Go Tell the Bees That I am Gone by Diana Gabaldon

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Sometimes I wonder why I’m continuing to read this series. This is the ninth Outlander novel and the last one that I really enjoyed was the sixth; since then, each book has felt longer and less substantial than the one before. In this book, the final sequence – 100 pages or so – is excellent, but to get there you have to persist through 800 pages of irrelevant subplots that seem to lead nowhere and minor characters we barely know suddenly given large storylines of their own. As I’ve mentioned in previous reviews, though, part of my problem is that I’ve never been a fan of the Lord John Grey spin-off series, and Lord John and his family have played an increasingly large part in these most recent novels when I would prefer to be reading about other characters. I don’t mind Lord John himself but have very little interest in Hal, Ben, Amaranthus, Dottie or Percy!

Anyway, if you’re new to the series, should you start with this book? My answer would be no – definitely not! Start at the beginning, when 1940s nurse Claire Randall first steps inside a stone circle in Scotland and finds herself transported to the 18th century, then read the books in order, otherwise you’re going to be very confused.

Go Tell the Bees That I am Gone picks up where Written in My Own Heart’s Blood left off. It’s 1779 and the Revolutionary War is drawing ever closer to Fraser’s Ridge, the settlement in North Carolina where Claire lives with her husband, Jamie Fraser. Although Jamie had resigned his commission in the Continental Army after the Battle of Monmouth, with tensions growing between his tenants on the Ridge he knows he won’t be able to stay away from the action for long. Elsewhere, Jamie’s son William is still trying to come to terms with the discovery of his true father’s identity while also continuing the search for his missing cousin, Ben.

Meanwhile, Roger is finally about to achieve his dream of being ordained as a minister, but he and Brianna are becoming convinced that they are being pursued by someone from another time and are questioning whether they’ve made the right choices to keep their children safe. We also catch up, briefly, with Fergus and Marsali, who are discovering that printing newspapers can be a dangerous occupation in times of war, and we follow Ian, Rachel and Jenny as they travel north in search of Ian’s first wife.

It may sound as though a lot is happening in this book, but the things I’ve mentioned above are not enough to fill 900 pages and there seems to be a huge amount of padding: Frances Pocock, the orphan rescued from a brothel in the previous novel, trying to adjust to her new life at Fraser’s Ridge; William’s friend John Cinnamon searching for his father; a young girl, Agnes Cloudtree, escaping from an abusive stepfather; Silvia Hardman, Jamie’s Quaker friend, making a shocking discovery about her husband; and the usual assortment of difficult births, medical procedures, hunting expeditions, and all the minutiae of daily life on the Ridge. The focus on Claire and Jamie and their immediate family members, the relationships that made the earlier books so compelling, has been lost and the new characters just aren’t as interesting.

With no overarching plot to drive the story forward, it’s not until near the end that the pace eventually begins to pick up and I was reminded of why I used to love Diana Gabaldon’s books. We end on a cliffhanger which gives me hope that the next book will get off to a more exciting start! Book ten is apparently going to be the last and I suspect we could have another very long wait (the previous one was published in 2014, a seven year gap). I’ll definitely read it – I couldn’t not find out how it all ends after coming this far! – but I hope it will be better than this one and will concentrate on giving the main characters we know and love the ending they deserve.

This is book 11/50 read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2022.

The Reindeer Hunters by Lars Mytting

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Translated by Deborah Dawkin.

This is the second book in Norwegian author Lars Mytting’s Sister Bells trilogy. I loved the first, The Bell in the Lake, so was looking forward to visiting the village of Butangen again and finding out how the story would continue.

The Reindeer Hunters begins in 1903, more than twenty years after the events of the first novel. Kai Schweigaard, once a newcomer to Butangen, has settled into his role as village pastor, but is still haunted by memories of Astrid Hekne, the woman he had hoped to marry. He also feels guilt over his involvement in the removal of the two bells which once hung in the bell tower of the local church, commemorating Gunhild and Halfrid Hekne, the conjoined twin sisters who were two of Astrid’s ancestors. When Kai hears about a legendary tapestry woven by the sisters – the Hekne Weave – he sets out to search for it, hoping in some way to make amends for what happened in the past.

