Category: Reviews

The Scandalous Ladies Football Club by Frances Quinn

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Published earlier this month to coincide with the World Cup (congratulations to Spain on their win), Frances Quinn’s latest novel is set in the final years of the 19th century and inspired by the formation of the British Ladies’ Football Club. Having loved her two previous books, The Lost Passenger and That Bonesetter Woman, I was hoping for good things from this one and wasn’t disappointed. Despite not being very interested in football (soccer to my blog readers in other parts of the world!) I found this a fascinating, inspirational story.

It’s 1897 and in a world dominated by men, where husbands and fathers make all the rules, the idea of women playing football is considered ridiculous and inappropriate. But when schoolteacher Minnie Newton kicks a ball back to a group of men playing in a London park one day, she’s reminded of how much she enjoyed the game as a child. Minnie places an advertisement in the local newspaper, not sure what kind of response there’ll be, and is thrilled when she receives several replies from interested applicants. However, as the group of women gather on Saturday morning for their first session, it quickly becomes obvious that this isn’t going to be easy. Most of the women have never even watched the sport before, let alone kicked a ball – then there’s the question of what to wear (long skirts are hardly suitable) and the problem of finding somewhere to train. Eventually, though, solutions are found, and soon the club has obtained both a patron – the explorer, writer and women’s rights activist, Lady Veronica Montague – and a coach, retired male footballer Bill English.

The novel focuses on three of the lady footballers. The first is obviously Minnie herself as the club’s founder and leader. The second is Grace Mousel, a shy single woman who lives with her father and spends her days catering to his every whim. Grace discovers that she has a real talent for football but feels that she has to keep her new passion hidden from her father, as he would never understand and would insist that she give it up. Then there’s Harriet Flinders, a married woman whose husband, Richard, is stationed in India, leaving her alone in London with their two sons. Bored and dissatisfied with her marriage, Harriet decides to join Minnie’s club purely because she knows it would annoy Richard if he found out but, like Grace, she soon finds that playing football is something she enjoys both for its own sake and for the independence it gives her.

As for Minnie, we know from the beginning that she’s hiding a big secret – her real name is Adela Adams and she’s a married woman, a fact that would cause her to lose her job as a teacher if it became known. Although I felt that the false identity subplot was recycled from Quinn’s last book, The Lost Passenger, it added tension to her story just as it did to Elinor’s in that book, and we find out only gradually why Adela left her husband and changed her name and what she stands to lose if she’s caught.

Quinn has loosely based the novel on the story of the real life British Ladies’ Football Club, but doesn’t stick very closely to the facts, changing the names of the people involved and imagining matches and rivalries that the club never actually had. There are some similarities, though – the real founder of the club was Nettie Honeyball which, like Minnie Newton, was thought to be an assumed name (although Nettie’s true identity is still unconfirmed); their patron, Lady Florence Dixie, closely resembled Lady Veronica in the book (she explored Patagonia and kept a pet jaguar called Affums); and of course, both clubs, real and fictional, faced a huge amount of prejudice, scorn and ridicule.

Although I found the book very enjoyable, it’s not perfect. In particular, I wished more attention had been given to other members of the club, not just Minnie, Harriet and Grace. Some of them were barely even mentioned by name. Also, without wanting to give away spoilers, I felt that the way the story ended for two of the characters seemed very convenient and clichéd. Other than that, I loved it. It’s obviously a book with a lot to say about feminism, equality and women’s rights, but the message never gets in the way of the story. Definitely worth reading, whether or not you’re a football fan!

Thanks to Simon & Schuster UK for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 9/20 of 20 Books of Summer

The Kill by Émile Zola

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Translated by Brian Nelson

This is the second book in Émile Zola’s Les Rougon-Macquart cycle, if reading in order of publication. A few years ago I read the first book, The Fortune of the Rougons, which lays the foundations for the rest of the series, but each novel is also designed to stand alone. The connection between them is that each book features characters who belong to rival branches of the same family, the Rougons and the Macquarts, all descended from Adelaïde Fouque, whom we met in the first novel. The Kill, or La Curée to give it its French title, was published in 1872 and is set during the Second French Empire (1852-1870).

