Water Baby by Chioma Okereke

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One of the things I love about reading is that it can take you to places you’ve never visited in real life and are never likely to. Chioma Okereke’s new novel, Water Baby, is set somewhere I knew absolutely nothing about: Makoko, a community built on and around a lagoon in the Nigerian city of Lagos. Although it may sound idyllic, that’s sadly not the case. Makoko, as Okereke describes it, is a place where most of the inhabitants are living in poverty, where the lagoon is dirty and polluted and drug use is a widespread problem. It has become known as Africa’s ‘biggest floating slum’.

The heroine of Okereke’s story is nineteen-year-old Yemoja, nicknamed Baby by her father. Since leaving school, Baby has been earning her living by rowing passengers across the water in her canoe, Charlie-Boy, named after her beloved younger brother, but she and her friends dream of one day experiencing a different way of life. However, with her father trying to push her into marriage with Samson, a neighbour who repairs boats, and with a large family of younger cousins to help care for, the possibility of leaving Makoko seems remote.

Things finally begin to change for Baby when she hears about a newly launched project using drones to create maps of Makoko, increasing the profile and visibility of their settlement. Young women from the community, known as ‘Dream Girls’, are being trained to pilot the drones and Baby is desperate to get involved, despite her father’s distrust of the project. When someone takes a photograph of her on the lagoon, mistaking her for a Dream Girl, the image soon goes viral on social media and Baby finds she has become a celebrity overnight. The opportunity arises for her to represent Makoko at a conference in Switzerland, but will this be the start of a new life for Baby or will she decide that her future lies at home after all?

I thought this book was fascinating, mainly because of the setting and the insights it gave me into a lifestyle so completely different from my own. Okereke describes Makoko so vividly I could already picture what it looked like even before searching for photos to see it for myself. The lives of the people of Makoko are already difficult – making your home on a lagoon means facing problems with sanitation, electricity supplies and running water, not to mention access to education and medical care – but they are also in an unusually vulnerable position regarding climate change:

There used to be more vessels on the horizon, but year on year that’s changing. From the shrinking lagoon size and lesser quantities of fish to water levels rising alongside the rubbish enveloping us. From manmade disasters to unthinkable diseases. Life is always throwing something at us, but we hold our ground.

I liked Baby, but some of the other characters were less well developed; in particular I felt that I never fully got to know her love interest, Prince. I did find Baby’s relationship with her little brother Charlie Boy very moving, though, for reasons that I can’t really explain here without spoiling the story! Although Baby and her friends are fictional characters, the Code for Africa mapping project and the Dream Girls are real and I found it interesting to read more about them after finishing the book.

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

Rosabelle Shaw by D.E. Stevenson – #1937Club

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My third and final book for 1937 Club, hosted by Stuck in a Book and Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, is Rosabelle Shaw (also published as The Story of Rosabelle Shaw) an early novel by D.E. Stevenson. Wikipedia describes Stevenson as an author of ‘light romantic novels’, but I have read several of her books and although some of them fit that description, others (such as her dystopian novel, The Empty World) do not. This is another that is not a typical Stevenson novel and I found it suprisingly dark.

The novel begins in 1890s Edinburgh with Fanny Dinwiddie, a pretty, lively young woman, who catches the eye of John Shaw, a farmer visiting the city on business. For John, it’s love at first sight and it’s not long before he is heading back to Shaws, his farm near the Scottish coast, with Fanny as his wife. It takes Fanny a while to adjust to her new home – she has left behind her father and beloved sister, Alison, and she misses the social life of Edinburgh – but eventually she begins to settle in and make friends and soon a daughter, Rosabelle, is born. At this point, I was expecting a gentle, domestic novel about the life of a farmer’s wife on a Scottish farm…but I was wrong.

When Rosabelle is three years old, a ship is lured onto the rocks near Shaws farm during a storm. John thinks he knows who is responsible for causing the wreck and is filled with guilt for not doing more to stop it, but is able to make amends by rescuing and informally adopting the only survivor of the disaster, a small child with whom Fanny immediately forms a bond. Nobody knows the little boy’s name or the identities of his real parents, so John and Fanny raise him with their own children and name him Jay. From the moment Jay enters their lives, tensions begin to form in the Shaw household. Unlike Rosabelle and her real brother and sister, Jay is a deceitful, jealous and manipulative child determined to get his own way. John struggles to like the boy, while for Fanny he can do no wrong, causing the first real disagreements of their married life.

Moving forward several years, we meet the Shaw children again as young adults. Rosabelle has begun to look at Jay in a different light, captivated by his good looks and charisma, and begins to fall in love, much to the dismay of her neighbour Tom, who was hoping to marry Rosabelle himself. But there could still be a chance for Tom after all, because Jay is about to bring shame on the Shaw family and betray their kindness and generosity, breaking the hearts of both Rosabelle and Fanny.

