Category: Reviews

The Tower by Thea Lenarduzzi – #ReadIndies

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This month Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings is hosting #ReadIndies, celebrating books from independent publishers. I’ve never read anything published by Fitzcarraldo Editions before, so this seemed a good opportunity to read one of their books.

The Tower is a difficult book to describe. It’s not quite fiction, but it doesn’t feel like non-fiction either. It’s a memoir but it’s also an essay and an ode to the power of storytelling. The book follows an author known only as ‘T.’ – presumably Thea Lenarduzzi herself – as she becomes obsessed with the story of a young woman, Annie, who developed tuberculosis in the early 20th century and, according to local legend, was locked away by her father in a tower specially built on the family estate. After living there in isolation for several years, she is said to have died from the disease and although the house has since been demolished, the tower still remains.

T. becomes completely fixated on Annie and her tragic life, determined to find out everything she can about her illness, her imprisonment and her death. She spends a lot of time researching the history of TB, its symptoms and the various treatments, also looking at the lives of famous sufferers such as the author Katherine Mansfield. She visits the now abandoned tower, speaks to historians and archivists and listens to tales told by local residents. All of this is covered in the first two sections of the book and I found most of it fascinating. T. goes off on a lot of lengthy tangents and meanders from one subject to another, but in general Annie’s story was very compelling…

Until, suddenly, we discover that everything we – and T. – thought we knew about Annie may not necessarily be completely accurate after all. In the third section of the book, Lenarduzzi switches from writing in the third person to the first person and becomes herself again, instead of a character known as T. This final section takes the form of a long discussion of storytelling, raising lots of intriguing questions. What is a story and who chooses how it should be told? What is it that draws us to certain stories and not others? As Lenarduzzi explains:

Perhaps for now I should simply say that we don’t always tell the story we want to tell. We can’t always choose our place in it, nor how it ends, or even if it does. That, reader, is the stuff of fiction.

The Tower, then, wasn’t quite what I expected, but it’s a book that surprised me several times and left me with a lot to think about at the end! Thea Lenarduzzi has written another book, Dandelions, inspired by her family history, which sounds equally interesting.

The House of Fallen Sisters by Louise Hare

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Louise Hare has written several historical novels set in various periods, but this is the first one I’ve read. I’ll probably be looking for her others as I enjoyed this one – it has an interesting setting and an engaging heroine and it explores a little-known episode from British history.

It’s December 1765 and Sukey Maynard is running away from home – home being Mrs Macauley’s brothel in Covent Garden. It used to be her mother’s place of work, until she died when Sukey was very young, and since then Sukey has been cared for by Mrs Macauley and her family. Now that she’s fourteen, her virginity is about to be auctioned off to the highest bidder and she’s decided to flee rather than stay and go through with it. Before she gets very far, she encounters a young man who has been badly beaten and wounded, and she helps him reach a doctor, who agrees to treat him. However, this delay means that Sukey finds herself captured and taken back to Mrs Macauley.

The rest of the novel follows Sukey after she returns to the brothel and prepares to face whatever life has in store for her. At first her position is better than she expected as she catches the eye of a wealthy client whom she hopes will become her ‘keeper’, but what will she do if he changes his mind? The lives of Sukey and the other girls in Mrs Macauley’s establishment are difficult, uncertain and often unpleasant, but Hare shows us how even in the bleakest of circumstances, small acts of friendship and kindness can make a big difference. Although Sukey makes some enemies, she also makes some good friends and I enjoyed watching her various relationships develop.

There’s a mystery element to the story, which unfolds as young women begin to go missing, both from Mrs Macauley’s house and from the surrounding area, thought to have been lured away by a mysterious figure known only as the Piper. We find out what’s happening to the women earlier than I expected, but this allows Hare to take the story in some interesting directions as Sukey and her friends look for revenge.

Another subplot revolves around Jonathan Strong, the young man Sukey rescues after he is beaten almost to death. Strong really existed and his story is a fascinating one as he was a slave whose owner brought him to London from Barbados and he became the subject of an important legal case regarding slavery and the abolitionist movement in Britain. Sukey herself is mixed race, which gives her an added interest in his fate, and she and her friends try to help Jonathan in any way they can throughout the book. William Sharp, the doctor who treats him, and his brother Granville Sharp are also real people. This is the first time I’ve read a novel in which the Sharps and Jonathan Strong appear, so I found that aspect of the story fascinating.