The Kill follows Aristide Rougon, son of Pierre Rougon from the first book, as he leaves his home in Provence and settles in Paris, where he changes his name to Aristide Saccard. It’s a good time to arrive in Paris as the city is currently undergoing huge renovations with new boulevards, parks and landmarks being created under the supervision of Baron Haussmann. Ambitious and ruthless, Aristide starts buying up properties he has discovered are targeted for demolition then claiming compensation from the city at vastly inflated levels. He’s beginning to make a fortune through this corrupt scheme when his wife becomes terminally ill. Before she has even died, Aristide is already arranging his next marriage – to Renée, a girl from a rich family who will come with a large dowry.

The marriage is not a very happy one, with both husband and wife aware that it’s not much more than a business deal. Bored, Renée begins an affair with Maxime, Aristide’s son by his first wife. Maxime is several years younger and expected to marry the wealthy but consumptive Louise de Mareuil, but he is excited by the idea of a forbidden, incestuous relationship with his stepmother. In an interesting reversal of normal gender stereotypes, Zola portrays Maxime as delicate, feminine and beautiful while describing Renée as having masculine traits and being the stronger, more assertive of the two. Their affair forms one major thread of the novel; the other is concerned with Aristide’s business schemes and his attempts to get Renée to sign over the deeds to her family home.

The Kill, then, is a book that focuses on the lives of the rich and privileged. It’s a very descriptive book, as Zola brings to life the huge, opulent mansions, exquisite clothing, lavish banquets and luxurious carriages of the very wealthy. The title is a hunting term referring to the scraps of prey that are thrown to the hounds at the end of the hunt and Zola uses this as a metaphor for the greed of the businessmen who are fighting for money, power and influence and taking whatever they can from the rebuilding of the city. There wasn’t a single character I liked or had much sympathy for (although Aristide’s sister Sidonie was a great villain!) and I found all the descriptions of extravagance and waste overwhelming and distasteful, but I know that was the point of the novel so it certainly achieves its purpose. Apparently Zola himself was a poor journalist at the time of writing this book and had no personal experience of the sort of world he was describing, so everything had to be written purely from research, which makes it even more impressive.

I’m aware that there are several English translations of this book available, including an old one you can download free from Project Gutenberg, but I read a modern (2004) translation by Brian Nelson and do recommend it. I also found the introduction to my Oxford World’s Classics edition interesting as it discusses not just the story but also Baron Haussmann’s transformation of Paris. One of the projects that took place under Haussmann was the creation of the glass and iron structure that housed the Les Halles food market, which is the setting of the third book in the series, The Belly of Paris, and the next one I’m planning to read!

Book 8/20 of 20 Books of Summer

I’m also counting this towards Paris in July hosted by Emma of Words and Peace.

This is also book 5/50 from my third Classics Club list.

The Rose and the Yew Tree by Mary Westmacott

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This month’s theme for the Read Christie 2026 challenge is ‘Best-Kept Secret’ and we’re focusing on the six novels Christie wrote under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. I have already read three of them – Giant’s Bread, Unfinished Portrait and A Daughter’s a Daughter – so I decided to read The Rose and the Yew Tree next as it’s also on my lists for both the Classics Club and the 20 Books of Summer challenge.

The Rose and the Yew Tree is narrated by Hugh Norreys, who breaks off his engagement to Jennifer after being badly injured in a car accident. Confined to a wheelchair, Hugh moves to St Loo in Cornwall to live with his brother and sister-in-law, Robert and Teresa. His condition has left him feeling bitter and worthless and he secretly keeps a bottle of pills to hand in case he decides to end his life. However, he finds several things in St Loo to distract him from thoughts of suicide…

First of all, Hugh is introduced to Lady St Loo, widow of the seventh baron, along with her sister, sister-in-law and granddaughter Isabella. Hugh has never met anyone quite like the beautiful, strange Isabella; she has a calmness and poise he’s never encountered before and several characters in the book refer to her as a fairytale princess. But Hugh is not the only man drawn to Isabella; she also catches the eye of John Gabriel, the Tory party candidate for St Loo in the upcoming elections.

Gabriel is the son of a plumber and has done his best to work his way up the social ladder, but still feels a sense of inferiority around people of a higher class, although this is masked by his confident, charismatic exterior. He’s not a natural Tory – in fact, he doesn’t have any strong political views one way or the other – but he wants a career in politics and thinks he’ll have more chance of standing out than he would in the Labour party. Gabriel’s campaign plays a large part in the novel, as does his complex relationship with Isabella, whom he both desires and resents (the resentment because she belongs to the aristocracy he despises so much).

