Tag: 17th century

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

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Girl with a Pearl Earring Set in the 1660s, Girl with a Pearl Earring is narrated by Griet, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a tile painter who lives in Delft in the Netherlands. When her father is left unable to work after being blinded in an accident, he arranges for Griet to become a maid in the household of the artist Johannes Vermeer. Settling into her new job, Griet soon finds that coping with the cleaning, washing and dusting are the least of her worries; she also has to learn to deal with the hostility of Vermeer’s wife, the cruelty of one of their young daughters and the jealousy of the family’s other servant, Tanneke. And why is Tanneke jealous? Because Griet has been given the job of dusting Vermeer’s studio – a room rarely entered by the rest of the household. As the months go by, Griet watches painting after painting slowly take shape on Vermeer’s easel, but when she discovers that she herself is going to be the subject of his next portrait she senses that the fewer people who know about it the better…

Having read two of Tracy Chevalier’s other books, Remarkable Creatures and The Virgin Blue, it seemed silly that I still hadn’t read Girl with a Pearl Earring. Now that I’ve read it I can see why it’s her most famous novel. The thing I found most striking about the book is that the writing style actually feels like one of Vermeer’s paintings: clear and detailed and true to life. I am not an expert on Vermeer (or any other artist, to be honest) but this was something that I noticed almost immediately and was very impressed by. If you’re not familiar with Vermeer’s work I highly recommend searching for an image of each painting as it is referred to in the book – I can promise that it will add to your appreciation of the story and of Chevalier’s writing.

This book is set in a time and place that I know very little about and I loved the descriptions of 17th century Delft. Most of Griet’s time is devoted to carrying out her duties within the Vermeer home, but she also has plenty of opportunities to visit other areas of the town – buying meat for the family at the meat market, going to church, visiting her brother at the tile factory where he is an apprentice, or spending time with her parents and the young butcher they hope she will marry. I have never been to Delft but by the time I finished this book I felt I could almost picture what it would have been like to live and work there in the 1660s. The religious aspect of the book – the tensions between the town’s Catholic and Protestant people – was also handled well, showing us the distrust and suspicion that existed between the two communities.

Although there is a romantic element to the story it is quite understated. We are in no doubt as to how Griet feels about Vermeer – it’s noticeable that while she thinks of other people by name, Vermeer is always ‘he’ or ‘him’ and this instantly sets him apart from all the other characters in the story. However, Griet is very slow to admit to herself the significance he has in her life. The romantic aspect of the book is quiet and subtle and lacks drama and passion, as does the rest of the story, but I didn’t have a problem with that. I enjoyed following Griet’s everyday life – shopping at the market, chopping vegetables, dusting the studio – and I enjoyed learning about Vermeer’s work and painting techniques. I didn’t need drama.

But despite finding so much to like about this book, there were also some things that I didn’t like. With the exception of Griet, I thought most of the other characters felt more like stereotypes than fully developed characters. And while I did find the writing style very effective, there seemed to be a distance between the narrator and the reader; the books that I really love are the ones where I can share in the characters’ hopes and fears, where I can laugh with them and cry with them – but I didn’t feel any of that with this book. Still, of the three Chevalier novels I’ve now read, this is my favourite so far and I’m looking forward to trying some of her others.

The Chains of Fate by Pamela Belle

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The Chains of Fate This is the second book in Pamela Belle’s Heron series, set in the 17th century and following the adventures of Thomazine Heron and her family in an England torn apart by civil war. I loved this one almost as much as The Moon in the Water, which I read last month, and would highly recommend these books to anyone who enjoys family saga-style historical fiction. The only problem is that they are now out of print, but I definitely think it’s worth trying to find copies.

*Spoiler warning – As this is a sequel and as the previous book ended on such a big cliffhanger, it would be almost impossible for me to discuss this novel without making references to the first one. If you’re interested in this series, please see my review of The Moon in the Water before reading any further!*

The Chains of Fate begins where The Moon in the Water ended, with Thomazine embarking on a journey north to Scotland in search of her cousin and lover, Francis Heron. Believing Francis to have drowned, Thomazine had married Dominic Drakelon before discovering that she had been misled and he was not dead after all. Leaving her husband and baby son behind, she sets off to find Francis with only her friend Grainne, servant Holly and Grainne’s two young children for company. The road north through a country at war is not without its dangers but Thomazine eventually arrives at the Borders home of her Graham cousins – only to discover that convincing Francis of her innocence will not be as easy as she’d hoped.

Will Francis and Thomazine find happiness together in the end or will they be separated forever by war or by the evil scheming of cousin Meraud? I’m not going to say any more because the story that unfolds throughout The Chains of Fate is a wonderful, epic tale of love, war and betrayal and I wouldn’t want to spoil a single page of it for you.

Much as I enjoyed reading this book, however, it’s not without a few flaws that prevented me from loving it quite as much as the first book. While I love Thomazine as a narrator, the fact that she is telling her story in the first person means that she is usually far removed from the centre of the Civil War action. The outcomes of various battles and the movements of the armies are described to Thomazine through letters or gossip picked up in taverns and I thought this became a bit tedious at times. Having said that, I am not a big fan of battle scenes, so I did appreciate the focus on ordinary families and the people who were forced to stay behind, worrying about their loved ones in the thick of the fighting.

