Rule Britannia by Daphne du Maurier

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I love Daphne du Maurier; whenever I pick up one of her books I know I’m guaranteed a good read. Although this one was not as good as some and I can certainly understand why it’s one of her less popular books, it still kept me gripped for all 300+ pages. I’m pleased I can say that because, having read other opinions on this book, I was concerned that it might be the first du Maurier novel that I wouldn’t like.

Published in 1972 her final novel, Rule Britannia, imagines that the UK has broken away from Europe to form an alliance with the US. This new nation will be known as USUK. The first twenty-year-old Emma knows about this is when she wakes up one morning to find that the tranquil corner of Cornwall where she lives is now under American occupation – there’s an American warship in the harbour, American marines stationed in the area and roadblocks on the routes leading in and out of the town. Already the Queen is visiting the White House and the President is preparing to come to Buckingham Palace. Despite reassurances from the government that the formation of USUK is essential for Britain’s economic and military stability, Emma’s family, friends and neighbours begin to grow increasingly concerned about the exact nature of the alliance and the effect it will have on their previously peaceful lives.

It can’t happen here, thought Emma, it can’t happen here, that’s what people in England have always said, even in wartime when they were bombed, because they were all together on their own ground. Not any more.

Although the story unfolds from Emma’s perspective, the real heroine of the story is her seventy-nine-year-old grandmother, Mad (short for Madam – unless I missed it, we aren’t told her real name), who is a retired actress. Mad and Emma live together with Mad’s six adopted boys whose ages range from three to nineteen, all of whom have suffered some form of tragedy in their early lives. Mad, even in her old age, is a strong-minded, independent woman who is determined to defend her home and family no matter what, and she plays an important part in Cornwall’s resistance to the occupying forces. But although Mad and her family believe they have been invaded, I should point out that we’re told the majority of British people are very happy with the alliance and that it’s only a small percentage of the population who are rebelling against it.

As with most Daphne du Maurier novels, this one does have some suspenseful and unsettling moments. I know from my past experience of her work that nothing is ever quite as it seems and I was wondering what surprises and twists she might have in store for the reader – but unfortunately I found the way the book ended slightly disappointing because I felt there was a lot more she could have done with the story. Another thing I didn’t like was the fact that one of Mad’s adopted sons, three-year-old Ben who happens to be black, appeared to have been included simply as an excuse to make racist jokes. The book was a product of the 1970s I suppose, but these comments are offensive rather than funny. These negative points, along with the overall strangeness of the book, stopped me from enjoying it as much as I’ve enjoyed her other books. It doesn’t compare to her best work and if you’re new to Daphne du Maurier I would suggest starting somewhere else.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

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I’d been wanting to read The Master and Margarita for a long time but had always felt too intimidated to pick it up. I expect there are probably other people who feel the same, so I want to reassure you that there’s really no need to be scared! Yes, it’s Russian literature, but it’s a lot easier to read and understand than I thought it would be. After just a couple of pages I could tell I was going to love it – isn’t it great when that happens?

It’s best if you know as little as possible before you begin, so to put it as simply as I can, The Master and Margarita imagines that the devil, in the guise of Professor Woland, arrives in Soviet Moscow and proceeds to wreak havoc on the city’s literary world. Woland is accompanied by a retinue of memorable characters including his assistant, Koroviev – a tall, skinny man in a jockey’s cap and broken pince-nez glasses – and a giant, talking black cat known as Behemoth. This storyline is interwoven with the story of Pontius Pilate, giving us an insight into Pilate’s thoughts and feelings in the period leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. A third thread of the novel, closely connected to the other two, features a romance between the writer of the Pontius Pilate story, a mysterious man who is referred to only as ‘The Master’, and his lover, Margarita.

This was a fantastic book – it was breathtakingly different and original, with so many different layers to it. There were some scenes that were so surreal and bizarre I had to read them twice to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood. I’m sorry I can’t give any examples of what I mean, but I don’t want to spoil any of the fun for you! Admittedly there were a few parts of the book where the story seemed to lose its way for a while, but the engaging writing, weird and wonderful characters and the dark humour all helped to keep me interested. There were some excellent set pieces too: the séance in the theatre, Margarita’s moonlight flight, the Great Ball at Satan’s, to name just a few that have stuck in my mind.

