Classics Challenge June Prompt: A tour of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Monkshaven

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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. Our task for June is to create a Visual Tour of a scene or description from the book.

The novel I’m currently reading for the challenge is Sylvia’s Lovers by Elizabeth Gaskell. The story is set in the 1790s in the fictional town of Monkshaven which Gaskell based on Whitby in North Yorkshire. Whitby was also the setting for Bram Stoker’s Dracula and is a beautiful coastal town with a busy harbour and a ruined abbey on the cliff. I would highly recommend a visit if you have the opportunity!

In Chapter 2 of the novel Sylvia and her friend Molly are walking into Monkshaven so that Sylvia can buy a new cloak. While they are there, a whaling ship returns from a voyage to the Greenland Sea. I have chosen some images that I think help to visualise Gaskell’s descriptions in this chapter.

..but as they were drawing near Monkshaven they stopped, and turned aside along a foot-path that led from the main-road down to the banks of the Dee. There were great stones in the river about here, round which the waters gathered and eddied and formed deep pools.

Image from Wikipedia

The next turn of the road showed them the red peaked roofs of the closely packed houses lying almost directly below the hill on which they were. The full autumn sun brought out the ruddy colour of the tiled gables, and deepened the shadows in the narrow streets.

Image from Wikipedia

The narrow harbour at the mouth of the river was crowded with small vessels of all descriptions, making an intricate forest of masts.

Image from Wikipedia – sepia photograph by Frank Sutcliffe, dated around 1890

There the old stone cross was raised by the monks long ago; now worn and mutilated, no one esteemed it as a holy symbol…

Image © bythestars – Caedmon’s Cross at St Mary’s Churchyard, Whitby

The red and fluted tiles of the gabled houses rose in crowded irregularity on one side of the river…

Image from Wikipedia

The fresh salt breeze was bringing up the lashing, leaping tide from the blue sea beyond the bar. Behind the returning girls there rocked the white-sailed ship, as if she were all alive with eagerness for her anchors to be heaved.

Image from Wikipedia – Whitby 1886, a watercolour on paper by Frederick William Booty

I hope these pictures have helped bring Gaskell’s writing to life for you! I’ll be posting my thoughts on Sylvia’s Lovers after I’ve finished reading the book.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

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The Song of Achilles is a retelling of the Iliad, told from the perspective of Patroclus, Achilles’ best friend and lover. Patroclus, the son of Menoetius, is only a child when he is exiled and sent to Phthia to live with King Peleus and his son, Achilles. Achilles is destined to become the greatest warrior of his generation and when he goes to Mount Pelion to receive training from the centaur, Chiron, Patroclus joins him there. As the years go by the bond between Achilles and Patroclus strengthens and their friendship develops into love, despite the attempts of Achilles’ mother, the sea goddess Thetis, to separate them.

The Trojan War begins when Helen, the wife of Menelaus of Sparta, is abducted by Paris of Troy. Both Achilles and Patroclus are part of the Greek army who set out to defeat the Trojans and return Helen to her husband. I’ll stop there because if you already know the story, you’ll know what happens to Patroclus and Achilles – and if you don’t, then I won’t spoil it for you.

I used to be fascinated by Greek mythology as a child but as the years have gone by I’ve read very little on the subject, so I began this book hoping that it would be good enough to reawaken my interest in it. I haven’t read The Iliad and could only remember a few basic facts about the Trojan War that I learned at school, so I was worried I might find it difficult to follow the plot. Well, this wasn’t a problem because Madeline Miller made it all very accessible and understandable. I was surprised to find that I actually knew more than I thought I did and recognised the names of a lot of the heroes and gods who appeared in the novel. But although the Trojan War and the events leading up to it are an important part of the story, the real focus is on the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus. Their love story was really beautifully written and filled with emotion and although the second half of the book didn’t sustain my interest as well as the first half did, I thought the final few chapters were particularly moving.

Achilles and Patroclus each have qualities that the other comes to value and admire. Achilles is handsome, talented and brave; Patroclus is quiet and loving. They both also have flaws: Patroclus often feels insecure while Achilles is sometimes too proud. It’s perhaps because they’re so different that they complement each other so well. I thought writing from the viewpoint of Patroclus was a good choice because it allowed us to see Achilles through the eyes of someone who loved him and also because, as a sensitive and observant narrator, he could give us interesting insights into the other characters as he met each of them for the first time, including Agamemnon, Briseis, Thetis, Ajax and my favourite, Odysseus.

