The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë by Daphne du Maurier

June 17, 20149 Comments

I’ve been interested in reading this book since I read Daphne by Justine Picardie in 2011. In Daphne, among other storylines, the fictional du Maurier is researching a biography of Branwell Brontë, hoping to find evidence of his talent and the possibility that he may have contributed to his sisters’ famous novels. This book, The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë, published in 1960, is the result of that research.

Even without reading Justine Picardie’s novel, I would have known du Maurier was a fan of the Brontës as their influence is obvious in some of Daphne’s own novels, particularly Rebecca and Jamaica Inn. I can understand why she may have been fascinated by Branwell, whom she probably saw as a tragic and misunderstood figure. His story is certainly quite a sad one, though a lot of his problems were self-inflicted. As the only boy in a family of girls his father had high hopes for him (to the Victorians it was probably unthinkable that a brother would be outshone by three of his sisters, but with the Brontës that was exactly what happened) and du Maurier suggests that this put him under a lot of pressure to succeed.

As a child, Branwell, like Charlotte, Emily and Anne, was bright and imaginative. He and Charlotte worked together on a set of stories set in the imaginary world of Angria, while Anne and Emily created the fictional land of Gondal. His future seemed full of promise, but as he grew older everything he did seemed to end unhappily. Unlike his sisters he was not sent to school (possibly because his father thought he was too sensitive) and plans for him to study painting at the Royal Academy never came to anything. He tried repeatedly to have some of his poems accepted by Blackwood’s Magazine and was ignored every time; du Maurier tells us that he even wrote to William Wordsworth but didn’t receive a reply. After being dismissed from his job as a clerk at the railway station and then his next job as a tutor (where he possibly had an affair with his employer’s wife), he descended into alcohol and opium addictions and died in 1848 aged thirty-one.

This doesn’t feel like a particularly academic biography and I’m sure there will be more up to date information about Branwell that has come to light since 1960, so I can’t really comment on its accuracy. Du Maurier was a novelist first and foremost and I get the impression her main concern was to capture the essence of Branwell’s character and explore the reasons why he failed where his sisters succeeded and why all his hopes and dreams came to nothing. She also spends a lot of time discussing and analysing Branwell’s work. I was surprised that so many examples of his writing have survived – a lot of his poems are included in this book and some of his prose and letters.

Du Maurier clearly has a lot of sympathy for Branwell, which is not surprising as she has obviously set out to try to restore his reputation and help him gain the recognition he never had during his lifetime. I always think it helps when you can tell that a biographer is genuinely interested in the person he or she is writing about! However, even with du Maurier’s enthusiasm for her subject she never tries to claim that Branwell’s writing was something it wasn’t and she comes to the conclusion that although he did have some talent, his poems were nothing special. His biggest contribution to the literary world may have been the influence he had on the writing of his three sisters.

Daphne du Maurier is one of my favourite authors, but this is the first of her non-fiction books I have read. Since I also love all three Brontë sisters (Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are two of my favourite Victorian novels with The Tenant of Wildfell Hall not far behind) this seemed a good choice to begin with. I did find it interesting and the style of the writing is not too different from du Maurier’s novels. I’m not sure how much appeal it would have to people who don’t share my interest in both du Maurier and the Brontës, but for those of you who do want to know more about Branwell and the other Brontës, I definitely think it’s worth reading. I would also highly recommend Jude Morgan’s novel The Taste of Sorrow – it’s a fictional account of the Brontë family (including Branwell and the two older sisters who died as children) but it sticks very closely to the known facts.

The Quick by Lauren Owen

June 15, 2014June 15, 201410 Comments

Well, this is going to be a difficult book to write about! At first it seemed it was going to be one of those atmospheric Victorian-style novels I love (similar to Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, The Quincunx by Charles Palliser or The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox). It begins with two children, Charlotte and James Norbury, growing up in Yorkshire in a large country house complete with fountains, statues and secret chambers. When their father dies, Charlotte continues to live on the estate with an aunt while James goes away to school and then to university.

