The Taste of Sorrow by Jude Morgan

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The Taste of Sorrow is a fictional retelling of the lives of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, beginning with their childhoods and ending just after Charlotte’s wedding. Before I started reading this book if you’d asked me how much I already knew about the Brontës, I would have said I knew very little. And yet a lot of the story felt familiar to me – their early attempts at writing stories set in the fantasy worlds of Angria and Gondal, their experiences of working as governesses, their brother Branwell’s alcoholism – so I must have known more than I thought.

Although The Taste of Sorrow does seem to stick to the historical facts as far as I could tell, it’s important to remember that this is a novel and not a biography. Jude Morgan brings the Brontë sisters to life by giving us insights into their feelings and emotions, their hopes and dreams. His fictional Brontës are realistic, complex and three-dimensional, and would have been interesting characters to read about even if they had not been based on real people. We can obviously never know exactly what thoughts would have gone through the minds of the real Charlotte, Emily and Anne, but I had no problem believing that they may really have said and done the things that Morgan has imagined them to have said and done. And that’s the highest praise I can give to an author writing this type of historical fiction.

The Taste of Sorrow, as the title suggests, is not the happiest of books. The Brontës had a lot of sorrow in their lives, beginning with the death of their mother and two elder sisters, Maria and Elizabeth. They also had to deal with the usual challenges and obstacles that came with being a woman in the 19th century. When Charlotte suggested that she would like to be an author she was discouraged by her father simply because she was female. Instead, Mr Brontë pinned all his hopes on his son, Branwell.

I had read very little about Branwell before I started this book, though I knew he had caused his family a lot of pain because of his drinking. I thought Morgan portrayed him quite sympathetically, attempting to show the pressures and disappointments that contributed to his downfall, and how his sisters struggled to reconcile their love for him with their despair in him. Although I couldn’t like Branwell, his character felt as real to me as the characters of Charlotte, Emily and Anne.

The book itself is very well written, although the style is unusual and takes a while to get used to, but the strong point of the book is the characterisation and each sister is shown as having her own distinct personality. Morgan does focus more on Charlotte than the other two, though I can see that as the sister who outlived the others it probably made sense to tell most of the story from her perspective. But my favourite Brontë book is Wuthering Heights (I love it even more than Jane Eyre, which I know puts me in a minority within the book blogging world) and for that reason, the sister I was most interesting in reading about was Emily. Although we don’t get to spend as much time with Emily as we do with Charlotte, I thought Morgan’s portrayal of her was excellent and I could easily believe that his Emily was the person who wrote Wuthering Heights.

I was also pleased to see that Morgan does give Anne a lot of attention and she is not shown as being in any way inferior or less important than her sisters. Personally I loved both of Anne’s books, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey, and I think it’s sad to see how often she is overlooked or dismissed.

The Taste of Sorrow will obviously be of particular interest to Brontë fans, but I think it would also be enjoyed by a wider audience as an interesting and compelling historical fiction novel in its own right. Now I just need to read the remaining two Brontë novels I still haven’t read: The Professor and Shirley.

Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola

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Thérèse is a young woman trapped in an unhappy marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille Raquin. On the surface she appears quiet and passive, never voicing an opinion of her own. But underneath Thérèse is a passionate person who longs to break away from her boring, oppressive existence. When Camille introduces her to an old friend, Laurent, the two begin an affair. Desperate to find a way in which they can be together, Thérèse and Laurent are driven to commit a terrible crime – a crime that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

If you think I’ve given too much away then I can tell you that this crime takes place quite early in the story and is not the climax of the book. The point of the story is what happens afterwards when Zola begins to explore the psychological effects this action has on the characters.

Thérèse Raquin, as you will have guessed, is a very dark book which becomes increasingly feverish and claustrophobic with scenes of violence and cruelty. I haven’t read much 19th century French literature, apart from a few books by Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo, and one thing that struck me about Zola’s writing was how much more daring and graphic this book is than British novels from the same period. The reader becomes locked inside the tormented minds of Thérèse and Laurent, sharing their fear and terror, their nightmares and sleepless nights, their inability to enjoy being together because the horror of what they have done stands between them. If you’ve read Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment or Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, there are some similarities here.

This book could be enjoyed just for the dramatic plot (it’s as tense and gripping as any modern thriller) but I also thought the four main characters – Thérèse, Laurent, Camille and Madame Raquin – were fascinating and very vividly drawn. Zola apparently said that his aim was to create characters with different temperaments and see how each of them reacted to the situation they were in.

As the first book I’ve read by Zola, I wasn’t sure what I could expect from Thérèse Raquin but I thought it was excellent and I’ll certainly be reading more of his books.

The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer

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The Invisible Bridge begins in 1937 and follows the fortunes of three Hungarian Jewish brothers – Andras, Tibor and Matyas Levi – as they try to survive in a Europe torn apart by World War II. At the beginning of the book, Andras is preparing to leave Budapest and go to Paris to study architecture. Soon after his arrival in France, Andras meets Klara Morgenstern, a woman nine years older than himself, a ballet teacher with a teenage daughter. Andras and Klara fall in love, but Klara has secrets in her past – secrets that she would prefer not to share with Andras.

