July Reading Summary

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July has been a good reading month for me – I’ve read eight books and enjoyed most of them – but not a good blogging month! I’ve only had time to write about three of the books I read, so I’ll have to catch up with the others in August.

Here are the three I’ve posted about:

Sylvia’s Lovers by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart
River of Destiny by Barbara Erskine

And here are the other books I’ve read this month. I’ll be posting my thoughts on them soon, I promise!

The Second Empress by Michelle Moran
To Defy a King by Elizabeth Chadwick
Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E. Stevenson
In Her Shadow by Louise Douglas
The Spring of the Ram by Dorothy Dunnett

New Book Arrivals

As I can never seem to find time to highlight my newly acquired books, I thought it might be a good idea to incorporate them into my monthly summary posts. Here are some I’ve bought or received in the last couple of weeks (titles link to the Goodreads synopsis for each book):

The Queen’s Confidante by Karen Harper – I requested this through Amazon Vine as I had enjoyed Karen Harper’s last two books. This one sounds a bit different to the usual Tudor novels, focusing on the death of Henry VIII’s brother, Prince Arthur, and the mystery of the Princes in the Tower.
In a Treacherous Court by Michelle Diener – Review copy from Simon & Schuster. I haven’t heard anything about this book or author but it sounds like another interesting historical fiction novel.
Race of Scorpions by Dorothy Dunnett – Third in the House of Niccolo series. I bought this for myself so I would have it ready for when I finished reading The Spring of the Ram.
Goodbye for Now by Laurie Frankel – Review copy from Headline. Another book I knew nothing about, but I’m intrigued by the synopsis.
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller – Another review copy from Headline. This is a post-apocalyptic novel, not one of my favourite genres but I’ll give it a try.

I don’t really have many plans for my reading in August, but I’m intending to take part in the Austen in August event hosted by Adam of Roof Beam Reader. I’ve already read all of Jane Austen’s novels, but I want to read Emma again as it was the only one I didn’t enjoy the first time and I would like to give it another chance.

How was your July reading?

River of Destiny by Barbara Erskine

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This is the first Barbara Erskine novel I’ve read. Knowing how popular she is and that I usually enjoy the type of books she writes – books that combine history and the supernatural – I’ve been meaning to try one for a long time but have never actually got around to it until now.

River of Destiny is set in three different time periods, one contemporary and two historical. The contemporary story follows Zoe and Ken Lloyd, who have moved away from London and bought a converted barn in Suffolk near the River Deben where Ken can indulge in his hobby, sailing. Zoe is not very happy with the move as she does not share Ken’s passion for boats and has had to leave behind a job she enjoyed. To make things worse, she is starting to sense ghostly presences in and around their new home. Gradually Zoe begins to learn that some of these paranormal occurrences could be echoes of The Old Barn’s eventful past.

In the novel’s two historical storylines we learn more about the events of the past which are haunting Zoe in the present day. The first of these is set in the Victorian period and tells the story of Dan, a blacksmith who finds himself a target of the scheming Lady Emily Crosby. Dan’s involvement with Emily will have tragic consequences. The third storyline is set in Anglo-Saxon England in the year 865 where we meet another smith, Eric, and his wife Edith. Amid the threat of a Viking invasion, Eric has been asked to forge a special sword for his lord, which he calls Destiny Maker – but it seems that the sword will not be given the chance to fulfil its destiny.

These three stories all take place in the same area of Suffolk, although in different periods, and are linked by sightings of a ghostly Viking ship sailing up the River Deben through a thick mist. Of the three storylines the one I found the most compelling was the contemporary one, which I thought had the most interesting group of characters: the mysterious Leo who lives alone in The Old Forge, Rosemary Formby who is on a mission to prove that walkers should have the right to cross a farmer’s field, and twelve year-old Jade whose family own one of the other barn conversions, The Summer Barn, and who is determined to cause trouble for Zoe and Leo. It surprised me that the present day story was my favourite, as with my love of historical fiction I usually prefer the historical parts of multiple time-frame novels!

