The Trumpet-Major by Thomas Hardy

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I love Thomas Hardy so was pleased when The Trumpet-Major was chosen for me in the recent Classics Club Spin. The deadline for finishing our Spin books was 3rd March, but I’m late as usual!

First published in 1880, The Trumpet-Major is set in Hardy’s fictional Wessex during the Napoleonic Wars (making it his only historical novel). Beginning in 1804, it follows the story of Anne Garland and her three suitors: miller’s son John Loveday, who is the Trumpet Major of the title; his brother Bob, a sailor whom Anne has secretly loved since she was a young girl; and Festus Derriman, nephew of the local squire. Anne’s mother, who marries Miller Loveday, would prefer Anne to pick Festus, but it quickly becomes obvious to the reader that he is spiteful and cowardly and that Anne’s choice will be between Bob and John.

With John being a soldier and Bob a sailor in the merchant navy, they each have to spend long periods of time away from home, allowing Anne to grow closer to the other in his absence. It’s difficult to know which, if either, she will eventually accept; John is a typical loyal, steadfast Hardy hero, but Bob, although more immature and less trustworthy, is clearly the one she has lost her heart to. There are lots of twists and turns along the way as the situation becomes complicated by misunderstandings, the arrival of another woman, and the scheming of Festus Derriman. There’s a subplot involving Squire Derriman – known as Uncle Benjy – who is looking for a place to hide his will, but otherwise the novel never really loses its focus on Anne and the three young men, which makes the story easy to follow and, for a Victorian novel, relatively short and quick to read.

The action all takes place in and around Budmouth, a fictional town based on Weymouth on the Dorset coast. This is not a military novel, despite the title and the occupations of two of the main characters, but it plays out against a backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars and the people of Budmouth live in fear of a French invasion at any minute. It’s quite a light story, in comparison with Hardy’s more famous tragedies like Jude the Obscure and Tess of the D’Urbervilles, but the constant threat of war gives it a more serious tone than it would otherwise have had, and there are some dramatic episodes such as a false alarm which causes Anne’s village to begin evacuating in panic and the arrival of a naval press gang.

The Trumpet-Major has a happier ending than many of Hardy’s other books, but I didn’t personally find it very satisfying and would have preferred it to end in a different way. Still, I enjoyed this book and although I would definitely describe it as one of his lesser novels, I can honestly say that I haven’t yet read anything by Hardy that I didn’t like! I only have two of his novels left to read and they are probably his most obscure ones – The Well-Beloved and The Hand of Ethelberta – so I’ll be curious to find out what I think of those two.

This is book 43/50 read from my second Classics Club list.

Book 11/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones – #MarchMagics2024

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Diana Wynne Jones is not an author I’ve ever read or been particularly interested in reading – for some reason I’ve always just assumed I wouldn’t like her, although I should have learned by now not to make assumptions like that! #MarchMagics is a reading event hosted by Chris of Calmgrove to celebrate the work of both Diana Wynne Jones and Terry Pratchett, so I decided this would be a good opportunity to finally try one of her books. I chose Deep Secret, which is marketed as one of the few books she wrote for adults.

First published in 1997, Deep Secret is set in a multiverse shaped like infinity (a figure eight laid on its side) and made up of a collection of worlds which are either ‘Ayewards’, where magic is accepted and practiced, or ‘Naywards’, meaning they are more cynical towards magic. Early in the novel we learn that Earth is currently a Naywards planet and it’s the job of Rupert Venables to nudge it in an Ayewards direction. Rupert is a Magid, a powerful magician responsible for maintaining the balance of positive and negative magic in the multiverse and he is one of the novel’s two main narrators.

At the beginning of the novel, Rupert’s mentor Stan, an older Magid, is dying and on his deathbed gives Rupert the task of recruiting a replacement. Armed with a list of five new Magid candidates, located all over the globe, Rupert sets out to track them down and decide which has the most potential. Before he can make much progress, however, he is summoned to the Koryfonic Empire, a world which is situated across the twist in the middle of the infinity symbol, where another difficult mission awaits – the Emperor has been killed in an explosion, leaving no known heir. It’s believed that he does have several living children, but their identities and whereabouts are a mystery. Rupert must try to find them before the situation leads to the downfall of the Empire

A large part of the novel is set during a Fantasy and Science Fiction convention at a hotel, where Rupert manages to gather together all five of the Magid candidates. I’ve never been to one of these conventions myself, but I could tell Diana Wynne Jones was having fun describing the chaotic nature of the event, some of the colourful characters who attend it and the confusing, maze-like layout of the hotel (which becomes even more confusing when an evil presence begins weaving its spell). The world-building is very impressive, merging together the fantasy land of the Koryfonic Empire with its emperors and centaurs, the normality of daily life in Bristol, where a lot of the story takes place, and the craziness of the hotel, which is almost a whole separate world in itself.

