In Her Shadow by Louise Douglas

6 Comments

After reading The Secrets Between Us last year as part of the Transworld Book Group, I’ve been looking forward to reading another book by Louise Douglas and I was pleased to find that her new novel, In Her Shadow, has the same combination of suspense, mystery and psychological drama that I loved in The Secrets Between Us.

The story is narrated by Hannah Brown who works at the Brunel Memorial Museum in Bristol. When Hannah glimpses her best friend Ellen Brecht in the museum one day, she is left feeling shocked and frightened…because Ellen died almost twenty years ago. Is Hannah imagining things or has her friend really come back from the dead?

In alternating chapters, Hannah tells her present day story and also shares with us her memories of growing up in the 1980s with both Ellen and another friend, a boy called Jago who was adopted by Hannah’s family. She remembers the day Ellen moved to their quiet Cornish village with her glamorous parents – her handsome, charismatic German father Pieter and her mother Anne, a former pianist. At first Hannah is captivated by the Brecht family but as time goes by she learns that things might not be quite as they seem. And so Hannah’s happy, nostalgic childhood memories are mixed with other, more disturbing ones that she would rather forget.

I really like the way Louise Douglas writes and the way she creates atmosphere. There are some lovely pieces of descriptive writing in this book, especially when she is writing about the area of Cornwall where Hannah, Jago and Ellen lived, but despite the beautiful, idyllic setting, there’s also a mood of darkness and foreboding that hangs over the story. We know from very early in the novel that something had happened between Hannah and Ellen that damaged their friendship and left Hannah with feelings of guilt, but we aren’t told what it was. We don’t know the circumstances surrounding Ellen’s death, what Jago’s involvement was, or why Hannah is still affected by it all so many years later. And we are kept wondering whether or not Ellen is really dead or whether her appearances are just a figment of Hannah’s imagination. As the novel progresses, the truth is gradually revealed and we can eventually start to piece the story together.

I didn’t find any of the three main characters – Hannah, Ellen and Jago – very easy to like, yet I could still have sympathy for all three of them and could care about what happened to them. They make mistakes, do the wrong things, make poor decisions and act on impulses, but their flawed, unpredictable behaviour only makes them feel more believable and human.

The construction of the novel, with the chapters alternating between Hannah’s current story and her childhood story, means that we learn a little bit more in every chapter, but some of the biggest surprises remain hidden until the very end of the book. Sometimes this type of structure can feel disjointed and confusing, but in this case I thought it worked perfectly and it helped maintain the right levels of tension and suspense throughout the book. I enjoyed In Her Shadow as much as I enjoyed The Secrets Between Us and I’ll be looking out for any future books by Louise Douglas!

I received a review copy of In Her Shadow from Transworld

Classics Challenge August Prompt: Quotes from Jane Austen’s Emma

13 Comments

This year I am taking part in a Classics Challenge hosted by Katherine of November’s Autumn. The goal is to read at least seven classics in 2012 and every month Katherine is posting a prompt to help us discuss the books we are reading. This month we are asked to share some quotes from our current read.

The classic I just finished reading yesterday was Emma by Jane Austen. This was a re-read for me and I’ll be posting my thoughts on the book next week. For now, here are some quotes from Emma. Katherine’s prompt recommended choosing some that were not so well-known. I’m not sure it’s possible to find any quotes from a Jane Austen novel that are not well-known, so I’ve just posted a selection of my favourites. Some might be more obscure than others.

“That is the case with us all, papa. One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”

***

“I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! But I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall. And, without love, I am sure I should be a fool to change such a situation as mine.”

***

“A sanguine temper, though for ever expecting more good than occurs, does not always pay for its hopes by any proportionate depression. It soon flies over the present failure, and begins to hope again.”

***

“To be sure – our discordancies must always arise from my being in the wrong.”

“Yes,” said he, smiling, “and reason good. I was sixteen years old when you were born.”

“A material difference, then,” she replied; “and no doubt you were much my superior in judgement at that period of our lives; but does not the lapse of one-and-twenty years bring our understandings a good deal nearer?”

“Yes, a good deal nearer.”

“But still, not near enough to give me a chance of being right, if we think differently.”

***

Was it new for any thing in this world to be unequal, inconsistent, incongruous — or for chance and circumstance (as second causes) to direct the human fate?

***

“I cannot make speeches, Emma,” he soon resumed; and in a tone of such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably convincing. “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me.”

***

Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.

