Category: Reviews

By the Pricking of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie

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The August theme for the Read Christie challenge is ‘Beloved Duo’, so one of her Tommy and Tuppence books was the obvious choice for this month! I’ve read the first three in the series, which made this an ideal opportunity to pick up the next one, By the Pricking of My Thumbs.

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, unlike Christie’s other detectives, age in real time throughout the series. When we first meet them in The Secret Adversary, published in 1922, they are young people in their early twenties; in By the Pricking of My Thumbs, published in 1968, they’re now in their sixties. Christie herself, of course, was also growing older and the topic of ageing forms a prominent part of this novel. It begins with a visit to Tommy’s elderly Aunt Ada at Sunny Ridge Nursing Home, where Tuppence falls into conversation with another resident, a Mrs Lancaster. She’s a sweet, friendly old lady and the two are getting along well – until Mrs Lancaster suddenly refers to something hidden behind the fireplace and asks Tuppence, “Was it your poor child?”

Tuppence is still thinking about those words several weeks later when Aunt Ada dies and she and Tommy return to Sunny Ridge to collect her belongings. Tuppence hopes to speak to Mrs Lancaster again, but is told that she has gone, having been taken away by a relative. Instinctively feeling that something is wrong, Tuppence tries to track down Mrs Lancaster but no one seems to know exactly where she could be. The only clue is a painting Mrs Lancaster gave to Aunt Ada before her death, showing a house by a canal. Tuppence is sure she’s seen that house before, possibly from the window of a train, so while Tommy is away from home attending a conference, Tuppence decides to find the house again in the hope that it will lead her to Mrs Lancaster.

This is a particularly dark Christie novel, which is to be expected considering the title comes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth (“by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes”). I found it creepy and unsettling, with all the talk of dead or missing children, Mrs Lancaster’s complete disappearance, and the descriptions of the house, partially abandoned and, as one character says, ‘put to the wrong use’. The scenes at Sunny Ridge also show, quite disturbingly, how the concerns of elderly people can easily be dismissed as confusion or dementia. Tommy and Tuppence themselves, though, are a delight to spend time with, as always, especially Tuppence who has to learn to accept that although she may still be a lively, adventurous young woman at heart, her physical limitations are catching up with her and she can’t do all the things she used to do.

Although this book is maybe not as tightly plotted as some of Christie’s others and not one of her absolute best, it’s still very enjoyable. I found the ending quite chilling – I hadn’t guessed the solution and the culprit was someone I had never suspected. Now I only have one Tommy and Tuppence book left to read: Postern of Fate, which I’m hoping to read for the Read Christie challenge later this year.

Book 17/20 of 20 Books of Summer

Little Spark by Jess Kidd

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A new Jess Kidd book is always something to look forward to and this year we’ve had two of them: first, Murder at the Spirit Lounge, the second book in the Nora Breen Investigates series, and now Little Spark, a standalone novel set in Victorian England.

Little Spark is the story of Bodkin Bell, a young woman with the unusual ability to generate powerful currents of electricity within her body. Bodkin has no idea why she has this particular skill – or curse, as it often seems to be. In fact, she knows very little about herself at all, except that she’s an orphan who has been taken under the wing of Cornelius Bell, a travelling showman. Cornelius has taught Bodkin how to pick pockets and use her wits to survive and together they travel the country with a sideshow act so Bodkin can perform as ‘Little Spark’. One day, however, things go wrong and Bodkin finds herself arrested.

Separated from Cornelius, her only friend, Bodkin begins to serve a prison sentence until she is rescued by Lady Hesperia Haseley who is making a charitable visit to the prison and takes a liking to her. Bodkin is offered a position as a servant at Point Mote, the Haseley estate, but once she arrives at her new home, she begins to wonder whether Lady Hesperia may have had another motive for bringing her there.

