating his story in the first person, meaning we spend the entire novel in his company.

This is not a particularly fast-paced book and Luca’s story is not always very dramatic, but despite this I did enjoy The Gondola Maker. I found the ending of the book too abrupt and the conclusion of the romantic storyline wasn’t very satisfying which was a bit disappointing, but this didn’t spoil the rest of the novel for me. It was good to have an opportunity to learn about the creation of gondolas, a subject I had never read about or even thought about before – and I loved visiting Venice again, albeit through fiction this time, instead of in person!

I read The Gondola Maker as part of an iRead Book Tour. For more reviews, interviews and giveaways please see the tour schedule.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

May 3, 2014May 3, 201410 Comments

Americanah is the story of Ifemelu and Obinze, two Nigerian people who have very different experiences of immigration. Ifemelu leaves Nigeria as a young woman to complete her studies in America. Thirteen years later she is still there, having established a successful career for herself as a blogger, but she has now made the decision to go home. Before she returns to Lagos, Ifemelu goes to an African hair salon in Trenton, New Jersey, to have her hair braided – a process which takes six hours, giving her time to reflect on all the things she has learned and observed during her years in America.

Obinze, who was Ifemelu’s boyfriend before she left Nigeria, also has dreams of going to America but is unable to obtain a visa and ends up working in London as an illegal immigrant. Obinze and Ifemelu are eventually reunited in Lagos, but will their love have survived so many years of separation?

As promised on the book cover, there is a love story to be found in Americanah, but this is not the main focus of the novel. The focus is on Ifemelu and her life in America, with several chapters following Obinze and his experiences in England. On arriving in the country that will be her home for the next thirteen years, Ifemelu faces a lot of challenges and difficulties, ranging from finding a job to learning how to cook hot dogs! She has many encounters with examples of racism (sometimes very subtle and sometimes much more obvious) and at the other end of the scale, people who are trying too hard to avoid talking about race because they’re afraid that they might cause offence. All of this gives Ifemelu plenty of material for her blog, which she calls Raceteenth, or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black.

Some excerpts from Ifemelu’s blog posts are included in the book and are fascinating to read, particularly when she writes about the differences between being a black American and a non-American black person. Something I found interesting was Ifemelu’s comment that “I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America.” This is in contrast to her cousin, Dike, who leaves Nigeria with his mother as a very young child and so has a very different perspective on life.

While I didn’t love Americanah quite as much as I’d hoped to, it was full of insightful observations and it’s a book that I would recommend to everyone, whatever your race, nationality or skin colour. As a white person, I confess that many of the aspects of race discussed in the novel are things that have never even occurred to me. So, as a commentary on race and immigration, I thought this book was excellent – the best I’ve read on these subjects. The various devices Adichie uses (blog posts, discussions at dinner parties, the conversations of the women working in the hair salon) give her an opportunity to explore important issues in an interesting and often witty way rather than just lecturing the reader.

Purely as a novel, though, I thought Americanah was less successful. It felt a lot longer than it really needed to be, considering the plot is not a particularly complex one, and while I was interested in following Ifemelu’s and Obinze’s separate storylines, I found I didn’t really care whether they got back together at the end of the book or not. I think for me personally this is a book I enjoyed on an intellectual level rather than an emotional one, which is not necessarily a negative thing, but probably the reason why, of the two books I’ve now read by Adichie, I prefer Half of a Yellow Sun to this one.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

May 1, 201416 Comments

I read Madame Bovary during April as part of a readalong hosted by Juliana of Cedar Station and CJ of ebookclassics. It was a book I’d been thinking about reading for a while anyway so the announcement of the readalong couldn’t have come at a better time for me.

