A Plague of Serpents by KJ Maitland

9 Comments

This is the fourth and final book in the Daniel Pursglove series by KJ Maitland (who has also published under the name Karen Maitland). Although I’ve done my best to avoid spoilers in this review, I wouldn’t recommend starting with this book anyway; the plots are complex and there are lots of characters to keep track of, so this is a series that should really be read in order, beginning with The Drowned City and moving on to Traitor in the Ice and Rivers of Treason.

This fourth novel, A Plague of Serpents, is set in the spring of 1608. It’s been three years since the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a failed attempt on the life of King James I of England and VI of Scotland by Catholic conspirators. One of the escaped conspirators, a man known only as Spero Pettingar, remains unidentified and uncaptured, but Daniel Pursglove is still on his trail. The King’s man, Charles FitzAlan, who released Pursglove from Newgate Prison on the condition that he would hunt down Spero Pettingar in return, is growing impatient; the longer Pettingar remains on the loose, the longer the King’s life remains at risk.

In search of answers, Daniel infiltrates a secret group of Catholics known as the Serpents who are plotting another assassination attempt. However, he has also become aware of a second group, the Wyverns, who are planning to use the Serpents as pawns and then seize control of the throne for themselves. To make things even more dangerous for Daniel, there are people within both factions who know too much about him and are prepared to threaten and blackmail him to get what they want.

Unlike the previous three novels, which took us to Bristol, Sussex and Yorkshire respectively, this one is set in London and while floods, frosts and thaws played a big part in those three books, the natural environment is less significant in this one. Instead of extreme weather conditions, this time the public have an outbreak of plague to deal with. I’ve always found the plague an interesting topic to read about, even more so since our own recent pandemic, but it doesn’t actually form a very big part of the book despite the title and prologue which made me think otherwise! Other than that, Maitland does her usual excellent job of creating an immersive and believable 17th century world. Rather than breaking the flow of the story to explain the meanings of terms and phrases, she saves these for a glossary at the end of the book, so if you want to know what a bene-feaker is, what a palterer does or what a cracknel tastes like, you’ll have your chance to find out.

The characters in the novel are a mixture of real and fictional; some, like Robert Cecil, are well known historical figures, but others are more obscure – I was surprised to find that the brothel-keeper Donna Britannica Hollandia really existed! With this being the last in the series, the storylines for the characters who have been with us for several books are wrapped up in one way or another and I was pleased to see that my theory about one particular character was proved correct.

Although I did enjoy A Plague of Serpents, I felt that it, like the earlier books, was far more complicated than it really needed to be. With several different groups of conspirators and others at court working with or against each other for their own purposes, it was difficult at times to remember who was on which side and who knew what. Otherwise, this was a perfect ending to the series and I will be interested to see whether Maitland continues to write historical mysteries/thrillers like these or goes back to the kind of standalone historical novels she wrote earlier in her career.

Thanks to Headline Review for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 17/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

The Household by Stacey Halls

17 Comments

Urania Cottage in Shepherd’s Bush, London, was a home for ‘fallen women’ founded in 1846 by Charles Dickens and Angela Burdett-Coutts. Their vision was to provide a safe place for young women to rehabilitate after serving prison sentences or working on the streets as prostitutes. At Urania Cottage they would receive an education and the opportunity to train as domestic servants, enabling them to start new, more respectable lives overseas. In her latest novel, The Household, Stacey Halls imagines the stories of some of these women.

During the period covered in the novel, there are many young women staying at Urania Cottage, but Halls chooses to focus on two of them. One is Martha who, while trying to rebuild her own life at the cottage, is also worrying about her sister, Emily, who has disappeared. As Martha grows more desperate about Emily, she is driven to make a decision she may later regret. The other is Josephine, who had expected a close friend to accompany her to Urania Cottage. When the friend never arrives, Josephine must decide whether to continue participating in the scheme or leave in search of happiness elsewhere.