In the hills just outside Butangen, Astrid’s son Jehans is leading a lonely life, supporting himself through fishing and hunting, having withdrawn from the rest of the community. One day he finds himself in dispute with another hunter when they both claim to have shot the same reindeer, but this marks a turning point in Jehans’ life as he gets to know the other hunter, an Englishman called Victor Harrison, and an uneasy friendship begins to develop.

This, like the first book, is beautifully written and translated. The setting – a remote Norwegian village steeped in superstition and tradition – is vividly described, making this the kind of historical novel where you can become truly immersed in another time and place. Towards the end of the book, though, we see that scientific progress and new technology are finding their way even to Butangen in the form of electricity, improved travel and advances in dairy farming. Events in the wider world also touch the lives of our characters, including the dissolution of the Norway-Sweden union, the First World War and, finally, the flu pandemic of 1918:

There, on the church steps, Schweigaard had put all his accumulated knowledge into his advice. Mass was cancelled indefinitely. Auctions and public dances were best avoided. Folk ought not to visit other villages. They should maintain a distance from strangers. And always veer on the side of prudence.

I enjoyed reading about Kai Schweigaard’s daily life, his duties as pastor and his relationships with the other villagers and I was completely absorbed in his search for the Hekne Weave and what it might reveal. I was much less interested in the details of Jehans’ hunting and fishing expeditions and, later, Victor’s work as a pioneer of aviation, although other readers will probably find those things more enjoyable than I did! For this reason, I didn’t like this book as much as the first and every time the perspective switched to Jehans or Victor, I found myself wanting to return to the village and continue with Kai’s storyline. I did, however, come to love one of the new characters, Kristine, a young woman who doesn’t have an easy life but displays an inner strength and determination that I really admired.

I’ll be looking out for the final book in this trilogy and will be interested to see where the story will go next.

Thanks to Quercus Books, MacLehose Press for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 10/50 read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2022.

Six Degrees of Separation: From The End of the Affair to Earth and High Heaven

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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 The End of the Affair by Graham Greene. As usual, it’s a book that I haven’t read! Here’s what it’s about:

“This is a record of hate far more than of love,” writes Maurice Bendrix in the opening passages of The End of the Affair, and it is a strange hate indeed that compels him to set down the retrospective account of his adulterous affair with Sarah Miles.

Now, a year after Sarah’s death, Bendrix seeks to exorcise the persistence of his passion by retracing its course from obsessive love to love-hate. At first, he believes he hates Sarah and her husband, Henry. Yet as he delves deeper into his emotional outlook, Bendrix’s hatred shifts to the God he feels has broken his life, but whose existence at last comes to recognize.

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I really didn’t know where to start with this month’s chain. I haven’t read anything at all by Graham Greene, so I tried to think of other books about the end of an affair but came up with nothing. I’m afraid I’ll have to take the easy way out and just link to another book with the word ‘affair’ in the title: The Daffodil Affair by Michael Innes (1). This is part of the Inspector Appleby mystery series but is not a typical detective novel at all. It has a very bizarre plot involving a mind-reading horse, a missing girl and a haunted house! It’s not an Appleby novel that I can recommend; I found it too strange and not what I’d expected when I picked it up.

Daffodil is the name of the horse in the above novel; a book which really is about a flower is The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas (2). Dumas is a favourite author of mine and although this book, set in the Netherlands in the 17th century, is much less well known than The Count of Monte Cristo or The Three Musketeers, I still loved it. A book about a contest between two men who both hope to grow the world’s first black tulip may not sound very exciting, but in Dumas’ hands it certainly is! It actually has some similar themes to The Count of Monte Cristo, but is a much shorter novel and could be a good starting point if you’re new to Dumas and daunted by the length of his other books.