Although I’ve read other novels about women in Sukey’s position (I highly recommend Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White and Elodie Harper’s The Wolf Den), the addition of the Jonathan Strong storyline made this one well worth reading as well. The book is published in the UK tomorrow, 12th February.

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

An Astronomer in Love by Antoine Laurain – #ReadIndies

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Translated by Louise Rogers Lalaurie and Megan Jones

I’ve been aware of Antoine Laurain’s books for years but this is the first one I’ve read. It was originally published in French in 2022 as Les caprices d’un astre and is now available in an English translation from Pushkin Press. I’m counting it towards this year’s Read Indies month, hosted by Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, which celebrates books published by independent publishers.

An Astronomer in Love is a dual timeline novel. One thread of the story is set in contemporary Paris, where divorced estate agent Xavier Lemercier has found an old telescope in a property he’s sold. He discovers that the telescope once belonged to the 18th century astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil, but he’s reluctant to give it to a museum and takes it home so he and his eleven-year-old son can use it to look at the night sky. Setting up the telescope on the terrace of his apartment, Xavier tests it out by looking at the nearby buildings – and is intrigued when he spots a woman on her balcony with what appears to be a zebra. Who is she and why would she have a zebra living in her apartment? Xavier is determined to find out!

In a second narrative which alternates with the first, we meet Guillaume Le Gentil as he sets out on a voyage to India in 1760, hoping to observe the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. Unfortunately, due to delays and bad weather, he misses the transit and decides to stay in that part of the world until the next one eight years later. The novel describes his adventures during this period and the people and wildlife he encounters.

Guillaume Le Gentil is a real historical figure and the expedition covered in the novel really happened. It was fascinating to read about his visits to Madagascar, the Philippines, Pondicherry and the Isle de France (now Mauritius), and his observations of creatures such as flying fish, giant tortoises, ring-tailed lemurs, and even dodos, which would be considered extinct just a few years later. I think Guillaume’s story would have been interesting enough to fill a whole book on its own, but I felt that I didn’t get the chance to know him on a personal level as much as I would have liked, because we kept having to leave him behind to return to Xavier in the modern day.

Xavier’s timeline is linked to Guillaume’s in several ways, the telescope being just one of them. Sometimes a word, phrase or thought, or a sighting of a particular bird or animal will lead seamlessly from one narrative to the other. It’s difficult to explain what I mean, but it’s cleverly done and works well. Although, as I’ve said, I would have been happy to stay with the historical timeline all the way through, Xavier’s story was also entertaining, apart from a strange episode involving terrorism that felt out of place. There’s a romance for both main characters too – and Venus, of course, is the goddess of love, so there’s some symbolism there, with the transit of Venus playing an important part in both threads of the novel.

Antoine Laurain’s other books all sound intriguing and I liked this one enough to want to try another one. If you’ve read any of them, which would you recommend?

Brigid by Kim Curran

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I enjoyed Kim Curran’s previous book, The Morrigan, which told the story of the Irish goddess of war and fate, one of the supernatural race known as the Tuatha Dé Danann. Her new novel, Brigid, takes as its subject another figure from Ireland’s distant past: Saint Brigid of Kildare, a semi-mythical woman who may or may not have existed. The current thinking seems to be that she was a real person, an abbess who founded the abbey of Kildare, but has been given many of the attributes of the Celtic goddess, Brigid, who shares her name. Curran’s approach is to include both Brigids in the novel, with the goddess guiding and watching over her human namesake.

The human Brigid, born in the 5th century, is the daughter of an Irish chieftain and one of his slaves, whom he sells to a druid when she becomes pregnant. Brigid grows up in slavery in the druid’s household before being returned to her father, who attempts to arrange a marriage for her. When she gives away her father’s best sword to a beggar, the king hears about her kindness and grants Brigid her freedom. Determined not to be forced into marriage or to live a life controlled by men, Brigid sets off alone on a journey to find her mother. Along the way she makes several new friends, including Lommán the leper and Darlughdach the bard, with whom she later founds a small sanctuary for women, which expands over time into the large and powerful abbey of Kildare.

I had no prior knowledge of Brigid’s life before beginning this book, but it seems that Curran has incorporated many of the key events and characters traditionally associated with Brigid’s story. One of these characters is St Patrick, with whom Brigid clashes several times throughout the book. She resents Patrick because he has all the advantages of being a man in a male-dominated society and because his approach to converting people to Christianity is more forceful than hers. Brigid is happy to allow people to continue celebrating pagan gods and festivals alongside the new Christian religion rather than expecting an immediate conversion.