I enjoyed the first few chapters of the book and was anticipating a great read, but as I got further into the story I started to lose interest. I think the problem was that I just didn’t like the way the novel was structured. The time shifts were a bit too frequent and abrupt for me and I also thought the story was told using too many different perspectives. Sometimes each section would only be two or three pages long – or even less – which meant I kept being pulled out of the flow of the story just as I was starting to get interested in it. I’m sure I would have enjoyed this book a lot more if I’d been able to get fully immersed in one storyline and one set of characters before moving on to the next.

So, I was left with mixed feelings about River of Destiny and I’m not sure if I really want to read any of Barbara Erskine’s other novels. If you’re a fan maybe you can convince me to give her another chance?

The Secret Keeper: A Novel of Kateryn Parr by Sandra Byrd

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This is Sandra Byrd’s second novel featuring a lady-in-waiting to one of Henry VIII’s wives (the first was To Die For: A Novel of Anne Boleyn). I have not read that one or any of her other previous novels but requested this one from Netgalley as I’m always interested in trying new historical fiction authors.

The Secret Keeper is narrated by Juliana St. John, a knight’s daughter who becomes lady-in-waiting to King Henry VIII’s sixth and final wife, Katherine Parr (spelled Kateryn in this book). Amid all the intrigue of the Tudor court Juliana is a loyal friend to the Queen and as they get to know each other better a strong bond is formed between them. As we follow Kateryn’s story through Juliana’s eyes, we discover that Juliana is hiding some secrets of her own, including one that won’t be revealed until the end of the book.

Having read about this period many times before, I was familiar with the major events of Katherine Parr’s life including her marriage to Henry VIII, the King’s death and her relationship with Sir Thomas Seymour, and her support for Anne Askew, who was tortured and burned at the stake as a heretic. You don’t really need to have any previous knowledge though, as the story is easy enough to follow anyway (and there are some useful family trees at the front of the book too). Katherine is probably most famous for being the wife who survived, but this novel makes it clear that she deserves to be remembered for so much more. She was a Protestant reformer and wrote and published two books, Prayers or Meditations and The Lamentations of a Sinner. Bearing in mind this was the 16th century, this was a significant achievement (Katherine was apparently the first English queen to have books published under her own name) and I enjoyed the little insights we were given into women’s literacy. The Queen also liked to discuss philosophy and religion with her friends and played an important role in the education of her stepchildren, including the future Elizabeth I, another woman who valued literature and learning.

However, this book was more than just a retelling of Katherine Parr’s life story because Juliana is a fictional character with an interesting story of her own to tell. She goes through some very difficult and traumatic situations during her time at court and one of her ordeals in particular is something that still has a lot of relevance today. Throughout the novel Juliana also experiences prophetic dreams and she must decide what she should do with the special knowledge she has been given.

Juliana was a sympathetic character and I also really liked Jamie Hart, the Irishman who is Juliana’s romantic interest throughout the book. I wished we had spent more time with him, as I felt I didn’t get to know him well enough and I would have liked his relationship with Juliana to have played a bigger part in the story. Normally I find there’s too much romance in Tudor court novels rather than not enough, but in this case I just wanted Juliana to have some happiness and I found I was looking forward to Jamie’s occasional appearances at court almost as much as she was!

Considering the number of novels that have been written about the Tudor court and Henry VIII’s six wives in particular, it must be so difficult to find a different way to approach this subject. Sandra Byrd manages to do this to some extent, by telling the story through the eyes of a fictitious lady-in-waiting, but although I enjoyed reading it there was nothing that I thought really made the book stand out from other historical fiction novels of this type. I did appreciate the way the author had made an effort to use language appropriate to the period and avoided the excessively modern dialogue that can often spoil the atmosphere of historical fiction. Oh, and if you’re wondering about the spelling of Kateryn’s name, the author’s note tells us that there’s some evidence that the queen used this spelling herself, signing her documents Kateryn the Queen, KP.

