The Specimen by Martha Lea

February 19, 201312 Comments

The Specimen sounded like the type of book I usually love. A Victorian setting, a murder mystery, exotic locations, interesting and unusual female protagonists – these are all things I love in a novel, so I had high hopes for this one.

The story begins in 1866 with Gwen Carrick on trial for the murder of the naturalist Edward Scales who has been found dead at his home in London. The narrative then takes us back in time to show us how Gwen first meets Scales and the events that lead up to his death and the murder trial.

Seven years earlier, in 1859, Gwen is living with her sister Euphemia in their remote home in Cornwall. Both women are unmarried and are leading unconventional lives for the time period – Gwen is an artist who is fascinated by natural sciences and loves to draw butterflies, beetles and other insects, while Euphemia is a spiritualist with a talent for mimicking voices. The sisters have little in common and their relationship is a difficult one. When Gwen meets and falls in love with Edward Scales she leaves her sister behind and accompanies him to Brazil to study and illustrate specimens of the flora and fauna there, but on their arrival in South America she starts to discover that Scales is not quite the person she thought he was. Why did Scales really invite Gwen on the trip to Brazil? What is he hiding from her? And is Gwen guilty of his murder?

Sadly, despite sounding so promising, this book didn’t live up to my expectations. I struggled to engage with the characters (Edward Scales is particularly unlikeable) and the Brazilian setting never really came to life. But my biggest problem was that I found the plot so difficult to follow and even after reaching the final page I wasn’t sure I’d understood what had happened. I do like books that encourage the reader to think, but this one was just too confusing for me. This is probably a book that would benefit from a re-read as it’s the type of story that has lots of clues buried in each chapter, which don’t necessarily have a lot of meaning until you get to the end and can see the whole picture. I didn’t like the book enough to want to read it more than once but I do think that might be the only way I would be able to fully appreciate it!

I do like to read about women who were involved in the sciences during the Victorian period and it was interesting to read about Gwen’s interest in studying and drawing insects. Gwen does not always behave the way a Victorian woman is expected to behave; she values her independence and is struggling to find a place for herself and her work in a nineteenth century society dominated by men. Euphemia was an interesting character too, though again, I found her storyline confusing (and often bizarre) and I don’t think I completely understood what was going on with her.

The Specimen is full of fascinating ideas and themes, so I’m sorry I can’t be more positive about it. I think as long as you’re aware that you need some patience and concentration and don’t go into this book expecting the gripping melodrama promised by the blurb, you might enjoy it more than I did.

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

The Forgotten Queen by D.L. Bogdan

February 14, 201311 Comments

Of all the royal women of the Tudor period, one we tend not to hear much about is Margaret, the elder sister of King Henry VIII and grandmother of Mary, Queen of Scots. And yet Margaret was not only a princess of England, but she also became a queen at the age of thirteen when she married King James IV of Scotland. In this historical fiction novel aptly titled The Forgotten Queen, D.L. Bogdan tells Margaret Tudor’s story.

James IV is much older than Margaret and given that this was a marriage made for political reasons, she is fortunate that James proves to be a kind and gentle husband – although not a very faithful one. In time Margaret comes to love him and is devastated when he is killed at the Battle of Flodden in 1513. Their young son succeeds to the throne and is crowned James V, but as he is not yet old enough to reign on his own, Scotland is ruled by a series of regents. Margaret marries again, this time to a man of her own choice, but as she learns more about her second husband – Archibald Douglas, the Earl of Angus – she begins to wonder if she has made a terrible mistake.

With her ties to both England and Scotland, it’s inevitable that eventually Margaret will have to choose between the country of her birth and her adopted country and must decide where her allegiances lie. It’s often unclear to the reader and even to Margaret herself what her true loyalties are, but the one thing that is obvious is that she wants whatever is best for the young James V, who is in a vulnerable position at the mercy of the various advisors, regents and noblemen who surround him. And while she fights to secure her son’s throne, Margaret never forgets her father Henry VII’s dream that through her Scotland and England could one day be united.

