The Black Crescent by Jane Johnson

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Jane Johnson is a British author who has set several of her novels in Morocco, her husband’s country, with each book exploring a different period in Morocco’s history. The Black Crescent is set in the 1950s, during the time of the French protectorate, when support for Moroccan independence was building momentum.

Our narrator, Hamou Badi, grows up in the remote mountain village of Tiziane, a place where the people still cling to ancient traditions and superstitions. Due to the lines on his hands, Hamou himself is said to be a ‘zouhry’, a legendary figure blessed by a djinn and capable of locating treasure and detecting sources of water. However, it is not treasure that eleven-year-old Hamou finds one day in 1939, but the body of a woman, hidden amongst the palm trees by a dried up riverbed. The lack of interest shown by the French authorities in trying to solve this murder leads to Hamou’s decision to become a police officer and ensure that future victims of crime are given the justice they deserve.

Several years later, in 1955, we rejoin Hamou in Casablanca, where he is now working for the Sûreté, the police force of the French colonialists who are still ruling the country. Hamou takes his job seriously, trying to maintain law and order on the streets of Casablanca, but he quickly discovers that many of his fellow Moroccans see him as a traitor and someone not to be trusted. As the independence movement continues to gather force, Hamou finds himself caught between the two sides and must decide which is most important to him – loyalty to his country or to the employer who pays his wages.

The Black Crescent is a fascinating novel, particularly as I previously had such limited knowledge of French-ruled Morocco. I knew nothing about the work of the Istiqlal (independence) Party or the tensions and unrest following France’s exile of Sultan Mohammed V in 1953. Hamou is the perfect choice of narrator, with one foot in both worlds, showing us that there are good and bad people on both sides. Johnson has clearly researched this period thoroughly (she provides a list of her sources in her author’s note) and writes with an understanding and sympathy for the aims of the Moroccans in attempting to overthrow their French occupiers, but without condoning the violence used by some groups such as the ‘Black Crescent’ of the title.

Hamou is portrayed as an honourable, kind-hearted man trying to navigate his way through a difficult situation and I found him easy to like. He also has a love interest – a young woman he meets in Casablanca – but it only plays a small part in the book and I was just as captivated by the relationship he forms with Madani, the little black cat he rescues and adopts. The book did feel very slow-paced and took much longer to read than I’d expected based on the length, but it held my interest throughout and I learned a lot from it. I wish I’d known there was a glossary at the end of the book, but I was able to understand most of the Moroccan terms from the context anyway, so that wasn’t too much of a problem!

I think The Sultan’s Wife, set in 17th century Morocco, is still my favourite Jane Johnson book so far, but there are three of her earlier novels I haven’t read yet, so that could change!

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

This is book 49/50 for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Kitchen Confidential to The Thirteenth Tale

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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’re starting with Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. I haven’t read it and I’m not likely to, but here’s what it’s about:

After twenty-five years of ‘sex, drugs, bad behaviour and haute cuisine’, chef and novelist Anthony Bourdain has decided to tell all. From his first oyster in the Gironde to his lowly position as a dishwasher in a honky-tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown; from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop the Rockefeller Center to drug dealers in the East Village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again, Bourdain’s tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable, as shocking as they are funny.

Using food and kitchens as my first link, John Saturnall’s Feast by Lawrence Norfolk (1) is set in the 17th century and tells the story of John Sandall, an orphan who is taken into the household of a wealthy nobleman, Sir William Fremantle. With his knowledge of food and ancient recipes, John is given the task of creating a meal to tempt Sir William’s daughter, who is refusing to eat as a protest against an arranged marriage. This is a complex, multi-layered novel with an unusual plot and a vivid portrayal of life in the kitchen!

The Feast by Margaret Kennedy (2) shares a word in the title, but is a very different book. Published in 1950, it follows a week in the lives of a group of guests who are staying in a hotel on the coast of Cornwall. We know from the beginning that by the end of the week the hotel will have been destroyed by a cliff collapsing on top of it, but we don’t know who will survive and who won’t. I really enjoyed this one; it’s one of my favourites so far by Margaret Kennedy.

