A Footman for the Peacock by Rachel Ferguson

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This month, Liz at Adventures in Reading, Running and Working from Home is hosting another Dean Street Press December. I hope I’ll manage to read more than one book for this, but I decided to start with one that was sent to me for review by Dean Street Press back in 2016. I do feel guilty about not reading it sooner, but had been put off by some mixed reviews, as well as that ongoing problem shared by all readers – too many books and too little time!

A Footman for the Peacock (first published in 1940) is a strange novel, nothing at all like the only other Rachel Ferguson book I’ve read, Alas, Poor Lady. It’s going to be a difficult book to describe, but I’ll do my best! On the surface, it’s the story of the Roundelay family who live at Delaye, a large country house in the fictional English county of Normanshire. In 1939, when the novel begins, the household consists of Sir Edmund, the head of the family, (who isn’t quite sure why he has been knighted – maybe it was a mistake), his wife Lady Evelyn and their two daughters, practical, down-to-earth Margaret and the more sensitive Angela. There are also three elderly aunts, two of whom haven’t spoken to each other for many years and go to great lengths to continue their silent feud, a cousin and an assortment of servants, including ninety-year-old Nursie, who is suffering from dementia.

Like many aristocratic families in the years between the wars, the Roundelays are finding that money is becoming a problem and the upkeep of such a large estate is much more difficult than it used to be. The house is falling into disrepair, they have no car and Lady Evelyn does the food shopping herself by bus. Despite this, the Roundelays still have the views and attitudes of their class and when it is eventually announced that Britain is at war with Germany, they display a shocking lack of interest in how it will affect anyone other than themselves.

The whole of the first half of the book is devoted to introducing the various members of the household, with some amusing anecdotes about their lives, and describing the history of the house and its surrounding towns and villages. Nothing much actually happens at all until the war breaks out – and even then, there’s not really any plot to speak of, just a series of episodes in which the family prepare their gas masks, cover their doors and windows for the blackout, and use any excuse they can think of to refuse to take in even a single evacuee. Their total selfishness and lack of compassion for those less privileged than themselves makes uncomfortable reading, but Ferguson doesn’t really make it clear whether she expects the reader to feel angry with them, to have sympathy for them or just to experience a feeling of recognition that, unfortunately, the way the Roundelays react to the evacuee situation is probably the way many people reacted and still would today.

Also in the second half of the book, the peacock of the title is brought to the forefront of the story – and yes, it’s a real peacock, who wanders the grounds of Delaye, bad-tempered, noisy and prone to attack anyone other than Sue Privett, the maid. There is an unusual connection between the peacock and the words inscribed on the window of a disused bedroom: “Heryn I dye. Thomas Picocke 1792”. Thomas Picocke, we soon discover, was a ‘running footman’ at Delaye in the 18th century – a servant who would literally run ahead of his employer’s carriage to smooth their journey and prepare for their arrival at their destination. Not a nice job and Picocke’s story, when it begins to unfold, is quite sad, as well as merging with the story of the Delaye peacock in a bizarre and unexpected way.

There are lots of great ideas in this book, then, but the lack of any overarching plot means the separate parts of the novel don’t work together as well as they should. It feels like a rambling, directionless mess, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it at all. Ferguson’s portrayal of an upper-class family’s attitude to war is fascinating (and apparently caused some controversy when the book was first published), the eccentric characters are entertaining to read about, and I was intrigued by the little touches of the supernatural in the peacock storyline. I would be happy to try the other two Rachel Ferguson books currently available from Dean Street Press, Evenfield and A Harp in Lowndes Square, but maybe not immediately!

The Winter Spirits: Ghostly Tales for Frosty Nights

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The Winter Spirits: Ghostly Tales for Frosty Nights is a collection of twelve new ghost stories written by popular authors of historical and Gothic fiction, all with a Christmas or Advent theme. It’s a follow-up to The Haunting Season, which I haven’t read but which includes eight of the same authors. This is the perfect time of year for ghost stories, so maybe I’ll look for the previous book next winter.

Back to The Winter Spirits and most of the stories are set in the 19th or early 20th centuries, giving them a traditional feel. More variety would have been nice – not just in the time periods, but also in the geographical settings, as the majority take place in Britain, with one or two in America or elsewhere in Europe – but otherwise I really enjoyed this collection. I’ve previously read full-length novels by most of the featured authors, but three of them were new to me: Andrew Michael Hurley, Catriona Ward and Susan Stokes-Chapman. I felt that Hurley’s The Old Play and Stokes-Chapman’s Widow’s Walk were two of the weaker stories, but looking at other reviews, some readers have singled them out as favourites, so I think it’s just a case of different stories appealing to different people! Ward’s contribution, Jenkin, was completely bizarre but added some diversity as it felt quite unlike any of the others.

The biggest surprise, for me, was Natasha Pulley’s The Salt Miracles; I really didn’t get on with her writing style in her novel The Bedlam Stacks, so I wasn’t expecting too much from this tale of disappearing pilgrims on a remote Scottish island (based on St Kilda). However, I ended up loving it – it’s such an unusual and chilling story! Inferno by Laura Shepherd-Robinson, one of my current favourite historical fiction authors, is another I particularly enjoyed – a wonderfully eerie story set in 18th century Italy, where a man is forced to confront his sins. Even better than both of these is Stuart Turton’s creepy and imaginative The Master of the House, in which a young boy who is being neglected by his father makes a deal with the devil. This one feels almost like a very dark fairytale and is one of the highlights of the book.

Of the twelve authors, Laura Purcell is probably the most well established as a writer of horror fiction and she doesn’t disappoint here with Carol of the Bells and Chains, in which a governess trying to deal with two unruly children tells them the story of the Krampus, with unintended consequences. Imogen Hermes Gowar’s A Double Thread, where a woman gets her comeuppance after badly treating her hardworking seamstress, is another I really enjoyed – it made me long for another novel by Gowar, as it’s been a few years since The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock!

The remaining stories are by Elizabeth Macneal, Bridget Collins, Jess Kidd and Kiran Millwood Hargrave. With a range of different styles and subjects, unless you just don’t like ghost stories I think this collection should contain something to please almost every reader.

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

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?