The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King

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This was the first book I finished in 2012 (the other books I’ve been posting about over the last few days were all reads from the end of 2011) and what a great book it was to start a new year with!

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice begins when fifteen-year-old Mary Russell, living with an aunt in England following the deaths of both her parents in America, is out walking one day and almost steps on a man who is sitting on a hill watching bees. This man happens to be the famous detective Sherlock Holmes, who has retired to the Sussex countryside. In Mary, Holmes finds a mind as intelligent and observant as his own, and the two soon become friends, with Holmes teaching Mary everything he knows about detection. Soon Mary finds herself working with the detective on what will be the first of many cases they’ll solve together and even after Mary leaves home to study theology at Oxford University, their friendship remains as strong as ever.

A lot of time in the first half of this book is spent introducing us to the characters and relating a few of Mary and Holmes’ earliest cases (one involving a woman whose husband is suffering from a mysterious illness and another involving an American senator’s kidnapped daughter). These two cases, and the third main one, appear to be unrelated at first but they do all add to the bigger picture. There was a section in the middle of the book where Mary and Holmes go to Palestine which didn’t seem to have much relevance to the plot, though I’ve since learned that we find out more about that in a later book in the series.

There were so many things to enjoy about this book: great characters, some intriguing mysteries to solve, a setting that I loved (the early 20th century, during and following World War I). I also liked the way the book began with Laurie R. King telling us that she had nothing to do with the book and had simply received a mysterious box of manuscripts written by Mary Russell herself. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice is therefore presented as if it was the first instalment of Mary’s memoirs, with her older self looking back on her younger days and the beginning of her relationship with Sherlock Holmes.

Most of all, I loved Mary Russell’s witty and engaging narrative voice. Her friendship with Holmes feels so natural and there’s some great dialogue between the two of them. The huge age difference (39 years, I think) is slightly disturbing when you think about it, considering Mary is only fifteen at the beginning, but it didn’t come across that way at all in the novel. Despite the differences in their ages and backgrounds, Mary and Holmes have a lot in common and Mary is Holmes’ equal when it comes to spotting clues and making deductions. I loved the portrayal of Sherlock Holmes too; he felt much more human and likeable than the Holmes I remember. And as they spend more time together, both characters change with Mary maturing into a confident young woman and Holmes eventually coming to accept her as his partner.

You might be wondering if it’s necessary to have read Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books first, but no, I don’t think it’s necessary at all (there are some references to people and events from the original books, but nothing that would prevent you from understanding this book). I have read Conan Doyle’s books, but it was a long time ago and I wasn’t really a huge fan, which I think might have actually made it easier for me to accept this depiction of Holmes and the other characters.

I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to discover these books (The Beekeeper’s Apprentice was published in 1994). The one advantage of coming to the series so late is that there are now another ten books to read without having to wait for each one to be published. I can’t wait to spend more time with Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes and hopefully I’ll have many happy hours of reading ahead!

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton

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After enjoying one of Kate Morton’s previous novels, The Forgotten Garden, which I read a couple of years ago, I was looking forward to reading this one until I saw that it was getting such mixed reviews. I decided I still wanted to give it a chance, but now that I’ve read it I can understand the problems other people have had with it.

The Distant Hours is narrated by Edie Burchill, whose mother Meredith was evacuated to Milderhurst Castle during World War II. Edie is fascinated by this because her favourite childhood book, The True History of the Mud Man, was written by Raymond Blythe, the owner of Milderhurst Castle. Yet for some reason her mother doesn’t like talking about what happened during the time of her evacuation or her relationship with Blythe’s three daughters, the twins Persephone (Percy) and Seraphina (Saffy) and their younger sister, Juniper.

When Edie, who works in publishing, is asked to write the introduction for a new edition of The True History of the Mud Man, she is given the opportunity to get to know the Blythe sisters who are now elderly women and are still living together at Milderhurst. As Edie begins her quest to discover what inspired Raymond Blythe’s famous story, she also starts to uncover the secrets her mother has been keeping for the last fifty years.