Point Mote is a neglected, crumbling mansion situated in the Kent marshlands, an appropriately atmospheric setting for a novel like this one. The former owner, Spendlove Haseley, was an inventor of automata, and his work is being continued after his death by his son, Ramshaw. Almost the first thing Bodkin sees when she enters the house is a disembodied mechanical hand stirring a pot of stew in the kitchen – and there are other machines and devices like this all over the house and its grounds. I was reminded of Anna Mazzola’s The Clockwork Girl, another dark historical novel about a creator of automata, although the settings and plots are quite different. Bodkin’s new job is to assist Ramshaw with his inventions and as she does so, she makes some discoveries about her employer, his family and herself.

Bodkin herself is an engaging heroine and although I’d expected more focus on her strange powers, it was interesting to watch her trying to solve the various mysteries of Point Mote with the help (or hindrance) of its other inhabitants, the usual cast of colourful characters you would expect to find in a Kidd novel. I was particularly intrigued by the two maids, sisters Coralie and Claudine, who have each lost an eye, one on the left and one on the right, although they won’t say exactly how it happened. There’s also Huffkin the dog, who may or may not be real! It’s such a fascinating, imaginative story; my only criticism is that I guessed the twists too easily – one in particular is a twist I’ve come across in several other books. Still, I found this a very enjoyable, entertaining novel, probably my favourite by Jess Kidd since Things in Jars.

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

The Story of Tudor Art by Christina J. Faraday

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In this interesting and ambitious book, Christina J. Faraday explores the history of Tudor England through its art and objects. The artwork of a particular period can tell us a lot about key historical events, how important figures chose to be portrayed and how people lived, worked and worshipped. Faraday looks at all of these things, moving chronologically forward through time, beginning with art associated with Margaret Beaufort, mother of the first Tudor king, Henry VII, and ending with the reign of Elizabeth I.

Paintings and portraits are naturally given a lot of attention, but Faraday also includes many other types of art from sculptures, tapestries and clothing to jewels, embroideries and furnishings. To show the range of items discussed, some examples include the Dacre Beasts, four 6ft tall figures carved from a single oak tree, now on display at the V&A in London; the Great Bed of Ware, a huge, ornate four-poster bed so famous Shakespeare mentioned it in Twelfth Night; and Cope’s Cabinet of Curiosities, a collection of rare antiquities and artefacts from around the world, reflecting the increase in global exploration during Elizabeth I’s reign.

There’s a fascinating chapter on the emerging class of people known in the 16th century as ‘the middling sort’ – similar to today’s middle class. During the Tudor period, these people began to purchase artworks for their own homes to display their growing wealth and culture. Mostly, though, Faraday focuses on works of art produced for the Tudor monarchs and displayed at court or in churches.

The book looks at the work of the various court painters, many of whom came to England from other European countries, bringing different styles and techniques with them. Some, such as Hans Holbein the Younger, are very well known; others, for example, William (or Guillim) Scrots, are less famous. Little is known about Scrots, but he caused a sensation with his 1546 anamorphic portrait of Edward VI, which is distorted so it can only be viewed clearly from one particular angle. As you would expect, most of the artists at that time were men, but the contributions of female artists Susanna Horenbout and Levina Teerlinc are also discussed.

At first this appeared to be quite a long book, but I found that I got through it much more quickly than I’d expected as around half of the book is made up of notes, a bibliography, a list of image credits and an index. The actual text of the book moves quickly from one monarch’s reign to the next, covering a huge amount of art in each chapter, and it ended up feeling too short rather than too long as there’s not time to go into much depth on anything. Still, it’s a good introduction to the subject and succeeds in showing the overall scope of Tudor art and how things changed between the beginning of the period and the end. Lots of photographs are included, but as I was reading the ebook version I don’t think I could fully appreciate some of these and I’m sure a physical version of the book would work better visually. I think it would make a nice gift for someone studying art history, but for the general reader with an interest in art or the Tudors (or preferably both) there’s a lot to enjoy here as well.