Trying to build a career for himself in London as a poet and playwright, James is befriended by the handsome Christopher Paige who will soon come to play an important part in his life. But when tragedy strikes, James becomes embroiled with the mysterious Aegolius Club…and this is where I’ll have to stop. From this point onwards the story goes in an unexpected direction and becomes something very different from what it had originally appeared to be. I can’t even tell you what the title of the novel, The Quick, means because that in itself is a spoiler.

I’m not sure whether keeping the true nature of this book hidden is a good idea or a bad idea. On the one hand, it means it will be read by people like myself who might not have picked it up otherwise, but on the other hand they may decide not to continue reading once the truth is revealed – while people who do like this type of book could be missing out on reading it. However, the publishers have obviously tried to create an air of mystery around it, so I respect their decision and will not give anything away!

I enjoyed this book up to the big plot twist but not so much afterwards. This was not necessarily because of the twist itself, but more due to the fact that at this stage we leave James and Charlotte behind for a while and are introduced to a new set of characters. Who was this Augustus Mould whose diary I found myself reading? What about Adeline Swift who suddenly begins narrating eleven chapters into the book? These things are explained, of course, and we do learn who these people are, but it meant that when the narrative eventually switched back to Charlotte or James I had lost the connection I’d felt with those two characters at the beginning.

The way the book ended took me by surprise and now I’m wondering if there’s going to be a sequel. If so, I’ll have to decide whether I want to read it, but if not then I’ll be interested to see what Lauren Owen writes next. I did like her writing and if this book had just been the straightforward neo-Victorian novel it seemed to be at first, I think I would have loved it.

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Madam, Will You Talk? by Mary Stewart

June 13, 201423 Comments

When I heard the sad news of Mary Stewart’s death recently I wanted to read one of her books as a tribute. There are still quite a few that I haven’t read and I decided on this one, her debut novel from 1955. It was a great choice because I loved it.

The novel is narrated by Charity Selborne, a young widow on holiday in the south of France with her best friend, Louise, an art teacher. Settling into their hotel, they get to know the other guests, including David, a thirteen-year-old boy from England, and his beautiful French stepmother. When Charity hears that David’s father, Richard Byron, has recently been acquitted of murder and could be in France at this moment searching for his son, she grows worried for the boy’s safety…but her efforts to protect David mean that she herself becomes Richard’s next target.

There’s a lot more to the story than that, but I really don’t want to say much more about it because this is one of Mary Stewart’s most exciting and suspenseful novels and I would like everyone to be as enthralled by the twists and turns of the plot as I was. All I will say is that this book contains one of my favourite sequences in all of the Stewart novels I’ve read – a thrilling car chase in which Charity is pursued across the French countryside (in a chapter appropriately titled Exit, pursued by a Bear – another thing I love about Mary Stewart is the way she works so many literary and mythological references into her writing).

This book is very dated now and definitely feels like one that was written in the 1950s, but I think that just adds to its charm. There are also lots of stunning descriptions of Avignon, Nîmes, Marseilles and all the other places Charity’s adventures take her to (I was pleased to see that her visit to Marseilles included a trip to the Chateau d’If, made famous by Alexandre Dumas in The Count of Monte Cristo). I particularly loved this description of Charity watching the sun rise above the remote village of Les Baux:

“How long I sat out there, in a coign of carved stone and rough rock, I do not know. Long enough, I suppose, for my vigil did at length bring in the dawn. I saw the first light, forerunning the sun, gather in a cup of the eastern cloud, gather and grow and brim, till at last it spilled like milk over the golden lip, to smear the dark face of heaven from end to end. From east to north, and back to south again, the clouds slackened, the stars, trembling on the verge of extinction, guttered in the dawn wind and the gates of day were ready to open at the trumpet…”

Since discovering Mary Stewart’s romantic suspense novels three years ago I have been hoping to find another one to match the brilliance of the first one I read, Nine Coaches Waiting. Now that I’ve read eight more of her books, I think Nine Coaches will always be my favourite, but Madam, Will You Talk? has come very close!

