Walter Scott Prize Longlist 2022

20 Comments

The longlist for the 2022 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction has been announced today! Thanks to this prize, I have discovered lots of great books and authors over the last few years and always look out for the longlists and shortlists; in fact, trying to read all of the shortlisted titles since the prize began in 2010 is a personal project of mine (you can see my progress here).

There are thirteen books on this year’s longlist:

Blue Postcards by Douglas Bruton (Fairlight Books)

Snow Country by Sebastian Faulks (Hutchinson Heinemann)

Rose Nicolson by Andrew Greig (Riverrun)

Mrs England by Stacey Halls (Manilla Press)

The Ballad of Lord Edward and Citizen Small by Neil Jordan (Lilliput Press)

The Sunken Road by Ciarán McMenamin (Harvill Secker)

The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed (Viking)

News of the Dead by James Robertson (Hamish Hamilton)

China Room by Sunjeev Sahota (Harvill Secker)

Fortune by Amanda Smyth (Peepal Tree Press)

Learwife by J.R Thorp (Canongate)

The Magician by Colm Tóibín (Viking)

Still Life by Sarah Winman (Fourth Estate)

~

I have only read two of the books on the longlist so far. I loved Rose Nicolson and am not surprised to see it included here and I also enjoyed Still Life (apart from the lack of speech marks, which was annoying). Mrs England has been on my TBR since last year and I will definitely try to read it before the shortlist is revealed, while The Fortune Men and Snow Country are also books that I was already thinking about reading. Of the others, I’m familiar with Learwife and The Magician but haven’t been tempted to read either, and the rest are completely new to me. I’m always surprised when I haven’t heard of half of the longlisted titles, considering how much historical fiction I read!

Have you read any of these books? Which ones would you recommend?

The shortlist will be announced in April and the winner in June at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose, Scotland.

Six Degrees of Separation: From No One is Talking About This to A Moment of Silence

29 Comments

It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for another Six Degrees of Separation, hosted by Kate of Books are my Favourite and Best. The idea is that Kate chooses a book to use as a starting point and then we have to link it to six other books of our choice to form a chain. A book doesn’t have to be connected to all of the others on the list – only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month we’re starting with No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood. Here’s what it’s about:

As this urgent, genre-defying book opens, a woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans. She is overwhelmed by navigating the new language and etiquette of what she terms “the portal,” where she grapples with an unshakable conviction that a vast chorus of voices is now dictating her thoughts. When existential threats–from climate change and economic precariousness to the rise of an unnamed dictator and an epidemic of loneliness–begin to loom, she posts her way deeper into the portal’s void. An avalanche of images, details, and references accumulate to form a landscape that is post-sense, post-irony, post-everything. “Are we in hell?” the people of the portal ask themselves. “Are we all just going to keep doing this until we die?”

~

I haven’t read No One is Talking About This and probably never will, but as soon as I saw the title I knew that my first link this month was going to be to a book about someone who doesn’t talk: The Silent Boy by Andrew Taylor (1). This historical mystery set during the French Revolution features a boy who witnesses a murder and, having been told by the culprit never to say a word, takes this warning literally and refuses to speak to anyone at all.

Gervase Frant, the hero of Georgette Heyer’s The Quiet Gentleman (2), is not a silent man but he is a quiet one (and his cousin Theo is even quieter). This is not really a typical Heyer novel – it’s classed as one of her Regency romances, but it has a strong mystery element and the romance is quite a subtle one. It’s also one that I particularly enjoyed – although I wished we had seen more of the heroine!

Another book with ‘quiet’ in the title is Death on a Quiet Day by Michael Innes (3). This book from 1956 is one of Innes’ series of Inspector Appleby novels. I’ve found the books in this series quite varied; Death on a Quiet Day is more thriller than mystery, with the protagonist being chased through the Dartmoor countryside after discovering a dead body.

The opposite of quiet is loud, so the next book in my chain is Grace Williams Says it Loud by Emma Henderson (4). This very moving novel tells the story of a young girl in the 1950s who has difficulty communicating verbally and her experiences after being sent to live at the Briar Mental Institute. Although I found this an uncomfortable book to read at times due to the subject, there were still some moments of warmth and humour and it’s a book that I’m very glad I decided to read.