Dickens himself is mentioned now and then but always stays in the background, never becoming an actual character in the novel. Angela Burdett-Coutts, on the other hand, has a much larger role. We meet Angela as a woman in her early thirties who several years earlier inherited a fortune from her banker grandfather, making her one of England’s wealthiest people. She is becoming known as a philanthropist and Urania Cottage is one of her first big projects.

Angela’s privileged lifestyle means she struggles to truly understand the needs of the women at the cottage, but she and Dickens both enter into the project with the best intentions. However, despite Angela’s wealth and position she still has problems of her own to deal with – such as being stalked by Richard Dunn. She had thought she was safe from Dunn when he was sent to prison for four years, but now he’s been released early and is on her trail again. As I read, I wondered whether this was a fictitious storyline, but I looked it up and found that, yes, Richard Dunn was a real person and did obsessively pursue Angela Burdett-Coutts as described in the book. It seems that other parts of the novel I had assumed were invented were also based on historical fact; after finishing the book I was interested to learn that many of the incidents described as happening at Urania Cottage were taken from Dickens’ letters to Angela and even inspired his own David Copperfield.

The Household is fascinating in many ways, yet it’s probably my least favourite of Stacey Halls’ books. The separate stories of Angela, Josephine and Martha never quite blend together properly and give the novel a disjointed feel. I found the first half very slow and although there’s a twist towards the end that I hadn’t seen coming, it happens too late to really change the way I felt about the book overall. Still, I’m pleased to have had the opportunity to learn about life at Urania Cottage and will look forward to whatever Stacey Halls writes next.

Thanks to Manilla Press for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 16/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

Historical Musings #85: An update for May

15 Comments

It’s been a few months since my last Historical Musings post, so I thought I’d start by taking a look at what’s going on in the world of historical fiction and then give an update on my own current reading.

~

First, like many readers, I was very sorry to hear the news of CJ Sansom’s death at the end of April. Sansom’s Shardlake series set in Tudor England is one of my favourite historical mystery series and I would highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t yet discovered it (try to start with the first book, Dissolution, if you can). Sansom recreates the feel and atmosphere of the period better than almost any author I can think of. It’s particularly sad that his death came just days before the new TV adaptation of Shardlake was shown on Disney+. I still haven’t got round to reading Tombland, the final book in the series, but I’m pleased that I still have it to look forward to now that I know there won’t be another one.

FictionFan has posted a lovely tribute to Sansom on her blog here.

~

You may have already seen my post on the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction shortlist, which was announced on 1st May, but if you missed it here are the six shortlisted titles:

The New Life by Tom Crewe
Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein
My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor
In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas
Absolutely and Forever by Rose Tremain
The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

I’ve now read three of these books, My Father’s House, Hungry Ghosts and The House of Doors, although I haven’t had time to review the last two yet. So far my favourite is My Father’s House but I’m hoping to read at least one more before the prize is announced in June.

~

Apart from my Walter Scott Prize reading, my most recent historical fiction reads include The Household by Stacey Halls, a book about Urania Cottage, a home for fallen women founded by Charles Dickens and Angela Burdett-Coutts, and A Court of Betrayal by Anne O’Brien, the story of Johane de Geneville, the wife of Roger Mortimer. I’ve also just finished a fascinating work of historical non-fiction – The Black Count by Tom Reiss, a biography of the father of one of my favourite classic authors, Alexandre Dumas. Again, I’m behind with my reviews but will be posting my thoughts on all of these as soon as I can!

I haven’t forgotten that one of my reading resolutions for 2024 was to read more historical fiction in translation. I got off to a good start, reading Shūsaku Endō’s Silence (translated from Japanese by William Johnston) in January and then Angharad Price’s The Life of Rebecca Jones (translated from Welsh by Lloyd Jones) in March, but sadly I haven’t read any more since then and I’m in need of inspiration! Book Riot’s new list of 8 of the Best Translated Historical Fiction Novels looks worth exploring, but I would love to hear your recommendations as well.