The Spring of the Ram by Dorothy Dunnett

12 Comments

This is the second book in the eight-volume House of Niccolò series. In the first book, Niccolò Rising, we saw how Nicholas, a young dyer’s apprentice, rose in the world to become head of the Charetty trading company. In The Spring of the Ram, Nicholas and the other men of the Charetty company – including the doctor Tobias, notary Julius, priest Godscalc, engineer John le Grant and mercenary leader Astorre – journey to the Black Sea port of Trebizond to establish a trading post. With them every step of the way is Pagano Doria, a sea adventurer who has married Nicholas’s thirteen-year-old stepdaughter, Catherine de Charetty, and is now in a position where he may be able to seize control of the company through his marriage.

One of the things I love about Dorothy Dunnett’s books is that they give me an opportunity to learn about people and places I might never have known anything about otherwise. Dunnett’s novels open up whole new worlds, focusing on periods of history and geographical locations that are usually ignored in historical fiction. This is the first book I’ve read about Trebizond, a final outpost of the Byzantine Empire which at the time the story is set (1461) is under threat of falling to the Turkish army at any moment, and I thought it was a fascinating setting. I loved all of the beautiful descriptions of Trebizond and the other places Nicholas and his companions pass through on their journey to and from the Black Sea coast. This, for example, is the moment when the two ships belonging to Doria and Nicholas finally arrive at Trebizond:

So there came to the poisonous honey of Trebizond the two vessels from barbarian Europe, the four months of their travelling over, and winter turned into spring. One after the other, they crossed the wide, irregular bay towards the green amphitheatre which lined it. In its midst, the classical City gleamed on its tableland, alight with marble and gold against the dark mountain forests behind. There stood the fabled City, treasure-house of the East.

I enjoyed The Spring of the Ram much more than the first book, Niccolò Rising, possibly because I’m more familiar with the characters now and so found it easier to get straight into the story. And of course when I first started to read Niccolò Rising it was inevitable that I was going to compare it with Dunnett’s other series, the Lymond Chronicles, however hard I tried not to, and although I liked Nicholas and Marian de Charetty, most of the other characters seemed to me to be less interesting than the ones in the Lymond Chronicles. It seems that I just needed to give myself time to get used to them though, because now that I’ve read two Niccolo books I feel that I’m starting to get to know and understand some of the characters better. Nicholas himself continues to amaze me with his complex machinations and intricate trading deals, but despite the amount of time we spend inside his head in this book (which is more than we were ever allowed to spend inside Lymond’s) his character and motivations still remain a bit of an enigma to me. Most of what we learn about him is through the observations of the people around him – Tobie, Godscalc and the others – but we have to remember that none of them truly understand Nicholas either and have a tendency to misinterpret his actions.

All of Dunnett’s books are clever, complex and intricately plotted; this one, I thought, was particularly complicated because there seemed to be so much happening behind the scenes, so many different forces and factions all vying against each other, pulling in different directions and trying to turn things to their own advantage. The main trading powers – Venice, Florence and Genoa – are all rivals with conflicting business interests, then there are the various rulers and leaders – Emperor David of Trebizond, Uzum Hasan of the White Sheep Tribe, Sultan Mehmet II of the Ottoman Empire, and others. Members of Nicholas’s family also seem to have agendas of their own, and finally there are Violante of Naxos and the mysterious Greek with the wooden leg, both of whom are also trying to control Nicholas’s actions. With so much going on, I won’t pretend that I fully understood everything that was happening in the book because I certainly didn’t, but as with all of Dunnett’s novels I’m looking forward to reading this one again!

It has taken Niccolo a bit longer to win me over than it took Lymond but I’ve been pulled into his world now and have already started the third in the series, Race of Scorpions.

Wolf Hall Readalong: Week 1

6 Comments

During August and September I am taking part in a readalong of Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning novel about Thomas Cromwell. The readalong is hosted by Michelle of The True Book Addict and Kai of Fiction State of Mind. This week we have been reading Part One, which consists of three chapters.

Here are my answers to this week’s discussion questions:

1) What prompted you to join this read-a-long?

As an avid reader of historical fiction I should probably have read this book before now, but for some reason, despite its success and popularity, I never got around to reading it. Now that the sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, has been released and getting so much praise and attention too, it seemed like the perfect time to finally read Wolf Hall, and when I saw that there was going to be a readalong it helped motivate me to actually pick the book up and start reading. I also like the way this readalong is structured and hopefully I won’t have any problems keeping up with the schedule!

2) What do you think of Thomas so far?

I don’t feel that I know Thomas Cromwell very well yet, but as I’ve still only read the first three chapters I’m sure I’ll get to know and understand him better as I read on. However, each of these first three chapters has given us an insight into a different side of Thomas’s character. In the first, we get a glimpse of what appears to have been a very unhappy childhood, living with a cruel and abusive father. In the second, we meet Thomas again as an adult and we are shown his public persona, the part he is playing in the politics of the country, and his interactions with other important historical figures such as Stephen Gardiner and Cardinal Wolsey. And in the third we see Thomas in his role as a husband and father.