I received a review copy of The Secret Keeper from the publisher via Netgalley

The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart

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Mary Stewart was a new discovery for me last year and since then I’ve been enjoying slowly working my way through her novels. I was looking forward to reading this one, The Ivy Tree, as I’ve seen it described as one of her best.

The Ivy Tree begins on a warm, sunny day when Mary Grey, who has recently moved from Canada to the north east of England, is walking in the countryside near Hadrian’s Wall. Suddenly she is approached by an Irishman who has mistaken her for his cousin Annabel who had disappeared eight years earlier. The man’s name is Connor Winslow (known as Con), the great-nephew of Matthew Winslow, owner of the estate of Whitescar. With Annabel believed to be dead, Matthew Winslow is intending to leave his fortune to his other granddaughter Julie – but Con thinks that he should be the rightful heir and he wants Mary Grey to help him claim the inheritance.

Although Mary explains to Con that he has made a mistake and she is not his cousin, he persuades her to impersonate Annabel as part of a scheme to enable him to inherit his great-uncle’s estate. And so Mary comes to Whitescar and, with the help of Con and his half-sister Lisa, easily manages to convince everyone that she is Annabel. But who exactly is Mary Grey and does she have reasons of her own for agreeing to go along with Con’s plans?

The Ivy Tree was published in 1961 and was written as a contemporary novel, although it now has a lovely, old-fashioned feel. I loved Mary Stewart’s descriptions of the setting, especially as I only live a few miles away from Hadrian’s Wall (the wall built by the Romans almost two thousand years ago) and I know exactly what the scenery she’s describing looks like. Her descriptive passages aren’t too long or too detailed, but include just enough information about the landscape, flowers, animals and birds to build up a vivid and realistic picture of the part of the country she’s writing about.

Mary Stewart’s novels (apart from her historical Arthurian novels) are usually described as romantic suspense. The romantic thread in this book was very weak in my opinion, but there was certainly lots of suspense. There are also one or two interesting subplots including one revolving around Julie’s boyfriend Donald, an archaeologist who is spending the summer working at a Roman fort in the area. And I should also mention the animals: there are some horses that have an important role to play in the story, especially Rowan the colt, as well as some funny scenes involving Tommy, a black and white cat.

Mary Stewart’s heroines are usually such nice, pleasant, likeable people, but the narrator of this book, Mary Grey, is an exception because she’s not so instantly likeable and her willingness to take part in Con’s schemes made me doubt and distrust her from the beginning. I didn’t really like any of the other characters either but I enjoyed being kept wondering who was ‘good’ and who was ‘bad’. As for the mystery aspect of the novel, I guessed the truth long before it was revealed but it was still interesting looking out for clues that might confirm whether I was right or not. This is one of those cleverly plotted books that would benefit from being read twice, so you can appreciate all the subtle little hints that the author has dropped into the story. I didn’t love the book enough to want to read it all again immediately but I did take the time to re-read the first chapter and noticed a few clues that had meant nothing to me the first time.

Of the four Mary Stewart novels I’ve now read, I liked this one a lot more than Rose Cottage but not as much as Touch Not the Cat or my favourite, Nine Coaches Waiting. For a better novel about mistaken identities and impersonations I would recommend Daphne du Maurier’s The Scapegoat. You could also try Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey, which I haven’t read yet, but which is referred to more than once by characters in The Ivy Tree when they’re discussing other famous cases of impersonations – yet another book to add to my list!

If you like Mary Stewart too, can you help me decide which of her books I should read next?

Six sixes from the first six months

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When I saw that Jo of The Book Jotter had posted a summary of the first six months of the year by putting six books into six different categories, I thought it was a great idea and the perfect way to look back on our reading so far in 2012.

You can see my own ‘Six Sixes’ below. I’ve changed a few of the categories slightly to suit my own reading and although some of the books I’ve read would fit into more than one category I’ve only listed each book once.