For a while, it seemed that the message of the book was “all men bad, all women good”, which is something that tends to annoy me because I think there are better, fairer ways to promote feminism. However, it turned out to be slightly more nuanced than that, as eventually some of Brigid’s own friends and followers become frustrated by her hatred of men and even Brigid herself has to accept that a life entirely without men is not possible and she’s going to have to learn to work with them whether she wants to or not. She can also be cruel, punishing people harshly for the smallest of things. As someone who would become a saint, I certainly didn’t find her very saintly in this depiction, but despite that she’s clearly someone who inspires love and loyalty from the women around her and that’s what makes her an interesting, if not always likeable, character to read about.

Whereas The Morrigan was a mythological retelling, with strong fantasy elements, this book is more grounded in reality. There’s still a small amount of magic, though, such as when Brigid performs her miracles – healing lepers, for example, or turning milk into butter. She’s assisted in this by the goddess Brigid, who occasionally appears to her in human form. However, I would describe this as much more of a historical fiction novel than a fantasy one, while The Morrigan was the other way round. They are both interesting books and it’s good to see an author tackling subjects that aren’t written about very often.

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

Room 706 by Ellie Levenson

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When Kate goes to meet her lover in a London hotel one morning, she has no idea what the day has in store for her. She expects it to be just like all the other times: an hour or two with James, then back home to pick up the kids from school and pretend to her husband, Vic, that nothing has happened. Switching on the television in the hotel room, however, she is horrified to discover that terrorists have taken control of their hotel and it’s not safe to leave the room. She doesn’t know how she’s going to explain this to Vic – that’s if she and James even make it out alive.

As the afternoon unfolds and they remain trapped in their room, afraid to even turn on a light or run water in case it alerts the gunmen to their presence, Kate begins to reflect on her life, her marriage and the choices she has made that have led her to be in the hotel on this fateful day.

Room 706 is Ellie Levenson’s debut novel. I enjoyed it overall, but it wasn’t really the exciting thriller I thought it would be. Every chapter set in the hotel alternates with one describing the early days of Kate and Vic’s marriage and another explaining how she came to be having an affair with James. This means only a third of the book is set during the terrorist attack and the rest is Kate’s backstory. Some of the hotel chapters are genuinely tense and suspenseful, for example when Kate and James hear other guests in the corridor, unaware of what’s going on, and are unable to warn them, but I would have liked more of this, more information on the terrorist group, what they wanted and what was being done to stop them.

The thoughts that go through Kate’s head during the hostage situation are both fascinating and believable. Thinking she may only have hours left to live, she makes a note of the online shopping password for her husband, empties her inbox in case someone finds her phone, writes on a piece of paper because her children might want to see her handwriting in years to come. In contrast, James makes no provision for his death at all, spending what could be his final moments working on a report for work on his laptop.

I loved Vic, although we only meet him through flashbacks and the texts he sends Kate while she’s under siege in the hotel. He seems to be the perfect husband and father and I couldn’t understand why Kate was cheating on him with James, who comes across as cold, aloof and completely unlikeable. We do get an answer to that, but it’s not one that made me feel sympathetic towards Kate! We don’t get answers to much else, though, so be prepared for that. I was frustrated by the way the book ended, although I think I understand what the author was trying to do.

Although this book wasn’t quite what I had expected, I did like it and as it’s Ellie Levenson’s debut novel, it will be interesting to see what she writes next.

Thanks to Headline for sending me a copy of this book for review.

The Inn at Penglas Cove by Lauren Westwood

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I loved this! Lauren Westwood is a new author for me, but before I was even halfway through this one I was looking to see which other books she had written and mentally adding them to my wishlist.

When Juno Cartwright discovers that her husband is cheating on her, she takes her two children – seventeen-year-old Bridget and her younger brother, Connor – and heads for Cornwall, where she has conveniently just inherited a cottage from a distant relative. At least, she thinks it’s a cottage…until they arrive at the Cross Keys, a crumbling old inn on the Cornish coast. Discovering that the inn is actually her inheritance, Juno intends to put it up for sale, but the longer she spends there the more she begins to feel at home. Connor is having fun exploring the cliffs, caves and beaches of Penglas Cove, but Bridget is disgusted with the whole situation – the inn has no internet connection, no showers, and she just wants to go back to London.