3) What do you think about Thomas’s feelings towards his son Gregory? Do you think he is too indulgent? Do you think his treatment of Gregory now will affect Gregory’s future?

I think it’s a good thing that Thomas is trying to avoid treating Gregory the way his own father treated him. This quote gives us a good idea of his feelings on this subject:

Bawling, strong, one hour old, plucked from the cradle: he kissed the infant’s fluffy skull and said, I shall be as tender to you as my father was not to me. For what’s the point of breeding children, if each generation does not improve on what went before?

I don’t think Thomas is being too indulgent, but it’s too early to say at this point in the novel what effect his treatment of Gregory will have on Gregory’s future.

See Kai’s post for other participants’ thoughts on Part 1 of Wolf Hall.

Classics Club August Meme – A Favourite Classic

11 Comments


The Classics Club are now hosting a new monthly meme and this month we are asked to write about our favourite classic. Like most of the other Classics Club members who have been participating in this meme I find it difficult to pick just one book. There are so many that I love and on a different day and in a different mood I might have chosen to write about Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Woman in White, Gone with the Wind or even a children’s classic, like my beloved Watership Down. But if I have to name one classic as my all-time favourite, it would have to be The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.

I’ll admit that other classics might offer deeper insights into life, more beautifully-written descriptive passages and more fully-developed characters, but this is the one I enjoy reading the most and that’s why it’s my favourite. It has such an exciting, entertaining plot (and lots of fascinating subplots), so much action and adventure – and one of my favourite fictional characters, Edmond Dantes.

I’m sure most of us have experienced some form of injustice at some point in our lives and can remember how it made us feel. The hero/anti-hero of The Count of Monte Cristo, Edmond Dantes, is the victim of an injustice so great that it completely destroys his life. Determined to punish his enemies for what they have done, he transforms himself into the Count of Monte Cristo and sets into motion an intricate plan for revenge.

I read The Count of Monte Cristo for the first time in 2006 and knew from the very first chapter that I was going to enjoy it. It’s a very long book – over 1,000 pages in the edition I read – but if you’ve never read it, please don’t let the length put you off. The story moves along at such a fast pace I remember being surprised to find it was a much quicker read than I’d expected. Don’t be tempted to read an abridged edition either because you would be missing out on so much. The plot is so complex I can’t imagine how anything could successfully be left out without spoiling the whole structure of the story.

I’ve also read two other Dumas novels – The Black Tulip and The Three Musketeers – and I loved them both, but not quite as much as I love this one. I’ve now read it twice and it’s on my list to re-read again soon for The Classics Club!

What is your favourite classic?

Seventy-Seven Clocks by Christopher Fowler

8 Comments

This is the third book in Christopher Fowler’s Bryant and May series following the investigations of two elderly detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May, who work for London’s “Peculiar Crimes Unit”. The first in the series, Full Dark House, looked back at their first mystery in the unit’s early days during World War II, while the second, The Water Room, was a fascinating mystery set in the present day and involving London’s system of underground rivers. This third instalment takes us back to 1973, when Britain was facing a winter of strikes and blackouts.

Seventy-Seven Clocks begins with two unusual incidents. The first is the death of a lawyer in the lobby of the Savoy Hotel, believed to be caused by a snake bite, and the second involves a man dressed in Edwardian clothing who runs into the National Gallery and damages a valuable painting. When more bizarre murders, accidents and abductions follow, Bryant and May discover that most of the victims are members of a large, rich family, the Whitstables. As they begin to investigate, the two detectives uncover a connection between the family and a Victorian secret society. Meanwhile, the receptionist at the Savoy Hotel, a seventeen-year-old girl called Jerry Gates decides to do some detective work of her own – but it seems that Jerry might have reasons of her own for disliking the Whitstables.

The solution to the mystery is both ingenious and completely ridiculous, but that has been the case with all three of the Bryant and May mysteries I’ve read and I’ve found that it doesn’t matter to me. In fact, the unusual and implausible plots are one of the reasons this series is so much fun to read and so different from anything else I’ve read. The other reason, of course, is that Bryant and May themselves are such wonderful characters. I find myself liking the character of Arthur Bryant more and more with every book. I love the way he refuses to leave no stone unturned or discount any possible theory, however unlikely it might seem. John May, being Bryant’s opposite in so many ways, is his perfect complement. One of the big differences between the two detectives is that May is willing to move forward and embrace new technology, while Bryant in many ways is still living in the past. As May says, “You find comfort in darkness. I prefer the world brightly lit; there’s so much more to see”.