‘Saying it loud’ can cause echoes, so the next book in my chain is Echoes from the Dead by Johan Theorin (5). This is the first in a series of crime novels set on the Swedish island of Öland; there are four books (although I’ve only read three of them) and each one takes place during a different season of the year. I loved the atmosphere and the elderly Gerlof, one of the recurring characters, and I should really find time to read the last of the four books.

Another book which is the first in a crime series (and has a sound-related title) is A Moment of Silence by Anna Dean (6), an entertaining murder mystery set in an English country house in the early 19th century. I loved the heroine, Miss Dido Kent, and had fully intended to continue with the series but never did.

~

And that’s my chain for February! My links have included silent boys and quiet gentlemen, quiet days, loud voices, echoes and crime novels. In March we’ll be starting with the modern classic, The End of the Affair by Graham Greene.

The Silver Wolf by JC Harvey

9 Comments

The Silver Wolf is the first in a new series, Fiskardo’s War, set in Europe during the Thirty Years’ War. This conflict, which took place between 1618 and 1648, is one I’m not very familiar with, so I thought it would be interesting to read a book set in a period that I don’t know much about.

This novel has quite a simple premise: an orphan, Jack Fiskardo (also known as Jacques or Jag to various people at various times) sets out on a quest to find his father’s killers and take revenge. However, the plot is anything but simple! Jack’s adventures take him from the French countryside to the home of an Amsterdam merchant and then to the battlefields of Germany and along the way we meet a huge cast of characters ranging from army scouts and soldiers to tavern keepers, farmers and noblemen. All of these people interact with Jack in one way or another and many of them have intriguing stories of their own, but it’s a lot to keep track of, so be aware that this is certainly not a quick, light read.

The Silver Wolf is divided into three sections: in the first, which begins in 1619, we meet Jack for the first time on the docks of Amsterdam; the second part takes us back several years to fill in some of the details of Jack’s childhood in the village of Belle-Dame near La Rochelle; and finally, in the third section we find Jack in Germany, playing his part in the events of the war while carrying out his private mission of revenge. My favourite was the middle section as it answered some of my questions and gave me a better understanding of what was going on. But although I thought the way the book was structured was quite effective, it did mean that lots of new characters were still being introduced very late in the novel, which I found slightly overwhelming.

The book is written in a lively, often playful style, and the author has opted to use modern speech and slang; I personally prefer dialogue in historical fiction to feel more ‘historical’, but I can see that the choice of language here probably suited the gritty, sometimes brutal, wartime setting. As for the Thirty Years’ War itself, as I’ve said, I previously knew very little about it, so it was good to learn more. The author’s note at the beginning of the book provides a basic outline of the war, why it was fought and the effect it had on the population of Europe, which I found very helpful!

Although I didn’t enjoy The Silver Wolf as much as I’d hoped to, for the reasons I’ve described above, I do think it’s an impressive and ambitious debut novel. I’m not sure whether I will read the second book, but I suspect it will be easier to follow than this one now that the scene has been set, so maybe I’ll be tempted!

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

This is book 3/50 read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2022.

Top Ten Tuesday: Classics with names in the titles

27 Comments

This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is “Books with Names/Character Names in the Titles”.

I have decided to focus on classic novels and have listed five female characters and five male – interestingly, I had much more choice when it came to the women! As usual with my Top Ten Tuesday posts, I have tried to stick to books that I’ve read and reviewed on my blog.

1. Ann Veronica by HG Wells – This novel about a young woman’s struggle for independence and her involvement with the suffrage movement isn’t something you would normally associate with science fiction author HG Wells, but I thought it was an interesting read.

2. My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier – Du Maurier liked using names in her titles! As well as the most obvious choice, Rebecca, there’s also Julius, Mary Anne – and this one, My Cousin Rachel, a dark and atmospheric novel which is one of my personal favourites by du Maurier.