I would recommend this novel to people like myself who only have a basic knowledge of Greek mythology (or none at all) as well as people who have already read The Iliad and are much more familiar with the story than I am. The Song of Achilles has something to offer both groups of readers. I’m still not sure that this is a subject I’m ever going to be passionately interested in, but after reading this book I do feel more enthusiastic about reading other novels based on Greek mythology.

The Song of Achilles was the winner of this year’s Orange Prize. I haven’t read any of the others on the shortlist because none of them really appealed to me, but having read this one I’m sure it was a deserving winner.

The Adventures of Alianore Audley by Brian Wainwright

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I’m always looking out for novels about one of my favourite periods in English history, the Wars of the Roses and the reigns of King Edward IV and Richard III. When I came across The Adventures of Alianore Audley, described as “a brilliantly funny, subversive spoof” I was intrigued…it sounded like something very original and refreshing. I was even more interested in reading it when I found that the author Elizabeth Chadwick had named it one of her top ten historical fiction novels!

This book is a lively and entertaining account of the Wars of the Roses as seen through the eyes of Alianore Audley, a fictional 15th century ‘damosel’ who is present at some important moments in history and meets some of the leading historical figures of the period. She has an interesting personal story of her own, involving her marriage to the knight Roger Beauchamp and her career as a spy for Edward IV and Richard III, collecting information for ‘Yorkist Intelligence’, but the main focus of the novel is on Alianore’s sharp and witty observations of the historical events of the time.

The language Alianore and the other characters use is (deliberately) filled with modern slang and references that would sound ridiculous in a serious historical fiction novel, but perfectly suit the tone of this book. Alianore is quite pro-Richard and the way she explains the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower is about as believable as any other theory I’ve read. And if you’re a Ricardian you’ll probably appreciate all of her comments about “the obnoxious Tudor slimebag”, Henry VII, who she wishes she’d dropped down the shaft of the garderobe at birth.

I enjoyed Alianore’s jokes about her hennin (the cone-shaped headdress fashionable at the time) and I loved the idea of Richard reading the Court Circular and looking for his latest war horse in the “Used Destriers” section! Another thing I liked was the way so many parallels are drawn between 15th century and 21st century politics. Alianore is always worrying about Richard’s “image problems” and on another occasion she tells Edward his “ratings in the North have plummeted to their lowest levels since 1469”. I’m going to be completely honest though and say that unlike most of the reviewers of this book on Amazon and Goodreads, I didn’t find it hilariously funny. I did think it was amusing and witty but I suppose a sense of humour is an individual thing and while this book might have made other people laugh out loud it didn’t quite have that effect on me. This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it though, because I did.

Despite the light-hearted feel of the writing, it’s obvious that the author has a good knowledge of the period (and I’m sure it’s usually the case that you would need to fully understand a subject to be able to write a convincing parody of it). Although this book was not difficult to read I don’t think I would recommend it as a first introduction to the period because to understand most of the jokes you really need to be familiar with at least some of the history involved. You might still enjoy it, but you wouldn’t be able to fully appreciate all of Alianore’s wit and sarcasm. But if you do decide to give this book a try, I can almost guarantee that it will be unlike any other historical fiction novel you’ve ever read!

One final thing I should mention: The Adventures of Alianore Audley is published by BeWrite Books, who are now an ebook only publisher. You might still be able to get a print copy, but I read the Kindle version which I thought was reasonably priced and well worth the money.

Niccolò Rising by Dorothy Dunnett

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If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ll probably remember that I read (and loved) Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles earlier this year. I read the sixth and final book in the series in April and was planning to wait a bit longer before I started the House of Niccolò series, but in the end I couldn’t resist the temptation.

The House of Niccolò books were written after the Lymond Chronicles but are set in an earlier period (the 15th century rather than the 16th) and there are some links between the two series. Niccolò Rising, as the title suggests, follows our hero Nicholas as he begins to rise in the world to become a successful merchant and courier. And that’s really all I can tell you about the story. It has so many different layers and is so complex, intricate and cleverly plotted that I wouldn’t know where to begin writing any kind of summary. It’s also difficult to know how much I can say without spoiling things for future readers; if you started reading this book without knowing anything at all about it, it’s possible that you might not even be able to tell at first who the main protagonist of the series is going to be, as Nicholas goes by a different name for the first half of the book.