First published in 1948, the novel takes its title from the poem, Little Gidding by TS Eliot: “The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree Are of equal duration.” I won’t explain the significance here, but you’ll understand it once you’ve read the book. Compared to the other Westmacott novels I’ve read, I found this one particularly complex – not necessarily the plot, which is quite straightforward, but in terms of the psychology and the underlying messages. It’s also much more than a simple romance (the Westmacotts are often described as romances, but I think that’s misleading).

I enjoyed the political element of the novel, set during the build to the 1945 General Election, which would result in a landslide Labour win over Winston Churchill’s Conservatives. What’s striking is how many of the characters get caught up in the election campaign without actually having any particular political allegiances – Hugh admits to not really understanding politics, Teresa claims the parties are all the same, Gabriel is just interested in the power and social standing a political career will give him, and Isabella only cares because it’s important to Gabriel. We also see how a candidate’s personal actions can affect their reputation with the public, for better or worse (such as rescuing a child or becoming involved with a married woman). Christie doesn’t often write about politics on a smaller scale like this – although several of her books deal with international espionage and intrigue – so I found it fascinating.

Of the four Westmacotts I’ve now read, I think this one and A Daughter’s a Daughter are the best, but I still have The Burden and Absent in the Spring to come!

Book 7/20 of 20 Books of Summer

This is also book 4/50 from my third Classics Club list.

No Friend to This House by Natalie Haynes

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I’ve read and enjoyed two of Natalie Haynes’ previous novels, A Thousand Ships and Stone Blind – both Greek mythology retellings, inspired by the Trojan War and the story of Medusa, respectively – so I was looking forward to this one, No Friend to This House. It retells the myth of Medea and is based on Euripides’ classic play.

Medea, however, doesn’t appear until halfway through the book. The first half is devoted to describing the journey of the Argo, the ship which carries Jason and his men, the Argonauts, to Medea’s home in Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece. Rather than telling this part of the story through the eyes of the Argonauts, though, it’s told from the perspectives of the various women – both mortals and goddesses – whose lives are touched in some way by the Argo‘s journey. This narrative structure is similar to the other two Haynes novels I’ve read and in all three it’s very effective as the actions of those on the peripherals can be just as important as those at the centre of the story.

Some of the characters we hear from are names everyone will know, such as the goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, but others are less famous – for example, Erato the Muse, the priestess Iphias and even the dove, Peleia! One of these lesser known characters, Kleite, is particularly grateful to be given a voice at last…

That’s right, I’m just glossed over every time – Kleite with the beautiful hair – as if that tells you who I am or why I did what I did. So if you didn’t know me until I got your attention just now, well isn’t that more reason to include me, not less? What’s the point in telling the old stories all over again in the same way?

Once Medea makes her appearance, the book begins to feel different. We spend longer with Medea than with any of the other characters, seeing multiple chapters from her perspective, and I missed the wide range of voices we heard in the earlier sections of the book. Still, I found this retelling of the Jason and Medea story much more enjoyable than the last one I read (Savage Beasts by Rani Selvarajah). There were also some other little touches that I loved. For example, every chapter is headed with a word or string of words in italics which, taken on their own, make no sense at all, but when put together tell a story-within-a-story. There’s also a fascinating ‘interlude’ in the middle of the book which describes the origins of the Golden Fleece itself.

Overall, I think I enjoyed this book more than A Thousand Ships but not quite as much as Stone Blind, although all three are excellent. I still need to read her earlier novels and her non-fiction, but I would also like to hear any recommendations of other Jason and Medea retellings! Have you read any good ones?

The Lost Château by Dinah Jefferies

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Last year I read and enjoyed Dinah Jefferies’ The Greek House. The Lost Château is a sequel of sorts, but it’s not necessary to have read the previous book first.

Most of the novel is set in 1936 and follows one of the characters from The Greek House, Thirza Caruthers, who is now living with her Italian husband, Emilio Bellini, at Merchant’s House in Corfu with their five-year-old daughter Romi and Emilio’s two twin daughters from his first marriage, Lucia and Valentina. When nineteen-year-old Lucia becomes a supporter of Mussolini’s Fascist movement and runs away to Spain to get involved in the Civil War, Emilio insists on going after her to bring her home, much to Thirza’s horror. However, Thirza will be kept busy during Emilio’s absence, because her great-aunt Berenice has been in hospital and needs someone to care for her when she returns home.