The story moves back and forth between Edie in the 1990s and Meredith and the Blythe sisters in the 1940s. What happened to Juniper’s fiancé who mysteriously disappeared on his way to visit her one night in 1941? What were the true origins of The Mud Man? Why have the three sisters never left Milderhurst Castle? Kate Morton keeps us wondering about the answers to these questions for hundreds of pages, revealing the truth very gradually, and although I was able to correctly guess at some of the story’s secrets, there were others that weren’t so easy to figure out.

The Distant Hours does have a lot of the things I usually love in a book: an ancient castle in the countryside, a literary mystery, lots of gothic elements. Unfortunately the setting, which could have been wonderfully atmospheric, never really came to life for me. Even the sections of the book that took place during World War II lacked the atmosphere I would have expected from a wartime setting. And so much was made of Raymond Blythe’s The True History of the Mud Man, there were times when I couldn’t help wishing Kate Morton had just written that story instead of this one!

There seems to have been a huge increase in the last few years in the number of books with dual timeframes in which a modern day character uncovers a family secret from the past, and to be honest I think I’m getting bored with books of this type in general. I’ve read a lot of them recently and this one didn’t offer anything very new or original. The main problem I had with this book though was the length. I don’t mind reading long books if the story is compelling enough to keep me interested, but the plot was too slow and meandering and I really think this book could easily have been at least 100 pages shorter. There were too many sections that felt repetitive and too many chapters that did nothing to move the plot forward at all.

I didn’t think The Distant Hours was a terrible book – just a bit disappointing and not really worth the time it took to read it. To those of you who’ve read all three of Kate Morton’s books, do you think it’s still worth me reading The House at Riverton?

Corrag by Susan Fletcher

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I first became aware of this book when Boof of The Book Whisperer said it was one of her favourites. I’ve been curious to see why she loved it so much and now that I’ve read it I agree that it’s a great book, although I didn’t think so at first.

In Corrag Susan Fletcher looks at one tragic moment in Scotland’s history – the Glencoe Massacre of 1692 in which thirty-eight members of the MacDonald clan were murdered by English soldiers and forty more died of exposure as they tried to escape. The story is narrated by Corrag, a young woman who has been branded a witch and sentenced to death for her involvement with the MacDonalds and the part she played in trying to prevent the massacre. As Corrag sits in her cell awaiting her death, she is visited by Charles Leslie, an Irish clergyman and Jacobite who is trying to find evidence to prove that the Protestant King William III was responsible for what happened at Glencoe.

Corrag tells Charles Leslie about her childhood in the north of England and the day her mother, who had also been accused of witchcraft, told her to ride into Scotland, where she believed she would be safe. With only her grey mare for company, Corrag rode “north and west” and made a new home for herself near the valley of Glencoe. Here she met the people of the MacDonald clan and experienced true friendship and love for the first time in her life. As Leslie listens to Corrag’s memories he begins to learn the truth about the Glencoe Massacre and at the same time is forced to change his own preconceived ideas about Corrag herself.

I wasn’t sure about this book when I first started reading. I actually put it down after the first chapter and decided it wasn’t for me. But then something made me pick it up a few days later and try again. Corrag’s narrative style is so unusual and original, it took me a few chapters to get used to it but after that I started to fall in love with the beautiful, lyrical writing. The writing style gives the book a very strong sense of time and place and I felt as if I was really listening to a voice from the past. Corrag is also very observant and appreciates the little details of life that most of us would never even notice. I loved seeing the beauty of the Highlands through her eyes as she rode through Scotland on her grey mare.

Each chapter of Corrag’s story is followed by a letter written by Charles Leslie to his wife at home in Ireland, telling her about his experiences in Scotland and how his opinions about Corrag are changing as he learns more about her life. Corrag of course has not done anything to deserve the accusations of witchcraft; she’s an innocent woman who loves the natural world and has a knowledge of herbalism and healing, like her mother before her and like many other innocent women who were burned at the stake. And yet no matter how hard things get for Corrag and how much cruelty she experiences at the hands of other people she remains a loving, kind-hearted person and never loses her faith in human nature.

Corrag is a beautiful, moving story and I’m so glad I didn’t give up on it.

Note: This book has also been published under the titles of Witch Light and The Highland Witch.