This book, like all the other Dorothy Dunnett novels I’ve read, was not the easiest of reads but in my opinion it was definitely worth making a bit of extra effort. I did find myself feeling completely confused on many occasions while I was reading, but some of my questions had been answered by the end of the book and the rest I’m hoping will become clearer later in the series or on a re-read. The biggest problem I had was trying to keep the characters straight in my mind. There are over one hundred of them listed in the character list at the front of the book (many of them are real historical figures) though with even the help of the list I still couldn’t seem to keep track of them all! The historical setting for this story is not one that I’m at all familiar with (the world of trade, banking and politics in Flanders and Italy in the 15th century), but I enjoyed learning more about it. Bruges, where a lot of the action in the book takes place, is somewhere I’ve wanted to visit for a long time and it has now moved even higher on my list.

All the time I was reading this book I was trying my best not to compare it with the Lymond Chronicles or Nicholas with Francis Crawford but really it was almost impossible not to. So the question is, as an introduction to the series did I like this book as much as the first Lymond book, The Game of Kings? The answer is no. The writing style is quite different and I didn’t find it as much fun to read. I was enjoying it enough to be in no doubt that I would keep reading to the end, but it never quite reached ‘unputdownable’ status. Nicholas, I suppose, could be considered more instantly likeable than Lymond (though it soon becomes obvious there’s a lot more going on behind his seemingly cheerful exterior than anybody realises) but he hasn’t quite won me over yet; we’ll see how I feel about him when I get further into the series.

When I came to the end of this book I didn’t feel compelled to immediately pick up the next one the way I did with the Lymond Chronicles, but I will definitely be continuing with the series. A copy of The Spring of the Ram is already waiting on my shelf.

The Bull of Mithros by Anne Zouroudi

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This is the sixth title in Anne Zouroudi’s “Greek Detective” mystery series. I haven’t read any of the five previous novels but that wasn’t a problem at all as this one worked perfectly as a standalone mystery.

The story is set on the small Greek island of Mithros, where the peace and tranquillity of island life is broken when a man is robbed and another killed by the escaping thieves. Seventeen years later, a boat appears in the bay and a stranger is thrown overboard. Until he can provide identification he is forced to stay on the island, where several of the islanders begin to recognise him. Is he connected in some way to the crime that took place all those years earlier? Soon another man arrives on the island of Mithros – this is Hermes Diaktoros, who has come to investigate. But where has he come from and who is he working for?

Hermes Diaktoros is a fascinating and unusual detective, a character shrouded in mystery. His name suggests a connection with Greek mythology (Hermes was the messenger of the gods) and there is definitely something slightly otherworldly about him. We learn very little about his past and he never reveals the identity of his employers either. He is referred to throughout the story as ‘the fat man’, which I thought might be irritating at first but it actually wasn’t. Despite him being such an enigmatic character (or maybe because of it) I really liked the fat man. He also reminded me in some ways of Poirot and in fact I think this series might appeal to Agatha Christie readers.

The pace of the story is gentle and relaxed, but not too slow. It also has a beautiful, atmospheric setting and would be the perfect book to take with you if you’re planning to visit a Greek island this summer! I enjoyed meeting Hermes Diaktoros for the first time and I didn’t feel I was at any disadvantage because of not having read the other novels first. Now that I’ve discovered this series I’d definitely like to read the earlier books and see how the fat man solved his previous five mysteries.

I received a review copy of The Bull of Mithros from Bloomsbury via Netgalley

The Sultan’s Wife by Jane Johnson

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The Sultan’s Wife is set in Morocco in the year 1677 and is narrated by two different characters. The first is Nus-Nus, a eunuch slave in the palace of the Sultan Moulay Ismail and the second is Alys Swann, an Englishwoman who has been captured at sea by corsairs and given to the Sultan as a gift. Amidst the dangers and conspiracies of Ismail’s court, Nus-Nus and Alys form a friendship and try to help each other survive.

I haven’t read any of Jane Johnson’s previous novels and chose to read this one purely because the setting sounded so interesting. I’ve never read a novel set in 17th century Morocco and I fell in love with the setting from the very first chapter. Everything was described so vividly, I wasn’t surprised to find that the author lives in Morocco herself and has already written two other books set in the same country. I learned so many fascinating little facts about Moroccan history and culture and about the building of the historic city of Meknes (which was intended to rival Versailles). There are also a few chapters where the action moves to England and the court of Charles II in Restoration-period London. It was interesting to be shown the English court through the eyes of Nus-Nus and to see the ways in which it was both different and similar to the Moroccan court. But although there are lots of descriptions of food, clothing, furnishings etc, the pace of the story never slows down and there’s always something happening.