~

Have you read any good historical fiction recently?

Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz

12 Comments

At some point in our lives, many of us will have to deal with the problem of difficult neighbours. Loud music and late-night parties, badly-behaved children, disputes over parking and damage caused by cats and dogs are all things that can make life stressful – but most of us wouldn’t resort to murder as a solution. However, that is exactly what seems to have happened at Riverview Close, a street of six large, luxurious houses in an affluent area of London.

The residents of Riverview Close include a doctor, a dentist, a retired lawyer, a chess grandmaster and two former nuns, all of whom have been getting on well together and leading peaceful lives. Everything changes with the arrival of Giles Kenworthy and his family, who are noisy and inconsiderate and succeed in annoying everyone else in the Close. When the residents learn that the Kenworthys are planning to cut down a beautiful tree and build a new swimming pool in its place, they decide to hold a meeting to discuss the situation – but a few weeks later the problem is solved anyway, as Giles is found dead, having been shot with a crossbow.

Five years later, author Anthony Horowitz (who uses himself as a character in his own novels) is looking for a subject for his new book. His previous four have been accounts of mysteries he has investigated alongside the private detective Daniel Hawthorne, but it seems there are no new mysteries to solve – and his publisher is putting pressure on him to start writing. Anthony decides to write about one of Hawthorne’s older cases instead, which happens to be the murder of Giles Kenworthy. Hawthorne agrees to share the details of the investigation with him, but warns him that the ending isn’t very satisfactory.

With large sections of the book set in the past and written in the third person from the perspectives of the residents of Riverview Close, this means Horowitz himself plays a much smaller part in this novel than he did in the earlier books in the series (the first one is The Word is Murder, if you’re wondering). Although I love these books, I know there are a lot of readers who find it irritating and egotistical of Horowitz to use himself as a character, but I think that would be less of a problem with this particular novel.

Because we see less of Anthony, there’s also less time spent on his interactions with Hawthorne, which is a shame as that’s one of my favourite things about this series. I had hoped to learn more about Hawthorne as each book has been slowly adding to our understanding of his character and background, but there aren’t really any major revelations about him in this instalment. There are lots of other interesting characters to get to know, though, including the members of the various households that make up Riverview Close; I particularly enjoyed meeting the two old ladies, May and Phyllis, who used to be nuns but now own a tea shop/book shop that sounds like a great place to visit!

They did not stock any modern, violent crime novels, especially ones that contained bad language. A casual reader looking for Harlan Coben, Shari Lapena, Ian Rankin or even James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice) would have to continue down the hill to Waterstones at the corner. What they specialised in – exclusively – was cosy crime.

They also stocked a range of gifts that were all crime-related, including the Agatha Christie tea towel May had used to wipe her hands. Other novelties included a Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass, Midsomer Murders mugs and T-shirts, Cluedo jigsaw puzzles and a box of assorted chocolates marked ‘POISONED’, a tribute to the great novel by Anthony Berkeley.

The mystery itself is an interesting one as all of the suspects have the same motive – Giles Kenworthy’s selfish, inconsiderate behaviour – and although I was convinced I had guessed the culprit correctly, it turned out I was wrong. I did wonder why Horowitz (the character) didn’t just look up the solution to the murder on the internet rather than waiting for Hawthorne to tell him the story bit by bit and getting frustrated about not knowing the ending, but that’s just a minor quibble. I’ll look forward to the next book in this series, assuming that there’s going to be one, but I’ll also continue to hope for a new book in the Magpie Murders series!

Thanks to Century for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Top Ten Tuesday: May Flowers

13 Comments

This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is “May Flowers”. There are a number of suggestions for ways to approach this topic, such as books with flowers on the covers or books about flowers or gardeners, but I’ve decided just to list ten books with names of flowers in the title.

These are all books that I’ve read and reviewed on my blog – and I’ve managed to find ten different flower names!

