Category: Reviews

The Strangers in the House by Georges Simenon

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Since enjoying my first Georges Simenon book, The Man from London, last year, I’ve been looking forward to reading more. I had intended to try one of his Maigret books next, but the opportunity to read this one came up first; it’s a new Penguin Classics edition of a novel originally published in 1940, The Strangers in the House, and is translated by Howard Curtis. Unfortunately, at 224 pages in the paperback version, it’s just slightly too long to count towards Novellas in November!

The Strangers in the House is one of the many standalone novels written by Simenon that are described as romans dur, or ‘hard novels’. I’m not entirely sure what that term means, but as far as I can tell, it refers to the dark, noirish atmosphere, and the hard, bleak lives that the characters are leading. And the life of our protagonist, Hector Loursat, is certainly bleak! Once a successful lawyer, he fell into a depression when his wife left him eighteen years earlier and turned to alcohol for comfort. Since then, he has spent his time sitting alone with his books and a constant supply of red wine, living in the same house as his daughter Nicole, but barely aware of her presence.

Loursat’s miserable, solitary existence continues until, one night, he hears a gun being fired inside the house and discovers a dead body in one of the bedrooms. When Nicole and her friends become implicated in the murder investigation, Loursat is forced to acknowledge that his daughter is now a stranger to him…or is it in fact Loursat himself who is the stranger in the house?

There’s a detective fiction element to this novel, as Loursat sets out to uncover the truth behind the murder. When suspicion falls on Nicole’s lover, he agrees to defend the young man in court and finds that getting involved in the legal profession again gives him some purpose in life. However, although we see Loursat speaking to the suspects, getting to know Nicole’s circle of friends and learning all he can about the victim, this is not a conventional mystery novel and not one that the reader has much chance of being able to solve. If you’re expecting a story with clever twists and surprises you’ll be disappointed; even the court scenes which take up about half of the book lack suspense.

The book is much more successful as a psychological study of a lonely, reclusive man who is forced to confront his own behaviour and gradually engage with the people and things he has neglected for years. Watching Loursat’s reawakening as he becomes aware of the things that have been going on in his own house without his knowledge is fascinating. Whether or not he finds redemption and whether it’s too late to repair the damage to his relationship with Nicole I will leave you to discover for yourself, if you read the book. All I will say is that Simenon’s storytelling is realistic, unsentimental and ‘hard’.

Have you read this or any of Georges Simenon’s other books? Which can you recommend?

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

The Swift and the Harrier by Minette Walters

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Minette Walters is better known as a crime writer, but she has made some forays into historical fiction in the last few years with The Last Hours and The Turn of Midnight, both set in England during the Black Death of 1348. Although I didn’t love either of those books, I did find them interesting, so I was keen to try her new one, The Swift and the Harrier, which is set in a completely different time period.

It’s 1642 and England is divided by civil war. On one side, the supporters of King Charles I; on the other, the Parliamentarians. In the middle, refusing to commit to either group, is Jayne Swift, a Dorset physician – although, as a woman, she is not allowed to officially give herself that title. The reason for her neutrality is that she values all human lives and doesn’t believe in denying treatment to someone in need just because they are the enemy. Most people, however, do take sides and Jayne finds that there are divisions within her own family.

Visiting her Puritan cousin in Dorchester one day, Jayne finds herself caught up in a crowd gathering to watch the hanging of some Catholic priests. She is rescued by a neighbour, Lady Alice Stickland, who introduces Jayne to her footman, William Harrier. Even on that first meeting, Jayne can’t help feeling that William doesn’t behave at all like a servant and, as their paths cross again and again, she begins to wonder who he really is. Footman, nobleman or soldier? Royalist or Parliamentarian? William is an enigma and Jayne must decide whether he can or cannot be trusted.

The Swift and the Harrier provides a wonderfully detailed depiction of life in the south of England during the Civil War. Real historical characters such as Oliver Cromwell and Prince Maurice (Charles I’s nephew) appear now and then and have a part to play in the story, but the main focus is on the ordinary people of Dorset and the impact the war has on them. I found the section of the book set during the Siege of Lyme Regis particularly interesting as I can’t remember reading much about it before, certainly not in as much detail as this.