Rags of Time by Michael Ward (3) is the first book in a series of historical mysteries featuring Tom Tallant, a London spice merchant, and set, like The Black Tulip, in the 17th century. This first novel takes us to Amsterdam during the period known as ‘Tulipmania’ where tulip bulbs are being bought and sold for higher and higher prices. I found this part of the book fascinating, particularly the descriptions of the Dutch practice of windhandel, or ‘trading in promises’. As I was putting this post together, I noticed that the cover of the book says “The murder was just the beginning of the affair,” so I could actually have linked this to The End of the Affair and used it as the first link in my chain!

In Rags of Time, Tom teams up with Elizabeth Seymour, a young woman who is a keen astronomer. Swithin St Cleeve in Two on a Tower by Thomas Hardy (4), is also an astronomer – or at least he dreams of becoming one. When Lady Constantine allows him to create an observatory in a tower on her land, the two meet in the tower to study the beauty of the night sky and gradually begin to fall in love, determined to overcome their differences in class and age. I found this a gentler story than some of Hardy’s others, less tragic but also less moving and although it’s still a book that I liked very much, it’s not a favourite of mine.

Although I don’t think Two on a Tower is one of his very best novels, I do love Thomas Hardy and have read most of his books now. A few years ago, I enjoyed dipping into this brief but beautiful guide to his life and work by Jane Drake, titled simply Thomas Hardy (5). The book includes a fold-out map of Hardy’s fictional Wessex, illustrations and colour photographs, some snippets of biographical information, quotations and extracts from several of his novels and poems. At only 32 pages, it’s too short to be completely satisfying and you won’t really learn a lot from it, but I think it would make a nice gift for a Hardy fan.

Drake is also the surname of Erica Drake, one of the main characters in Gwethalyn Graham’s Earth and High Heaven (6). This 1944 novel published by Persephone is set in Canada and follows Erica’s relationship with Marc Reiser. Marc comes from a Jewish family and Erica’s parents – who are English-Canadian – refuse to accept him as a suitable husband for their daughter. This fascinating novel explores the tensions and divisions between these two groups, and also the French-Canadian community. I enjoyed this book and, like many Persephones, it explores themes that are still important and relevant today.

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And that’s my chain for March! My links have included the word ‘affair’, flowers, Tulipmania, astronomers, Hardy’s Wessex and the name Drake.

Next month we’ll be starting with Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield.

The Clockwork Girl by Anna Mazzola

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The Clockwork Girl is Anna Mazzola’s third novel and, I think, her best so far. Not only is the cover beautiful, the setting is also wonderfully dark and atmospheric and the story is fascinating.

The year is 1750 and Madeleine Chastel, daughter of a Parisian brothel owner, is about to start a new job as a maid in the household of Dr Reinhart, a Swiss clockmaker. Madeleine is pleased to have an opportunity to escape from her mother’s clutches, but this particular job is not one she has chosen for herself – she has been forced to take it by the chief of police, who wants her to spy on Dr Reinhart and report back on any suspicious activities she witnesses. But although Madeleine soon becomes convinced that the police are correct and something strange is going on in the Reinhart household, she finds that she is growing fond of the clockmaker’s daughter, Veronique, and is reluctant to betray her new friend.

The novel is written from the perspectives of three different characters: Madeleine is one, Veronique is another and the third is Jeanne Poisson, better known as Madame de Pompadour, mistress of King Louis XV. I found the choice of narrators very effective as it means we are given insights into every level of Parisian society – the working class, the bourgeoisie or middle class, and the aristocracy. Our story takes place several decades before the French Revolution would begin, but you can see the foundations being laid here as tensions start to simmer. The various locations in which the novel is set are vividly described, with sharp contrasts between the dark, dirty streets where the poor people live in squalor and the luxury and opulence of the royal palaces of Versailles and the Louvre.

Although The Clockwork Girl is a work of fiction, it is inspired by several real historical events. First, the disappearance of children from the streets of Paris in 1750, a scandal known as ‘The Vanishing Children of Paris’. And secondly, the technological advances during the 18th century in the creation of automata – clockwork dolls, animals and other machines with moving parts. Anna Mazzola weaves both of these things into the plot and the result is an engaging and unusual novel that I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

If this book doesn’t appeal, you may prefer Anna Mazzola’s first book, The Unseeing, based on a true crime (the Edgware Road Murder) or The Story Keeper, a novel set on the Isle of Skye. I enjoyed both of them.