I knew absolutely nothing about Margaret Tudor before reading this book so, for me, she really is ‘the forgotten Queen’. It made a nice change to read a book set during the Tudor period that chooses to focus on somebody other than Henry VIII and his six wives and I did learn a lot about Margaret’s life. Unfortunately though, Margaret herself comes across as a very unsympathetic character: immature, selfish and stubborn. She makes some very bad decisions, often failing to take advice from other people, and she expects more from her friends than she is prepared to give in return. However, there were still times when I could feel some compassion for her, as she did seem to have a very difficult and tragic life. Only two of her children survived past infancy – James and her daughter with Angus, Margaret Douglas – and her second and third marriages were both very unhappy (although having said that, I felt that Margaret did nothing to make them any happier).

In addition to learning about Margaret’s life I enjoyed learning more about this period of Scottish history in general, for example the aftermath of Flodden, but I found the author’s attempt at handling Scottish dialect very irritating. To indicate that a character is Scottish she substitutes the words ‘dinna’ and ‘canna’ for don’t and can’t but doesn’t make any real effort to use any other Scottish words. This made the dialogue feel very unconvincing and artificial. Also, as the book covers such a long period of time, it would have been helpful if dates had been provided in the chapter headings or whenever the story jumps forward by a few years. It was hard to tell how much time had passed between one chapter and the next, or sometimes even between one paragraph and the next. Just a small thing but it would have made the story so much easier to follow!

This was a fairly light read, as you can probably tell from the title and cover. I think if I had been looking for a more in-depth book about Margaret Tudor I would have been disappointed, but as an introduction to her story it was enjoyable enough and has left me wanting to know more about this forgotten queen.

Turn of the Century Salon: A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

February 12, 2013February 12, 201322 Comments

This year I am participating in a Turn of the Century Salon hosted by Katherine of November’s Autumn. The idea of this is to read books published around the turn of the century – between the late 1880s and the early 1930s. While I do seem to have read more books from this period than I initially thought, there are still a huge number of turn of the century authors whose work I haven’t explored yet and E.M. Forster was one of those that I was most looking forward to trying for the first time.

A Room with a View is the story of Lucy Honeychurch who we first meet on a trip to Italy with her cousin, Charlotte Bartlett. Lucy and Charlotte have just arrived at the Pension Bertolini in Florence and are disappointed to find that they have been given rooms with no view of the River Arno. Two of the other English guests – a Mr Emerson and his son, George – hear them complaining and immediately offer to exchange rooms, but instead of accepting their generous offer, the rules of Edwardian society mean that Charlotte is shocked and offended by what she considers their inappropriate behaviour. During the rest of their time in Florence, Charlotte and the other middle-class English tourists dismiss the Emersons as bad-mannered and socially unacceptable but Lucy has several more encounters with them and is intrigued by their different outlook on life.

Back in England, their paths cross again when the Emersons move into a cottage in Lucy’s village not far from the Honeychurch home, Windy Corner. Lucy is now engaged to Cecil Vyse, a cold, pretentious man she doesn’t really love, but who is considered to be a suitable husband for her. But with George Emerson living nearby Lucy must decide whether to be true to her heart even if it means breaking the social conventions of the time.

As this is the first E.M. Forster book I’ve read, I didn’t know what to expect so I was pleased to find it was much easier to read than I had been afraid it might be. I loved the wit and warmth of Forster’s writing and I enjoyed watching Lucy’s slow development from a young woman who allows other people and society in general to dictate how she should think and behave to one who finds the courage to be herself and live her life the way she wants to live it.

The beginning of the book with the portrayal of the English in Italy made me think of The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim and as for the descriptions of Italy itself, they were beautiful and vivid:

At the same moment the ground gave way, and with a cry she fell out of the wood. Light and beauty enveloped her. She had fallen on to a little open terrace, which was covered with violets from end to end.

“Courage!” cried her companion, now standing some six feet above. “Courage and love.”

She did not answer. From her feet the ground sloped sharply into view, and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems collecting into pools in the hollows, covering the grass with spots of azure foam. But never again were they in such profusion; this terrace was the well-head, the primal source whence beauty gushed out to water the earth.