Andras and Klara’s story is played out against a backdrop of wartime Paris, Budapest, Ukraine and parts of the Hungarian countryside. The complex relationship between Andras and Klara is always at the heart of the novel but to dismiss this book as just another romance is unfair because it’s so much more than that.

Despite reading a lot of novels set during World War II, this is the first one I’ve read that is told from a Hungarian perspective. Hungary was allied with Germany which meant this story approached things from a slightly different angle than most other books I’ve read about the war and as I knew almost nothing about the role Hungary played, I was able to learn a lot from this book. And of course, because Andras and his family are Jews the novel is very much from a Jewish viewpoint. We see how it grew increasingly dangerous to be a Jew living in wartime Europe and how the Levi family became desperate to escape to safety. And when eventually Hungary finds itself under German occupation, we see that the Hungarian Jews fared no better than Jews elsewhere in Europe.

I enjoyed this book but it wasn’t perfect. There were times when I thought the balance between the romance storyline and the war aspect wasn’t quite right. And some of the characters needed more depth. I really liked Andras at first as he was a character who was easy to like and sympathise with, but as the story went on I started to find him a little bit too perfect and after spending more than 600 pages with him I wished he’d had a few flaws just to make him more interesting. I also think it would have been a nice touch if part of the book had been written from another character’s point of view. Not really a criticism of the book – I just think it would have added another dimension to the story and with the book being so epic in scope, the opportunity was there to do this.

The biggest problem I had with the book was the length! I’m usually quite happy to immerse myself in a long book but unlike some stories which do take a long time to tell, I thought this one could easily have been a lot shorter. My attention started to wander somewhere in the middle of the book when a lot of time was spent describing Andras’s life in the forced labour service (Jews were no longer allowed to serve in the actual Hungarian army but instead were expected to do jobs such as felling trees and clearing minefields) but things did pick up again over the last hundred pages.

In fact, the final section of the book, with its descriptions of life in Budapest towards the end of the war is so compelling and filled with so much tension, it made it worth sticking with the book through the less interesting chapters in the middle. And of course, I was genuinely worried for some of the characters so I had to keep reading to make sure they survived to the end of the book! I thought Orringer did a good job of keeping us in suspense wondering who would live or die and despite the few minor negative points I’ve mentioned above, I loved The Invisible Bridge.

July Reading Summary

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Another month over and another ‘Reading Summary’. I loved so many of the books I read in July that I’ve found it almost impossible to choose just two or three favourites like I usually do…so instead I’ve chosen six.

Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson – I was worried this book might not live up to the hype, but I loved it and couldn’t put it down.
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy – one of the Hardy books I was most looking forward to reading and it didn’t disappoint.
Therese Raquin by Emile Zola – my first experience of Zola. I was very impressed and will definitely be reading more of his work.

I also read three books set during World War II and all three were among my favourite books of the month too.

The Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons – a great story about an Austrian girl working as a maid in England during the war.
The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer – I started reading this in June and finally finished it this month. It’s a long book but I thought it was definitely worth the time and effort.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford – I’d been wanting to read this one for ages, so I was pleased to find I loved it as much as I’d hoped I would!

Other books read this month:

The Somnambulist by Essie Fox
The Road to Wanting by Wendy Law-Yone
Powder and Patch by Georgette Heyer
The Swimmer by Roma Tearne
Burned by Thomas Enger
The Observations by Jane Harris
The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie
The Birth of Love by Joanna Kavenna
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin
The Champion by Elizabeth Chadwick

All outstanding reviews have been written and will hopefully be posted in the next few weeks, so you shouldn’t have long to wait to find out what I thought about all of these books.

What have you been reading in July? Which books do you hope to read in August?

Powder and Patch by Georgette Heyer

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Philip Jettan has grown up in the country on his family estate and has never shown any interest in fashionable society. As he grows older he falls in love with his childhood friend and neighbour, Cleone Charteris, but Cleone is unimpressed by Philip’s simple country ways and makes it clear she’s looking for a man with better manners and nicer clothes. And so, with the help of his Uncle Tom, Philip goes to Paris to learn how to be a gentleman…but when ‘le petite Philippe’ returns wearing powder and patches, writing French poetry and fighting duels, Cleone starts to wish she could have the old Philip back.

Powder and Patch is a very early Georgette Heyer novel and in my opinion not an example of her best work. If this had been my first experience of Heyer I think I would have been disappointed, but because I’ve read and enjoyed some of her other novels I’m prepared to accept that I’ll come across the occasional book that’s not as good. And having read some of her later books, it was interesting to see an early indication of her storytelling ability and talent for witty dialogue. There’s a lot of humour in the story but I didn’t find it as amusing as it was obviously intended to be – although I have to say, the final few chapters were quite funny and redeemed the book for me.