A quick note on the translation: the version I read was the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation which, as far as I can tell from reading other reviews, may not be the best one. Personally I didn’t have any complaints about this translation, though obviously I can’t compare it with the others because I haven’t read them.

This is a book that I would definitely like to read again in the future; I might not find it as stunning the second time round but I’m sure I’ll be able to pick up on lots of little details that I missed the first time. I hope I’ve convinced you to give it a try too!

Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie

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Death in the Clouds, first published in 1935, is one of Agatha Christie’s many novels featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.

Ten people are travelling on a plane flying from Paris to London. During the flight a woman is found dead in her seat – apparently a murder has taken place without anyone seeing it happen. Among the other passengers is Poirot, who can’t believe a crime has taken place right under his nose! The mystery proves a difficult one to solve and after landing in England the suspects are allowed to go back to their everyday lives. As Poirot continues to investigate, he uncovers some secrets about the murdered woman and discovers that more than one of her fellow passengers had a reason to want her dead…

Like many classic mysteries, the crime takes place in a confined space so that we know from the beginning who the suspects are. The fact that this novel is set on a plane makes a nice change from the usual country house! The suspects include a beautiful aristocrat with a cocaine addiction, two prominent archaeologists, a doctor, a dentist, a businessman, a hairdresser – and my personal favourite, a crime novelist, whose inclusion gives Christie a chance to have some fun at the expense of her own genre. The characters don’t have a lot of depth and there are only a few that we get to know well, yet Christie makes it easy to remember who is who. There are plenty of red herrings to make the reader suspect first one person and then another; it’s even possible that Poirot himself could have committed the murder!

I enjoyed studying the seating plan at the front of the book and the list of the contents of the passengers’ luggage in an attempt to work out what had happened – but as usual, I didn’t even come close to solving the mystery. In a way I’m glad that my crime-solving skills are so bad because it means I can be surprised by all the twists and turns of the plot as the author intended.

I’m having fun working through all the Agatha Christie books available from my library’s ebook section, so you can expect some more Christie posts from me in the near future. It’s funny because her books had never held much appeal for me in the past, though maybe I was just unlucky with the ones I was choosing to read. Although Death in the Clouds is not one of the best that I’ve read so far, it was still an enjoyable read.

Cousin Kate by Georgette Heyer

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I enjoyed my first forays into Georgette Heyer’s historical fiction novels last year and decided it was time to try some more. Cousin Kate, published in 1968, is one of her later novels and one that appears to really divide opinion – possibly because it’s not what people tend to expect from Heyer. Although there’s still some humour and some romance, it’s a lot darker than the other Heyer novels I’ve read. It also has a gothic feel and I couldn’t help being reminded of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.

Our heroine, Kate Malvern, is a young woman who has been left orphaned and penniless following the deaths of both her parents and who has been working as a governess to support herself. At the beginning of Cousin Kate, she has lost her position and has returned to the London home of her former nurse, Sarah Nidd. Worried about Kate’s future, Sarah writes to Kate’s Aunt Minerva, who invites her to stay at the family mansion, Staplewood.

On her arrival at Staplewood, Kate remarks that the big house is not very homelike. Aunt Minerva, Lady Broome, is a manipulative woman, obsessed with the family lineage; her husband, the elderly Sir Timothy Broome, lives in a separate part of the house; and then there’s Kate’s handsome young cousin Torquil, who can be charming one minute, violent and aggressive the next. As Kate begins to learn exactly why Minerva was so keen to welcome her into the family, the only person she can turn to for help is Sir Timothy’s nephew, Philip.

The gothic elements of the book come in the form of the descriptions of the house and its grounds, locked doors and strange sounds in the night, the ruthless scheming of Aunt Minerva, family secrets – and Torquil, who is considered ‘mad’ and spends much of his time isolated in a distant wing of the mansion where he is attended by his doctor and faithful servant. It’s always sad to read how people with mental illness were treated in the past, in a time when it wasn’t properly understood, and I could sympathise with Torquil’s situation.

I also really liked both Kate and Philip and enjoyed watching their relationship develop. Kate has a kind heart and an ability to always see the best in people, but she is also a strong, courageous woman who values her independence. Philip is a pleasant, sensible person and felt to me like a realistic character, if not a particularly interesting or memorable one. I thought he and Kate made a believable couple.