One of the five possible new Magids on the list Rupert is given is Maree Mallory; it quickly becomes obvious from the way she is given so much more attention than the other four that she is likely to be the one Rupert recruits. Their relationship doesn’t get off to the best of starts and the way she is introduced into the story makes her difficult to like at first, but I warmed to her as the book went on and we started to see things from Maree’s perspective as well as Rupert’s. I also liked her relationship with her teenage cousin, Nick (who I think also narrates the companion novel to this one, The Merlin Conspiracy, which I haven’t read yet).

This is described as an adult book, maybe because there are a few references to sex, but I’m sure it would be suitable for young adults as well and the age of the protagonists (Maree and Rupert are in their twenties and Nick is fourteen) does make it feel as though it’s aimed at younger readers. As my first experience of reading Diana Wynne Jones, it was very enjoyable and I’m sure I’ll read more at some point.

The Tower by Flora Carr

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It’s 1567 and three women are being rowed across a Scottish loch towards Lochleven Castle. Two of them are maids – one is a Frenchwoman, Marie de Courcelles, known as ‘Cuckoo’, and the other is Jane, a Scot. The third woman is Mary, Queen of Scots, who is being imprisoned in the castle following her surrender at the Battle of Carberry Hill.

Although Mary doesn’t know it when she enters the castle, she will remain there for almost a year. It seems that no help is forthcoming from Mary’s fellow queen, Elizabeth I of England, or from Margaret Erskine, the castle châtelaine, who places her daughter-in-law in Mary’s chamber as a spy. Eventually, Mary’s spirits are lifted by the arrival of her good friend, Mary Seton, who joins the three of them in captivity, but Jane and Cuckoo are not so thrilled by this addition to their number and Seton’s presence quickly changes the balance of power inside the tower. Together they begin to form a plan of escape, but which of them will be prepared to risk the most to save their queen?

I’ve read other books about Mary, Queen of Scots, both fiction and non-fiction, but this one is different because it focuses on just this one specific period in Mary’s life. The narrow scope of both the span of time covered and the physical setting – the confines of one tower in a remote castle on an island accessible only by boat – give the story a tense, claustrophobic feel. We do get some backstory in the form of flashbacks, otherwise the four women have to wait for news from the outside world to reach them in their confinement.

For the reasons I’ve mentioned, this is a slow paced novel, with not a lot of action, and it mainly concentrates on exploring the relationships between Mary and her three companions. The different personalities of Cuckoo, Jane and Mary Seton come across strongly and these different personalities affect the way each woman responds to being imprisoned. However, I didn’t really like any of the characters, which was a problem when so much of the book revolves around their internal thoughts and feelings. I also felt that the author was projecting modern views and attitudes onto these 16th century women, which was a bigger problem for me.

The story does become much more compelling towards the end, when Mary prepares to put her escape plan into motion, and despite my criticisms, I do think the book is still worth reading for the insights into this short but important episode in Mary’s life.

Thanks to Random House UK for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 10/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

The Life of Rebecca Jones by Angharad Price – #Dewithon24

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Translated by Lloyd Jones

I’m aiming to read more books in translation this year so when I started considering possible options for Reading Wales, also known as #Dewithon, hosted this month by Paula at Book Jotter, it seemed like a good opportunity to read something translated from the Welsh language. Eventually I decided on The Life of Rebecca Jones by Angharad Price, first published as O! Tyn y Gorchudd (“oh, pull aside the veil”), in 2002 and translated into English by Lloyd Jones in 2010. It has been listed as one of the top 25 Greatest Welsh Novels by the Wales Art Review (a good resource if you’re looking for Welsh reading ideas).

The novel is a fictional biography, spanning almost the whole of the twentieth century, and is narrated by Rebecca Jones, who looks back on her life in the small rural community of Maesglasau. Beginning with the arrival of her newly wed parents at Tynybraich farm, followed quickly by the birth of Rebecca herself in 1905, she takes us through her entire life, comparing the twists and turns it takes to the path of the stream that flows through the Maesglasau Valley:

“Memories of my childhood reach me in a continuous flow: smells and tastes converging in a surging current. And just like the stream at Maesglasau, these recollections are a product of the landscape in our part of rural mid-Wales at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its familiar bubbling comforts me.
It was not really like that, of course. The flow was halted frequently. Indeed a stream is not the best metaphor for life’s regular flow between one dam and the next.”

Rebecca’s story is not a particularly dramatic or exciting one and is structured as a simple, linear chronicling of events, yet I found it very moving and compelling. As the novel progresses, Rebecca tells us about her daily life on the farm and the different roles performed by men and women, she describes the beautiful landscape and the changing seasons, and looks at some of the customs and traditions of the Maesglasau people. All of this is interspersed with the poetry of Hugh Jones, who was born in Dinas Mawddwy in the 18th century and wrote the hymn that inspired the Welsh title of the novel.