Six books I loved:

Here are some of my favourite books from the first half of the year. I loved Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles so much it was very tempting to include all six of them here, but I wanted to give other books a mention too!

1. The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett
2. Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
3. Here Be Dragons by Sharon Penman
4. The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye
5. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
6. Mariana by Susanna Kearsley

Six books by authors who were new to me:

I hadn’t read anything by any of these authors until this year and would be happy to read more books by all six of them.

1. The Last Summer by Judith Kinghorn
2. The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
3. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
4. Wonder Girls by Catherine Jones
5. Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay
6. The Hunger Trace by Edward Hogan

Six books with a mystery to solve:

I haven’t read many mysteries or crime novels this year but I enjoyed all six of these – especially my first two choices.

1. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King
2. Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters
3. Towards Zero by Agatha Christie
4. The Bull of Mithros by Anne Zouroudi
5. Every Secret Thing by Susanna Kearsley
6. Now You See Me by S.J. Bolton

Six books that took me back in time:

Historical fiction novels appear in most of my other categories too, but as it’s my favourite genre I decided to give it a category of its own.

1. The Crown by Nancy Bilyeau
2. The Secret Life of William Shakespeare by Jude Morgan
3. The Midwife of Venice by Roberta Rich
4. The Sultan’s Wife by Jane Johnson
5. The Adventures of Alianore Audley by Brian Wainwright
6. Treason by Meredith Whitford

Six classics I’ve read this year:

So far in 2012 I haven’t read as many classics as I was hoping to. Here are six of them – I’m sure I’ll be reading more over the final six months of the year.

1. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
2. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
3. Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome
4. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
5. Sylvia’s Lovers by Elizabeth Gaskell
6. A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

Six books that I had one or two problems with but am still glad I tried:

I found these books slightly disappointing but there were still some aspects of them that I liked.

1. Sacrilege by S.J. Parris
2. The Map of Lost Memories by Kim Fay
3. A Small Circus by Hans Fallada
4. The Land of Decoration by Grace McCleen
5. The Glovemaker by Stacia Brown
6. The Professor by Charlotte Bronte

~*~

So those are my sixes – will you be posting your own?

Here Be Dragons by Sharon Penman

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Here Be Dragons is the first in Penman’s Welsh Princes trilogy and follows the lives of King John’s daughter, Joanna, and her Welsh husband, Llewelyn ab Iorweth (known as Llewelyn the Great).

The book begins in the year 1183 when we meet Llewelyn as a ten-year-old boy, upset at having to leave Wales and move over the border into England following his mother’s marriage to an English border lord. The grandson of Owain the Great, King of Gwynedd, Llewelyn is homesick for Wales and as soon as he is old enough, he returns to Wales to reclaim his crown from his uncles. Llewelyn becomes Prince of Gwynedd and eventually rules most of Wales and devotes his life to securing the stability of his country as he believes that a united Wales will be stronger and better able to defend itself against the English.

Our other main character, Joanna, is the illegitimate daughter of King John. After her mother’s death she goes to join her father at court and when Joanna is fourteen the King arranges to have her married to Llewelyn in the hope that their marriage will help to bring peace between Wales and England. As the years go by Joanna begins to love Llewelyn but finds herself increasingly torn between her father and her husband.

As Sharon Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour is one of my favourite historical fiction novels I probably shouldn’t have waited so long to read this one, but I do tend to do that with authors I’ve enjoyed – I can never decide whether I would rather read all their books as quickly as I can or spread them out over as long a period as possible so I still have something to look forward to. I finally picked up Here Be Dragons a few weeks ago and I wasn’t disappointed – I loved it!

Penman does such a good job of making some very complicated periods of history easy to follow and understand. Before I read The Sunne in Splendour I didn’t know much about Richard III or the Wars of the Roses but by the end of the book I really felt I had learned a lot, and I had the same feeling at the end of Here Be Dragons. Of course these novels are fiction and you can’t assume that everything in a historical fiction novel will always be completely accurate, but Penman’s books are obviously very well researched and she does include an author’s note where she explains which parts of the novel are fact and which are fiction.