However, I had difficulty believing in Jayne Swift as a 17th century woman. While I could maybe accept the premise that she had received some medical training from a male physician friend, I felt it was completely unrealistic that she would be able to practise her medicine so openly in the 1640s. The challenges she faces in getting the men she meets to accept her as a doctor seem to be very easily overcome and there is no sense of the danger Jayne would surely be in due to the witch hunts sweeping England at that time, when women with even a basic knowledge of healing and herbal remedies were at risk of accusations of witchcraft. Although I did find the plot quite gripping and enjoyed getting to know William Harrier and some of the secondary characters such as Alice Stickland, the fact that I found Jayne and her circumstances so unconvincing stopped me from becoming fully absorbed in the story.

Thanks to Allen & Unwin for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 48/50 read for the 2021 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Midnight in Everwood by MA Kuzniar

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If you’re looking for a different kind of Christmas read this year, Midnight in Everwood could be it. This retelling of The Nutcracker will whisk you away to a fantasy land of snow and sugar and will be best read in front of a fire with a hot drink on a cold day. Sadly, I didn’t like it as much as I’d hoped to but I know other readers will enjoy it much more than I did (and judging by the early reviews, they already are).

The novel opens in Nottingham in 1906, where twenty-year-old ballet dancer Marietta Stelle is hoping to audition for a prestigious ballet company. Her parents, however, have other plans for Marietta; they want her to give up dancing and settle down into a conventional and respectable married life. The husband they have in mind is their new neighbour, the inventor Dr Drosselmeier, who has been delighting everyone with his wonderful clockwork toys – everyone except Marietta, who senses something cold and cruel behind Drosselmeier’s charming exterior. Trying to escape from Drosselmeier’s unwelcome attentions on Christmas Eve, Marietta hides inside a grandfather clock, but when the clock strikes midnight she finds herself trapped within the enchanted, snow-covered land of Everwood.

This book is being marketed as children’s author MA Kuzniar’s debut adult novel – ‘The Nutcracker for adults’ – but I think this is misleading as it feels much more like a book for teenagers. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but it’s not what I expected and the book lacked the depth I would have preferred. I also found the writing style much too flowery; there are long descriptions of clothes and food and every sentence is packed with adjectives and similes, most of them related to cakes and sweets – voices are ‘smooth and rich as buttercream’, eyes are the colour of ‘butterscotch’ and expressions ‘soften like melted chocolate’. The sugary theme continues throughout the entire book and while I found it quite captivating at first, my senses began to feel overwhelmed with sights, tastes and smells! I can see, though, that this is exactly what other people loved about the book, so it really does depend on the individual reader.

On a more positive note, it was interesting to read a book set in Edwardian Nottingham, rather than the usual London. I wished we had seen more of that setting, but the majority of the story takes place in the magical land of Everwood (which is reached in a way that reminded me of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). Although Everwood seems enchantingly wonderful at first and a safe haven in which Marietta can hide from the sinister Drosselmeier, it quickly becomes clear that it is more of a prison, making this a dark Christmas read rather than a happy, festive one. The friends Marietta makes in Everwood – Dellara the fairy and Pirlipata, princess of Crackatuck – are imprisoned there too, and there is a feminist thread running through the story, exploring the various constraints on women’s lives, both in the fantasy world and in the real one.

I have to confess, I’ve never actually read the original ETA Hoffmann Nutcracker story or the Alexandre Dumas one on which the famous ballet is based. Maybe if I had, I would have appreciated this novel more, although I would still have struggled with the sweet and sugary writing style which just wasn’t for me at all.

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

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

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This month’s theme for Read Christie 2021 is ‘a story set on a mode of transport’. There are plenty of those to choose from and I’ve already read a few of them – Murder on the Orient Express, Death in the Clouds and The Mystery of the Blue Train – but I decided to read a book I’ve never read before, one of Christie’s most famous novels, the 1937 Poirot mystery Death on the Nile.

When Linnet Ridgeway, a beautiful heiress, is found shot dead in her cabin during a cruise along the Nile, there are two suspects with obvious motives. One is her husband, Simon Doyle, who will inherit her money on her death; the other is Simon’s former fiancée Jacqueline de Bellefort, who was left heartbroken by Simon and Linnet’s marriage and has followed them on to the steamer Karnak, threatening revenge. However, both Simon and Jacqueline have alibis, so Hercule Poirot, also touring the Nile on the same cruise, is forced to turn his attention to the other passengers – many of whom, it seems, are hiding secrets of their own and could also have reasons to want Linnet dead.

As it happens, another of Christie’s detectives, Colonel Race (whom I recently met in Sparkling Cyanide), soon arrives onboard the Karnak, on the trail of a man suspected of terrorism. Although it seems unlikely that this will be the same person who killed Linnet, Race joins Poirot in the search for the murderer. It was interesting to see them working together – this is Poirot’s book, of course, and he is the one who solves the mystery, but Race makes some useful contributions and his presence in the story means that Poirot can share some of his theories and thought processes with him (and therefore with the reader).