Berenice lives in France, in an old château in the Dordogne, leading a solitary existence since the death of her daughter, Sophie, and the disappearance of her husband many years earlier. Accompanied by Valentina and Romi, Thirza goes to stay with Berenice, where she continues to worry about Emilio but finds distractions in trying to keep the crumbling, neglected château clean and tidy and in delving into the mystery of Berenice’s past. Why is Berenice so hostile and withdrawn? Who is the mysterious Géraldine who once lived in a cottage on the estate? And what really happened to Sophie all those years ago?

I’m counting The Lost Château towards Paris in July hosted by Emma of Words and Peace as most of the book is set in France, mainly in the Dordogne region near Sarlat-la-Canéda. As usual with Dinah Jefferies, everything is beautifully described from the 17th century stone château surrounded by forest to the cobbled streets and busy shops of Sarlat. We also briefly see Paris when Thirza and Valentina are invited to visit Jean-Paul, a widower whose mother is hoping to buy Berenice’s château. Thirza is immediately attracted to Jean-Paul and spends the whole book battling with her feelings for him, a storyline which annoyed me as Thirza claims to love her husband but makes no attempt to understand why he’s prepared to enter a dangerous warzone to rescue his daughter and accuses him of being selfish. Thirza herself was the one who seemed selfish to me – although to give her some credit, she does start to think differently about things by the end of the book.

Although I loved the French setting, Lucia’s story sounded fascinating and I was sorry that we only hear about it from a distance as news from Spain reaches Thirza. I would have liked some chapters from Lucia’s point of view to see the Spanish Civil War unfold at first hand and to understand what drives a vulnerable young woman towards radical politics. I suppose that would have made the book too long! We do, however, get some chapters from Berenice’s perspective, set several decades earlier when she first comes to live at the château as a young wife and mother. Berenice’s story is sad and shocking and explains why she has become the unhappy, prickly person we meet in the 1930s timeline.

This isn’t my favourite book by Dinah Jefferies but I did find it interesting. I wonder if there will be a third novel about these characters; the way this one ended made me think that there could be, as various family members are now positioned in different places around Europe with the outbreak of the Second World War approaching.

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

Book 6/20 of 20 Books of Summer

This Dark Night by Deborah Lutz

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My favourite of the three Brontë sisters has always been Emily; although I love Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, I love Wuthering Heights more and I also find Emily herself the most interesting and intriguing person of the three. When I came across this new biography by Deborah Lutz, then, I knew I wanted to read it. I’ve read other books about the Brontës – mainly fictional ones such as Dark Quartet by Lynne Reid Banks and The Taste of Sorrow by Jude Morgan (see my Top Ten Tuesday post for a full list) – but I liked the idea of one with a specific focus on Emily.

The book takes us through Emily’s entire life, beginning with her birth in 1818, the fifth of six children. When Emily was three, her mother died, leaving the children to be raised by their aunt and their father, Patrick Brontë, an Irish clergyman. Growing up in a parsonage in Haworth, West Yorkshire, Emily and her younger sister Anne developed their writing skills with a series of poems and stories set in the imaginary world of Gondal. Although most of this material has been lost, some of Emily’s Gondal poems still exist and Lutz uses them to explore what they can tell us about Emily as a person and how they provided the foundation that led to the writing of Wuthering Heights.

Emily’s early life was marked by various tragedies – just a few years after her mother’s death, her two eldest sisters also died of tuberculosis, having fallen ill at Cowan Bridge School (the model for Lowood School in Jane Eyre). As Patrick was reluctant to let his three surviving daughters attend school after this, Charlotte, Emily and Anne were largely educated at home. Rarely mixing with people outside the family, Emily didn’t make friends easily and was seen as a quiet, reclusive, fiercely private person. As an adult, although she briefly worked as a teacher and studied in Brussels with Charlotte, Emily continued to spend most of her time at home, managing the household and caring for her father and brother, Branwell, who was descending into alcoholism, having failed in his attempts to establish a literary career of his own.

Emily died in December 1848 at the age of thirty, just three months after Branwell and five months before Anne, all probably of tuberculosis. Charlotte, the only sibling to marry, died seven years later from complications during a pregnancy. It’s thought that the insanitary conditions in the village of Haworth, including a water supply contaminated by the nearby graveyard may have contributed to the poor health of the Brontë family.