Although it doesn’t form a big part of the plot, some of the characters in The Feast have traits that represent one of the seven deadly sins, which I thought was a clever touch. Anne Zouroudi’s Greek Detective series, which follows the investigations of the mysterious Hermes Diaktoros, also uses one of the seven sins as a theme for each novel. The Doctor of Thessaly (3) is the third book in the series, although they can be read in any order, and this one has ‘envy’ as its theme.

I haven’t read many authors whose surname begins with the letter Z, but one of them is Émile Zola. I’ve read three of his books so far and my favourite is Thérèse Raquin (4), the first one I read and a standalone novel which is not part of his longer Rougon-Macquart cycle. This is a very dark novel about two people who commit a terrible crime and the psychological effect this has on the rest of their lives.

I’m going to use a word in the title again for my next link, which leads me to 13, rue Thérèse by Elena Mauli Shapiro (5). This unusual and imaginative novel begins with a man discovering a box full of photographs, letters, postcards and other items that once belonged to Louise Brunet, a Frenchwoman who lived through both world wars. We are given a picture of each item, followed by a few pages of story describing the item’s significance and background, and gradually Louise’s history begins to unfold.

My final link uses the number 13. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (6) is the story of a young woman who agrees to write the biography of a reclusive author. It’s an entertaining read, clearly inspired by several classic Gothic novels, and I described it in my review as a tale of ‘Yorkshire moors, twins, mistaken identities, ghosts and governesses’.

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And that’s my chain for this month! My links have included: Kitchens, the word ‘Feast’, the seven deadly sins, author names beginning with Z, the name Thérèse and the number thirteen.

In January we’ll be starting with Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.

My Commonplace Book: November 2023

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A selection of quotes and pictures to represent November’s reading:

commonplace book
noun
a book into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use.

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Kosuke Kindaichi was reading in bed. Despite how slovenly it might appear, he found that if he did not do so in bed, then nothing he read actually made an impression.

The Devil’s Flute Murders by Seishi Yokomizo (1953)

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“Dad only wanted us to be good people, Leslie and I, that was all, he was only doing the right thing.”

“What he thought was the right thing.”

“What else is there?”

The Progress of a Crime by Julian Symons (1960)

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‘And I didn’t break in, did I? Sure, didn’t I see you sitting there through the window? Reading your book. You’re one of those, I suppose.’

‘One of what?’

‘Readers.’

I don’t know how to respond to this remark, which appears to be some form of accusation.

Water by John Boyne (2023)

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Illustration from “Jack and the Beanstalk”, 1854

18:29 Celia wrote:
‘Evil happens when good people do nothing.’ You have a whistle, Denise, and a duty to blow it.

The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett (2023)

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There is no explaining this simple truth about life: you will forget much of it. The painful things you were certain you’d never be able to let go? Now you’re not entirely sure when they happened, while the thrilling parts, the heart-stopping joys, splintered and scattered and became something else.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett (2023)

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Love does funny things to people, when it serves to harm and not heal. It makes fools of the most rational of men, and the kindest of women cruel. It makes one think most strangely. It changes a person.

From Widows Walk by Susan Stokes-Chapman
The Winter Spirits by various authors (2023)

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Figurine from the National Archaeological Museum of Athens

‘It’s one of the universe’s untouchable truths,’ he continued, as if lecturing. ‘Beauty exists. And is the most precious thing there is. And yet none of us can truly define it or agree what it actually is. But when you see it, it casts a spell on you.’

The Figurine by Victoria Hislop (2023)

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Garry reminded himself that politicians were experts in neatly avoiding questions they didn’t like. He waited, knowing silence sometimes worked better than insistence.

The Fake Wife by Sharon Bolton (2023)

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The house only isn’t enough, you see. It has to have the setting. That’s just as important. It’s like a ruby or an emerald. A beautiful stone is only a beautiful stone. It doesn’t lead you anywhere further. It doesn’t mean anything, it has no form or significance until it has its setting. And the setting has to have a beautiful jewel to be worthy of it. I take the setting, you see, out of the landscape, where it exists only in its own right. It has no meaning until there is my house sitting proudly like a jewel within its grasp.