Knowing that this is one of Christie’s most popular books, I expected to love it but, although I did enjoy it, I don’t think it’s a favourite. That’s partly because I thought the characters, with only one or two exceptions, were a particularly unpleasant, privileged and entitled group, so I didn’t have much sympathy for either the victim or any of the people who found themselves under suspicion! Also, I guessed who had committed the crime almost immediately – before it happened, in fact – which took away some of the fun. I don’t think it was necessarily a particularly easy mystery to solve; I feel as though I’ve read another book recently (maybe not a Christie one) based on a similar idea and once I had that idea in my head, it seemed quite obvious who had done it. What I couldn’t work out was exactly how it was done, so I was still kept in suspense waiting for Poirot to explain it.

Next month’s Read Christie theme is ‘a story set after WWII’. This will mean any Christie novel published after 1945; I’ve already read a lot of them, but any suggestions are welcome!

Book 8 for R.I.P. XVI

The Royal Game by Anne O’Brien

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With a title like The Royal Game, you might expect this novel to be about a king or a queen; in fact, it’s the story of the Pastons, who rose from humble origins to become members of the aristocracy and one of Norfolk’s most influential families during the 15th century. Their collection of personal letters, known as the Paston Letters, is the largest archive of private correspondence surviving from the period and tells us a lot about life in England at that time.

The Pastons’ story is retold by Anne O’Brien in fictional form, using the letters as a guide. She has chosen to focus on three characters in particular: Margaret Mautby Paston, wife of John Paston, who becomes head of the family after the death of his father; John’s sister Elizabeth (known as Eliza); and Anne Haute, a cousin of Edward IV’s queen, Elizabeth Woodville. There are chapters written from the perspectives of each of these women, mainly Margaret and Eliza at first, with Anne only introduced halfway through and becoming more prominent towards the end of the book.

During the period covered in the novel, the Wars of the Roses are playing out in the background as the House of Lancaster and the House of York fight for control of England’s throne. The Pastons are an ambitious family who see the changing political situation in terms of what it will mean for them and how they can turn things to their own advantage in order to increase their wealth and power. This means that much of the story is concerned with the gaining and losing of properties and land, disputes over wills and controversies surrounding inheritances. In particular, estates left to John Paston by his patron Sir John Fastolf (the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Falstaff), become the subject of a long legal battle.

I liked this book much more than Anne O’Brien’s previous one, The Queen’s Rival, partly because this one is written in a more straightforward format – although with the alternating narrators I mentioned above. I felt that the narrative voices of Margaret and Eliza were very similar and sometimes I had to remind myself which one I was reading about, but this was less of a problem as I got further into the book. Margaret is portrayed as a strong, intelligent and resourceful woman working alongside her husband to hold on to the family property, while Eliza is being badly treated by her mother and desperately hoping for marriage as a way of escape. Eventually, both women find themselves with the same focus in life: to protect their children’s titles and inheritances from jealous rivals who are trying to claim them for themselves. Our third narrator, Anne Haute, who is depicted as another young woman with ambition and hopes of an advantageous marriage, seems unconnected to the other two at first, but quickly becomes drawn into the Pastons’ world.

The Wars of the Roses is one of my favourite historical periods to read about and it made a nice change to move away from the usual novels set at the royal court or on the battlefields and see what was going on elsewhere in the country at that time. I enjoyed this book but it’s very long and detailed and I was surprised when I reached a cliffhanger ending and discovered that there’s going to be a sequel. I will look out for it, but while I wait maybe this would be a good time to read my copy of Blood & Roses, Helen Castor’s non-fiction book about the Paston family.

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

Book 47/50 read for the 2021 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

I Would Prefer Not To by Herman Melville

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I’ve never read anything by Herman Melville – I know I should have read Moby Dick by now, but it has never sounded appealing to me – so when I spotted this new collection of Melville short stories from Pushkin Press it seemed a good opportunity to experience some of his work without having to commit to a 600+ page novel.

I Would Prefer Not To contains four stories, although the final one takes up more than half the book and is probably better described as a novella. My favourite was the first story, Bartleby the Scrivener, which was first published in Putnam’s Magazine in 1853. The narrator is an elderly Wall Street lawyer who employs two clerks, or ‘scriveners’ – Turkey and Nippers – whose job is to make copies of legal documents, and one office boy, Ginger Nut. An increase in work leads the lawyer to look for a third scrivener and, as he has been having difficulties with the temperamental natures of the other two, he decides to hire Bartleby, a quiet man whom he hopes will be a good influence on the others.