I found Rosabelle Shaw quite enjoyable, but it seems to have had mainly negative reviews, maybe because the melodramatic, almost Gothic feel isn’t what you would expect from Stevenson. A lot of people have also complained about the racism, which I noticed as well – it’s definitely implied that because Jay arrived on a foreign ship and is possibly Spanish, he is naturally sly and untrustworthy, unlike the good, honourable Scottish characters. The book reminded me very much of Wuthering Heights, with Jay being similar to Heathcliff, who is also of unknown parentage and nationality and causes nothing but trouble for the Earnshaw family (Rosabelle is obviously in the role of Catherine Earnshaw, who falls in love with her adopted brother).

The book takes on a slightly different tone towards the end when, in 1914, war breaks out and brings big changes to our characters’ lives. From this point, the focus of the book shifts away from Jay to concentrate on the war and how it affects the family at Shaws. I thought it was a fascinating novel, but it won’t appeal to everyone and there are probably better places to start if you’re new to Stevenson. For me, though, it was another good choice for 1937 Club!

Caroline England by Noel Streatfeild – #1937Club

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My second book for this week’s 1937 Club (hosted by Stuck in a Book and Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings) is by an author who was a childhood favourite but whose adult fiction I’ve only recently begun to explore. I loved her 1940 novel, The Winter is Past, set during the early stages of World War II, so when I saw that Caroline England was published in 1937 it seemed a perfect choice for the club.

The novel begins in 1870 with the birth of Caroline Torrys, the first child born to James and Selina Torrys of Milston Manor in Kent. The Manor has belonged to the Torrys family since the 16th century and James, desperate for a male heir, is disappointed with the arrival of a baby daughter. As the years go by and Selina becomes weak and worn down with her efforts to please her husband and produce a son, Caroline is raised in the nursery by a strict and often cruel nurse. Growing up nervous and anxious, with her spirit broken, Caroline eventually finds a way of escape when she falls in love with a writer, John England, and elopes with him. Caroline’s upper class family disapprove of John, whose father owns a shop, and she is cut off from the Torrys and her beloved Milston Manor.

The next part of the book follows Caroline through her marriage to John and the birth of her own children, whom she vows to treat with the kindness and affection she herself was starved of as a child. However, as her children grow older she finds that they don’t necessarily want her ‘interfering in their lives’ – and that John is the one demanding her time and attention. We then get to know Caroline’s children as adults and see how the family copes during World War I and its aftermath until finally, in the last section of the book, we join Caroline as a grandmother, living in a world that has changed beyond recognition.

I’ve probably given the impression that this book is very depressing – and it’s true that despite her privileged start in life, things are difficult for Caroline at times – but it’s not as bleak and miserable as it sounds. Although Caroline’s experience of being a wife and mother is not quite as blissful as she had hoped, she makes the most of what she has and finds happiness where she can. She also grows and changes as a person, as the post-war world grows and changes around her and the social system she once took for granted begins to collapse. By the end of the book, Milston Manor no longer belongs to the Torrys family and is being converted into a hotel, while Caroline herself is forced to think differently when she gets to know her son’s working-class fiancée, a woman she would have once considered ‘not our sort’.

I found the first section of the book, describing Caroline’s childhood, the most compelling because Streatfeild writes about child characters so convincingly. It was so interesting to read her portrayal of Caroline’s life in the nursery and the different methods used by her first nurse, the warm and loving Naomi, and the cold, abusive woman who takes her place, and then to see how Caroline’s upbringing affects her own choices as an adult. The later chapters, which concentrate more on Caroline’s sons and daughters, interested me slightly less, but I often find that to be the case when a family saga moves on to the next generation.

Of the two adult Streatfeild novels I’ve read, I preferred The Winter is Past as it was more tightly plotted, whereas this one covers a much longer period of time and has less focus. I enjoyed both, though, and look forward to trying some of her others.

They Found Him Dead by Georgette Heyer – #1937Club

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This week, Simon of Stuck in a Book and Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings are hosting another of their very popular clubs, where we all read and write about books published in the same year. This time it’s 1937 Club and for my first book I’ve turned to a favourite author who can be almost guaranteed to have had at least one title published in any chosen club year. In 1937, she had two and although An Infamous Army, a novel set before and during the Battle of Waterloo, is one I read a few years ago and didn’t particularly enjoy, I’m pleased to say that I had a much better experience with this one.

They Found Him Dead is one of twelve contemporary detective novels written by Heyer. It begins with the family, friends and business associates of Silas Kane assembling at his country house to celebrate his sixtieth birthday. As with many large gatherings, there are various tensions between members of the group, but when Silas is found dead at the bottom of a cliff after going out for his usual evening walk, the police decide that it was just a tragic accident. Only fourteen-year-old Timothy Harte, half-brother of Silas Kane’s nephew Jim, suspects murder – and when Kane’s heir, Clement, is shot in the head several weeks later, it seems that he could have been right.