Endless Night by Agatha Christie (1967)

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Favourite books read in November:

Water and The Winter Spirits

Authors read for the first time in November:

Julian Symons, Andrew Michael Hurley, Catriona Ward, Susan Stokes-Chapman

Places visited in my November reading:

England, Ireland, USA, Italy, Greece, Japan, Scotland

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Reading notes: November was another good month of reading for me. I read two books for Novellas in November, joined in with Read Christie 2023, and caught up with some more of my NetGalley review copies. I was sorry not to take part in any of the other events taking place in the book blogging world, such as Nonfiction November, but there just wasn’t time. Hopefully next year!

In December, I’m planning to join in with Dean Street December, hosted by Liz at Adventures in Reading, Running and Working from Home and I would like to finish my Classics Club Spin book, Nicholas Nickleby – I’m not going to manage it by the deadline, though, which is Sunday! Otherwise, I’ll just see what I feel like reading.

How was your November? Do you have any plans for your December reading?

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

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The title of Ann Patchett’s latest novel, Tom Lake, doesn’t refer to a person, as I’d assumed before I started reading, but to a place – a town in Michigan with a theatre overlooking the lake. One summer in the 1980s, a theatrical group gather at Tom Lake to rehearse the Thornton Wilder play, Our Town. The role of Emily has gone to Lara, a young woman who previously played that same part in a high school production. Here at Tom Lake, Lara meets and falls in love with the charismatic Peter Duke, the actor who plays her father in Our Town and who goes on to become a famous Hollywood star.

Many years later, in 2020, Lara and her husband, Joe, are living on a Michigan farm with their three adult daughters, Emily, Maisie and Nell, who have all come home to be with their parents as the Covid pandemic sweeps across the world. While they help to harvest cherries from the family orchard, the girls ask Lara to tell them about her relationship with Duke. As they listen to her story unfold, they discover things about their mother’s past that makes them reassess everything they thought they knew about her and about themselves.

I loved Ann Patchett’s last novel, The Dutch House, so I was hoping for a similar experience with this book. Sadly, that didn’t happen, although I did still find a lot to like. It’s certainly a beautifully written novel, but I just found it a bit too quiet and gentle and I never felt fully engaged with the characters the way I did with the characters in The Dutch House. I know I’m in a tiny minority, though, and I expect to see Tom Lake on many people’s ‘books of the year’ lists in December.

Although the present day sections of the book are set during the pandemic, Covid is barely mentioned at all and it’s really just a plot device to explain why the family are all together on the farm with such little contact with the outside world. This provides the perfect environment for the three daughters to pass the time listening to their mother’s story without too many distractions – and a cherry orchard does sound like a lovely place to spend the pandemic. Something else which plays a much bigger part in the novel is Thornton Wilder’s Our Town; clearly the play and, in particular, the role of Emily are very important to Lara, but as I’ve neither read nor seen it I didn’t really understand the significance. It seems to be a play that is much better known and more widely studied in America than it is here in the UK and I wish I’d had at least some familiarity with it before I started this book. That’s possibly one of the things that prevented me from enjoying it as much as I’d hoped.

I do like Patchett’s writing, so even though this particular book wasn’t a huge success with me, I’m still looking forward to trying some of her earlier work.

Thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ) for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books set at sea

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This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is “Books Set In X (Pick a setting and share books that are all set there. This could be a specific continent or country, a state, in outer space, underwater, on a ship or boat, at the beach, etc.)”

I am listing here, in no particular order, ten books that are set entirely or mainly at sea. Let me know if you’ve read any of these!

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1. She Rises by Kate Worsley – I’m starting my list with this novel about a young man press-ganged into the Navy in the 18th century, and his sister, left behind in England, trying to find out where he has gone. I found this a very atmospheric book with some clever twists when the two storylines begin to merge together.

2. A Fatal Crossing by Tom Hindle – I loved this murder mystery set aboard a cruise ship crossing the Atlantic in 1924. A ship is the perfect setting for this kind of novel as the suspects are all together in one place and nobody can arrive or leave!

3. Life of Pi by Yann Martel – I didn’t expect to enjoy Martel’s Booker Prize winner, especially as I’d had a previous failed attempt to read it a few years earlier, but I ended up loving it. An Indian boy, Pi, finds himself stranded in a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan – and a Bengal tiger!

4. Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini – I could have included both this book and The Sea-Hawk, but decided to stick to one book per author. This one tells the story of Peter Blood, who is wrongly found guilty of treason after the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 and is transported to Barbados as a slave. Driven into piracy, he sets out to clear his name so he can marry the woman he loves. Sabatini’s books are always entertaining and this is one of his best known.

5. Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian – No list of nautical fiction would be complete without at least one book by Patrick O’Brian! This is the first in his Aubrey-Maturin series, set during the Napoleonic Wars and following the adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and his friend, the surgeon and spy Dr Stephen Maturin. I confess to not really understanding all the naval terminology, but I’m eight books into the series now and looking forward to reading the rest!

6. The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton – This is a wonderfully eerie novel set aboard a cursed ship on a trading voyage from Batavia to Amsterdam in 1634. I loved the atmosphere and the twists and turns of the plot, but wished the historical setting had felt more authentic.

7. My Beautiful Imperial by Rhiannon Lewis – Set in the 19th century, this novel follows a young Welsh sailor, Davy Davies, as he embarks on a career at sea, becoming captain of the Imperial, which just happens to be sailing down the coast of South America when civil war breaks out in Chile in 1891. I knew nothing about the Chilean Civil War before reading this book, so I found it fascinating, particularly after learning that the main character is based on the author’s own ancestor.

8. Blue Water by Leonora Nattrass – This is the second book in the Laurence Jago historical mystery series, although it would also work well as a standalone. A murder takes place aboard the Tankerville, sailing from Britain to Philadelphia to deliver an important treaty to George Washington. I’ve enjoyed all three books in this series so far.

9. Cup of Gold by John Steinbeck – This was Steinbeck’s first novel, published in 1929. The story is loosely based on the life of the 17th century Welsh pirate, Sir Henry Morgan, taking us from the hills and valleys of Wales to Barbados and Panama and incorporating some Arthurian legend along the way. It’s beautifully written, but not at all what I’d expected from Steinbeck!

10. Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh – This is the first book in Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy and introduces us to a large, diverse cast of memorable characters who are thrown together on a voyage from India to Mauritius aboard a former slaving ship just before the First Opium War. I enjoyed all three books in the trilogy and learned a lot from them.

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As someone who has never really considered myself a fan of nautical fiction, I’m surprised to see how many books I’ve enjoyed that are set on ships and boats! I could also have included Georgette Heyer’s pirate adventure novel Beauvallet, The Night Ship by Jess Kidd in which a ship is wrecked off the coast of Australia in 1629, and The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware, a modern thriller set on a cruise liner in the Norwegian Fjords.

What books have you read that are set at sea?

Endless Night by Agatha Christie

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There are still a few weeks left in this year’s Read Christie 2023 challenge, but plans for Read Christie 2024 have already been announced! You can find out more and register for full details on the Agatha Christie website here. You don’t need to commit to reading a book every month – I just join in with any that appeal to me or that I haven’t read before.

Back to the 2023 challenge and the prompt for November is a motive: greed. Endless Night, the suggested title for this month, was first published in 1967 and is a standalone novel, not featuring Poirot, Miss Marple or any of Christie’s other famous detectives. It’s also one of only a small number of her novels to be written in the first person (apart from some of the Poirots, which are narrated by Captain Hastings). In fact, it’s really not a typical Christie novel in any way, but I still enjoyed it and apparently it was one of Agatha’s own favourites.

Many of Christie’s novels have titles inspired by nursery rhymes, poems or other works of literature. This one is taken from William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence:

“Every Night and every Morn
Some to Misery are born.
Every Morn and every Night
Some are born to Sweet Delight.
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Endless Night.”

Michael Rogers, our narrator, is an attractive, charming young man but one who has been jumping from one job to another with no real aim in life. When he stumbles upon an old house called The Towers – or ‘Gipsy’s Acre’ as it is known locally – and sees that it’s for sale, he dreams of buying it and settling down there, if only he could afford it. As luck would have it, he meets and falls in love with Ellie, a young American heiress, and soon the two are married and have bought the property, knocking down the old house to build a new one designed by their architect friend, Rudolf Santonix.