As Emily left so little of her own work and correspondence behind, most of what we know of her comes from letters written by Charlotte and her friend, Ellen Nussey. Because we don’t have much insight into what Emily herself may have been thinking or feeling, a lot of this biography is based on speculation – ‘Emily probably thought’ or ‘it’s possible that Emily felt’ – as well as a general overview of the world in which Emily lived and how things she saw or experienced may have influenced her character and work. It also seems that almost as much attention is given to Charlotte and Anne, although that’s understandable as the lives and careers of the three sisters are so closely connected.

Something that comes across strongly is how exceptionally talented Emily was. Obviously, her writing is discussed in detail: her poems including the Gondal poetry; Wuthering Heights, the difficulty she had in getting it published and the way it was reviewed at the time; and the second novel she was working on at the time of her death, which has sadly never been found. However, Emily was also an accomplished pianist and a gifted artist – some of her artwork is reproduced in the book, including her wonderful drawings of her dogs. Her achievements are particularly impressive when you remember that she spent very little time at school and was mostly self-educated.

Although I can’t say that I learned a lot from this book (maybe because, as I’ve mentioned, there’s simply not that much we can learn due to the limited information available), I did enjoy reading it. It doesn’t feel too academic and is an easy book to read. For those who want to dig deeper, there are notes, references and a bibliography at the end of the book, but otherwise I think this would probably be a good introduction to the lives of Emily and her siblings.

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

Book 5/20 of 20 Books of Summer

A Far-flung Life by ML Stedman

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I remember really enjoying ML Stedman’s first novel, The Light Between Oceans, which I read when it was published in 2012. It’s been a fourteen year wait for her second book, but I’m pleased to say that it was definitely worth waiting for! Like the first book, which followed the lonely lives of a lighthouse keeper and his wife, A Far-flung Life (as the title suggests) is set in another remote location – a sheep station in rural Western Australia.

The novel opens on a hot summer’s day in January 1958 with Phil MacBride and his two sons, twenty-two-year-old Warren and eighteen-year-old Matt, on their way to a meeting in the nearest town – a journey that takes hours due to the vastness of the landscape. Phil’s wife, Lorna MacBride, is waiting at home on the family sheep station, Meredith Downs, with their daughter, Rosie, unaware that a terrible tragedy is taking place on the road – a kangaroo has jumped in front of the MacBride’s truck, causing an accident in which Phil and Warren are both killed and Matt, the only survivor, is left suffering from head injuries and memory loss.

As Matt begins the long process of recovery, he’s forced to come to terms with the fact that his life has now changed forever. Being the youngest son, he had been looking forward to leaving Meredith Downs and seeing the world, but that’s no longer an option – now he’ll have to step up and run the sheep station, continuing his father’s work and providing for his remaining family members. However, there’s still more trouble ahead for the MacBrides…but I’m not going to say much more about the plot, as the next traumatic incident is another pivotal moment that causes a sequence of serious effects for everyone involved.

This is a book with a lot of misery in it, then, but although it’s certainly heartbreaking at times and uncomfortable to read at others, it’s written with a warmth that stops it from becoming too unbearably bleak. I loved the characters – a lot of the focus is on first Rosie and then Matt, both people who make mistakes, do bad things (mostly unintentionally) and then have to deal with the consequences. They find different methods of coping, but each of them, in his or her own way, ends up making huge sacrifices. I was also very fond of Andy, a second generation character whom we first get to know as a child, obsessed with his rock collection, and watch grow into an adult, carrying the story forward into the future.

The secondary characters are strongly drawn as well, particularly Pete Peachey, the ‘roo shooter’, who was a prisoner of war in Japan and now lives alone in a tent at Meredith Downs, culling the kangaroos on the station. Pete offers support and friendship to the MacBride family, but is also struggling with his own problems and his own identity. Then there’s Bonnie Edquist, a geologist working for a mining company who are beginning to explore the Meredith Downs lands in search of valuable minerals. Bonnie’s arrival opens up several storylines: a possible romance; the unwelcome impact of mining on people’s homes (the MacBride’s sheep station, like many others, was leased by the government rather than owned by the family); and the devasting health impacts of asbestos.

I also loved the setting, which is vividly described, capturing the sheer size of the million-acre sheep station and the isolated lives of the people who live there. It reminded me of Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds, another family saga with a similar setting – although the plots are very different. A Far-flung Life is one of the best books I’ve read this year and despite the misery I do recommend it!

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

Book 4/20 of 20 Books of Summer