Category: Reviews

The Last Lifeboat by Hazel Gaynor

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We hear a lot about children being evacuated from the cities to the British countryside during World War II, but not so much about those who were sent away to safety overseas. Hazel Gaynor’s new novel, The Last Lifeboat, explores this often overlooked aspect of the war, taking as its inspiration the real life tragedy of the SS City of Benares, a British evacuee ship which was torpedoed by a German U-boat in September 1940 with almost 100 children on board.

The novel follows the stories of two women: Alice King and Lily Nicholls. Lily, who lives in London, is a widow and the mother of two young children, Georgie and Arthur. All she wants is to keep her children safe, but as bombs begin to rain down on the city, Lily starts to fear for their lives and when she hears about a new government scheme to evacuate children to other countries, she has a difficult decision to make. Meanwhile, schoolteacher Alice King is looking for a way to ‘do her bit’ for the war effort and has signed up with CORB (the Children’s Overseas Reception Board) as a volunteer escort who will accompany a group of children on a ship sailing for Canada.

These two separate storylines connect when Lily entrusts Arthur and Georgie to Alice’s care as parents are not allowed to accompany their children overseas. The ship on which they set sail – the SS Carlisle – is part of a large convoy so everyone assumes they will be protected from the German U-boats, but once out in the Atlantic things go badly wrong. The ship is hit by a torpedo and begins to sink, leaving the passengers and crew to pile into the lifeboats. Some are rescued, others are thrown into the waves, but one lifeboat drifts out of range with Alice King on board. The days that follow will be a traumatic period for Alice, as she and the others in the boat find themselves lost at sea with little hope of rescue and limited supplies of food and water, but it will be equally traumatic for Lily as news of the disaster reaches London and she discovers that one of her children is missing.

I think this is the best of the three Hazel Gaynor books I’ve read so far (the others are The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter, about Grace Darling, and The Cottingley Secret, the story of the Cottingley fairies). I liked both Lily and Alice and found each of their stories very moving. Alice’s is more dramatic as the days go by and she and the other lifeboat passengers struggle to survive while adrift in the Atlantic, but I could also feel Lily’s heartbreak and anger as she waits for news of her lost child and makes the shocking discovery that the evacuee ships were not being escorted to Canada as promised but left to fend for themselves after passing a certain point. Knowing that the book is based on a true story and that real people did have to go through the things that Alice and Lily went through just makes it even more powerful.

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

This is book 22/50 read for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Inquest by Henrietta Clandon

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Inquest is one of four Henrietta Clandon mysteries available from Dean Street Press. Many of you will have heard the sad news earlier this year of DSP publisher Rupert Heath’s death, but it has been confirmed that the titles currently in print will still be available as long they have the copyrights. I loved the first Clandon novel I read, Good by Stealth, so I thought I would read another one while I still had the opportunity.

Henrietta Clandon was a pseudonym of John Haslette Vahey, a Northern Irish author who also wrote under several other names, most often Vernon Loder. Inquest, originally published in 1933, was the first of his books under the Clandon name. I’ve never read anything else he has written, so I don’t know how much difference there is between the various pseudonyms in terms of writing style or topics.

The novel opens six months after the death of William Hoe-Luss, an English businessman believed to have been poisoned by consuming deadly mushrooms during a house party in France. Now his widow, Marie Hoe-Luss, has assembled all of the original guests – with the addition of Dr Soame, William’s physician – for another house party at Hebble Chase, her estate in England, where she plans to hold a sort of informal ‘inquest’ into her late husband’s death. However, when one of the guests breaks their neck falling from a high window, it seems that the killer may have struck again.

Although the police do eventually arrive on the scene, most of the sleuthing in the book is done by Dr Soame, who also narrates the whole novel. He’s an interesting choice of narrator as his medical knowledge and previous experience as a police surgeon means he works alongside the detectives at times, while also being one of the party, mixing with the suspects. Soame already knows some of the guests through his position as the Hoe-Luss family doctor, but others are new to him which allows the reader to get to know them along with Soame.

I enjoyed the first half of the book, which introduces the characters as they arrive at the estate for Marie’s inquest – an assortment of friends, family members, business partners and former lovers, which means there are plenty of tensions, entanglements and motives for murder. They aren’t the most pleasant bunch of people, but that’s common in Golden Age mysteries so not unexpected and not too much of a problem! However, I felt that later in the book, after the second death takes place, the plot became unnecessarily complicated and I began to struggle to keep everything straight in my mind.