I think Anbolyn is hosting another Mary Stewart Reading Week in September, so whether you’re already a Stewart fan or whether you have yet to try any of her books, I hope you’ll consider joining in. I have Wildfire at Midnight, Thunder on the Right, My Brother Michael and Airs Above the Ground still to read, but maybe it’s time I tried her Merlin series which I’ve heard so much about. What do you think?

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

June 11, 2014June 11, 201421 Comments

This week Caroline of Beauty is a Sleeping Cat and Delia of Postcards from Asia are hosting an Angela Carter Week. I have to admit that I had dismissed Angela Carter years ago as an author just not for me, based on one or two failed attempts at reading her novels as a teenager. Seeing the announcement of the Angela Carter Week and knowing that she is a beloved favourite of so many people, I decided it was time to give her another chance – with some short stories this time.

In The Bloody Chamber, Carter takes ideas and themes from fairy tales and legends – vampires and werewolves, Bluebeard and Puss in Boots, dark forests and gloomy castles – and works them into a collection of new short stories. There are ten in the book – The Bloody Chamber, The Courtship of Mr Lyon, The Tiger’s Bride, Puss-In-Boots, The Erl-King, The Snow Child, The Lady of The House of Love, The Werewolf, The Company of Wolves and Wolf-Alice. Some are quite long (The Bloody Chamber is more than forty pages long in this edition) while others are very short (less than two pages for The Snow Child) and all of them are steeped in feminism, violence and sexuality.

I’m glad I chose this book to try again with, because I did enjoy it. However, I had quite an uneven reaction to the stories in this collection and found that I liked some of them much more than others – though I suppose that’s normal when reading short story collections. I was interested to read in the introduction by Helen Simpson that they should not actually be described as retellings because Carter herself said that her intention was to “extract the latent content from the traditional stories and to use it as the beginnings of new stories”.

By far the strongest, in my opinion, is the title story, The Bloody Chamber. The Gothic atmosphere and imagery in this story reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe. Inspired by the Bluebeard legends, it’s the tale of a young woman who travels to the castle of her new husband, a Marquis who has already been married and widowed three times before. When the Marquis goes away on business he leaves his wife with a bunch of keys and strict instructions not to unlock the door of one of the rooms. Not surprisingly, she is unable to resist the temptation and discovers something shocking within the forbidden chamber.

I also loved The Courtship of Mr Lyon, a romantic and beautifully written story based on Beauty and the Beast. I preferred this one to The Tiger’s Bride, which gives a completely different perspective on the same fairy tale. Puss-in-Boots, although not one of my favourites, stands out from the others in the book as it is written in a very different style. While most of the others, particularly The Bloody Chamber, are elegant and haunting with rich, elaborate descriptions, this one is a lively, amusing story narrated by the cat himself. The Snow Child is equally memorable, though for different reasons – for such a short story, it’s one of the most disturbing in the book.

The Erl-King and The Lady of the House of Love also deserve a mention, both for their atmospheric settings and the beauty of the language used. Interestingly, I think the stories I enjoyed least were the three final ones which incorporated elements from Little Red Riding Hood and werewolf folklore. I’m not sure why that should be, unless they just suffered from being last in the book.

I can see why Angela Carter’s books are so widely studied in schools and universities because her writing is packed with symbolism and imagery. I know I would have to read this whole collection again to even begin to fully appreciate everything she was trying to say in each of the ten stories.

Have you read this book? Which was your favourite story?