Rebecca is not the only child in the Tynybraich household; she has several younger brothers and sisters, some of whom die in infancy. Three of the brothers – Gruffudd, William and Lewis – are either born blind or become blind later in childhood (is it worse to have never seen the beauty of the world or to have glimpsed it and had it taken away?) and are all sent away to a boarding school for blind children. The education they receive leads to opportunities they would never have had at home in their Welsh valley and while Rebecca is proud of their remarkable achievements she also feels that her brothers’ ties to their own history, culture and language have been broken. This is a pattern she sees repeated in the wider community as the years go by and more and more young people are choosing to leave Maesglasau and make their homes elsewhere. Meanwhile, for those who remain, further changes are brought by modern technology, new ideas, and a greater movement of English people crossing the border into Wales.

When I first started to read, I wasn’t quite sure whether Rebecca and her family were real people or fictional ones, although the book does include photographs and feels historically authentic. I was quickly able to discover that the family at Tynybraich did indeed exist and are ancestors of Angharad Price. There was even a documentary filmed in the 1960s about the three blind brothers. However, not everything Price tells us about Rebecca’s life is the truth, for reasons only explained once we reach the end of the book. That ending was both surprising and perfect.

Have you read this book or are there any others written in the Welsh language that you can recommend?

Book 9/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden

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I loved Katherine Arden’s Winternight Trilogy, set in medieval Russia and drawing on elements of Russian history, folklore and fairytales. I’ve been waiting for her to write another adult novel for five years and my patience has finally been rewarded with The Warm Hands of Ghosts. Taking us to the battlefields of the First World War, this is very different in terms of setting, atmosphere and scope, but I’m pleased to say that it’s another great book.

Laura Iven has been serving as a military nurse in Belgium but in January 1918, when the novel begins, she is back at home in Halifax, Canada, having been wounded and discharged. It has not been a happy homecoming for her, as not only has she left behind a brother, Freddie, still fighting on the front line, but soon after her return to Halifax a ship exploded in the harbour, destroying part of the city and killing her parents. When Laura receives a box containing Freddie’s belongings and a note telling her that he is missing in action, she is reluctant to believe that he has also died and decides to return to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital where she can search for more information on his disappearance.

A second thread of the novel is set several months earlier and follows Freddie, who awakens on the battlefield to find himself wounded and alone with an enemy soldier – a German, Hans Winter, who is also badly injured. Lost in no man’s land, together they try to make their way to a place of safety, knowing that depending on whom they encounter first, one or both of them could be shot as either an enemy or deserter. It’s here that they first meet Faland, a fiddler who seems to offer them a way of escape. When Laura arrives at the hospital a few months later and hears tales of the mysterious musician who can give soldiers the gift of oblivion – if they are prepared to pay a price for it – she begins to wonder whether this is what has happened to her brother.

As I said above, this book is quite different from the Winternight Trilogy and I wouldn’t really describe it as fantasy – although it does contain some elements of the supernatural, mainly surrounding the appearances of Faland the fiddler. I don’t want to say too much about him but as Katherine Arden explains in her author’s note, if he reminds you of Woland from Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita it’s not a coincidence! Faland is one representation of evil in the novel; the vast horror of the battlefield is another and the tired, desperate soldiers face a difficult choice between the two.

I found the opening chapters set in Halifax very interesting as I previously knew so little about life on the Canadian homefront during the First World War. This is the first time I’ve read about the explosion of the Mont Blanc and the massive loss of life it caused (nearly two thousand people were killed and thousands more injured). In Flanders, meanwhile, the details of the Battle of Passchendaele and its aftermath and the conditions faced by nurses and patients in the field hospitals are equally interesting to read about.

This is not my favourite Katherine Arden book – I preferred the characters in the Russian trilogy and the more magical setting – but I still enjoyed it very much.

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

Book 8/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

Deadly Duo by Margery Allingham

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Deadly Duo (also published as Take Two at Bedtime) is a 1949 collection of two novellas by Margery Allingham, neither of which feature her famous detective, Albert Campion. I’ve discovered over the years that I tend to prefer Allingham’s stories without Campion to the ones with him, so I thought I would probably enjoy this book – and I was right, although I found one of the novellas much stronger than the other.

The first of the two novellas is Wanted: Someone Innocent. Twenty-year-old Gillian Brayton is attending a school reunion when she is approached by an older woman, Rita Fayre, whom she barely remembers from her school days. To her surprise, Rita greets her like a close friend and offers her a job in her household. Gillian has been completely alone in the world since the death of her beloved uncle and is struggling financially, so despite her misgivings she finds herself accepting. On arriving at Rita’s house, she learns that her job will involve taking care of Rita’s husband, who was injured in the war – but why do all the other servants seem so suspicious of Gillian? Is there another reason for Rita’s invitation?