3. Lorna Doone by RD Blackmore – Set in 17th century England, I loved this novel about a man who falls in love with a woman from a clan of violent outlaws. Although Lorna is the title character, I actually found some of the minor characters more interesting, and I could probably say the same about a few of the other books on this list too.

4. Sylvia’s Lovers by Elizabeth Gaskell – I’ve read several of Gaskell’s novels and this is one that I particularly liked. Set on the North Yorkshire coast during the Napoleonic Wars it’s a beautifully written novel but I agree with Gaskell when she said it’s “the saddest story I ever wrote”.

5. Shirley by Charlotte Brontë – I’ve chosen to highlight this one rather than Charlotte’s more popular Jane Eyre. Although it’s not one of the strongest novels by the Brontë sisters, I think it deserves to be more widely read. It’s an interesting fact that Shirley was seen as a male name rather than a female one until the publication of this book.

6. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad – I thought this was a fascinating book, but also a difficult one to read and understand because of the structure and the complex, morally ambiguous title character. I can’t really say that I enjoyed it, but I was pleased to at least make it to the end.

7. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens – Another author who used a lot of names in titles! I haven’t read all of them, but those I have read and could have chosen from include Oliver Twist, The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Dombey and Son. I decided on this one because it’s a book I particularly enjoyed, with a selection of fascinating characters – apart from the very annoying Dora Spenlow!

8. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy – If Sylvia’s Lovers is sad, this book is heartbreaking. It follows the story of a young man from a humble background whose attempts to gain an education and live with the woman he loves leads to tragedy. I love Hardy but can see why he doesn’t appeal to everyone!

9. Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu – This Victorian classic has everything you could wish for in a Gothic novel and after a slow start, I loved it. A good choice for a Halloween reading list or to curl up with on a dark winter’s night.

10. Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope – Phineas Finn is a young Irish politician who appears in Trollope’s Palliser series. His name actually features in two of the books from this series – this one and Phineas Redux, both of which I enjoyed.

Have you read any of these? Which other classics can you think of with character’s names in the title?

My Commonplace Book: January 2022

15 Comments

A selection of words and pictures to represent January’s reading:

commonplace book
noun
a book into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use.

~

But I could not look back at a road untravelled. However blind I had been, I had to set my sights on the path ahead, and go now where it led.

The Leviathan by Rosie Andrews (2022)

~

One always thinks one would like never to struggle again. Only lately have I come to see how essential it is.

The Key in the Lock by Beth Underdown (2022)

~

He always instructs Cecco and Tommaso to tell stories with their pictures but to leave something as a mystery, something hidden. It is more enticing, more delightful, when a secret is concealed. The viewer must bring part of themselves to the painting.

I, Mona Lisa by Natasha Solomons (2022)

~

The people in your head are safe; he knows that now, he understands. It doesn’t matter how hard it is to keep them there; it’s just a thing that must be done. You lock a door on them; no-one can hurt them. And nor can they hurt you.

The Silver Wolf by JC Harvey (2022)

~

Steve, there’s no such thing as TIME. There’s only history, legend, memory and nostalgia. Time is a CONCEPT, not a dimension. You can’t stop it, you can’t travel through it, you can’t turn it back. It’s NOW. Here and now.

The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett (2022)

~

The future cannot blame the present, just as the present cannot blame the past. The hope is always here, always alive, but only your fierce caring can fan it into a fire to warm the world.

Silver on the Tree by Susan Cooper (1977)

~

Erasmus visiting the children of Henry VII accompanied by Joan Vaux

‘You’ve stayed out very late, Joan’ he complained. ‘I presume you’ve been with those damned birds.’

Chilled by the sharp wind blowing off the river I hurried to warm myself at the fire and it was Lizzie who responded. ‘The ravens seem very restless, Father. Mother Joan says something untoward has disturbed them.’

‘Oh?’ My husband raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Is ravenish the latest of your many languages, Joan?’

The Queen’s Lady by Joanna Hickson (2022)

~

‘What a terrible mess we can make of our lives. There should be angel police to stop us at these dangerous moments, but there don’t seem to be. So all we’re left with, my precious son, is whether we can forgive, be forgiven, and keep trying our best.’