Madame Bovary is a French realist novel published in 1856. The title character, Emma Bovary, longs to experience the drama and excitement she has read about in romantic novels but she is unlikely to find it in her marriage to Charles Bovary, an unambitious country doctor. Charles loves his wife and is not unkind to her, but Emma finds him boring and her life dull and meaningless. After she and Charles attend a ball hosted by the Marquis d’Andervilliers, Emma becomes depressed and miserable; she has had a glimpse of a more glamorous world and it has left her even more disillusioned and dissatisfied with her own situation.

Charles wonders whether a move to a larger town will make her happy but Emma is no more content in their new home in Yonville-l’Abbaye than she was in the small village they’ve left behind. Seeking an escape from her unhappy existence, Emma has affairs and spends money she can’t afford, but as she becomes more reckless in both her romantic and financial entanglements, her life begins to spiral out of control.

It has been interesting to read the opinions of other readalong participants, because while I think we all agree that Emma’s behaviour is silly and self-destructive, the amount of sympathy we have for her seems to vary widely. Some readers can relate to Emma and admire her for doing something to try to change her life and find some happiness; other readers find her very selfish and annoying.

I’m one of those readers who didn’t like Emma at all, though I did have some pity for her, because I know there weren’t many options open to women in the 19th century, particularly those living in provincial areas, who wanted more from life than just to be a wife and mother. I can see why she may have felt that adultery was a way of escape and a way to find the passion she’d read about in books. I thought it was sad that Emma couldn’t even take any pleasure in her daughter (when Berthe is born, her first emotion is disappointment that the baby isn’t a boy). Later, when Berthe comes up to her hoping for affection Emma pushes the little girl away so that she falls and hurts herself. Poor Berthe – and life doesn’t get any better for her later in the book either.

I don’t think Charles was entirely blameless as he could have made more effort to understand his wife’s feelings and he was so naïve that he seemed completely oblivious to what was going on, but my sympathy was definitely with him and with Berthe more than with Emma. I noticed, though, that Flaubert himself seems to stay neutral throughout the novel, reporting on his characters’ thoughts and actions without actually passing judgment on them and telling us what we should think.

There were parts of this book that I really enjoyed, but I’ll have to be honest and say that much as I wanted to love this book I just didn’t. I think my dislike of Emma was part of the problem, but not the whole problem, as I didn’t find the writing style very engaging either. The version of Madame Bovary that I read was an older Penguin edition (pictured above) translated by Alan Russell – I had no reason for choosing this translation other than that it happened to be the one I already had on my shelf, which seemed as good a reason as any. I didn’t really have any problems with it and found it easy enough to read, but having since read that Flaubert prided himself on always searching for the perfect word, in this case it’s possible that the translation did affect my enjoyment. I didn’t like the book enough to want to read it again in a different translation to find out, though!

While this has not become a favourite classic, I’m still glad I’ve read it. If nothing else, I can now see where Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s inspiration for her novel The Doctor’s Wife came from!

The Fortune Hunter by Daisy Goodwin

April 29, 20146 Comments

Set in 1875, this is the story of two women and their love for the same man, Captain Bay Middleton, a cavalry officer and renowned horseman. One of these women is Charlotte Baird, heiress to a fortune, whose brother is a friend of Bay’s from the army. Bay asks Charlotte to elope with him but she convinces him that it will be best to wait nine months until she comes into her inheritance. However, this could be a mistake because in the meantime the Empress Elizabeth of Austria and her retinue arrive at nearby Easton Neston for the hunting season.

Elizabeth – or Sisi, as she is known to her friends – is the wife of Franz Joseph of Austria. Bored with her marriage and with constantly being in the public eye, Sisi is looking forward to spending some time in the English countryside riding and hunting. Sisi is an excellent horsewoman herself, and when Bay Middleton is given the job of acting as her ‘pilot’ (or guide), she and Bay find that their shared passion for horses leads to passion of a different sort. They are unable to keep their affair secret and when people begin to gossip about the Empress and her relationship with her pilot, Bay must decide whether his fascination with Sisi is more important than his love for Charlotte and his dream of winning the Grand National.