The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak

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I was so looking forward to reading this book. I love historical fiction novels set in Russia and this one sounded wonderful (and has such a beautiful cover too). It would be the perfect book to lose myself in over the Christmas holidays, I thought. Well, unfortunately it wasn’t. Or not for me, anyway – the majority of people who have reviewed this book seem to have loved it, which makes me feel even more disappointed that I didn’t.

The Winter Palace is described as ‘a novel of Catherine the Great’, which is slightly misleading as Catherine is not the main character and the book only covers her early years. Beginning with her arrival at court as the Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, a prospective bride for the Empress Elizabeth’s heir, Grand Duke Peter, Catherine’s rise to power is described by her friend, Varvara Nikolayevna. Varvara is a young Polish girl, the daughter of a bookbinder, who is employed as a spy, or ‘tongue’, at the court of Empress Elizabeth. The Winter Palace is really Varvara’s story rather than Catherine’s.

This is a period of Russian history I knew almost nothing about, so I can’t comment on how accurate any of the novel is. I found some of it confusing at first, due to my unfamiliarity with the people and events of the era, though there is a useful character list at the back of the book to help with this. It’s always good to finish a historical fiction novel feeling that you were at least able to learn something about the period and by the time I reached the end of this book I did feel that I had a better knowledge of the subject.

The setting of the book – the Russian Imperial court – was as fascinating as I’d expected it to be. I did enjoy the first few chapters of the book, where Varvara first arrives at the Winter Palace and becomes a spy for the Chancellor, Count Bestuzhev. The atmosphere of claustrophobia and danger was very convincing and showed what it must have been like to live in a world where everything you said or did was being spied on and reported. Reading about all the plotting, scheming, betrayal and changing allegiances made me feel relieved that I didn’t have to experience life at the Russian court myself!

I think the book might have worked better for me if it had been narrated by Catherine herself instead of her story being secondary to Varvara’s, who was not even present at court for long sections of the novel. I didn’t feel enough connection to Varvara and her personal storyline to stay interested throughout the chapters where she was away from the Winter Palace and I thought it was a bad decision to remove her character from the Empress’s household for such a long period of time as this was what led to me becoming bored with the story.

Really, this wasn’t a bad novel; it just didn’t have the depth I was hoping for, especially considering the length of the book. I don’t think I’ll be reading the sequel, though it would be interesting to see how Eva Stachniak continues the story.

A Classics Challenge – January: Charlotte Brontë

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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 seven classics in 2012 and on the 4th day of every month, Katherine will be posting a prompt to help us discuss the book we are reading.

The first book I’ve chosen to read for the challenge is The Professor by Charlotte Brontë. I’m almost halfway through the book and have been enjoying it so far. I’ll be posting my thoughts about the book itself after I’ve finished reading it, but for this month’s prompt, Katherine is asking us to focus on the author – in this case, Charlotte Brontë.

There are three different levels of participation this month depending on how far into the book we are, and I feel I’ve read enough of The Professor to answer the questions for all three levels.

Level 1
Who is the author? What do they look like? When were they born? Where did they live? What does their handwriting look like? What are some of the other novels they’ve written? What is an interesting and random fact about their life?

Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte was born in Thornton, Yorkshire on April 21, 1816, the third of the six children of Reverend Patrick Brontë and his wife Maria Branwell Brontë.

The Brontë Parsonage Museum

The Brontë family lived at Haworth Parsonage, now the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Charlotte Brontë is the author of four novels: Jane Eyre, one of my favourite classics, Villette, which I read last year, The Professor, and Shirley. I am reading The Professor now and will hopefully have time for Shirley too before the end of the year.

Charlotte Brontë's signature

Here’s an interesting piece of trivia about Charlotte: A tiny manuscript of an unpublished Charlotte Brontë story was sold at auction in 2011 to a French museum. The story was written in 1830 when she was fourteen years old and each page measures only 1.4 x 2.4 inches.

Level 2
What do you think of their writing style? What do you like about it? or what would have made you more inclined to like it? Is there a particular quote that has stood out to you?

I find it hard to explain exactly what I like about Charlotte Brontë’s writing style, but I obviously like it enough to want to read all four of her books! I love the way she expresses the feelings and emotions of her characters; she chooses exactly the right words and phrases to convey their sadness, loneliness and suffering as well as their moments of happiness and love.