Superintendent Hannasyde and Sergeant Hemingway arrive from Scotland Yard to investigate and quickly discover that there’s a large number of suspects including several nephews and nieces in the line of inheritance, some of Kane’s business partners and even his elderly mother, a woman in her eighties. However, they first need to decide whether they really are dealing with two murders or just one – and if there have been two, were they both committed by the same person?

I thought this was an entertaining novel, although I did panic at first due to the huge number of people introduced in the opening chapter. I wished I had drawn a family tree to keep them all straight in my mind, but after a few more chapters everything had settled down anyway and the characters and their relationships became more clearly defined. As a mystery it’s not a very clever or original one – in fact, it’s quite formulaic in many ways, with the country house, family party, motives revolving around inheritances and business deals and the Scotland Yard detectives all being very familiar to anyone who has read a lot of Golden Age crime. The murderer is also quite easy to guess, once you’ve picked up on one very obvious clue.

What I really enjoyed about this book was not the plot but the characters. I particularly loved Timothy, who has an active imagination leading him to see drama and conspiracy in every situation and is nicknamed Terrible Timothy by Sergeant Hemingway. He does actually help to solve the mystery, but not in the way he had expected! There’s also a bit of romance (although it’s quite understated and not a big part of the book), with Timothy’s half-brother, Jim Kane, falling in love with Patricia Allison, companion to Silas Kane’s mother. I liked these two characters as well; in general, the characters in this book are a more pleasant bunch than in the other Heyer mysteries I’ve read! A few of them also appear in her 1951 novel, Duplicate Death, which I read before this one and I’m now wishing I’d read them in the correct order!

I still have a lot of Heyer’s mysteries left to read and am looking forward to them. They don’t really compare to Agatha Christie’s when it comes to plotting a crime, concealing clues and creating red herrings, but they’re still fun to read. This was a great start to the 1937 Club for me and I’m also enjoying my second book, which I’ve almost finished and will be reviewing later in the week.

#1937Club – Some previous reads

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1937 Club, hosted by Stuck in a Book and Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, starts on Monday and we will all be reading and writing about books published in that year. It seems to have been another great year for publishing – I have previously read and reviewed nine 1937 books on my blog and thought I would list them here before the week begins. If you haven’t decided what to read yet and are looking for some last minute ideas I can recommend most of these!

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Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie – One of several Christie books published in 1937 and one of her most famous Poirot mysteries, set on a cruise along the Nile.

The Nutmeg Tree by Margery Sharp – The first Sharp novel I read and enjoyed, with a heroine I loved.

The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell – Orwell’s fascinating non-fiction book about the living conditions of working class people in the North of England.

An Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer – Not one of my favourite Heyer novels due to the long descriptions of the Battle of Waterloo. I’ll be reviewing her other 1937 book next week.

Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie – Another Poirot mystery, starring an adorable dog! Also in 1937 there was a collection of short stories, Murder in the Mews.

Under the Hog by Patrick Carleton – A great novel about Richard III – surprisingly sympathetic for its time!

Hamlet, Revenge! by Michael Innes – This Inspector Appleby mystery is set in a country house during an amateur production of Hamlet.

Wolf Among Wolves by Hans Fallada – A long novel set in Germany during the Weimar Republic (I read an English translation by Philip Owens).

Alas, Poor Lady by Rachel Ferguson – Published by Persephone, this is an interesting novel exploring the employment opportunities (or lack of them) for women from wealthy families who find themselves in need of work.

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Have you read any of these? Which other 1937 books have you read – and will you be taking part in the club next week?

The Fraud by Zadie Smith

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When I saw this year’s longlist for the Walter Scott Prize, one of the books I was most interested in reading was The Fraud. I haven’t read any of Zadie Smith’s other books, but the subject and setting of this one sounded appealing to me.

At the heart of the novel is a real-life court case in which a man many believe to be Arthur Orton, a butcher’s son from London, claims to be Roger Tichborne, the missing heir to a baronetcy thought to have died in a shipwreck in 1854. The ‘Claimant’, as he becomes known, is immediately identified as Roger by his mother, but the rest of the Tichborne family insist that he’s an imposter. The dispute goes on for several years and captures the imagination of the public, with people travelling for miles to come and watch the case play out in court. Two of the people following the proceedings with interest are Sarah Ainsworth and Eliza Touchet, who are central characters in Smith’s novel.