This novel is based on a true story – Sisi, Bay and Charlotte are all people who really existed – but it’s probably not one that many people will be familiar with. I certainly wasn’t. However, having read the author’s note and also the small amount of information I could find online, it seems that The Fortune Hunter is largely fictional and only loosely based on the real life story. There are some significant differences, such as the fact that the events of the novel take place over just a few months while in reality, Bay was Sisi’s pilot for five years. But whether or not the characters and their actions were completely true to life, it didn’t matter to me because the author made them feel so real and made me care about them so much that I found myself thinking about them even when I wasn’t reading the book.

The Empress Sisi, who I admit I knew nothing about before starting this book, must have been a fascinating woman. She was also known as a woman of great beauty and I was interested to read about how she would have her floor-length hair tied to the ceiling at night to relieve the pressure of its weight on her head and how she would cover her face in strips of raw meat to freshen her complexion. I particularly enjoyed a scene in the novel where Sisi meets and makes conversation with Queen Victoria, a very different type of monarch with very different views!

Although I was unable to find out anything about the real Charlotte Baird beyond her name, the fictional Charlotte is another character I loved. I enjoyed reading about her experiments with photography, a hobby that in Victorian England was not considered entirely appropriate for a young woman. But the character I was drawn to the most was Bay Middleton. I never doubted that he loved Charlotte but it was easy to see how he became captivated by the Empress and why he was ashamed of his behaviour while at the same time being unable to stop himself. It was not clear to me what the outcome of the story would be for Bay, for Charlotte or for Sisi and I was kept in suspense until the final chapter.

There are also some great secondary characters including Caspar Hewes, a flamboyant American photographer; Augusta Crewe, who is engaged to Charlotte’s brother; and Chicken Hartopp, a disappointed suitor of Charlotte’s. Another favourite was Bay’s grey mare, Tipsy – I thought the relationship between Bay and his horse was well written and very touching. There’s a lot of period detail too and the setting feels believably Victorian, with no irritating anachronisms or language that feels inappropriately modern.

This is a long novel (there were more than 600 pages in the version I read) but I was so engrossed in the story that I didn’t really notice the length. I loved this book and now I need to find a copy of Daisy Goodwin’s first novel, My Last Duchess.

Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford

April 27, 2014April 27, 20148 Comments

William Eng has spent the last five years of his life in the care of the nuns at Seattle’s Sacred Heart Orphanage. It’s 1934 and living conditions at the orphanage are very poor, particularly for William who is Chinese-American and considered inferior to most of the other children. But William is not at all sure that he is actually an orphan – although he has never known his father, the last time he saw his mother she was being carried out of their apartment by a doctor, promising that she’d be coming back soon.

On William’s twelfth birthday he and the other boys are taken to see a film as a special treat and William becomes convinced that one of the actresses he sees on the screen, Willow Frost, is his mother. With the help of his best friend, a blind girl called Charlotte, he sets out to find Willow Frost in the hope that she can answer the question that has been troubling him for five years – what can lead a mother to abandon her child?

Having loved Jamie Ford’s previous novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, I was looking forward to reading this one. If anything, this book was even more ‘bitter and sweet’ than the first! At times it was so sad that I wasn’t sure if I could bear to continue reading, but even while my heart was breaking for William and his mother it was obvious that they loved each other and that gave me a glimmer of hope. I wanted them to find the happiness they deserved and that was what kept me turning the pages.

Although we begin in 1934 with William in search of Willow Frost, at least half of the novel is actually set several years earlier in 1921 and follows the story of the young Willow – or Liu Song as she was originally known. It was the 1921 section of the story that I found particularly upsetting to read; being Chinese, a woman and unmarried, life is not easy for Liu Song and it seems that every bad thing that could possibly happen to her does happen. While her stepfather, Uncle Leo, is the villain of the book, I was equally furious with the attitude of a social worker who supposedly had William’s best interests at heart but was clearly only concerned with punishing his mother for what she claimed was immoral behaviour.