I really wanted to love this book, so I’m disappointed that I didn’t. It’s a good, solid mystery novel, apart from getting a bit confusing towards the end, but there’s nothing to make it stand out from other similar books in the genre, unlike Good by Stealth, which was unusual, witty and clever. I’m not sure whether I’ll read the other two Henrietta Clandon books – I suspect I’ve already read the best one – but maybe I’ll try a Vernon Loder at some point.

Unfinished Portrait by Mary Westmacott

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May’s theme for the Read Christie 2023 challenge is ‘betrayal’ and the suggested title this month is Unfinished Portrait, a 1934 novel which is one of six books Christie published under the pseudonym of Mary Westmacott. Although I haven’t managed to take part in the challenge every month so far this year, I was particularly keen to join in with this one as I’ve previously only read one Westmacott novel – Giant’s Bread – and have been looking forward to reading more of them ever since.

Unfinished Portrait begins by briefly introducing us to Larraby, a portrait painter who is visiting an unnamed island when he comes across a woman sitting alone in a garden. Sensing that something is wrong, Larraby engages her in conversation and discovers that he is correct – she is intending to commit suicide. Not wanting to leave her alone, he accompanies her back to her hotel and listens as she tells him the story of her life and explains the sequence of events that have put such desperate thoughts into her head.

The woman’s name is Celia – at least that’s what Larraby calls her, as he doesn’t know her real name – and her story forms the main part of the novel. A lot of time is spent on Celia’s sheltered childhood, growing up in the late Victorian period in a comfortable home with servants and a nanny until the family’s financial position is affected by the early death of Celia’s father. I only know the basics about Agatha Christie as a person, but apparently Unfinished Portrait is semi-autobiographical, drawing on her own childhood memories to create Celia’s tales of inventing imaginary friends, time spent abroad due to her father’s poor health, the close relationships she had with her mother and grandmother and her first attempts at writing books. Later, Celia finds herself trapped in an unhappy marriage to Dermot, a man who is insensitive, controlling and eventually unfaithful – which again is based on Agatha’s own marriage to Archie Christie. If I’d been more familiar with Christie’s own life I would have appreciated the autobiographical element of the book a lot more, which would probably have added to my enjoyment of it, but I still found Celia’s story compelling in its own right.

After finishing the book, I could see how it fits the challenge topic for this month, exploring the theme of betrayal from several different angles: Dermot betrays Celia with another woman, Celia herself betrays a previous lover, and later in life she feels she has betrayed her daughter. All of these betrayals combine to cause the deterioration in Celia’s mental state that leads to her feeling so unhappy the day she meets Larraby. It’s a sad and emotional story – even sadder knowing that it was how Christie felt about her own situation at that time. Of course, the book was published in the 1930s and so it’s an ‘unfinished portrait’, leaving a lot of things in Celia’s life (and Christie’s) unresolved and incomplete.

I found this book quite different from Giant’s Bread, the only other Westmacott book I’ve read, and I think I preferred that one overall. I’m definitely more of a Christie fan than a Westmacott fan, but these are still great books and I’m looking forward to reading the other four.

Savage Beasts by Rani Selvarajah

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The Greek myth of Medea is transposed to 18th century India in Rani Selvarajah’s debut novel, Savage Beasts. Although I haven’t read very much about Medea – except where she has appeared as a secondary character in other novels I’ve read, such as Madeline Miller’s Circe – it was actually the Indian setting that attracted me to this book rather than the Greek myth aspect and I expect it will have equal appeal to readers of historical fiction and those who enjoy mythology retellings.

The novel opens in 1757 in Calcutta (now known as Kolkata). The East India Company, under the leadership of Sir Peter Chilcott, are advancing on Bengal and war seems inevitable, but James Chilcott, Sir Peter’s nephew, has arrived in Calcutta ready to make a bargain. He is prepared to betray the company and reveal their plans, he says, but he wants something from the Nawab of Bengal in return. Although the Nawab isn’t convinced, his daughter, Meena, is captivated by the handsome young Englishman and agrees to help him. When things go wrong, James and Meena are forced to flee Bengal, leaving a scene of death and devastation in their wake.

So far, I could see the parallels with mythology – Meena in the role of Medea, daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, and James as Jason, who comes to Colchis on the Argo in search of the Golden Fleece. When Meena and James leave Bengal, they encounter Meena’s aunt, Kiran, whom I quickly identified with Circe. The later parts of the myth are less familiar to me, but as far as I could tell the novel continued to follow the basic outline, with one or two nice twists towards the end.