Eliza Touchet is a cousin by marriage of the novelist William Harrison Ainsworth and has lived with him as his housekeeper – and occasional lover – since the 1830s, while also growing close to his first wife, Frances. By the time of the Tichborne trial several decades later, William has been widowed and married again, this time to Sarah, his former maid. Sarah is obsessed with the Tichbornes and convinced that the Claimant is telling the truth and it is she who persuades Eliza to accompany her to court. Here Eliza finds herself drawn not to the supposed Sir Roger, but to one of the key witnesses – Andrew Bogle, an elderly black man who was Roger’s uncle’s servant and is one of the few people to speak up in support of the Claimant.

The novel moves backwards and forwards in time between the 1830s and 1870s, with the story unfolding through a series of very short chapters, sometimes only a page or two long. I wasn’t really a fan of this structure, as it made it difficult to become fully immersed and keep track of what was happening. And there’s a lot happening! As well as the coverage of the Tichborne trial, there’s a long digression into the early life of Andrew Bogle as a slave on a plantation in Jamaica, discussions of the Victorian literary scene and domestic details of life in the Ainsworth household. There were too many separate storylines for one book and some of them didn’t really seem to lead anywhere or integrate with the others. Having said that, I still found things to enjoy and my overall feelings about the book are probably slightly more positive than negative!

Most of the people who appear in The Fraud really existed, although not necessarily as Zadie Smith describes them. Eliza Touchet, for example, was a real person but died much earlier than she does in the novel and wouldn’t have been around by the time of the Tichborne case, so while there’s a lot to learn from this book it’s worth remembering that it’s not all factually correct. I did find it interesting to read about the life and work of William Harrison Ainsworth, whose books were hugely popular at the time – particularly Jack Sheppard, one of the ‘Newgate novels’ Claire Harman discusses in her true crime book, Murder by the Book – but have largely been forgotten today. Smith explores Ainsworth’s rivalry with Charles Dickens, as well as allegations that he stole some of the ideas for his novels from his illustrator, George Cruikshank. Is it just the Tichborne Claimant who is the ‘fraud’ of the title or could it also be Ainsworth himself?

Although there were parts of The Fraud that I enjoyed, I think there was really enough material here for two or three books and I ended up feeling overwhelmed. Maybe a different Zadie Smith book would have been a better starting point for me after all.

Book 15/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

Six Degrees of Separation: From Black Lamb and Grey Falcon to The Map of Lost Memories

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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 were told we could begin with any travel guide of our choice. Coincidentally, I have just begun reading Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Rebecca West’s 1941 travel book about her journey through the former Yugoslavia. I’ve wanted to read this for years and have been put off by the length, but I’ve finally decided to just plunge in.

Rebecca West’s epic masterpiece not only provides deep insight into the former country of Yugoslavia; it is a portrait of Europe on the brink of war. A heady cocktail of personal travelogue and historical insight, this product of an implacably inquisitive intelligence remains essential for anyone attempting to understand the history of the Balkan states, and the wider ongoing implications for a fractured Europe.

Girl at War by Sara Nović (1) is set in Croatia in 1991, during the breakup of Yugoslavia. As the country descends into war, we see events unfold through the eyes of a ten-year-old girl. I found this a very moving and emotional novel and enjoyed reading it during a trip to Dubrovnik.

A book with a shared word in the title is War Horse by Michael Morpurgo (2). It’s a children’s book, but can also be appreciated by adults; I read it in preparation for going to see the Steven Spielberg film version in 2012. The story is narrated by Joey, a young horse who serves in the cavalry on the battlefields of World War I.

Lean on Pete by Willy Vlautin (3) is also a book about a horse. It’s the story of fifteen-year-old Charley, who gets a job at the Portland Meadows race track in Oregon and forms a close bond with the racehorse, Lean on Pete.
As well as being an author, Vlautin is currently the guitarist and vocalist with the American country soul band The Delines.

Another author who is also a musician is Mat Osman, the bassist in the band Suede (and brother of author and TV presenter Richard Osman). I have read his second novel, The Ghost Theatre (4), which is set in an alternate history version of Elizabethan London, where one of our protagonists belongs to a community of bird-worshippers known as Aviscultans.

Birds provide the link to my next book, The Bird King by G Willow Wilson (5), in which a mapmaker accused of sorcery and the ability to draw magical maps flees across 15th century Spain in search of the legendary island of Qaf, said to be the home of the King of the Birds. I found this a very unusual novel, combining history, myth and fantasy.

In Kim Fay’s novel, The Map of Lost Memories (6), a woman dreams of making an important historical discovery and establishing her own museum. Setting off on an expedition to Cambodia, she begins a search for ten lost copper scrolls recording the history of the Khmer people. I think this is possibly the only book I’ve read set in Cambodia!

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And that’s my chain for April. My links have included: books set in the former Yugoslavia, books with war in the title, horses, authors who are musicians, birds and maps. Staying with the ‘travel’ theme, my chain this month has taken me to Croatia, France, USA, England, Spain and Cambodia.

In May we’ll be starting with a novel longlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize – The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop.