Campion at Christmas by Margery Allingham

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I love Margery Allingham so I was pleased to have the opportunity to read this new collection of four short stories, all with a festive theme. The title is slightly misleading as only three of the four stories feature Albert Campion, but they are all quite enjoyable in their different ways. They are also very short, so perfect for readers with busy Christmas schedules who just want something quick to read!

The first story, On Christmas Day in the Morning, was my favourite and involves Campion investigating the death of a postman hit by a car on Christmas morning. The culprits have been identified, but the evidence provided by local residents is confusing and Campion must decide whether the suspects and the victim really could have been in the right location at the right time for the accident to have taken place. It’s not much of a mystery, but I found it a sad and poignant story which reminded me of how lonely some people feel at Christmas.

Next we have Happy Christmas, probably the weakest story in the book, in which a young couple with a passion for the 19th century decide that they would like to have a traditional Victorian Christmas. Campion doesn’t appear at all in this story and I’m not sure that it really belonged in this collection. I’m not entirely sure what the point of it was, although I do love the idea of a Victorian Christmas.

The Case of the Man with the Sack is a more conventional detective story. Albert Campion is celebrating Christmas with friends at their country house when a theft takes place – and the main suspect is Santa Claus. This is a slightly longer story than the others, so there’s more time to develop the plot. Of course, it can’t compare with a full-length Campion mystery, but it was interesting enough to hold my attention until the end.

Finally, there’s Word In Season, a lovely but unusual tale about Campion and his dog, Poins. Did you know that, according to myth, animals are given the power of speech in the final hour of Christmas Eve? I didn’t, but that’s what this final story is about.

These four Christmas stories were obviously ideal for the time of year and I did find them entertaining, but I thought they were too short to be completely satisfying. I’m looking forward to reading some more of Allingham’s longer novels soon.

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

Zennor in Darkness by Helen Dunmore

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One of the reading challenges I have been participating in during 2018 is the What’s in a Name? challenge which involves reading books with certain words in the title. Having reached November with only four of the six required books completed, it was looking unlikely that I would be able to finish the challenge, but I’m pleased to say that I have managed to squeeze the final two books into my December reading – starting with this one, Zennor in Darkness (a book with a title that begins with Z).

Published in 1993, Zennor in Darkness was Helen Dunmore’s first novel. I had high hopes for it, as I’ve enjoyed some of her others, particularly Exposure and Birdcage Walk. Unfortunately, although there were things that I liked about this one, I was slightly disappointed with it, even more so because most people who have read it seem to have loved it and I’m sorry that I couldn’t love it too.

The novel is set in 1917 in Zennor, a village on the coast of Cornwall where the author DH Lawrence lives for a while during the First World War. Hoping to find some peace and quiet away from the controversy caused by the recent publication of his novel, The Rainbow, Lawrence and his wife Frieda have decided to rent a cottage in Zennor where they can wait for the war to end and for a time when he may be able to resume his writing career. But even as Lawrence gets to know the local farming families and discovers the charms of rural life, he finds himself the centre of controversy yet again – this time because of Frieda, who happens to be German. The villagers view Frieda with suspicion, disapproving of her red stockings and her German songs, and convinced that she and Lawrence are sending signals to the U-boats lurking off the Cornish coast:

‘All the same though, there are things not right up there. They say they’ve put different coloured curtains up. In the same window.’
‘Why, whatever would they want to do that for?’
‘In the window looking over the sea.’
‘You mean -‘

One person who doesn’t care about the gossip and who is happy to befriend the Lawrences anyway is Clare Coyne, a young woman who lives with her widowed father. Clare is a talented artist and is helping to illustrate a new book her father is writing on botany; she is also in love with her cousin, John William Treveal, who is home on leave from the trenches before starting his training as an officer. The rest of the family are unaware of Clare’s feelings for John William, so she keeps her fears and worries for him to herself, hoping that as he has survived this long, he will continue to survive and will come back to her when the war is over.

The novel is partly about Clare’s relationship with DH Lawrence and partly about her love for John William, but I felt that the two elements of the story didn’t work together very well and could have formed the basis of two separate books. I found the central love story by far the most engaging and interesting aspect of the novel, while the inclusion of Lawrence added very little for me. I couldn’t help making comparisons with Mr Mac and Me by Esther Freud, a very similar story about the architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, where I thought the blending of real historical characters and fictional ones was more successful.

I did love the portrayal of life in a small village during the war, touching on topics such as shell shock, desertion and the effects of war not only on those who are fighting in it but on the loved ones they leave behind. The writing is certainly beautiful – both poetic and insightful, with some lovely descriptions – but books written in third person present tense are often a problem for me and that was the case here as I found it distracting and emotionally distancing. I think the writing style is what prevented me from enjoying this book as much as I’d hoped to. Not a favourite by Helen Dunmore, then, but I will continue to read her books and will hope for better luck next time.