1. Blackberry and Wild Rose by Sonia Velton – An interesting historical novel about the community of Huguenot silk weavers living and working in London’s Spitalfields in the 18th century. I was drawn to this book by the pretty cover, but enjoyed the story as well.

2. The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas, fils – The novel which inspired the opera La traviata. I read a translation by Liesl Schillinger and enjoyed this story of Marguerite Gautier, who uses bouquets of red and white camellias to send messages to her lovers.

3. The Orchid Hour by Nancy Bilyeau – Historical thriller set in New York’s Little Italy during Prohibition. It’s a fascinating setting and we do learn a little bit about growing orchids too.

4. Daisy in Chains by Sharon Bolton – This is a contemporary crime novel about a man serving a life sentence for murder and the lawyer he chooses to help him overturn the verdict. A typical Bolton novel with lots of twists and turns!

5. The Red Lily Crown by Elizabeth Loupas – An excellent historical fiction novel set in 16th century Florence and following the story of an alchemist’s daughter who enters the household of Francesco de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.

6. The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas, père – I would never have imagined that a book about a tulip-growing contest could be so exciting, but this one is! I love Dumas and have thoroughly enjoyed everything I’ve read by him so far.

7. The Poppy Field by Deborah Carr – A dual-timeline novel split between the present day and 1916-18 where the story unfolds of a VAD nurse at a casualty clearing station in France during the war. Interesting but predictable.

8. Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden – This classic novel from 1939 follows a group of nuns who set out to establish a new convent in the Himalayas. I loved the atmosphere Godden creates as she explores the relationships between the nuns and how they adjust to the unfamiliar environment.

9. Jasmine Nights by Julia Gregson – A novel about a singer working for ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association) during World War II, performing for the troops in North Africa. An aspect of the war I hadn’t read about before.

10. The Daffodil Affair by Michael Innes – This 1942 mystery novel about a stolen horse, a missing girl and a haunted house is part of Innes’ Inspector Appleby series. I found it too bizarre to be very enjoyable and would recommend starting with a different Appleby novel.

~

Have you read any of these? Which other books can you think of with flowers in the title?

Six Degrees of Separation: From The Anniversary to Wild Swans

24 Comments

It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for another Six Degrees of Separation, hosted by Kate of Books are my Favourite and Best. The idea is that Kate chooses a book to use as a starting point and then we have to link it to six other books of our choice to form a chain. A book doesn’t have to be connected to all of the others on the list – only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month we are starting with The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop. It’s not a book I’ve read – or had even heard of until now – but here’s what it’s about:

Novelist J.B. Blackwood is on a cruise with her husband, Patrick, to celebrate their wedding anniversary.

Patrick is older than J.B., formerly her professor. But now his success is starting to wane and hers may overshadow his.

For days they sail in the sun. They lie about drinking, reading, sleeping, having sex. There is nothing but dark water all around them.

Then a storm hits, and Patrick falls off the ship. J.B. is left alone, as the search for what happened to Patrick – and the truth about their marriage – begins.

With a stay-up-all-night plot and breathtaking prose, this is the haunting and unforgettable story of a marriage and a death.

~

I’m using the idea of ‘falling off the ship’ as my first link. Someone else who was swept overboard on a cruise is Nona Ranskill in Miss Ranskill Comes Home by Barbara Euphan Todd (1). Stranded on a desert island just before the start of World War II, Miss Ranskill is rescued after almost four years and returns to England to find that war has broken out in her absence and life has changed almost beyond recognition. I loved this book; it was one of the first books published by Persephone that I read and still one of my favourites.

Another novel set on an island is Haven by Emma Donoghue (2). In 7th century Ireland, three monks set out on a pilgrimage to look for an isolated place to build a monastery. Their search takes them to the steep, rocky island of Skellig Michael, uninhabited except for thousands of birds. The novel follows the monks as they try to establish their new settlement and prepare for a life of seclusion. It’s more interesting than it sounds, although I’ve preferred other books by Donoghue.