The relationship between Joanna and Llewellyn forms a big part of the plot, but that’s not all this book is about. As well as romance, the story also includes political intrigue, battles, feuds, rivalry between brothers, betrayal and forgiveness. I didn’t always agree with what Joanna did, but I did like her and had a lot of sympathy for her, being caught between her husband and her father; not a choice that anybody should have to make. Using Joanna, in her unique position, as one of the novel’s main characters meant we could see things from both a Welsh and English perspective and neither were portrayed as the villains. There’s no doubt that King John made a lot of mistakes and errors of judgement, but he is portrayed here as having some good qualities as well as bad ones and is shown in a better light than in other novels I’ve read about him.

Of the two Penman books I’ve read, although I loved them both I did prefer The Sunne in Splendour but that’s probably because I’m more interested in that particular period of history. I will read the other two books in this trilogy, Falls the Shadow and The Reckoning and will try not to wait so long this time before I get around to reading them!

Sylvia’s Lovers by Elizabeth Gaskell

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Sylvia’s Lovers is set in the final years of the eighteenth century in the small town of Monkshaven on the Yorkshire coast. During this period Britain and France were at war and the men of Monkshaven lived in fear of the press-gangs who regularly captured sailors from the town and forced them into action against France. Against this backdrop we meet Sylvia Robson, the beautiful young daughter of a farmer from nearby Haytersbank, and the two very different men who hope to marry her. One of these is Sylvia’s cousin, Philip Hepburn, a serious, reliable man who works in a draper’s shop; the other is the much more exciting and charismatic Charley Kinraid, a ‘specksioneer’ (chief harpooner) on a whaling ship. When Philip discovers that Kinraid is a rival for Sylvia’s love, he makes a decision that will eventually have tragic consequences for everyone involved.

Elizabeth Gaskell said this was the saddest book she ever wrote and I can definitely understand why she would have said that! Apart from the central storyline involving Sylvia, Philip and Kinraid, there are other characters with their own tragic stories to be told. Hester Rose, for example, who works with Philip in Foster’s shop and has been secretly in love with him for years without ever daring to say so. And Daniel Robson, Sylvia’s father, a former whaler who decides to take action to stop any more of the town’s young men being pressed into the navy.

Monkshaven is a fictional town but was based closely on the real North Yorkshire town of Whitby. A few weeks ago I posted a visual tour of Monkshaven – I hope the photos and quotes I included help to convey some of the atmosphere Gaskell created in her descriptions of the town. My own familiarity with Whitby (I’ve been there many times over the years) made it easy for me to picture the scenes. When we were told of a funeral procession slowly winding its way up the steps to the church on the cliff or the crowds gathering to watch a whaling ship coming in, I could see the images clearly in my mind.

Sylvia’s Lovers took a long time to read (it was 500 pages and felt even longer, partly because I had to concentrate on understanding the dialogue – I should probably warn you that this book does contain a lot of Yorkshire dialect) but the setting, the historical background and the characters kept me interested. Sylvia frustrated me at the beginning because she was so silly and immature, uneducated and unwilling to learn; by the end of the book though, she had changed a lot and I found myself starting to like her. I had sympathy for Philip, both before and after he made his terrible mistake, and I loved Hester Rose. Kinraid was the only character who never felt fully developed but I think that was maybe intentional.

This book reminded me of Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, with all the descriptions of scenery, the local dialect, the focus on rural working-class life and the overwhelming mood of sadness and misery. As one tragedy followed another through the second half of the book, it started to seem that there were going to be no happy endings for any of the characters. I can honestly say this was one of the most depressing books I’ve read and on a few occasions towards the end I wondered why I was still reading it. The answer to that is because I find Gaskell’s writing so beautiful and moving and because she had really made me care what happened to Sylvia, Philip, Hester and the others. This is only the second Gaskell novel I’ve read; the first was North and South which is a much more popular book, but I think I liked this one more despite it being so heartbreaking.