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I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a Merry Christmas! I’ll be back soon with my books of the year, my December Commonplace Book and maybe another review or two before New Year.

The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West

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Rebecca West is the final author to be celebrated in Jane at Beyond Eden Rock’s Birthday Book of Underappreciated Lady Authors this year. Having previously only read The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West, I decided to read The Fountain Overflows next as it is one of the books on my Classics Club list. This is the first in a trilogy (the other two – This Real Night and the unfinished Cousin Rosamund – were published posthumously), and although it is a work of fiction, it does apparently draw on the author’s own childhood experiences.

The Fountain Overflows is set in the early 20th century and tells the story of the Aubrey family through the eyes of Rose, one of the children. As the novel opens, the family are preparing for a move from Scotland to London, having only recently returned to Britain from South Africa. The children have become used to changing address on a regular basis due to the fact that their father, a newspaper editor, seems unable to stay in one position for very long. He is irresponsible, unreliable and has a habit of gambling his money away on the stock exchange, but his wife and children love him anyway and hope that this time he can make a success of the job he has been offered and that they will be able to stay in their new home for longer than usual.

The Aubreys are a creative, cultured and highly gifted family – Rose and her twin sister, Mary, are talented pianists; their little brother Richard Quin, as he grows older, discovers an aptitude for the flute; and Cordelia, the eldest, plays the violin. Their mother, Clare Aubrey, had been a concert pianist herself, and it falls to her to see that each of her children receives the correct guidance and tuition to make the most of their abilities. This proves particularly challenging where her eldest daughter is concerned, as thanks to a well-meaning but interfering teacher, Cordelia is led to believe she is much more talented than she really is. I found the Cordelia storyline very moving – it’s obvious from the beginning what is going to happen but it takes a long time to play out and I dreaded the moment when she would inevitably discover the truth.

Although this is a story driven by characters, relationships and family bonds, there is also some drama. There is an episode where Rose and her mother visit the home of Rose’s Aunt Constance and cousin Rosamund, only to find the house apparently haunted by poltergeists. Later in the book, the mother of a friend from school is accused of murder and the Aubreys are drawn into that too. But these incidents, each of which could have formed the entire plot of a different sort of novel, are relatively minor aspects of The Fountain Overflows and no more or less important than many of the other things that happen in Rose’s life.

I loved Rose’s narrative voice; not all authors can write convincingly from the perspective of a child, but Rebecca West certainly does. She really captures the way children think and feel, the things that matter to them and the way they look at the world. But the most engaging character, for me, was Rose’s mother. I admired her for her strength in trying to keep her family and marriage together, seeing that the rent is paid on time, helping others despite her own financial hardship, and providing a stable, loving home for her children when their father couldn’t or wouldn’t.

With such strong, believable characters and such lovely writing, this was a wonderful read. I was sorry to have to leave the family behind at the end, but I’m looking forward to meeting them again in This Real Night.

This is book 10/50 from my second Classics Club list.

Before the Rains by Dinah Jefferies

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Whenever I want a book to transport me to another country and another time, I need look no further than Dinah Jefferies. So far her novels have taken me to Ceylon, Malaya and French Indochina; this one, Before the Rains, is set in Rajputana, India, in the 1930s.

Our heroine, Eliza Fraser, has a passion for photography and hopes to build a career for herself as a photojournalist. When an old family friend and British politician, Clifford Salter, arranges for her to spend a year photographing the royal family of one of India’s princely states, she is both delighted and nervous. India is where she grew up and she still feels a connection to the land and the people, but it is also where, at the age of ten, she witnessed the death of her father in Delhi.

Arriving at the palace where she will live for the next twelve months, Eliza finds that not everyone is happy to have an outsider interfering in their affairs, especially when they discover that she is a widow. Other people, though, are much more welcoming – including Jayant Singh, the younger brother of Prince Anish. When Jay offers to escort Eliza around the countryside in search of subjects for her photographs, she is distressed by the poverty she sees and urges Jay to do something to help his people. In return, Jay helps her to understand the effect British rule has had on India. As they discuss these and other issues and get to know each other better, a friendship forms between them which quickly becomes something more…but Eliza knows that there can only be any future for them if Jay is prepared to defy both his family and the expectations of society.