A pilgrimage of a very different sort takes place in Jerome K. Jerome’s Diary of a Pilgrimage (3). First published in 1891, the Diary is narrated by J, an Englishman who travels to Germany with a friend to see the famous Passion Play at Oberammergau. Although it’s not as funny as Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, it is written in a similar style, with J sharing amusing anecdotes about the things he experiences and people he meets during the journey.

Staying with books set in Germany, my next link is to Nightmare in Berlin by Hans Fallada (4). Despite the title, there’s no connection to Fallada’s more famous book, Alone in Berlin, and this is a completely separate novel, following the story of Dr Doll and his wife Alma in post-war Berlin. Apparently the book is very autobiographical, as Fallada himself, like Dr Doll in the novel, was appointed mayor of a small rural town after the war and later struggles with a serious morphine addiction. I read a translation by Allan Blunden from 2016 (the first time the book was made available in English).

Nightmares are bad dreams and the title of my next book is the opposite – Dreams of Joy by Lisa See (5). Set in the 1950s, this is the sequel to See’s Shanghai Girls and follows nineteen-year-old Joy Louie as she leaves her home in Los Angeles to travel to Shanghai, full of enthusiasm for Chairman Mao’s new communist China. As you can imagine, the story isn’t very joyful at all and Joy eventually begins to learn that the new regime isn’t as wonderful as she hoped.

Another book about Communist China, a non-fiction one this time, finishes my chain. It’s Wild Swans (6), Jung Chang’s autobiography, telling the stories of her grandmother, mother and finally herself and taking us on a journey through the history of 20th century China. I found this book fascinating and was able to learn a lot from it; it’s also one of the most gripping non-fiction books I’ve ever read.

~

And that’s my chain for May! My links have included: falling overboard, islands, pilgrimages, books set in Germany, good and bad dreams and Communist China.

In June we’ll be starting with Butter by Asako Yuzuki.

Sufferance by Charles Palliser

14 Comments

Charles Palliser is probably best known as the author of The Quincunx, a long and twisty Dickensian novel which I read and loved years ago, but he has also written five more books including The Unburied and this new one, Sufferance.

Sufferance is a strange novel as none of the characters are named – not even the narrator – and we are not told where or when the story is set. However, it’s obvious enough that we are reading about an occupied European city during the Second World War and at the start of the novel, the Enemy has divided the city into Western and Eastern Zones. We also know that our narrator is a respectable, law-abiding man who works for the government and has a wife and two teenage daughters.

When the narrator’s youngest daughter brings a friend home from school and explains that the girl’s parents have become trapped in the other zone, unable to return to their house, he thinks he is doing the right thing by inviting her to stay with them until her parents come back. He doesn’t expect it to be for long – and it seems that the girl’s parents are wealthy people, who might repay the family for their kindness when they return. Unfortunately, a series of government announcements makes it clear that the girl belongs to a ‘protected community’, who are gradually having their rights taken away and are being closely monitored by the Enemy occupiers.

As the weeks and months go by with no news of the girl’s parents, our narrator and his wife become increasingly anxious and afraid. What will happen if the authorities discover that they are sheltering one of the protected community? To make things worse, the girl has proved to be a selfish, manipulative person who seems ungrateful for the help she has been given and completely unaware of the danger all of them are facing. Tensions within the family start to build as they struggle to agree on how to deal with the situation, but things are only going to get worse the longer they wait.

This is an excellent novel; the vagueness surrounding names, dates and places, which I could have found irritating in another book, is used very effectively here to create a sinister, unsettling atmosphere. Although the historical parallels are very obvious, we are left with the impression that the things described could happen anywhere, at any time and to anybody. The sense of fear and desperation felt by the narrator comes across very strongly, as with the introduction of identity cards, rationing and new laws regarding the girl’s community, he becomes aware that he is committing a crime.

Sufferance is a fascinating exploration of how each decision we make can have serious consequences and how quickly things can spiral out of control. I loved it and really must find time to re-read The Quincunx!

Thanks to Guernica Editions for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.