Nus-Nus and Alys are fictional characters but Moulay Ismail, the Sultan, was a real person and is considered to be one of the cruelest rulers in history (one of his nicknames is ‘the bloodthirsty’). This is something that Jane Johnson portrays very convincingly – based on some of the things he does in this novel, living in his household must have been a terrifying experience! Nus-Nus and the other slaves and courtiers are constantly in fear of their lives, knowing that they are at the mercy of his whim, and they have learned to be extra careful when they see him dressed in yellow as this indicates he’s in a particularly murderous mood. Ismail’s wife, Zidana, is also portrayed as a villain; a jealous, scheming person who uses poisons and witchcraft to attack her enemies.

Of the two narrators, I didn’t find Alys Swann a very memorable character but I did really like Nus-Nus. In fact, he was the main reason why I enjoyed this book as much as I did. Nus-Nus was captured from his Senufo tribe as a young man and before coming to the Sultan’s palace had spent some time assisting a British doctor who taught him to read and write and to speak English. These skills make him invaluable to both Ismail and Zidana and are the reason why he’s in a position where he’s able to befriend and help Alys. As a black slave and a eunuch, Nus-Nus is often treated unkindly by other members of the court, but still has a lot of dignity and courage. I thought he was a wonderful character.

The story does touch on some controversial subjects including slavery, racism and prejudice, torture and cruelty (some of the things described in the novel are very brutal and characters lose their lives in some gruesome ways) but I thought everything was handled sensitively. The only criticism I really have is that Alys didn’t have a very distinctive voice; sometimes she didn’t sound any different from Nus-Nus and I didn’t immediately realise the narrator had changed. Apart from that, The Sultan’s Wife was exciting, informative and swept me away to another time and place, which is what I’m always looking for in historical fiction. I loved it!

Sacrilege by S.J Parris

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Sacrilege is the third in a series of historical mysteries set in Tudor England and featuring Giordano Bruno, a former monk who left his monastery in Italy to escape the Inquisition. Bruno is now in London working as a spy for Queen Elizabeth I’s Secretary of State and ‘spymaster’, Sir Francis Walsingham. At the beginning of Sacrilege, he is reunited with Sophia, a girl he met in a previous instalment of the series. Sophia has run away from her home in Canterbury after being accused of murdering her husband, Sir Edward Kingsley, and she wants Bruno to help clear her name.

Bruno agrees to travel to Canterbury with Sophia where he hopes to uncover the truth about Kingsley’s death and discover the real murderer, but he also has another reason for visiting the city: Walsingham has asked him to investigate rumours of a Catholic plot against the Queen. But soon after his arrival there’s another death and Bruno finds himself caught up in a conspiracy involving the remains of St Thomas Becket, the former Archbishop of Canterbury who was murdered in the cathedral centuries earlier.

If you’re new to this series it would probably be better to start at the beginning with Heresy, and read the books in order. I haven’t read the previous two novels and although I was able to follow the plot of this one without too many problems, I did feel I was missing out on some important background information. The novel is narrated in the first person by Giordano Bruno, but I felt I never really got to know him, which could be partly due to the fact that I started in the middle of the series. I thought he was likeable enough, but not really the charismatic narrator the blurb had promised.

I didn’t know anything about Bruno before reading this book, but he was a real person, an Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. It was interesting to read about him after finishing the novel and discover how much of his back story given in the book was based on the known facts about his life. We do meet some of the better known historical figures of the Elizabethan period too (Francis Walsingham and Sir Philip Sidney, for example) but although they do have a role to play, during most of the story they are kept in the background while the focus is on Bruno and his investigations.

The actual mystery storyline was interesting and complex. Although things did move forward at quite a fast pace, there were also a lot of long descriptive passages and I found I had to really concentrate on these because they sometimes contained clues and information that were vital to the plot. The novel appears to have been well researched and I thought the atmosphere of 16th century Canterbury, the city and the cathedral, was evoked quite well, but it all felt just a bit too modern to be completely convincing. I did enjoy Sacrilege but I don’t think I liked it enough to want to read more books in this series.