Like all of Dinah Jefferies’ novels, this one features some lovely descriptive writing, bringing to life the sounds, colours, tastes and smells of India. But along with the beautiful descriptions, there are some brutal, horrifying ones, such as an account of a widow throwing herself onto her husband’s funeral pyre, followed by a discussion of the custom of sati, as well as the fates of unwanted baby girls and of women suspected of witchcraft. For all Eliza had spent her childhood in India, she had been insulated within the British community and it’s only now that she is going out on her excursions with Jay that she feels she is truly starting to understand the country, its history and its people.

Although I loved the setting, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed some of Jefferies’ others, which is mainly due to the fact that I found it predictable and too reliant on coincidences – there were at least two plot twists towards the end that I found completely unconvincing. I also struggled to believe in Eliza’s romance with Jay; I liked both characters, but I thought it seemed too convenient that on arriving at the palace Eliza would immediately catch the eye of a prince. Maybe I should have just been less cynical and more prepared to suspend disbelief.

This is probably my least favourite of Dinah Jefferies’ novels, but I’m still looking forward to reading her new one, The Missing Sister, which will be set in 1930s Burma.

The Santa Klaus Murder by Mavis Doriel Hay

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Mavis Doriel Hay wrote three mystery novels during the 1930s, all of which are now available as British Library Crime Classics. This one, The Santa Klaus Murder, sounded as though it would be perfect for the time of year, and of course it was. I enjoyed it, although I found it very similar to Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot’s Christmas and Georgette Heyer’s Envious Casca, and not as good as either of those books.

The Santa Klaus Murder is set in and around Flaxmere, a country estate belonging to Sir Osmond Melbury. The novel opens with several first-person accounts written by members of Sir Osmond’s family as they gather at the house to celebrate Christmas and in this way we get to know all of the main characters and learn a little bit about their backgrounds and the relationships between them.

It seems that for many years, Sir Osmond has been trying to control and manipulate the lives of his adult children. His son, George, has the security of knowing that, as the only male heir, his inheritance is safe, but for the four daughters things are much more uncertain. He has already tried to influence, with varying success, the marriages of the three eldest girls – Hilda, Edith and Eleanor – and is now trying to do the same with Jennifer, the youngest. Philip Cheriton, the man Jennifer loves, is attending the Christmas gathering, but Sir Osmond has also invited Oliver Witcombe, whom he would prefer to see as her husband. Jennifer is desperate to marry Philip but needs to find a way to do so without upsetting her father.

We do see a kinder side to Sir Osmond when, on Christmas Day, he asks Oliver to dress up in a Santa Klaus costume and distribute gifts to the family and servants. When the old man is discovered shot dead at his desk in the study that same afternoon, all the clues seem to point towards Santa…but why would Oliver want Sir Osmond dead? Colonel Halstock, the Chief Constable, is brought in to investigate and quickly discovers that almost everyone who spent Christmas at Flaxmere may have had a motive for murder. Could the killer be one of Sir Osmond’s children or one of their partners? What about his pretty young secretary, Grace Portisham, who may be expecting to receive something in his will? Or could it be Ashmore, the family’s old chauffeur, who lost his job at Flaxmere just before Christmas?

Most of the remaining chapters in the book, with one or two exceptions, are narrated by Col. Halstock as he tries to identify the culprit. There’s a lot of discussion of alibis, people’s movements, and the layout of the rooms, so if you enjoy trying to solve those sorts of puzzles – where somebody was at a certain time and what they were doing, or how somebody could have moved from one room to another without being seen – then this is probably the book for you. I didn’t work out who the murderer was, although I had my suspicions, but I did find other parts of the plot easy to predict. As a traditional country house mystery, there wasn’t much that made this book stand out from other books of its genre and era, but as an entertaining and undemanding Christmas read I found it satisfying enough.

Mavis Doriel Hay’s other novels are Murder Underground and Death on the Cherwell, both of which I’m now interested in reading.

Historical Musings #45: My Year in Historical Fiction – 2018

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It’s my final Historical Musings post of 2018, which means it’s time for my annual summary of my year in historical fiction! I have kept the same categories as in the previous two years so that it should be easy to make comparisons and to see if there have been any interesting changes in my reading patterns and choices (my 2017 post is here and 2016 is here).

I know the year is not quite over yet, but I like to stick to a weekend in the middle of the month for my Historical Musings posts – and I don’t think I’ll read enough historical fiction in the final two weeks of the year to significantly affect these statistics anyway.

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Time periods read about in 2018

No big surprises here – this is a very similar picture to last year, with books set in the 19th and 20th centuries making up nearly half of my reading. The 16th and 17th centuries were popular again too (all those Tudor and English Civil War/Restoration books). Apart from Ancient Greece, very early periods of history are still poorly represented in my reading. Recommendations are always welcome!