A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe (2022)

~

Silence is the only real thing we can lay hold of in this world of passing dreams. Time is a shadow that will vanish with the twilight of humanity; but Silence is a part of the eternal. All things that are true and lasting have been taught to men’s hearts by Silence.

Diary of a Pilgrimage by Jerome K. Jerome (1891)

~

Walking is a great sedative and the peace and solidity of an old city at night tends to make personal affairs, however terrible, seem small beside such an ancient tranquillity.

Black Plumes by Margery Allingham (1940)

~

Jacques de Vaucanson’s automata – The Flute Player, The Tambourine Player, and Digesting Duck

It was safer that way – to shut yourself off from other humans in the hope that they couldn’t hurt you. But what kind of life would that be? As lonely and cold as a convent cell, or as one of her father’s metal creatures.

The Clockwork Girl by Anna Mazzola (2022)

~

‘I’m not making this up,’ I said.

‘I know you’re not. But that doesn’t mean that you really saw what you think you saw. I mean, the Northern Lights. They’re not really a big curtain flapping about in the sky, they just look like that. Shadows. Electricity. You agree with that, don’t you? Things aren’t always visible, things aren’t always what they seem.’

Shadow Girls by Carol Birch (2022)

~

‘Ivan Matveich, my dear – so you’re alive!’ stammered Elena Ivanovna.

‘Alive and well,’ said Ivan Matveich, ‘and by the grace of the Almighty, swallowed without the least injury. My only anxiety is what view my superiors will take of this episode – for having obtained a permit for travel abroad, I have ended up in a crocodile, which was far from clever.’

A Bad Business by Fyodor Dostoevsky (2021)
(Quote from The Crocodile – 1865)

~

“Why do these things always happen to you?” she demanded plaintively. “Why does no one gag me and bind me hand and foot?”

“You wouldn’t like it if they did,” I assured her. “To tell you the truth, I’m not nearly so keen on having adventures myself as I was. A little of that sort of thing goes a long way.”

The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie (1924)

~

Favourite books read in January:

Silver on the Tree, The Clockwork Girl, The Man in the Brown Suit and The Twyford Code

Authors read for the first time in January:

Rosie Andrews, JC Harvey, Janice Hallett, Jo Browning Wroe

Places visited in my January reading:

England, France, Germany, Wales, Italy, Russia, South Africa

~

Reading notes: This has been a great start to the year for me, with fourteen books read including four that I particularly enjoyed. I also wanted to read more books this year set in countries other than my own, so I’m off to a good start with that too, having visited seven different countries in my January reading.

I had (and still have) a lot of books on my NetGalley shelf with upcoming publication dates, so I decided to make an effort to get ahead with those this month. I’m now nearly up to date with most of the books due in February or March and will be posting my reviews nearer to publication.

How was your January reading?

The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie

13 Comments

A new year means a new Agatha Christie reading challenge! After participating in all twelve monthly reads for Read Christie 2021, I’m not planning to do the same again this year – I do love Christie, but there are so many other authors I want to read too. However, I will still be dipping into Read Christie 2022 throughout the year whenever I’m tempted by the monthly theme. The topic for January is ‘A story inspired by Agatha’s travels’ and the suggested book is The Man in the Brown Suit, one that I hadn’t read before and that sounded quite appealing to me.

Published in 1924, this book is not part of the Poirot or Marple series, although it does feature another of Christie’s recurring characters, Colonel Race. Like They Came to Baghdad or The Secret Adversary, it’s more thriller than mystery; a murder does take place near the beginning, but this is only a starting point and not the main focus of the novel.

Most of the novel is narrated by Anne Beddingfield, the recently orphaned daughter of a famous archaeologist. Finding herself alone in the world, with a small inheritance to spend, Anne longs for an adventure to come her way so she can imitate the heroines of her favourite books and films. This wish becomes reality when she witnesses an accident in a London tube station and picks up a piece of paper dropped by the doctor who examines the victim. On this scrap of paper are some numbers and the words ‘Kilmorden Castle’; Anne is sure that these are clues and that she has found the adventure she’s been waiting for. When a woman is found dead the next day in the home of Sir Eustace Pedler, Member of Parliament, a man in a brown suit is suspected of the crime. Convinced that the two incidents are related, Anne deciphers the clues on the paper and boards a ship sailing to Cape Town, hoping to track down the brown-suited man.