I love Heyer’s use of language in the dialogue between her characters and I thought there was just the right amount of slang in this book to set the story in its period without becoming too difficult to understand. In fact, the only character who used an excessive amount of Regency-period slang was Sarah’s father-in-law, Mr Nidd, and this really suited his personality, making him an amusing, vibrant character who seemed to leap out of the pages!

Although, as I’ve said, this was quite a dark Heyer novel which deals with some serious themes, I still thought it was an entertaining read. I can see that it might not be to everyone’s taste but I loved it.

The Map of Time by Felix Palma

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The Map of Time, translated from the original Spanish, is an interesting mixture of historical fiction, science fiction and romance. The book appealed to me as soon as I read the synopsis and saw that it was set in Victorian London, involved time travel and featured several real historical figures including Jack the Ripper, Joseph Merrick (The Elephant Man) and the authors H.G. Wells, Henry James and Bram Stoker. It sounded fascinating and it was, though there were a few aspects of the book that didn’t work for me at all. I thought it was too long and ambitious and tried to do too much.

The starting point for the story is 1896, shortly after the publication of H.G. Wells’ novel, The Time Machine, which captured the imaginations of his readers and convinced them that time travel could become a reality. One of the people hoping to travel through time is Andrew Harrington whose lover, Marie Kelly, was killed by Jack the Ripper eight years ago. Andrew believes that if he could go back to the night of the murder it might be possible to save Marie’s life – so he decides to approach Wells and ask his advice.

Wells also becomes involved in the life of Claire Haggerty, a young woman who has trouble conforming to Victorian society and longs to escape to the year 2000 where the ‘brave Captain Derek Shackleton’ is thought to have saved the world from destruction by evil automatons. But is it really possible for Andrew and Claire to travel through time or is time travel something that only exists in fiction?

I’ve read a lot of novels that involve time travel as a part of the plot, and while all of them obviously require the reader to suspend disbelief, some of them manage to make it seem more plausible than others. There are a number of theories put forward in The Map of Time and it all started to become very confusing, but for anyone with an interest in the intricacies of time travel, parallel worlds, paradoxes (is it possible to meet a future version of yourself, for example?) and the effects our actions have on history, you should find it interesting.

The biggest problem I had with this book was that the pacing and structure of the story didn’t feel quite right to me. The book is divided into three very distinct sections: the first deals with the Andrew Harrington story, the second follows Claire Haggerty and the third concentrates on H.G. Wells himself. This had the effect of making the book feel almost like three separate books in one and it took me a while at the start of each section to get used to the new characters and completely different direction of the plot. Then there’s the omniscient narrator who intrudes into the story at times in a mock-Victorian style. This can work well in original Victorian classics, but here I thought it felt forced and unnatural and it ended up annoying me.

I realise I’m making it sound as if I didn’t enjoy this book at all, but that’s not true. There were parts that I found fascinating and times when I couldn’t put the book down. I thought the quality of the writing was good overall and I probably wouldn’t have guessed it was a translation. But for a book which sounded so exciting and original, it didn’t quite live up to my expectations.

Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope

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Anthony Trollope was a new discovery for me last year and has now become one of my favourite Victorian authors. I read The Warden last April and Barchester Towers in November and then I swore I wouldn’t wait another six months before reading my next Trollope. And that’s exactly what I have done! Maybe it’s a good thing that I’ve waited so long though, because I love Trollope’s books so much I don’t really want to rush through them too quickly.

In this third volume of the Chronicles of Barsetshire, Trollope takes us away from the cathedral town of Barchester (the setting for the previous two novels) to Greshambury, a small town in another part of the county. Here we meet Dr Thorne, and his beloved niece, Mary. Mary’s birth was surrounded by scandal and she has been brought up by her uncle unaware of her mother’s family and the fact that she is related to the wealthy baronet Sir Roger Scatcherd, the doctor’s friend who is slowly drinking himself to death.

Another friend of the doctor’s is Squire Gresham, whose son, Frank, falls in love with Mary. Unfortunately the Greshams are having money problems and Frank’s family are determined that he must marry a rich woman, which Mary is not. The squire’s wife, Lady Arabella, does her best to keep Frank and Mary apart but will she succeed – or will something happen to change Mary’s fortunes?