What let this novel down for me was the writing. I hate to be too critical of an author’s first novel, but I did find some of the word choices odd or inappropriate. Characters ‘smirk’ all the time, on almost every page – that’s when they’re not ‘sneering’ or ‘scoffing’. I lost count of how many times these words were repeated. I also struggled to believe in Meena as a convincing woman of her time. It seemed unlikely that the daughter of a Nawab (a Mughal ruler of similar status to a prince) would have the freedom to hang around the docks of Bengal on her own, as Meena does in the opening chapter, and her subsequent actions feel more and more anachronistic.

I did like the basic concept of moving the Medea story to 18th century India and the idea of James/Jason as part of a colonial power coming to take what they can from Bengal/Colchis is an intriguing one. For this to work, though, there really needed to be a stronger sense of time and place, but sadly, I couldn’t think of the characters as anything other than modern people in historical costume. Despite my negativity, I stuck with the book to the end and did occasionally become drawn into the story; it’s been receiving a mixture of reviews, including plenty of four and five star ones, so evidently other readers have enjoyed it more than I did. Give it a try if it appeals – and please let me know if there are any other retellings of the Medea myth you can recommend!

Thanks to HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 21/50 read for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane

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The Sun Walks Down by Australian author Fiona McFarlane is not a book I had considered reading until it appeared on this year’s shortlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Attempting to read all the shortlisted books for the prize is one of my ongoing personal projects and this is the third I’ve read so far from this year’s list (the others are Act of Oblivion and These Days).

The novel is set in South Australia and takes place over a period of seven days in September 1883. On the first day, a dust storm sweeps through the small town of Fairly in the Flinders Ranges and after it has passed, six-year-old Denny Wallace is found to have gone missing. As the whole community becomes caught up in the search for him, McFarlane introduces us to each resident of the town in turn, exploring their lives and the ways in which they are touched by Denny’s disappearance.

As well as Denny’s parents and siblings, we also meet a Pashtun cameleer, a Ramindjeri tracker, a Swedish painter and his English wife, a pair of newlyweds and an assortment of farmworkers and housemaids. Each has their own story to be told and some are given their own chapter, written in the form of a dream, a confession, a prayer or a set of notes. In this way, McFarlane looks at various aspects of life in colonial Australia and the relationships between the Indigenous people and the European newcomers. Although I did find this interesting (I’ve read shamefully little about 19th century Australia) I felt that there were too many characters in the book and the viewpoint changed from one to another too quickly, preventing me from forming a strong connection with any of them. I would also have preferred a tighter focus on the search for Denny as this seemed to get pushed aside for long periods.

I did love the beautiful descriptions of the Flinders Ranges and the way McFarlane uses colours to bring to life images of the sun, sky and clouds. 1883 was the year when Krakatoa erupted and caused a ‘volcanic winter’ with unusually vivid sunsets:

The sky burns and leaps, it gilds and candles – every drenched inch of it, until the sun falls below the ranges. Then the sky darkens. The red returns, stealthy now, with green above and lilac higher still. It deepens into purple. Here’s the strange new cloud, hovering in its own grey light. Then night comes in, black and blue and grey and white, and the moon in its green bag swings heavy over the red nation of the ranges.

I think I would describe The Sun Walks Down as a book that I admired rather than one that I particularly enjoyed. I can see why other people have given it glowing reviews and why it’s being nominated for awards, but it just wasn’t for me. That probably means it will win the Walter Scott Prize this year – not long until we find out!

This is book 20/50 read for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

The Stolen Crown by Carol McGrath

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When Henry I of England dies in 1135 leaving no legitimate male children, he names his daughter, Maud, as heir to the throne. Through her marriage to the late Holy Roman Emperor, the Empress Maud, as she still calls herself, is used to wielding power, yet she is unable to gain the support of the nobility and clergy of England and the throne is taken instead by her cousin, Stephen of Blois. Maud, however, refuses to give up her claim and so a battle begins between the cousins that will become known as ‘the Anarchy’ – a period of civil war lasting for almost two decades.

Carol McGrath’s new novel, The Stolen Crown, tells Maud’s story, exploring her marriage to Geoffrey of Anjou, the years of conflict with Stephen and her relationships with her half-brother Robert of Gloucester and with Brien FitzCount, her most loyal supporter. Although Maud (sometimes known as Matilda) was never actually crowned Queen of England and was referred to instead as ‘Lady of the English’, she left an important legacy as the eldest of her three sons with Geoffrey would go on to become Henry II, the first of the great House of Plantagenet.

The novel is written largely from Maud’s own perspective and she is portrayed as a strong, courageous and determined woman, but also one who makes mistakes, ignores advice and acts impulsively at times – in other words, a believable human being who comes to life on the page. We follow Maud throughout her adult life, beginning with her marriage to Geoffrey, a husband she didn’t choose and didn’t want, but with whom she eventually settles down to start a family in Anjou. When Stephen seizes the throne, Maud leaves her husband and children behind to travel to England and fight for what she believes is rightfully hers. Some sections of the book are also written from the point of view of Maud’s illegitimate half-brother Robert, which was a good decision as it allows us to see Maud through the eyes of someone else close to her, as well as filling in the gaps when Maud is not directly involved in the action. I’ve always liked Robert when I’ve come across him in historical fiction and it’s interesting to think of the sort of king he would have made had he been a legitimate heir.

I knew from the other Carol McGrath books I’ve read (The Silken Rose, The Damask Rose and The Stone Rose, a trilogy of novels about three queens who were labelled ‘she-wolves’) that she also likes to include fictional characters in her stories. In this book, we meet Alice, a young woman from a family of entertainers – musicians, jugglers and puppeteers. Alice has a storyline of her own, including a romance with a young knight, Sir Jacques, but she also fits seamlessly into Maud’s story, spying and carrying messages between the Empress and Brien FitzCount. Although I found Maud much more interesting to read about, Alice’s inclusion in the book gives us an insight into medieval life away from the royal courts.

The Anarchy is a fascinating part of English history, often overshadowed by later conflicts such as the Civil War and the Wars of the Roses, so I’m pleased that McGrath has chosen to give some attention to this period and to Maud. I’m looking forward to seeing who and what she writes about next.

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

This is book 19/50 read for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Farewell, the Tranquil Mind by RF Delderfield

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Farewell the tranquil mind! Farewell content!
Farewell the plumed troops and the big wars
That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!

These lines from Othello inspired the title of Ronald Frederick Delderfield’s 1950 novel about a period of history that was anything but tranquil – the French Revolution. Having loved Delderfield’s A Horseman Riding By trilogy (which begins with Long Summer Day), I’ve been keen to read more of his books. This one wouldn’t necessarily have been my first choice – it’s currently out of print and with very few reviews online – but I came across a copy in a charity shop and thought I would give it a try.

Farewell, the Tranquil Mind is narrated by David Treloar, a young man from a family of Devon smugglers. From an early age, David has been different from the other male Treloars; while his brothers work with their father, bringing in shipments of contraband cargo, David stays at home and helps his mother run the family farm, Westdown. He is also the only one who has learned to read and write, having been taken under the wing of the agent, Saxeby, who introduces him to French politics through Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man. However, when a smuggling operation goes wrong and an exciseman is shot dead, the blame falls on David and he is forced to flee England.

Arriving in France in the middle of the Revolution, he is befriended by André Lamotte, the nephew of a Parisian wigmaker and perfumier known as Papa Rouzet. It is through his friendship with André and the Rouzet family that David becomes involved with various revolutionary groups including the Brissotins and the Cordeliers – and falls in love with Charlotte, Rouzet’s niece. With the situation in France becoming increasingly dangerous, David and Charlotte consider escaping to England – but not only is David still wanted for the murder of Exciseman Vetch, the English also now suspect him of being a French spy.

I found this book interesting, but certainly not as enjoyable as the Horseman Riding By trilogy, and I can see why it hasn’t been reissued like most of his other novels. The blurb made it sound quite exciting – and it is, in places, but in between there’s lots of exposition and political detail and this slows the plot down, making it less entertaining than I’d expected. Despite having read other books set during the French Revolution, I had to concentrate to keep track of all the different groups and who was on which side. It wasn’t just a case of royalists versus republicans; within the republican movement there were many separate factions – as well as the two I’ve mentioned above, there were Jacobins, Girondins, Montagnards, Dantonists and several others, each with their own ideas on the goals of the Revolution and how the country should be run.

I liked David, but I felt that Charlotte’s role in the book was too small and understated for me to get a clear sense of who she was or what she was like and this meant that I didn’t feel fully invested in the romance element of the book. It’s disappointing when I think of how well defined even the minor characters were in the other books of Delderfield’s I’ve read. This novel was written very early in his career, though, which maybe explains why it doesn’t feel as accomplished. It’s worth hunting down and reading if you’re particularly interested in learning more about the political side of the French Revolution, but otherwise probably not the best place to start with Delderfield! I’m still looking forward to reading more of his books and would welcome any suggestions as to which one I should read next.

This is book 18/50 read for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.