The Lost Duchess by Jenny Barden

June 10, 2014June 10, 20148 Comments

With a title like The Lost Duchess and an opening chapter set at the court of Elizabeth I, describing an encounter between one of the Queen’s ladies and Lord Hertford, you may think this sounds like just another Elizabethan court romance – but you would be mistaken. With the arrival of Sir Francis Drake bringing stories of his adventures in the New World comes the first hint of what this book is actually about. And when Emme Fifield, the lady who had that confrontation with Hertford, decides to join Governor John White’s expedition to establish a new colony at Chesapeake, it becomes clear that The Lost Duchess is going to be something fresh and different.

Emme is desperate to leave England and sail to the New World so that she can avoid the disgrace she knows she will face when her involvement with Lord Hertford is made public. In order to convince the Queen to let her go, she promises to return with reports on the colonies for Elizabeth and her spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, but Emme’s real intention is to stay in Chesapeake and build a new life there…especially when she begins to fall in love with one of her fellow travellers, the mariner Kit Doonan. But while Emme is trying to keep the truth about her past hidden from Kit, we learn that Kit also has some secrets of his own.

Emme and Kit are great characters and I enjoyed getting to know both of them, but the aspect of this book that I found the most interesting was the fate of the lost colony of Roanoke – the English settlement established by Sir Walter Raleigh in the 1580s before being abandoned with no trace of the colonists. The explanation for the colony’s disappearance is still a mystery today, but Jenny Barden suggests one possible theory which I thought was very convincing. And if you’re wondering why all of this is significant to the story told in The Lost Duchess, although the ship on which Kit and Emme set out from England is originally heading for Chesapeake, Roanoke is where they end up.

The voyage itself provides lots of exciting action as Emme and the other colonists face dangerous seas and the loss of their supplies, while finding themselves at the mercy of their Portuguese navigator, Simon Ferdinando, who may or may not be trying to betray them. Life becomes no easier when they land at Roanoke – poisonous fruit being one hazard and conflicts with the native people another. Having befriended Chief Manteo of the Croatoans, the settlers are hopeful that they can negotiate with the Native Americans but it seems that things have happened in the past which will make it difficult for them to live peacefully alongside each other.

Roanoke and its mysteries is a fascinating, unusual setting and I’m sure you’ll agree that it makes a change from the majority of Tudor/Elizabethan novels which tend to focus on royalty and life at court. Jenny Barden’s previous novel, Mistress of the Sea, sounds wonderful too and is linked with this one through the character of Kit Doonan’s brother, Will. I’m looking forward to reading it.

I read The Lost Duchess as part of a blog tour. For more reviews, interviews and giveaways please see the tour schedule at Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours.

The Orchard of Lost Souls by Nadifa Mohamed

June 8, 2014June 8, 20146 Comments

In 2013, Nadifa Mohamed was named one of Granta’s “Best Young British Novelists”. This is her second novel, set in Somalia in the 1980s as rebel forces clash with the military dictatorship and the country heads towards civil war. The events of this turbulent period are seen through the eyes of three female characters:

* Deqo, a nine-year-old orphan who grew up in a refugee camp and has now found herself homeless and alone in the city of Hargeisa.
* Kawsar, a widow mourning the death of her daughter, who becomes confined to her bed after a violent beating at the police station.
* Filsan, a soldier sent to Hargeisa from the capital city of Mogadishu and feeling homesick for the life she has left behind.

During a military parade at a stadium in Hargeisa, the paths of these three women briefly cross before they are separated again and go on to have very different experiences of this troubled time in Somalia’s history.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book set in Somalia before and I knew nothing about the causes of the civil war or the situation in Hargeisa, so reading The Orchard of Lost Souls meant I had an opportunity to learn something new. Telling the story from three different perspectives allows the author to explore different aspects of the war; through Deqo and Kawsar we see what it was like for people living in and around Hargeisa, trying to survive from one day to the next, while Filsan’s story gives us some insights into the military regime. As you can probably guess, many of the things the women experience are traumatic and brutal, though I won’t go into any details here.