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

This is book 9/50 read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2022.

My Commonplace Book: February 2022

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A selection of words and pictures to represent February’s reading:

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

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There are few people so obstinate as the man who half thinks he is wrong.

Somebody at the Door by Raymond Postgate (1943)

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Yet it seems to me that most people, in most situations where the best means to proceed is unclear, will favour a careful, restrained approach over wild impulsive action based on an assumption that all of one’s darkest suspicions are the unvarnished truth. How often does a person shrug off the most bizarre events as mere coincidence, or happenstance, or good or ill fortune, without giving any serious consideration to a deeper meaning, or a deliberate design, or sinister intent? So it was for me.

The House of Footsteps by Mathew West (2022)

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Portrait of Edwin Booth by John Singer Sargent, 1890

Is that what real acting is, that moment you stop pretending? And if so, can a person ever be sure, even offstage, even in the parlour of his own house, that he isn’t simply acting a part? All the world’s a stage etc, etc. You don’t have to be the son of a Shakespearean actor to have such thoughts. Everyone has them.

Booth by Karen Joy Fowler (2022)

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I squeezed my eyes shut before I could stop myself. I have always been free, I reminded myself. I have always been free. I knew now that slavery was nothing to be ashamed of, that being born free meant I was lucky, not special, but horror was still my gut reaction.

Theatre of Marvels by Lianne Dillsworth (2022)

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Camellia reticulata

Everything was believed except the truth.

The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas, fils (1848)

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‘There will never be the neat ending you crave, Betty; we cannot go back to how things were, only forward to how things could be. Else why have we suffered so much?’

The Rebel Daughter by Miranda Malins (2022)

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We fret and sweat over the choices that seem certain to tip the balance of our fortunes, but in truth it’s not the crossroads of our lives that determine their lengths. It is the unseen thorn which poisons our finger, the forgotten key we turn back for, the single careless step.

Traitor in the Ice by KJ Maitland (2022)

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“A dream, your father states, is like a poem. It invents and reinvents its own language. It’s lyrical, ambiguous. And most importantly, it never quite gets to the point.”

Death and the Conjuror by Tom Mead (2022)

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Electra and Orestes, from an 1897 Stories from the Greek Tragedians, by Alfred Church

Since my return from Aulis, I had thought the world empty of surprise. To be surprised, you had to have a belief that the world would always follow its rhythms and patterns as it had always done.

Elektra by Jennifer Saint (2022)

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It was one thing to challenge a legend. It was quite another to challenge reality.

The Reindeer Hunters by Lars Mytting (2022)

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Favourite books read in February:

Booth and Death and the Conjuror

Authors read for the first time in February:

Mathew West, Karen Joy Fowler, Lianne Dillsworth, Alexandre Dumas fils, Tom Mead

Places visited in my February reading:

England, USA, Ireland, France, Greece, Norway

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Reading notes: I’ve continued working through the books on my NetGalley shelf and am up to date with the ones being published in March and April now (reviews to follow nearer publication dates). I also managed to fit in a book for the Classics Club Dare and a book from the British Library Crime Classics series, although I decided not to take part in the Read Christie challenge this month as the February book was Death on the Nile, which I’ve already read.

In March, I’m hoping to take part in Reading Ireland Month at 746 Books and Reading Wales Month at Book Jotter, read at least one or two books from the Walter Scott Prize longlist ahead of the shortlist announcement in April, and possibly join in with the next Read Christie book, which is After the Funeral.

How was your February? Do you have any reading plans for March?

The House of Footsteps by Mathew West

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“You make it sound like I’m on my way to Castle Dracula,” says Simon Christie, the narrator of Mathew West’s debut novel The House of Foosteps, after arriving in the remote village of Cobsfoot during a funeral procession and taking refuge in the nearest tavern where he asks for directions to Thistlecrook House – “a strange place, where the master takes dark, wild moods”. It’s 1923 and Simon has been sent by his auction house to evaluate a collection of rare artworks owned by the Mordrake family – and as he enters Thistlecrook House for the first time and makes the acquaintance of the reclusive, secretive Victor Mordrake, it was Dracula that continued to come to mind.