None of the characters in this book seemed to have much depth, with Cleone being particularly silly, especially in comparison to some of the stronger, more complex heroines in the other Heyer books I’ve read. I found it difficult to warm to her from the start because I thought Philip was fine the way he was: sincere, honest and reliable, and Cleone’s inability to accept him made me feel annoyed with her. The moral of the story is obvious: that outward appearances can be deceiving and it’s what’s inside that counts.

This book is set in the Georgian era, rather than the Regency period which Heyer is more famous for, and this gives the story a slightly different feel, although I don’t personally have any preference for one period over the other. I should point out that if you’re like me and have only a very basic knowledge of the French language (or none at all) be warned that there are a lot of French phrases scattered throughout the book, including an entire poem written in French. I don’t think it actually affected my understanding of the plot at all but I did keep wondering if I might be missing something.

Powder and Patch is a short novel but just the right length really because I don’t think the plot would have been strong enough to sustain a longer book. I found it a very quick and easy read which kept me entertained for a while, but definitely the weakest of the Heyer novels I’ve read so far.

I’m part of the Transworld Book Group!

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It’s time for the latest reading challenge from Transworld! Like their previous challenges (which included the 2010 Summer Reading Challenge and the Great Transworld Crime Caper) this one is open to EU residents only. You can choose four books from a list of fifteen and as you review each book, Transworld will send you the next one.

Here’s the list:

1. The Sandalwood Tree by Elle Newmark
2. Black Swan Rising by Lee Carroll
3. The Secrets Between Us by Louise Douglas
4. Teacher, Teacher! by Jack Sheffield
5. Death Sentence by Mikkel Birkegaard
6. Crippen by John Boyne
7. Caligula by Douglas Jackson
8. Twelve by Jasper Kent
9. The Obscure Logic of the Heart by Priya Basil
10. Nothing But Trouble by Rachel Gibson
11. The Colour of Death by Michael Cordy
12. Odin’s Mission by James Holland
13. Legacy by Danielle Steel
14. The Water Room by Christopher Fowler
15. The Bomber by Liza Marklund

If you live in the EU and you’d like to take part, all you need to do is leave a comment on Transworld’s blog, Between the Lines, and they will contact you to ask for your book selections and address.

So which books did I choose?


The Sandalwood Tree by Elle Newmark


The Secrets Between Us by Louise Douglas


The Water Room by Christopher Fowler


The Obscure Logic of the Heart by Priya Basil

Who else is taking part in this? What do you think of my choices?

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

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One day in 1986 Henry Lee stands outside Seattle’s Panama Hotel. The building is being renovated and has been opened up for the first time in over forty years. As Henry watches, a number of items are carried up to the street. These things belonged to the Japanese American families who were ‘evacuated’ from their homes during the second world war. They had stored their possessions in the hotel basement but never came back to reclaim them. This is an important historical discovery, but for Henry it also has personal significance as it brings back memories of one particular Japanese family and a girl called Keiko…

Henry and Keiko are both just twelve years old when they become friends in 1942. He is the only Chinese boy and she the only Japanese girl in an all-white school. Unfortunately Henry’s father disapproves of their relationship – China and Japan have been involved in conflict for years and he considers all Japanese people to be the enemy. And with Pearl Harbor still fresh in people’s minds, Japan is America’s enemy too. Henry’s parents make him wear an “I am Chinese” button when he goes out in case anyone mistakes him for a Japanese boy. When the US government decide to round up thousands of Japanese people and send them to internment camps (allegedly to stop them from spying) Henry and Keiko find themselves separated.

The story of Henry and Keiko’s love and the fate of America’s Japanese population is just one part of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet; the book also looks at the difficult relationship between Henry and his father, racial tensions in the 1940s, the Seattle jazz scene and the importance of music in our lives. The novel is heartbreaking in places and heartwarming in others (the ‘bitter and sweet’ of the title), yet it never became too sentimental for me. It’s a lovely, tender, moving story from beginning to end, but at the same time it’s a story that helps to educate the reader about an aspect of World War II that rarely seems to be given any attention today. I feel ashamed that I knew nothing about the way Japanese American people were treated during the war and I’m pleased that this gap in my knowledge has now been rectified somewhat.

So many of the books I’ve read recently have dual timeframes. In this book the narrative is split between 1942 and 1986, but for once I found both periods equally compelling to read about. As for the characters, the good ones are very good and the bad ones are very bad, yet they still feel like real, believable people rather than two-dimensional stereotypes. I really loved both Henry and Keiko. They were characters I genuinely cared about and I felt emotionally invested in their story, rather than just being a passive observer. And someone else who deserves a mention is Sheldon, a black saxophone player who becomes a friend of Henry’s, the type of friend I think we would all like to have!

As you might have guessed by now, I really loved this book – and I think it might even be one of my favourite books of the year so far. I had added it to my wish list as soon as it started appearing on so many American book blogs a couple of years ago and now that I’ve finally had a chance to read it for myself I’m so glad it was as good as I’d hoped it would be!