Anne is a wonderful narrator and her intelligence, courage and quick wits mean that she is often – although not always – one step ahead of the villains. However, there’s also a second narrator and that is Sir Eustace Pedler. Sir Eustace’s narrative is interspersed with Anne’s and takes the form of a diary in which, in contrast with Anne, he describes his dislike of adventure, as well as his frustration with his annoying secretary Mr Pagett. The diary entries add a lot of humour to the story and I enjoyed hearing Sir Eustace’s voice now and then as a change from Anne’s.

Christie’s novels are always entertaining, but this is one I found particularly fun to read. Stolen diamonds, a revolution, travel through South Africa, a criminal mastermind known only as the ‘Colonel’…there’s such a lot happening and so many things to enjoy. The one aspect of the novel that I didn’t like was the romance between Anne and another character; I thought it seemed to come very suddenly out of nowhere and I was disappointed that Anne, being such a strong person in other respects, had the view that a woman should admire a man’s strength and prepare to be submissive.

Going back to the theme for this month’s read, this novel was inspired by a round-the-world trip taken by Agatha and her first husband Archie Christie in 1922. You can see the full list of categories for Read Christie 2022 at the bottom of the challenge page on the Agatha Christie website.

Black Plumes by Margery Allingham

6 Comments

Margery Allingham, one of the four Golden Age ‘Queens of Crime’, was best known for her Albert Campion detective series, but she also wrote several standalone crime novels. I have previously read and enjoyed The White Cottage Mystery, so had high hopes for this one, Black Plumes.

First published in 1940, Black Plumes is set almost entirely in the London home of the Ivory family and the art gallery they own in the building next door. The family matriarch is the elderly Mrs Gabrielle Ivory and the story is written from the perspective of her granddaughter, Frances. As the novel opens, Frances’ father, Meyrick, is on business abroad and has left his son-in-law Robert Madrigal (who is married to Frances’ half-sister Phillida) to run the gallery while he is away. In his absence, however, strange things have been happening: a broken vase, a slashed painting – and finally, an argument between Robert Madrigal and the artist David Field, after which Robert disappears.

A few weeks later, Robert’s dead body is discovered and suspicion quickly falls upon David – leaving Frances in a difficult situation, as David is the man she has just agreed to marry. She tells herself that he must be innocent, but how can she be sure?

As I’ve said, there is no Albert Campion to solve the mystery in this book, which could be a good or a bad thing depending on whether you’re a Campion fan. Instead, there’s Detective Inspector Bridie, an elderly Scotsman from Orkney who is brought in to investigate. However, we don’t really get to see any of his investigations and he doesn’t have a large part to play in the story. I didn’t solve the mystery myself – although I had narrowed it down to two suspects and one of them was correct – but since we see everything through Frances’ eyes rather than the detective’s, I think that made it more complicated.

There’s a touch of romance in the story too, particularly at the beginning where Frances and David agree to announce a fake engagement in order to prevent Frances having to marry someone else, but this storyline turned out not to be as much fun as it promised to be at first (Georgette Heyer does that sort of thing much better). It didn’t help that I found David so annoying; in fact, I didn’t like any of the characters much at all, although I enjoyed most of Gabrielle Ivory’s scenes and the contrast between her Victorian values and her granddaughter’s more modern ones.

After finishing this book, I looked at some other reviews and was confused when I saw everyone complaining about the use of a certain racist term to describe one of the suspects. It seems that this word has been edited out of the new edition I read and replaced with a less offensive term, which I think was a good idea in this case. The racist sentiment is still there, but it’s clear that it’s supposed to be the view of one of the characters rather than Allingham herself.

I think Black Plumes is worth reading if you like Allingham’s writing, but if it had been the first book I’d read by her, I’m not sure that I would have wanted to read more.