Unfortunately, it seems that Michael and Ellie are not destined to be happy in their new home. Gipsy’s Acre has a bad reputation and they are told by an old fortune teller, Esther Lee, that the land is cursed. As Mrs Lee continues to appear, issuing more warnings, Michael wonders whether there really is a curse or if the old woman is trying to drive them away. Then there’s Ellie’s friend and companion, Greta Andersen, who moves in with them when Ellie injures her ankle. Ellie is very close to Greta, but Michael complains that she’s too controlling and has too much influence over his wife.

Christie continues to build tension and suspense in this way until a murder eventually takes place, late in the book. With no detective to investigate the crime and with only Michael’s impression of the other characters to base our opinions on, it’s a difficult mystery to solve. I was convinced I knew who the murderer was, but I wasn’t even close and was completely taken by surprise when the truth was revealed. Although I’m not planning to do it at the moment, I think it would be fascinating to read it again and see how I managed to miss the clues entirely.

I don’t think this ranks as one of my absolute favourites by Christie because I did find it a bit slow in the middle, but that unexpected ending made up for it. I also think it’s one of the most atmospheric of her books, with a real sense of unease and foreboding. I’m not sure yet whether I’ll be able to fit next month’s Read Christie book into my December reading, but I’m definitely signing up again for 2024!

The Murder Wheel by Tom Mead

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This is the second book in Tom Mead’s Joseph Spector mystery series, following last year’s wonderful Death and the Conjuror. If you haven’t read the first book yet and want to start with this one it won’t be a problem as the two deal with standalone mysteries.

The Murder Wheel begins in London in 1938 with lawyer Edmund Ibbs visiting a client, Carla Dean, in Holloway Prison. Carla is awaiting trial for the murder of her husband while they were riding on a Ferris Wheel together at the fair. As the only other person in the carriage when a shot was fired at close range – and with her fingerprints all over the alleged murder weapon – suspicion has naturally fallen on Carla. Ibbs’ job is to prove that she is innocent, but it’s going to be a difficult task!

When he’s not investigating crimes, Edmund Ibbs is pursuing a secondary career as an amateur magician and has just received a copy of a highly controversial new book, The Master of Manipulation, which promises to give away all the secrets of the art of magic. After his visit to Carla in prison, Ibbs heads for the Pomegranate Theatre to watch a performance by the great illusionist, Professor Paolini. When another suspicious death occurs during the magic show, Ibbs finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and discovers that he is now a suspect in another murder case! Are the crimes connected? Luckily, retired magician Joseph Spector is on hand to solve the mystery.

The Murder Wheel is another entertaining novel, but I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as the first book, mainly because I found it so complicated. There are eventually three separate seemingly impossible crimes to solve and I struggled to keep track of all the different threads of the story. There’s a lot of focus on the murder methods and the intricacies of how each one was committed, and although the solutions do all make sense, I could never have worked them out; I completely failed Mead’s ‘challenge to the reader’ near the end of the book, even though we’re told that the clues have all been provided in the text (and when the solutions are finally revealed, there are footnotes linking back to where each clue first appears).

I do love the partnership between Joseph Spector and Inspector Flint of Scotland Yard; they work together so well because one of them is using traditional methods of detecting such as questioning suspects and searching for evidence, while the other is more concerned with how his knowledge of illusions and sleight of hand can show how the crime was carried out. Magic plays a bigger part in this book than it did in the first one and I enjoyed that aspect of the story; it was interesting to get some insights into the backstage preparations for a magic show and how some of the tricks are performed, although I can see why some of the characters were unhappy with the author of The Master of Manipulation revealing all their secrets!

Tom Mead is a fan of Golden Age detective novels, particularly of the ‘locked room’ or ‘impossible crime’ types, and I think he does a good job overall of capturing the feel of a 1930s mystery – although with this book, I never felt that I really was reading a 1930s mystery, the way I did with the first one. I’m not sure exactly what was different, but that’s another reason why I preferred Death and the Conjuror. Still, I will probably read the third book in this series, assuming there’s going to be one!

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

This is book 48/50 for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.