Forster has a sense of humour as well; the dialogue is often quite funny and he puts his characters into some amusing situations. I also loved the character names and the chapter titles (especially Chapter Six – “The Reverend Arthur Beebe, the Reverend Cuthbert Eager, Mr. Emerson, Mr. George Emerson, Miss Eleanor Lavish, Miss Charlotte Bartlett, and Miss Lucy Honeychurch Drive Out in Carriages to See a View; Italians Drive Them.”)

Published in 1908, A Room with a View was a perfect book to choose for the salon as it really does epitomise turn of the century society and a gradual move away from Victorian values into a freer, less socially constrained twentieth century.

Which of E.M. Forster’s other books should I read next?

Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses by Sarah Gristwood

February 9, 2013February 9, 20139 Comments

Blood Sisters is a non-fiction book which looks at the lives of seven women who all played an important part in the period of history known as The Wars of the Roses or the Cousins’ War – the conflict between the House of York and the House of Lancaster, two branches of the English royal family. These seven women are listed below:

* Margaret of Anjou (Marguerite), Queen to Henry VI

* Cecily Neville, the mother of two Kings of England: Edward IV and Richard III

* Elizabeth Woodville, Queen to Edward IV and mother of the ‘Princes in the Tower’.

* Margaret of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV and Richard III and wife to the Duke of Burgundy.

* Anne Neville, wife of Richard III and daughter of the Earl of Warwick (the Kingmaker)

* Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry Tudor (the future Henry VII).

* Elizabeth of York, Edward IV’s daughter and Henry VII’s wife.

Notice that I’ve defined these seven women by their relationships to the men, the Kings, and it would have been almost impossible not to do that, as their connections to the Plantagenet and Tudor Kings of England are the reasons they are still remembered today. But in this book, Sarah Gristwood shows that each of them also had an interesting story of her own and was historically important in her own right. Rather than devoting one section of the book to each woman and telling their stories separately, she weaves them together which makes sense considering that some of the women were related and several of them did meet or interact with the others in some way.

While Blood Sisters was very compelling and readable non-fiction, I have to admit I didn’t learn much that I didn’t already know about most of the women. The lives of Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beaufort were covered in another book I’ve read, The Women of the Cousins’ War, and a lot of the same information appears here too – though I suppose there’s a limit to how much information is actually available. Of the seven featured in this book, Margaret of Burgundy was the one I previously knew the least about and so I was particularly interested in reading about her.

As well as telling us about the major historical events of the period, Gristwood also gives us a lot of information to help us understand what daily life was like for these women: for example, records of household accounts, and descriptions of clothes worn at coronations or pageants and the dishes served at banquets. I also enjoyed reading about the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower and I appreciate the fact that Gristwood presented some of the different theories and possibilities rather than just blaming Richard III! A lot of attention is also given to the stories of the various Yorkist pretenders to the throne who caused so many problems for Henry VII during his reign, especially Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be the younger son of Edward IV.

It’s frustrating that so much of the information we have about this period comes from the work of Thomas More and others who were writing during the Tudor period and so were likely to be biased, but Gristwood does take care to point out when something may not be completely accurate and when we need to use some caution. She explains which of her sources may have been unreliable or may have had their own reasons for wanting to portray a person or event in a certain way.

I would recommend Blood Sisters to anyone interested in learning more about this period from a female perspective and it’s also an ideal book for readers like myself who don’t often read non-fiction but want to build on the knowledge they’ve already gained through reading historical fiction.

I received a copy of this book for review via Netgalley

The King’s General by Daphne du Maurier

February 7, 201312 Comments

If you asked me to name my favourite author I wouldn’t be able to give a definitive answer; there are so many that I love and I would find it hard to single one out. But one name that would always be high on my list is Daphne du Maurier. I’ve read twelve of her books now, including this one, and I can honestly say I’ve enjoyed all of them.

The King’s General is set in seventeenth century Cornwall, during the English Civil War. Our narrator is Honor Harris, whose family are Royalists fighting for the King against the Parliamentarians. Honor is eighteen years old when she meets and falls in love with Richard Grenvile but on the day before their wedding tragedy strikes and the marriage never takes place. As the years go by, Richard rises through the ranks of the army, marries another woman and has children, while Honor stays in the Harris family home and remains single.