As well as the class divide and the social stigma of illegitimacy, other themes include the corruption involved in Victorian politics and the effects of alcoholism. None of the Trollope books I’ve read so far could be described as having an enthralling plot and this one even less so. After reading the first few chapters, although I did enjoy them, I was starting to wonder when the story was going to begin. But although Trollope’s books may initially appear to be about very little, his plots are deceptively clever and intricate, and he has a way of pulling the reader into the story so that you become completely absorbed in the moral dilemmas of his characters. And he does apologise for the slow start too…

I feel quite an apology is due for beginning a novel with two long dull chapters full of description. I am perfectly aware of the danger of such a course… It can hardly be expected that any one will consent to go through with a fiction that offers so little allurement in its first pages; but twist it as I will I cannot do otherwise. I find that I cannot make poor Mr Gresham hem and haw and turn himself uneasily in his arm-chair in a natural manner till I have said why he is uneasy. I cannot bring my doctor speaking his mind freely among the bigwigs till I have explained that it is in accordance with his usual character to do so.

I mentioned in my review of Barchester Towers the habit Trollope has of telling us in advance what’s going to happen and he does it again in this book. The outcome of the novel is completely obvious from the beginning, so if you prefer your books to be full of suspense and surprises then Trollope is maybe not the author for you – although I do usually prefer suspense and surprises myself and yet I still like Trollope. I love his warm, witty writing style so much that I don’t at all mind the number of pages he spends introducing us to his characters and describing their backgrounds, appearances and personality traits. This is something that often bores me in books by other authors, but Trollope’s characters are so interesting that I really enjoy getting to know them all.

I was slightly disappointed that our old friends from the previous two books, Mr Harding, his daughter Eleanor and son-in-law Archdeacon Grantly didn’t feature in Doctor Thorne (although the Bishop and Mrs Proudie from Barchester Towers do make a brief appearance), but the new set of characters made up for it. In fact, the relationship between Dr Thorne and his niece Mary reminded me very much of Mr Harding and Eleanor. With the exception of Frank himself, I didn’t really like any of the Greshams or their relatives, the de Courcys (how much sympathy can you have with characters who are constantly saying things like, “If you marry a girl without a fortune, Frank, how are you to live?”) I did like Frank, Dr Thorne and Mary, and I also enjoyed all the scenes involving the two baronets Sir Roger Scatcherd and his son Louis, both unforgettable characters!

Next in the series is Framley Parsonage. I won’t make any promises this time about how long it will be before I read it, but I’m already looking forward to another enjoyable visit to Barsetshire.

Ghost Light by Joseph O’Connor

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Ghost Light tells the story of Molly Allgood, a real-life Irish actress who performed under the stage name Maire O’Neill and was engaged to the playwright John Millington Synge at the time of his death from cancer in 1909. Molly was fourteen years younger than Synge, she was a Catholic whereas he was a Protestant, and she came from a much poorer background. It seemed that almost everyone disapproved of their relationship including their parents, families and friends.

We first meet Molly in 1952, many years after Synge’s death. She’s living in poverty in London, dependent on alcohol, alone and desperate. We follow her over the course of a day as she prepares to take part in a play which is being broadcast on BBC radio and this story is interspersed with Molly’s memories of Synge and flashbacks to the early twentieth century.

As you’ve probably guessed, Ghost Light is not a happy book at all. Molly’s story is very sad, moving and poignant. The novel is written mostly in the second person, as well as following a stream of consciousness style, which made the book a bit harder to read than it needed to be, but Joseph O’Connor’s writing is undeniably beautiful and I did get used to the second person perspective after a while. There was also a chapter written in the style of a scene from one of Synge’s plays which I thought was a nice addition.

O’Connor states in his author’s note that although Molly and Synge were real people, this is a fictional story and most of the events described in the novel never actually happened. However, even if O’Connor’s Molly and Synge don’t bear much resemblance to their real-life models, they both felt completely realistic to me. Although I didn’t find Molly very likeable, I did love her narrative voice, which was bitter one minute and amusing the next, and this helped me warm to her character.

I won this book in last October’s Readathon and would like to thank Jessica of Park Benches and Bookends for providing a copy. I wish I’d had a chance to read it sooner, but my timing was actually perfect because I was in Dublin for a few days just last week and discovered some displays on Synge and Molly Allgood in the Dublin Writers Museum which I probably wouldn’t have appreciated if I hadn’t read Ghost Light!