At first Bartleby works hard at his copying, but when the lawyer asks him to proofread a copied document, he replies with, “I would prefer not to”. Over the following days, he refuses to do more and more of the tasks that are requested of him – never giving an angry or rude response; always just those same five words: “I would prefer not to”. As the lawyer decides how to deal with this unexpected problem, the reader wonders what is wrong with Bartleby and what has caused his unusual behaviour. I enjoyed the story, but it left me very confused and I didn’t really understand what Melville was trying to say. However, after turning to Google for help, it seems that the meaning of the story was deliberately ambiguous and it can be interpreted in many ways, which made me feel a lot better about not understanding it!

Next is The Lightning-Rod Man, a short and intriguing tale of a salesman who arrives at the narrator’s house in Albania during a thunderstorm and tries to sell him a lightning-rod. The narrator is sceptical and says he will trust God to keep him safe, but the salesman won’t take no for an answer. Again, the meaning is not immediately obvious, but it’s an entertaining story and reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe. The third story, John Marr, is the weakest in the book, in my opinion. The title character is a retired sailor trying to adjust to a life on land, in a remote community on the American prairies. Feeling isolated and out of place, he remembers his seafaring days through songs and poems. The piece included in this collection is taken from John Marr and Other Sailors, a volume of poetry published in 1888, so maybe it would have worked better if read in the context of the original book.

Finally, we have the novella Benito Cereno, in which an American sea captain sailing off the coast of Chile encounters a Spanish slave ship in distress. Boarding the ship to see if he can help, he meets the Spanish captain, Benito Cereno, who tells him how the ship came to be in trouble. As he observes the behaviour of Benito Cereno and his slaves, he begins to wonder whether there is more to this than meets the eye. This was another interesting story, but I felt that it was much too long and too easy to guess the twist; we see things only through the eyes of the narrator, who is frustratingly oblivious to what is really happening on the Spanish ship. It was also another difficult one to interpret: was it a racist, pro-slavery story or an anti-racist, anti-slavery story? It could be either and it can’t be assumed that the views of the narrator reflect the views of the author.

So, now that I’ve had my introduction to Herman Melville, will I be reading Moby Dick? At the moment I think I would prefer not to, but maybe I’ll be ready to tackle it one day in the future!

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

Black Drop by Leonora Nattrass

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The final decade of the 18th century is a time of revolution and political upheaval; in 1794, the year in which Black Drop is set, Britain is both at war with France – a country still in the grip of the Reign of Terror – and trying to negotiate a treaty with the recently independent America. Our narrator, Laurence Jago, is a London clerk working in the Foreign Office and facing the difficult task of trying to advance in his career while also hiding a secret that, if discovered, would lead to accusations of treason.

When details of Britain’s military plans are leaked to the press, suspicion falls at first on Jago – but then the blame shifts to another clerk, Will Bates, who is found to have hanged himself in his room. Was Will really the traitor or is he being used as a convenient scapegoat? Jago is sure he was innocent and that his death was actually murder rather than suicide so, with the help of his friend, the journalist William Philpott, he sets out to discover the truth.

I enjoyed this book, although it was more political thriller than murder mystery and I occasionally felt that the plot was becoming more complicated than it really needed to be; I struggled to keep track of all the characters, their roles within the government and which of them may or may not be a spy. Overall, though, it was a fascinating period to read about, with so much going on in the world at that time – not only the French Revolutionary Wars and American treaty mentioned above, but also the fight for political reform led by the British shoemaker Thomas Hardy (not to be confused with the author of the same name!) and the growing debate over slavery and abolition.

Laurence Jago is a great character and the sort of flawed hero I love. The ‘Black Drop’ of the title refers to the laudanum Jago depends upon to get through the day and to ease the fear of his secrets being discovered. As his addiction worsens, it begins to affect the way he judges people and situations and leads the reader to question whether or not everything he is telling us is completely reliable. Despite this, I liked him very much and connected with his narrative style immediately. Jago is one of several fictional characters in the novel whom we see interacting with real historical figures such as Thomas Hardy, Lord Grenville, the Foreign Secretary, and John Jay, the American envoy. I knew nothing about any of these people before reading this book; it’s always good to learn something new!

Black Drop is Leonora Nattrass’ first novel. The way this one ended made me think there could be a sequel, but if not I will be happy to read whatever she writes next.

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

Book 46/50 read for the 2021 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Book 7 for R.I.P. XVI