As well as being educational, this is also a compelling story (or stories, as there are really three of them in this one novel) and I was interested in all three characters, although I thought Filsan was much more difficult to like than either Deqo or Kawsar. However, I did have some problems with the structure of the novel, especially at the beginning. For the first fifty pages of the book, the viewpoint switches rapidly between each of the three women which I found very overwhelming and confusing. I was relieved to discover that this didn’t continue all the way through the book! The opening section was followed by three longer sections concentrating on one character at a time, so I was able to get to know each of them separately before they eventually meet again near the end of the novel.

I can see why Nadifa Mohamed has won awards for her writing because she clearly has a lot of talent and her descriptions of Somalia are beautiful. I’ll leave you with one of my favourite passages, where Filsan remembers the streets of Mogadishu:

In the centre of the city where the alleys narrow at points to the width of a man’s shoulder blades, you can walk as if in a dream, never certain of what might appear after the next bend: a bare-chested man with a silver swordfish slung over his thin black back, a shoal of children reciting Quran from their wooden slates, a girl milking a white, lyre-horned cow. The place has enchantment, mystery, it moves backward and forward in time with every turn of the feet; it is fitting that it lies beside an ocean over which its soul can breathe, rather than being hemmed in by mountains like a jinn in a bottle.

The Frost of Springtime by Rachel L. Demeter

June 7, 2014June 6, 20147 Comments

When I was offered the opportunity to take part in a blog tour for Rachel L. Demeter’s The Frost of Springtime, I wasn’t sure whether or not to accept. I read a lot of historical fiction novels and many of them have an element of romance, but I tend not to be drawn to books that are specifically classed as ‘historical romance’ as this one is. The setting sounded intriguing, though, so I decided to give it a try.

The Frost of Springtime is set during the Paris Commune of 1871, a brief period during which a revolutionary government ruled Paris. The novel begins with Vicomte Aleksender de Lefèvre rescuing a young girl, Sofia Rose, who has been sold into a Parisian brothel by her own mother. Sofia becomes Aleksender’s ward but she is later separated from her guardian while he goes away to fight in the Franco-Prussian War.

When Aleksender returns to Paris accompanied by his friend, Christophe Cleef, he finds that the city has been torn apart by revolution, protest and destruction. At home, too, things are changing. His father’s death has left him with new responsibilities and an altered relationship with his brother…and the little girl he saved from a life of misery and abuse has matured into a beautiful young woman of nineteen. Left scarred by his traumatic wartime experiences, Aleksender is in need of love and comfort and it seems that Sofia can provide them. But what about his wife, Elizabeth, the woman he married years earlier as part of an arranged marriage and has never loved the way he loves Sofia?

The Frost of Springtime is a dark and atmospheric story with some great descriptions of a Paris in political turmoil. Although there is certainly a strong romantic thread running through the centre of this novel, there is also quite a lot of history. In fact, there could be too much history for those who are looking purely for a love story, but for me personally the balance was about right. I had no previous knowledge of the Paris Commune and now that I’ve learned a bit about it from reading this book I would like to know more. I may have to do some further reading on the subject!

Aleksender and Sofia were both strong characters – characters I was interested in and cared about. Unless you just don’t like the idea of the age difference or a man falling in love with a girl who had been his ward, I’m sure you’ll feel the same and will be hoping for a happy ending for the two of them. However, I did also like Elizabeth and had a lot of sympathy for her as she really hadn’t done anything wrong and didn’t deserve to be treated badly. Aleksender’s behaviour sometimes disappointed me because it wasn’t always what you would expect from the hero of a romantic novel but this could be partly explained by the fact that he is suffering from what appears to be post-traumatic stress disorder caused by his experiences at war.

I’m glad I didn’t let my doubts about historical romance put me off reading this book as I did enjoy meeting Aleksender and Sofia and learning about such an interesting period of French history.

If you’d like to read more reviews, interviews and guest posts please see the tour schedule at Enchanted Book Promotions – and don’t forget to enter the tourwide giveaway for an Amazon gift card at this link: a Rafflecopter giveaway