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

Book 16/20 of 20 Books of Summer

Troubled Waters by Ichiyō Higuchi – #WITMonth

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Translated by Bryan Karetnyk

August is Women in Translation Month and I’ve chosen to start with a collection of short stories by an author often described as Japan’s first professional woman writer of the modern era. Born Higuchi Natsuko in 1872, she was the daughter of a peasant who had just managed to achieve samurai status a year before the Meiji Restoration period began, leading to the samurai caste being abolished. After her father’s death, Higuchi and her mother and sister were left struggling financially and Higuchi decided to support her family through her writing. Using the pseudonym Higuchi Ichiyō (in Japanese, the first name comes last), she had her first story published in a magazine in 1892 and went on to write more stories, poems, essays and a diary before dying from tuberculosis at the age of just twenty-four.

This new collection from Pushkin Press contains five of her stories published between 1893 and 1895. The first, A Snowy Day (Yuki no hi), is a beautifully written story in which our narrator looks back on her school days, when she fell in love with an unsuitable man, and reflects on the disillusionment she now feels due to decisions made during that time. Although it’s the shortest story in the book, it has a powerful emotional impact and was the perfect introduction to Higuchi’s work. The second story New Year’s Eve (Ōtsugomori) was even better – probably my favourite of the five. It follows O-Mine, a young woman working as a maid in a rich household, who asks her employer for an advance on her salary so she can help her uncle who is ill and struggling financially. Her employer agrees then cruelly pretends to forget, leaving O-Mine contemplating stealing. I particularly loved the ending which is ambiguous but also very satisfying.

Growing Pains (Takekurabe) is a novella-length story and another I enjoyed. It tells the story of a group of young people living in Yoshiwara, Tokyo’s red light district, and revolves around a feud between two rival gangs, one led by Chōkichi, the son of a construction foreman, and the other by Shōtarō, a pawnbroker’s son. We also meet the shy, serious Nobu, whose father is the local priest, and fourteen-year-old Midori, a bright, lively girl who is being groomed to become a courtesan like her older sister. As this group of children grow older they begin to discover that their hopes and dreams for the future are unlikely to come true as their paths have already been laid out for them by their parents and society. I loved all the insights we get into Japanese culture and the summer and winter festivals, and because this is the longest story in the collection, there’s more time for character development as well.

Karetnyk states in his introduction at the beginning of the book that he has tried to preserve Ichiyō’s classical Japanese writing style, which means there are no quotation marks around dialogue, with sentences and paragraphs often running together into one long section of prose. I found the first three stories easy enough to follow, but for some reason the style was more of a problem for me with the fourth, Troubled Waters (Nigorie), and I sometimes struggled to tell where one person had finished speaking and another had started. For that reason, this story wasn’t one of my favourites, but it’s still a striking depiction of the fate of courtesans, focusing on O-Riki and one of her clients, who has become infatuated with her.

The final story is This Mortal Coil (Utsusemi) and it’s another very short one. It explores a young woman’s overwhelming feelings of guilt that cause her to descend into mental and physical illness. I found it the weakest of the five stories in the book, but it was still interesting and apparently this is the first time this particular story has been translated into English. I would definitely recommend this collection as a whole for what it tells us about Meiji-era Japan and the lives of women during that period. For me personally, most of the Japanese literature I’ve read has been crime, so it was good to have the opportunity to try something different!

Thanks to Pushkin Press Classics for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 15/20 of 20 Books of Summer

The Boleyn Secret by Alison Weir

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Alison Weir has written so many novels about the Tudors it’s surprising that she’s still able to find different angles and perspectives to write from. In The Boleyn Secret, she tells the story of Kate Carey, daughter of Anne Boleyn’s sister Mary and, some believe, Henry VIII himself. There have been other books about Kate, but I haven’t read any (apart from where she’s mentioned as a minor character), so reading a whole book from her point of view was something new for me.

Katherine Carey (referred to as Kate throughout the book, so I will do the same) was born in 1524 to Mary Boleyn and her husband, William Carey, However, as Mary was having an affair with Henry VIII around this time, many historians have suggested that he was the true father, although this has never been confirmed and Henry never acknowledged Kate as his daughter. For the purposes of this novel, Weir assumes that the rumours were true and that Kate was aware that Henry was her father. She uses this idea to explore how this knowledge may have impacted on Kate’s life, how she discovered it and whether she wanted it to be known.