However, there are a few aspects of her writing that I don’t like so much. Two problems I’m having with The Professor are the overwhelming number of references to physiognomy (judging a person’s character from their appearance) and also a tendency to include a lot of French dialogue which is not translated, making it difficult for a non-French speaker to follow what’s being said. Overall, though, I do like the way she writes and am looking forward to reading the rest of this book.

Level 3
Why do you think they wrote this novel? How did their contemporaries view both the author and their novel?

The Professor was Charlotte Brontë’s first novel, although it remained unpublished until after her death. The main character, William Crimsworth, is a teacher at a school in Belgium. As Charlotte herself (like her sister Emily) had spent some time studying and teaching in Brussels, she was able to draw on her own experiences when writing this novel. It seems that The Professor wasn’t very highly regarded during Charlotte’s lifetime and she was unable to find a publisher for it, even after she began to have success with her other novels.

Have you read any of Charlotte Brontë’s novels? What do you think of her work?

Don’t forget to visit Katherine’s blog post where you can find links to other participants’ responses. We are all reading different books so a variety of different authors are being highlighted this month.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

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2011, among other things, was the year I discovered that I do actually like Agatha Christie, having read a few of her books in the past which I didn’t enjoy very much. I think I had obviously just been choosing the wrong books because I read five in 2011 and loved all but one of them (The Mystery of the Blue Train).

This one, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, is set in the fictional village of King’s Abbott, home to our narrator, Dr James Sheppard, and the retired detective Hercule Poirot. When Roger Ackroyd is found stabbed to death in his study, Poirot comes out of retirement to investigate the murder. The suspects include Ackroyd’s stepson, his secretary and butler, a big-game hunter and one of the parlourmaids. With Dr Sheppard’s assistance, Poirot begins to piece together the evidence to solve the mystery.

I loved this book and it might even have become my favourite Christie novel so far, if not for one little problem: I guessed the solution to the mystery very early in the story. Now, this is not something that usually happens – I’m normally completely mystified by Agatha Christie’s novels and don’t even bother trying to solve them. This is the first one I’ve ever figured out correctly, but it did mean that in some ways the book was spoiled for me. Not completely spoiled – it was still fun watching for more clues that would confirm whether I was right or not – but it would have been nice to have been surprised when the solution was finally revealed, as the author had intended.

As most Poirot novels are written either in the third person or narrated by Captain Hastings (who does not appear in this book) it took me a while to get used to the new narrator. It gave this book a slightly different feel to the other Poirots I’ve read. I also thought the characters had a bit more depth than usual and I loved the scenes with the doctor’s irritating gossip-loving sister, Caroline, who added some humour to the story. And even though the ending of the story didn’t have quite the impact for me that I would have liked it to have done, I could still appreciate how cleverly constructed the mystery was. There were plenty of suspects, all hiding secrets of their own, lots of red herrings and some plot twists. I’m looking forward to reading more Poirot throughout the year ahead!

Thomas Hardy by Jane Drake (Wessex Books)

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Wessex Books are a publishing house based in Wiltshire who specialise in books about the history, mysteries and legends of the Wessex region of South West England. I was unaware of Wessex Books until they contacted me before Christmas to offer me a review copy of one of their titles, Thomas Hardy by Jane Drake, and as Hardy is one of my favourite authors I was very happy to receive this beautiful 32 page guide to his life and work.

Thomas Hardy, as you probably know if you’ve read any of his books, set most of his work in a fictional Wessex and Jane Drake’s book begins with a useful fold-out map and a list of the place names found in his writing. The pages that follow give some basic biographical information about Hardy with a focus on how his life related to his work. There are also some beautiful illustrations and photographs (many of them in colour) showing some of the places that were important to Hardy, including his birthplace at Higher Bockhampton, near Dorchester. And interspersed throughout the books are some of Hardy’s poems: Tess’s Lament, The Ghost of the Past, After the Last Breath, and a few others.

With all the poems, extracts from his novels, quotations, photos and captions taking up so much space, there’s not a huge amount of original text to read in this book. It’s not a comprehensive biography and at only 32 pages it’s obviously not intended to be. However, the book is lovely to look at and I’m sure it would make a nice gift either for someone who is interested in Hardy’s work or who is planning a visit to that part of the country.