As the war intensifies and the fighting spreads throughout Cornwall, Honor joins her sister and brother-in-law in the safety of their home, Menabilly, and here she meets Richard again for the first time in fifteen years. He has left his wife, bringing their fourteen-year-old son, Dick, with him, and is now commanding the Royalist forces as the King’s General in the West. Richard and Honor discover they still love each other as much as before and although she refuses to marry him, they begin an unusual relationship that withstands the war, betrayal and rebellion going on around them.

I wasn’t sure at first that I was going to like this book. The first chapter was very confusing – it’s narrated by an older Honor looking back on her life and reflecting on people and events that we know nothing about yet, before going back in time in the next chapter to tell her story from the beginning. But as soon as Honor and Richard had their first meeting on the battlements of Plymouth Castle I knew I needn’t have worried! After I finished the book I went back to re-read the first chapter and it did make a lot more sense.

The King’s General is historical fiction rather than the gothic suspense Daphne du Maurier is probably better known for, but there are still elements of the gothic here, mainly in the atmospheric descriptions of Menabilly with its secret tunnels, hidden chambers and mysterious noises in the night. Menabilly (the inspiration for Manderley in Rebecca) was du Maurier’s home in Cornwall and previously belonged to the Rashleighs, one of the families featured in The King’s General. It was apparently the story of a discovery at Menabilly by William Rashleigh in the 19th century that inspired the writing of this novel.

But while this book could be described as historical romance, as you might expect from du Maurier the romance between Richard and Honor is not a conventional one and neither of the two main characters is a typical romantic hero or heroine. Even people who like flawed characters (and I usually do) might have trouble with Richard as he is not a very pleasant person at all. He’s ruthless, arrogant and cruel and the way he treats his shy, nervous son Dick is particularly horrible. I couldn’t help thinking that his relationship, or lack of it, with Dick reminded me of Heathcliff’s with his son, Linton, in Wuthering Heights and of course, many of du Maurier’s books do have a strong Brontë influence. The only point in Richard’s favour is that he does seem to truly love Honor and in the scenes where they are alone we sometimes see a more human side to him. Honor herself is another strong and complex person. I didn’t always agree with the decisions she made but I admired her courage in helping to protect her family and friends throughout the war and her strength in dealing with the disaster that befell her early in the story. I deliberately haven’t told you exactly what this disaster was because if you can manage to avoid knowing before you start to read the book, it will probably have more impact!

Du Maurier had obviously put a lot of effort into her research for the novel. Although this is a fictional story, the various battles and other historical events in the book did take place as described and most of the characters were real people recorded in history, including both Richard Grenvile and Honor Harris. The Civil War (actually three separate wars between 1642 and 1651) is not a period of English history I have read much about. I know the basics that we were taught at school – that the Royalists (Cavaliers) were defeated by the Parliamentarians (Roundheads), and King Charles I was beheaded and replaced by the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell – but beyond that, I don’t know very much at all. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, because my total lack of knowledge of the Battle of Lostwithiel, for example, or the Siege of Plymouth Castle, meant that I never knew what was going to happen next.

While The King’s General doesn’t rank as one of my top three or four Daphne du Maurier novels I still loved it and am looking forward to the remaining du Maurier books I still haven’t read.

War and Peace Readalong: January

February 2, 201311 Comments

Throughout 2013 I am taking part in a readalong of Tolstoy’s War and Peace hosted by Amy of My Friend Amy and Iris of Iris on Books. Amy has posted some questions to help us discuss January’s reading.

Why are you reading War & Peace?

I read Anna Karenina years ago and enjoyed it so I’ve been meaning to read War and Peace for a long time but haven’t been able to find the motivation to actually get round to doing it. After taking part in a year-long group read of Clarissa by Samuel Richardson last year, when I saw that Amy and Iris were planning a readalong of War and Peace for 2013, I decided to join in with this one too. It seemed like a good opportunity to read another long novel and the reading schedule looked very manageable – this month we had to read Volume 1 Part 1 and I had no difficulty finishing it in time. In fact, I didn’t want to stop at the end of Part 1 and I admit to starting Part 2 before the end of January!

What translation are you reading? Are you reading print, ebook, or audio?