Despite the overwhelming sadness, I enjoyed Songs of Willow Frost. There are some great descriptions of Seattle in the 1920s and 1930s and we are given some fascinating insights into the city’s Chinese community and the lives of people struggling to survive during the Depression. I didn’t find this book quite as satisfying as Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet and there were one or two aspects of the plot that didn’t resolve the way I would have liked them to but overall I thought this was a wonderfully poignant and moving story.

Thanks to Lovereading for the review copy

Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims by Toby Clements

April 25, 2014April 25, 20148 Comments

On a cold winter’s morning in 1460, a band of armed horsemen approach the Priory of St Mary near Lincoln. One of the monks, Thomas Everingham, is outside the priory walls that morning, having been sent out to kill a fox that has been caught in a trap, and when he notices that the soldiers are about to attack two nuns (one of whom is Sister Katherine, a young woman who has spent most of her life in the priory) he decides to intervene. In the scuffle that follows, Thomas seriously injures one of the men, who happens to be the son of the nobleman Sir Giles Riven. With the furious Sir Giles seeking revenge, Thomas and Katherine (disguised as a boy called Kit) are forced to flee the priory.

After living for so many years in their isolated religious community, Thomas and Katherine have little knowledge of the world beyond and are surprised to find that England is in the midst of war. Henry VI is still on the throne but is under threat from the Duke of York and Earl of Warwick, whose armies are gathering in Calais in preparation for the next stage of what will become known as the Wars of the Roses.

With the help of pardoner Robert Daud, who leaves them a bag containing a mysterious book, Thomas and Katherine reach Calais and join the company of two of Warwick’s men, Sir John Fakenham and his son, Richard. Here Thomas learns to use a bow and Katherine increases her knowledge of healing, skills they will need when they return to England to face their enemy, Sir Giles Riven, and to play their part in the bloody battles of Northampton and Towton.

Although this book has already received lots of glowing reviews, I’ll admit that I had my doubts about it before I started reading. I thought it might be too similar to Conn Iggulden’s Wars of the Roses novel, Stormbird, which I read last year and struggled with. Luckily, while there were some similarities and I suspect that most people who did love Stormbird will love this book too, I did enjoy this one quite a bit more.

This is one of my favourite historical periods but I never get bored with reading about it; each book I pick up offers something new and adds to my knowledge of the subject. This novel is slightly different from most of the others I’ve read that are set during the Wars of the Roses, because instead of concentrating on the kings and queens, the rich noblemen and powerful battle commanders, the focus here is always on the ordinary people – people like Thomas, Katherine and their friends who have no involvement in politics and decision-making, but are risking their lives for York or for Lancaster.

I was interested to learn that Toby Clements had attended re-enactments and living history camps and even tried using a longbow, all as part of his research for this novel. The research has really paid off because his writing has a feel of authenticity that is sometimes lacking in other books. I could almost imagine that I really was standing in the middle of a muddy battlefield with arrows flying around me, walking through a smelly, bustling market place or watching Katherine performing surgery without the benefits of modern medicine. There’s certainly nothing glamorous about this story!

I only have two minor complaints about the book – and both are entirely a matter of personal taste. First, it is written in present tense which is something I almost always find slightly irritating. It seems to be an increasingly common choice of authors these days and is becoming difficult to avoid, but I still don’t like it and find past tense much easier to read. Clements also devotes more time to the battles (and fights, brawls, archery sessions etc) than I would have liked, but although I didn’t particularly enjoy reading these scenes I can appreciate that they were written very well, especially the Battle of Towton. As I said, though, other readers will not necessarily have a problem with either of these things.

Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims is the first in a series. At the moment I’m undecided as to whether I want to continue with the second book, but I did end up enjoying this one for the different perspective it offered on a period I love.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review via NetGalley