Two centuries earlier, in 1820, Bess Trevelyan arrived in Cornwall to marry Lord Robert Penhelion. It was an unhappy marriage and, according to legend, Bess had a lover – Penhelion’s brother, a sea captain – and had taken refuge in the Cross Keys Inn to wait for the return of his ship. When Penhelion learned of the affair, he paid the innkeeper, Old John Dog, to murder her. Juno is fascinated by this legend, particularly as she and Bridget seem to bear a striking resemblance to the portrait of Bess Trevelyan hanging on the wall in the inn. As Juno tries to find out more about Bess and her tragic story, it seems that history is beginning to repeat itself.

This is such an atmospheric novel! Penglas Cove and the Cross Keys Inn – complete with an adjoining smugglers’ museum and pirate cave with waxwork figures playing out the story of Bess Trevelyan – are so vividly described they feel like real places. In her author’s note, Westwood acknowledges Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn and Frenchman’s Creek and Winston Graham’s Poldark series, as well as her own visits to Cornwall, and you can see the influence of all of these on her writing.

I loved our narrator, Juno, but she also has a strong cast of supporting characters around her; my favourites were Cliff and Elspeth, two elderly people who run the museum and pirate cave and who become almost like family to Juno and her children. And then there’s Bess, whose story unfolds in the form of a dual narrative. We don’t spend as long with Bess as we do with Juno, but it’s long enough to get to know her and to discover that there’s more to her story than anyone in the present day knows. Both threads of the novel were fascinating and it was all so readable that I finished it in two days, which could have been less if I’d had nothing else to do!

Although smuggling and piracy are things we tend to associate with times gone by, they do of course still exist today and in the modern day storyline Westwood explores the forms smuggling and trafficking can take in the 21st century. This gives the novel more relevancy and a more serious tone, but I personally would have preferred just to focus on the Bess mystery and Juno’s efforts to renovate the inn and build a new life for herself and the children. Still, I found The Inn at Penglas Cove a very entertaining and enjoyable read and just need to decide which Lauren Westwood book I should read next.

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

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

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Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter had a lot of success last year, being shortlisted for the Booker Prize and winning the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. It also appeared on a lot of people’s end of year ‘best of’ lists so I had high hopes for it, particularly as I’ve previously enjoyed two of his other books, Pure and Now We Shall Be Entirely Free.

The novel is set in the winter of 1963, one of the coldest winters on record in the UK. Beginning in late December 1962 and lasting until March, temperatures plummeted, blizzards blanketed most of the country in deep snow and rivers and lakes froze over. Against this backdrop, we see the stories of two married couples play out. Dr Eric Parry has recently moved to rural Somerset with his wife, Irene, who is pregnant. Eric is enjoying being a country doctor, but Irene is finding it hard to adapt; it’s so different from her life in London and she misses her sister, who has gone to live in America. Despite her pregnancy, she feels that she and Eric are growing apart – and she’s right to feel that way because, unknown to Irene, Eric is having an affair with one of his patients.

Bill and Rita Simmons, who live at a nearby farm, are also newly arrived in the countryside. To the disappointment of his wealthy father, who wanted him to join the family business, Bill has chosen to follow a very different path and become a dairy farmer. It’s proving to be more difficult than he expected, but he’s sure that with new ideas and investment, he’ll be able to turn things around. He just needs to convince the bank to lend him the money! His wife Rita, like Irene, is pregnant and, also like Irene, she feels lonely and out of place, so it’s probably not surprising that the two women quickly form a bond and a friendship begins to develop.

Apart from a long chapter in the middle of the book in which Irene hosts a Boxing Day party and several other key characters converge on the Parrys’ house, the main focus is on the two couples, their daily lives and the relationships between them. All four characters are believable and strongly drawn, but I think Rita is the one I found most interesting. Before marrying Bill, she had been a dancer in a Bristol nightclub, so the transition to life as a farmer’s wife in a small, quiet community is particularly difficult for her. She has started hearing voices in her head, a sign of her vulnerable, fragile mental state, but Bill isn’t able to give her the support she needs, feeling that he doesn’t truly know who his wife is and preferring to ignore her past.

Although I did enjoy following the stories of Eric and Irene, Rita and Bill, I felt that I was held at a distance for most of the book and never quite connected with the characters on an emotional level as much as I would have liked to. Maybe it was just me, or maybe it was a result of the bleak, frozen setting reflecting their troubled, isolated lives and the coldness of their marriages. Still, this is an impressive novel overall and despite not quite managing to love it I can see why it’s so highly regarded.