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31.2% of the historical fiction authors I read this year were new to me.

Down from 47.3% last year. I’m disappointed I haven’t tried more new authors this year – although it does mean I’ve been enjoying books by favourite authors instead.

Three books I’ve read by new-to-me historical fiction authors in 2018:
Smile of the Wolf by Tim Leach
Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce
By Sword and Storm by Margaret Skea

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Publication dates of books read in 2018

I’ve been reading a lot of new or recent historical fiction again this year, with the rest spread across the 20th century. Sadly, I haven’t read anything published earlier than 1900 but that could change next year as I do have some older historical fiction on my Classics Club list which I’m looking forward to reading.

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14.3% of my historical reads in 2018 were historical mysteries.

Up from 9.6% last year – but not a big difference.

Three historical mysteries I’ve enjoyed reading this year:
Traitor by David Hingley
A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters
Lamentation by CJ Sansom

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I’ve read historical fiction set in 22 different countries this year.

One more country than last year (if I’m allowed to count Martinique, an overseas territory of France). I’m still finding it difficult to get away from mainly reading books set in my own country, England, but while France and Italy occupied the next two positions in both 2017 and 2016, this year Scotland is in second place with France third and Italy a long way behind.

Three books I’ve read set in countries other than my own:
My Beautiful Imperial by Rhiannon Lewis (Chile and Wales)
The Sealwoman’s Gift by Sally Magnusson (Iceland and Algeria)
The English Girl by Katherine Webb (Oman)

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Five historical men I’ve read about this year:

William Lilly

Prince Rupert (The Winter Prince by Cheryl Sawyer)
William Marshal (Templar Silks by Elizabeth Chadwick)
Henry Tudor (The Tudor Crown by Joanna Hickson)
René Descartes (The Words in My Hand by Guinevere Glasfurd)
William Lilly (The Magick of Master Lilly by Tobsha Learner)

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Five historical women I’ve read about this year:

Ana de Mendoza

Jane Seymour (Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen by Alison Weir)
Elizabeth I (Young Bess by Margaret Irwin)
Ana de Mendoza, Princess of Eboli (That Lady by Kate O’Brien)
St Hilda (The Abbess of Whitby by Jill Dalladay)
Elizabeth Mortimer (Queen of the North by Anne O’Brien)

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Have you read any good historical fiction this year? Have you read any of the books or authors I’ve mentioned here?

The Poppy Field by Deborah Carr

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2018 has been an eventful year in many ways and in November we marked the one hundredth anniversary of the end of the First World War. I picked up Deborah Carr’s new novel, The Poppy Field, to read over the centenary weekend, but I’ve since fallen behind with my reviews, which is why I’m only posting about it now.

The Poppy Field has two narratives, one set in 2018 and the other in 1916-18. First, in the present day, we meet Gemma, a British trauma nurse who has taken some time away from her stressful job to work on the renovation of a farmhouse in Doullens, in Northern France. Her father has recently inherited it and wants to get it into a good enough condition to be able to sell. With the help of Tom, a man she meets in Doullens who offers to assist with the building work, Gemma begins the long and difficult task of restoring the house to its former beauty. During the refurbishment, they discover a bundle of old letters dating back to World War I, written by an Alice Le Breton, and as soon as Gemma settles down to start reading them, she becomes obsessed with finding out how Alice’s story will end.

The other thread of the novel follows Alice, a young woman from Jersey in the Channel Islands, who volunteers as a VAD nurse at a casualty clearing station near Doullens during the war. Working conditions at the station are challenging and often horrifying, as wounded soldiers are brought in from the front line and the doctors and nurses do their best to save lives with the limited medication and equipment available to them. In the midst of so much pain and suffering, Alice is still able to find some happiness when she falls in love with one of her patients – but in times of war life is uncertain and Alice knows that her dreams could be shattered in an instant.

Although Alice and Gemma are very different people, there are many parallels between their stories – they are both nurses, they have both reached important turning points in their lives, and they have both found themselves in the same part of France. They also each become involved in a romance, but while I found Alice’s very moving (as wartime romances usually are), I thought Gemma’s was less convincing and very predictable. She meets the man who will become her love interest almost as soon as she arrives in France and there’s no real suspense involved in wondering whether they will end up together or not. Gemma’s whole storyline felt like little more than a frame for Alice’s, but I find that’s often the case with dual-time period novels and I almost always prefer one narrative over the other.

Although I’d hoped for more from this book, I did still enjoy it, particularly the historical sections and the details of Alice’s nursing work. The two separate threads of the story tie together nicely towards the end and the novel as a whole is an interesting and poignant read.

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