I really enjoyed this story and thought it could easily have been developed into a longer novel. Allingham creates a lot of suspense and atmosphere and although we see everything through the eyes of Gillian, who is rather naive and gullible – the ‘someone innocent’ of the title – it’s obvious to the reader from early on that she is going to be used as a pawn in a crime. I guessed some of the solution but not all of it and anyway, part of the fun was in getting to know the various members of the household, as well as the police officer, Superintendent McNaught, who is brought in to investigate. McNaught is a character I particularly liked; I’m sure he could have been the star of his own series!

The second novella, Last Act, is the longer of the two and it didn’t interest me as much as the first. It’s written from the point of view of Margot Robert, a young French actress who has fallen in love with Denis, one of the grandsons of her guardian, Mathilde Zoffany (known as Zoff). Unfortunately for Margot, Zoff doesn’t like or trust her grandson and has accused him of trying to kill her. When Zoff is indeed found dead under unusual circumstances, suspicion naturally falls upon Denis – but there are other people in the house who all have motives for wanting her dead.

This story has a more complex plot than the other one and a larger cast of characters, but it didn’t have the same atmospheric feel to it and I felt that the characters were less well developed. I disliked almost all of them, particularly Zoff, who was so unpleasant I couldn’t understand why everyone seemed to be in thrall to her. The solution is clever and quite surprising, but as I didn’t really care how or why Zoff had died, the revelation was less impactful than it probably should have been. Still, these two novellas together made a light, quick and entertaining read!

Clairmont by Lesley McDowell

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I have read several novels about the Romantic poets and their social circle, including Jude Morgan’s Passion and Guinevere Glasfurd’s The Year Without Summer, but Claire Clairmont has always seemed a shadowy character, who hasn’t come to life as strongly as other women such as Mary Shelley or Lady Caroline Lamb. This new novel by Lesley McDowell changes that by giving Claire a voice and placing her at the forefront of her own story.

Clairmont follows Claire throughout three different periods of her life, beginning in 1816 when she accompanies her stepsister Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley) to Geneva. Claire, Mary and Mary’s married lover, Percy Bysshe Shelley, with whom she already has a baby son, are renting a house by the lake, while Shelley’s friend Lord Byron is staying at the nearby Villa Diodati with his doctor, John Polidori. Claire is pregnant with Byron’s child, but it’s becoming clear that he now views her as an inconvenience and would prefer it if the child was never born.

The Geneva episode taking place in 1816, the ‘year without a summer’ which followed a volcanic eruption in Indonesia, is the part of Claire’s life most people will be familiar with (if they’re familiar with her at all). It was during their stay at the Villa Diodati that Mary began to write her famous novel Frankenstein, and it’s through her own relationships with Byron and the Shelleys that Claire has gained historical significance. In addition, this novel also follows Claire during her time working as a governess in Russia in 1825 and later when she settles in Paris in the 1840s, and we gradually begin to see how those events of 1816 have impacted the rest of her life.

There were things that I liked about this book and things that I didn’t (more of the latter than the former, unfortunately). To start with a positive, I appreciated having the opportunity to learn more about Claire Clairmont, having previously known very little about her beyond her involvement with the Romantic poets. I had no idea what she did or where she went later in life, so I found that interesting. The story is not told in chronological order, but moves back and forth in time, with a Russia chapter followed by a Paris one then back to Geneva again, which I thought was quite confusing, particularly as the gaps between the timelines aren’t adequately filled in and no backstory is given for the characters prior to 1816. It felt as though half of the story was missing and it made it difficult to become fully immersed.

The writing is beautiful and dreamlike and at times reminded me of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet (especially since, like the O’Farrell novel where Shakespeare is never referred to by name, here Byron is always referred to by his nickname, Albe, and never Byron). However, sometimes beautiful writing isn’t enough and I didn’t get on very well with Hamnet so maybe it’s not surprising that I didn’t get on with this book either. The constant jumping around in time and the vagueness of the plot made it hard for me to really get to know Claire and understand her actions. Although I had a lot of sympathy for her because of the terrible way Byron treated her during and after her pregnancy (which has been well documented, including in his own letters), I had no idea what attracted her to him in the first place or how their relationship had reached this point, because none of that is explained or touched upon. Throughout the book, we are continually being dropped into situations that don’t make much sense without being given the full context.

Don’t let me put you off this book if you want to try it – there are plenty of other books I didn’t care for that other people have loved! This will probably be a good read for the right reader; it just wasn’t for me.

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

Book 7/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024