The book begins with the twelve-year-old Kate witnessing the execution of her aunt, Anne Boleyn (another story that has never been confirmed). We are then taken through the whole of Kate’s life, encompassing her close relationship with her cousin and half-sister Elizabeth (the future queen), her marriage to Sir Francis Knollys, her view on key historical events such as Henry VIII’s next four marriages, the reigns of Edward VI and Queen Mary, religious change and turmoil, and finally the long reign of Queen Elizabeth and the downfall of Mary, Queen of Scots.

Having read all of Weir’s Six Tudor Queens series and several of her other Tudor novels, a lot of this felt repetitive as I was just seeing the same events from yet another perspective. However, there was still plenty of new material, mainly surrounding Kate’s family life with Francis and their sixteen (yes, sixteen!) children. Kate and Francis appear to have had a genuinely happy marriage, a nice change from all the unhappy marriages that often fill the pages of historical novels! I particularly enjoyed the part of the book where they, as Calvinists, go into exile in Europe during the reign of Mary I and her Protestant burnings. Weir admits in her author’s note, though, that this episode of their lives is poorly documented so she had to use her imagination here.

Elizabeth is a huge presence in Kate’s life; they are very close from childhood and Kate loves her as a sister, although she’s never quite sure whether Elizabeth knows the truth about their relationship and is afraid to bring the subject up herself. Elizabeth is presented as a complex person of many contradictions: she can be exceptionally generous and thoughtful, but also incredibly selfish; she often seems cold-hearted and appears to be jealous and resentful of Kate’s loving marriage to Francis, but she also has a vulnerable side and relies on Kate for friendship and support. It’s frustrating to see how Elizabeth repeatedly finds ways to keep Kate and Francis apart, purely because she doesn’t want to share Kate with anyone else; I don’t think I could have kept forgiving her the way Kate did – but of course, in the turbulent Tudor period it was important to stay on the right side of your king or queen!

Overall, I enjoyed this book but I thought it felt unnecessarily long, a common criticism I have of Alison Weir’s novels. I understand that she wants to include as much information as possible to give a full picture of the subject she’s writing about, but this is fiction, not non-fiction, and I’m sure there must have been things that could be left out or condensed to make the story more fun to read. Still, it was interesting to have the opportunity to learn more about Kate Carey and her family. Alison Weir’s next novel will be The Pretender’s Wife, about Lady Catherine Gordon and Perkin Warbeck, so that’s something to look forward to.

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

Book 14/20 of 20 Books of Summer

No Fair Maidens by Kim Willis

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I’ve read a lot of Greek mythology but very little British mythology, so when I came across No Fair Maidens on NetGalley it seemed like a good opportunity to rectify that. However, I don’t think I read the description of the book properly as it wasn’t quite the exploration of British goddesses that I’d expected but more of a memoir of the author’s own personal journey. Looking at other reviews, it seems a lot of people made the same mistake, but I think as long as you know what kind of book it is before you start, there’s still a lot to enjoy here.

Kim Willis begins by telling us about a time in her life when she began to struggle with mental health issues. She had just been told (wrongly) that she would never be able to have children and was left feeling depressed and empty. It was then that she took a trip to the mouth of the River Severn and drew inspiration from the story of the goddess Sabrina (or Hafren in Welsh), whose name over the centuries became Severn. Sabrina and her two sisters fell to earth in the form of single raindrops and then each chose her own route to the sea, growing and swelling as they went. Willis found it motivating to think of these three women charting a path for themselves with no maps to show the way – and this led her to investigate the stories of other mythical British women.

I had heard of some of the women featured in the book; Morgan le Fay, who appears in the Arthurian legends usually as King Arthur’s half-sister, is probably the most famous, but I was also already familiar with Melusine, the water spirit who turns into a snake for several days each month. The others I knew little to nothing about – Coventina, Arianrhod, Scáthach and my two favourites, Cerridwen and Gwendoline. I won’t say too much about any of the individual women as you may prefer to discover their stories for yourself, but all of them are fascinating and, interestingly, they are all associated with water in some way.

However, relatively little time is spent on the actual myths; most of them are told in just a few pages embedded into each chapter. Much more attention is given to the author’s own reactions to learning about the myths, how she found them inspiring and healing and how they gave her the strength to move forward. Although I appreciate her courage in being so open and honest with the reader about her life and her mental health, I didn’t personally find any of this particularly interesting and struggled to identify with her personality and way of life. I’m sure other readers will like this aspect of the book and find it helpful; it just depends on what you’re looking for, I think.

I did enjoy reading about the author’s travels around England, Scotland and Wales to get to the source of each of the stories and stand on the land where our eight mythological women may once have stood. I’ve been left wanting to know more about these myths – and maybe I’ll actually get round to reading The Mabinogion one of these days!

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

Book 13/20 of 20 Books of Summer

The Forever Summer by Lulu Taylor

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The first thing to say about this book is that it’s definitely not the light summer read you would probably expect from the cover and title. It’s actually a tale of lies, betrayal and treason set during the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany. It’s the first Lulu Taylor book I’ve read and I really enjoyed it.

The novel opens with a brief section set in the modern day, introducing us to Lottie Conway, a young woman who has grown up under the shadow of a family scandal – one linked with the actions of two women at the start of the Second World War. The Conway name has become tarnished by association, although the details have always been vague. When a new blockbuster film is made about the incident, Lottie decides it’s time to speak to the one person who knows exactly what happened: her grandmother, Dinah.

Dinah’s story begins in 1931 when her wealthy friend, Marina, invites her to a dinner party. Here she meets Marina’s cousin, William Conway, whom she hasn’t seen since they were children and they quickly fall in love and decide to marry. The marriage isn’t welcomed by everyone – William’s mother refuses to even speak to Dinah, which she assumes is due to her poor background – but the two are blissfully happy and head to Germany on their honeymoon. They’re planning to visit Rosemary, another of William’s cousins, at her school in Munich, but first William wants to visit the site of the Battle of Blenheim. However, they are not the only British tourists in the area that day…Winston Churchill is also visiting the battlefield, having some time on his hands after resigning from the Conservative shadow cabinet.

The Conways’ lives are changed forever by that chance meeting with Churchill, who believes that William, who works for the Foreign Office, can be of use to him in providing information on activity in Germany and the British government’s response to it. But they also make another new acquaintance in Munich who will have an equally big influence on their future fates: Ernst Hanfstaengl, known as Putzi, a close friend of Adolf Hitler, leader of the increasingly powerful Nazi Party.

The Forever Summer is quite a long book but was a faster read than I expected as I was so gripped by it. I loved the way the author obscures the true intentions of the characters from us, leaving us questioning who can and cannot be trusted. A good example of this is Victoria Gauntlett, one of the women who brought shame on the Conway family; it’s never quite clear whether Victoria is spying for Britain, spying for Germany, a double agent or just an innocent young woman. We only see her through Dinah’s eyes and Dinah is hardly an unbiased observer, as she is jealous of Victoria’s close friendship with William. By the time we reach the end of the book, then, there are lots of secrets to be revealed and some surprising twists to look out for along the way.

What I found most interesting, though, was the portrayal of the mood in Munich during the build to the war. When Dinah first visits for her honeymoon in 1932, she can sense a tension in the air even then; there are already men on the streets wearing brown uniforms with the swastika insignia and disturbing rumours of their plans for Jews. When she returns just three years later, the atmosphere has become much more oppressive; there’s a stronger military presence and Nazi flags line the boulevards and hang from shops and houses. I was also fascinated by the depiction of Putzi Hanfstaengl, a real person although I don’t think I’ve come across him in fiction before. Most poignantly of all, the book explores the question of whether another war was inevitable or if anything could have been done differently during that period that may have prevented it.

I’ll have to investigate some of Lulu Taylor’s other books; I had previously dismissed them as probably not being for me, but I’m interested in trying more of them now.

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

Book 12/20 of 20 Books of Summer