The role of darkness and light is one of the themes explored during the story, but there were so many other things involved in this book I was slightly overwhelmed by it all! Pre-Raphaelite art, Gilbert and Sullivan societies, Victorian guilds (the Worshipful Company of Watchmakers), the British class system, the invention of electric light, and lots of other interesting topics and pieces of trivia. Christopher Fowler’s knowledge of London’s history is so impressive. Every time I come to the end of a Bryant and May book I feel that I’ve really learned something new.

If I have a criticism of this book, it’s that at nearly 500 pages it felt longer than it really needed to be, and I didn’t find Jerry’s storyline very interesting. It didn’t add much to the main plot in my opinion and could almost have been left out entirely. I thought the story was complex enough without it.

Oh, and if you’re new to Bryant and May and wondering if you need to read the series in the correct order, I would say it’s not necessary at all. It’s my personal preference to read a series in order if possible, but with these books each of the three mysteries I’ve read so far stand alone and are complete stories in themselves. I didn’t like this one quite as much as Full Dark House or The Water Room but I still enjoyed it and am looking forward to reading more Bryant and May soon.

The Second Empress by Michelle Moran

6 Comments

This historical fiction novel by Michelle Moran is set during the final years of Napoleon’s reign, between 1809 and 1815, and explores the French Emperor’s relationships with his second wife, Marie-Louise, and his sister, Pauline. I have only read one of Michelle Moran’s previous novels, Cleopatra’s Daughter, which is set in Ancient Rome and although I enjoyed it, I thought this new one, The Second Empress, was much better – the quality of her writing seems to have improved and the characters felt more developed too.

The story is told by three very different characters who take it in turns to narrate one chapter each. The first is Maria-Lucia, the eighteen year old daughter of Francis I, Emperor of Austria. Abandoning her dreams of marrying Count Adam von Neipperg, the man she loves, and one day ruling Austria as her brother’s regent, Maria-Lucia agrees to a marriage with the Emperor of France, Napoleon Bonaparte, as it will help to keep her father’s throne safe. Napoleon hopes she will be able to give him a legitimate heir, which his first wife Josephine was unable to provide. Maria-Lucia, or Marie-Louise as she became known in France, is a lovely, compelling character, intelligent, well-educated and talented. The portrayal of Napoleon is very negative (not that I had really expected anything else) but despite his cruelty to her throughout their marriage, Marie-Louise continues to perform her duties with dignity and grace.

Our second narrator is Pauline, Princess Borghese, Napoleon’s sister. She dreams of marrying Napoleon herself so that they can rule Egypt together like the ancient pharaohs and she is bitterly jealous of both her brother’s first wife, Josephine, who she encouraged him to divorce, and his second, Marie-Louise. Pauline is a spiteful, malicious person but of the three narrators, I thought her voice was the strongest and the most fun to read. She’s not a completely unsympathetic character because she is so obviously unhappy and miserable. She also has a lot of eccentricities – she’s obsessed with Egypt, she likes to bathe in milk, and she even uses her servants as footstools to rest her feet on. Although Pauline was a real historical figure, she’s not someone I’ve ever read about before so I’m not sure how accurate this portrayal is, but I thought she was a fascinating character.

Finally there’s Paul Moreau, Pauline’s Haitian servant, who accompanied her back to France after Haiti gained its independence from the French. Despite his loyalty to Pauline (and the fact that he has been in love with her for many years) Paul is aware of her faults and is able to feel sympathy for Marie-Louise too. He also still has hopes of returning to Haiti to help rebuild his war-torn country and this adds another interesting aspect to the story.

Although I have read other books set during Napoleon’s reign, this is the first one I’ve read which concentrates on the lives of Napoleon and the Bonaparte family. Before I started to read, I was worried that I might struggle because I don’t know a lot about this period of French history, but luckily this was not a problem. The focus is on the lives of the three narrators and their relationships with each other and the people around them; details of politics, battles and military campaigns are kept to a minimum (which could be either a good or a bad thing, I suppose, depending on your personal tastes in historical fiction). I was fascinated by the characters in this novel, particularly Pauline and Marie-Louise and was inspired to do some research and find out more about them – though as I had no idea how their stories would play out and didn’t want to spoil the book for myself, I waited until I had finished before I looked anything up. The author’s notes at the back of the book were helpful too and explained what happened to each of the main characters after the novel ends.

As I have so little knowledge of this subject, it wouldn’t be fair of me to comment on the historical accuracy of this book but I could tell that it had been well-researched – Moran had even included some extracts from real love letters sent between Napoleon and Josephine. A huge amount of information has obviously had to be condensed into 300 pages, so the book doesn’t really go into a lot of depth but would be a good choice if you’re looking for an enjoyable, entertaining historical fiction novel and don’t want to be overwhelmed with too many details.

I received a review copy of The Second Empress from the publisher via Netgalley