I’m reading the Kindle version of the Vintage Classics edition. Opinions seem to be very divided on all of the available War and Peace translations so I wasn’t sure which one to choose. I read the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita a couple of years ago and was quite happy with it and as I remember disliking the Maude translation of Anna Karenina (though it didn’t affect my enjoyment of the story too much) I decided it might be best to go with P&V again.

So far, is it different than you expected or the same?

I had high hopes for this book and I’m pleased to be able to say that I’ve loved what I’ve read so far, though it does have quite a different feel to Anna Karenina. I’ve found it surprisingly easy to read, though this first section has been mainly concerned with introducing us to the characters – I suspect I might be going to struggle with the military scenes as I don’t have much knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars or the French invasion of Russia.

The only problem I’ve had is that so much of the dialogue is in French and in this edition and format the English translations are in the notes at the end of each chapter – not very convenient with the Kindle (one of the negative things I’ve found with ebooks in general is that it’s not as easy to move backwards and forwards through the text as it is with a physical book).

Do you have a favorite character?

Not yet – I don’t feel I know any of them well enough to have favourites. And there are so many of them too! I’m still having trouble keeping them all straight (and especially remembering how each of them is related to the others) but I’m sure that will become easier as I progress through the book. The characters I’ve found most memorable so far are Pierre, Count Bezukhov’s illegitimate son, and Natasha, the thirteen-year-old daughter of the Rostovs. We haven’t seen much of Natasha yet but she seems a strong, lively character and I’m looking forward to getting to know her better.

What do you see as the biggest obstacle to finishing?

The mistake I made with Clarissa last year was that I kept abandoning the book without picking it up for long periods of time which made it difficult to start reading again. I loved Clarissa while I was actually reading it, but as soon as I stopped and allowed a few weeks to pass, I lost all my enthusiasm for it. I don’t want that to happen with War and Peace so this time I really need to find a reading pace that I’m happy with. I’ll try to stick to the readalong schedule at first as it’s more fun to be reading and posting at the same time as other participants, but it could be that a different pace would suit me better. The important thing is that I continue to enjoy reading this book and don’t start to feel that it’s a chore, which is what happened with Clarissa.

I don’t really have much more to say about the book at this early stage but I’ll post another update at the end of February.

The White Cottage Mystery by Margery Allingham

January 28, 201317 Comments

I love reading detective novels from the Golden Age but I’m very aware of the number of authors from that era I still haven’t tried and until now, Margery Allingham was one of them. This is the first of her books that I’ve read but I’m now definitely interested in reading more of them. I understand The White Cottage Mystery was her first detective story, originally serialised in the Daily Express in 1927 before being published as a book the following year, and though it does have the feel of an early effort I still enjoyed it.

The mystery begins with Jerry Challoner driving through a small village in Kent one afternoon when he notices a young girl struggling to carry a heavy basket. Stopping his car, he offers to help, but shortly after dropping the girl off at her home, The White Cottage, he hears the sound of a gunshot. After learning that Eric Crowther, from the neighbouring house, the Dene, has been murdered inside The White Cottage, Jerry calls his father, Detective Chief Inspector W.T. Challoner of Scotland Yard. When W.T. arrives on the scene he interviews the family and servants who live both in the cottage and the house next door and discovers that the dead man was an unpleasant, blackmailing bully. There are plenty of people who have a motive for killing Crowther and who openly admit to wanting him dead, but W.T. and Jerry must decide which, if any of them, is the murderer.

Even though a murder is involved, there’s no graphic violence or anything too gruesome in this book, and the focus is on W.T’s attempts to solve the mystery. Written and set in the 1920s, W.T. uses old-fashioned methods of crime solving – looking for clues and questioning suspects – and his investigations uncover family secrets, blackmail and even connections to a secret society of thieves. The plot is not especially original but there’s still some suspense and a big twist near the end that took me by surprise – I would never have guessed who the murderer actually was and I can see why it took W.T. such a long time to figure it out.

The White Cottage Mystery is really more of a novella than a novel, short enough to be read in just a few sittings, but the plot was resolved satisfactorily and I felt that it didn’t really need to be any longer. Now that I know what Margery Allingham’s writing is like I think I’m going to enjoy exploring her other novels!

I received a copy of The White Cottage Mystery from Bloomsbury Reader via Netgalley.