As I read on, I was reminded of other classic Gothic novels and ghost stories and each chapter seemed to raise more questions than it answered. Who is Amy, the beautiful young woman who sits curled up in a chair in the library every evening, begging Simon not to mention her presence to anyone else in the house? What really happened to Victor’s wife, said to have drowned in a frozen lake on the estate? What causes the dark shadows Simon can see under his bedroom door every night? And why does Victor, a vegetarian who can’t even bear having dead flowers in the house, have a whole collection of paintings depicting violent and macabre biblical scenes?

The answers to some of the novel’s many mysteries are revealed gradually as the story unfolds. Others are still unanswered at the end, leaving the reader to make up their own mind about what exactly was going on at Thistlecrook House. I do sometimes enjoy an ambiguous ending, but in this case I was disappointed that we weren’t given more clarity; I had been so intrigued by some of the strange happenings and really wanted to be given a proper explanation for them! However, I still thoroughly enjoyed reading this book – and until I reached that unsatisfactory ending, I had been going to say that it was one of my favourite reads of the year so far.

The novel has a wonderfully dark and sinister atmosphere and despite being set in the 1920s, the remote location – a rural village in the far north of England, close to the Scottish border – creates the feeling that the story could be taking place in a much earlier period. Although I was sometimes frustrated by Simon’s actions and choices, I was always completely absorbed in his story, wondering who could and could not be trusted and watching the boundaries blur between reality and fantasy. If you’ve enjoyed books like The Woman in Black or The Haunting of Hill House I would recommend giving The House of Footsteps a go.

This is book 8/50 read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2022.

The Queen’s Lady by Joanna Hickson

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Joanna Hickson’s new novel is a sequel to 2020’s The Lady of the Ravens and continues the story of Joan Vaux, lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII. The ravens that formed such an important part of the first book appear less often here, but Joan still has a strong affinity for them and still believes firmly in the legend that should the ravens ever abandon the Tower of London, the kingdom will fall.

Joan’s position at court means that she witnesses – and is sometimes personally involved in – some of the key events of this period of history. The novel begins in 1502 with the death of Prince Arthur shortly after his marriage to Katharine of Aragon and it is up to Joan to try to comfort his grieving mother, Queen Elizabeth. When Elizabeth herself dies just a year later, Joan’s place at the Tudor court becomes more insecure, particularly when her husband Sir Richard Guildford is imprisoned on suspicion of treason. Eventually, with a new king on the throne – the young Henry VIII – Joan and her family begin to rise to royal favour again, but there’s more drama ahead both for Joan and for the Tudors.

I enjoyed The Lady of the Ravens, but I think this is the stronger of the two books. Although Joan was a real person, she’s one that I knew absolutely nothing about before reading these two novels and I found it fascinating to read about familiar events and people from a completely new perspective. I was particularly interested in the sections where Joan accompanies the two Tudor princesses – Margaret and Mary – to their respective marriages with the King of Scotland and King of France. The fact that Joan is chosen to carry out these important duties is proof of her high standing with the royal family and yet, at various times throughout the novel, we see how quickly this can change and how the King and Queen hold the fates of everyone around them in their hands.

As well as retelling the story of the end of Henry VII’s reign and the beginning of Henry VIII’s, the novel also explores Joan’s personal life: her marriage to Sir Richard Guildford and how she copes during the period of his imprisonment; her often difficult relationship with her son, Hal, who has been raised as a companion to Henry VIII; and her feelings for Anthony Poyntz, a much younger man who had once been like a son to her but is now becoming something more. As Joan is not a well-known historical figure, I had no idea how her story would play out, so was able to enjoy watching it unfold without knowing what was going to happen next.

I think this is my favourite of Joanna Hickson’s books (I’ve read them all apart from one, The Tudor Bride, the second of her two novels about Catherine of Valois). I’ll be interested to see which historical woman she chooses to write about next.

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

This is book 7/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2022.