I was also slightly disappointed that Thomazine and Francis are kept apart for such long stretches of the book. The other storylines the author brings into the novel – the relationship between Thomazine and her little boy, Kit; the love affairs of Grainne, Lucy and Jamie; and the question of who will inherit Goldhayes – were compelling too and did interest me, but I still found myself getting impatient wondering when Francis was going to make another appearance!

Anyway, this was another great book and I’m now looking forward to reading the third one, Alathea – but apprehensive too because I’m aware that it’s about the next generation of Herons and in my experience sometimes a series is not as good once we leave the original characters behind. I’m hoping this won’t be the case with Alathea and it shouldn’t be too long before I have the chance to find out.

The Moon in the Water by Pamela Belle

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The Moon in the Water Pamela Belle’s name first came to my attention two or three years ago when I was looking for lists of novels about Richard III and saw a mention of one of her books, The Lodestar. After discovering that it was out of print, I never actually got round to looking for a copy and forgot about it…until a few weeks ago when I came across one of her other novels, The Moon in the Water. Not the one I had originally wanted to read – and set in an entirely different period – but it sounded good so I decided to try it anyway. And I can’t say that I regret reading this one instead of The Lodestar, as I loved it from the first page to the last!

First published in 1983, The Moon in the Water is the kind of historical family saga I used to love reading – books like Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds, Susan Howatch’s Penmarric or John Jakes’ North and South trilogy come to mind – but haven’t read very often in recent years. It was a joy to discover this one and to know that I have many more Pamela Belle books still to look forward to. The Moon in the Water is the first of her Heron series, following the story of Thomazine Heron and her family, and is set during the English Civil War.

When Thomazine, our narrator, is orphaned at the age of ten, her father’s cousin, Sir Simon Heron, becomes her guardian. Arriving at Sir Simon’s estate of Goldhayes in Suffolk, Thomazine settles into her new life and gets to know the other Heron children – Simon, the eldest and the heir; Edward, who wants to become a soldier; the rebellious, quick-witted Francis; Lucy, an avid reader of stage plays; and six year-old Jamie, the baby of the family. Thomazine soon forms friendships with each of her five cousins, but it’s Francis with whom she feels the closest connection. When a marriage is arranged between Thomazine and another cousin, Dominic Drakelon, Thomazine is horrified but consoles herself with the knowledge that the wedding won’t take place until she is sixteen and a lot can happen in six years.

As time passes and the Heron children grow up, Thomazine discovers that she has fallen in love – not with Dominic, but with her cousin Francis. With Sir Simon now dead, his eldest son, Simon, has become head of the family, but unfortunately he distrusts and disapproves of his younger brother; if Thomazine is to have any chance of escaping from her betrothal to Dominic, she must first find a way to repair the relationship between Simon and Francis. Meanwhile, tensions between King Charles I and his Parliament intensify and the Herons, who choose to support the King, find themselves facing a host of new challenges as civil war breaks out in England.

The Moon in the Water is a romance, but not a silly, bodice-ripping one. There is so much more to this book than just the central love story. Music and poetry are shared interests of several of the characters and we are given fragments of song and verse. The historical background is well researched and there are descriptions of battles, sieges and the ways in which civil war affects not just the people at the heart of the action but also those who have stayed at home. And while it’s sometimes too easy to predict what is going to happen, the story is gripping enough to make this a difficult book to put down.

But going back to that central love story, it’s a great one. Rather than coming out of nowhere, the relationship between Thomazine and Francis develops slowly from friendship to romantic love and it feels believable – although it’s obvious to the reader long before the characters themselves start to become aware of how they feel! It also helps that they are both such great characters. I had a look at some of the other reviews on Goodreads after finishing the book and was intrigued by the fact that several reviewers mentioned that Francis Heron is very like Francis Crawford of Lymond from Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles, which is exactly what I kept thinking too, to the point where I started to find it distracting and wished the author had chosen a different name! The intelligent, imaginative young Francis Heron is very much as I would imagine Francis Crawford as a child and as an adult his relationship with his brother Simon is similar in some ways to Lymond’s relationship with his brother Richard.

I also loved Thomazine, which is fortunate as this is really her story, narrated in the first person, which means her personality comes through on every page. Another favourite character was Grainne, the Irish girl who marries a friend of the Herons and becomes almost one of the family. The villains were maybe a bit disappointing – and it was easy to guess who they were going to be, even before they committed any villainous acts – but that’s just a small criticism of such an enjoyable book.

It’s frustrating that these books and so many others that I want to read are out of print, but at least in this age of the internet it’s a lot easier to find copies of them than it used to be! I’m very excited about reading Pamela Belle’s other novels, beginning with the next in the Heron series, The Chains of Fate. With this one ending on a big cliffhanger, I can’t wait to see what the future holds for the Heron family – although I’m sure things aren’t going to go smoothly for them!

The Crimson Ribbon by Katherine Clements

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The Crimson Ribbon The Crimson Ribbon is a new historical fiction novel set during the English Civil War. As the story begins in 1646, our narrator, Ruth Flowers, is a servant in the household of Oliver Cromwell. When her mother is hanged for witchcraft, Ruth is forced to flee to London to the home of Master Poole and his daughter, Elizabeth (Lizzie), friends of Cromwell’s mother. On the journey she meets a former Parliamentarian soldier, Joseph Oakes, who has deserted after the Battle of Naseby and is hoping to become a printer’s apprentice so that he can continue the fight using words instead of violence.

Still haunted by her mother’s death, Ruth finds it difficult to trust Joseph and separates from him when they reach London, expecting never to see him again. As she settles into her new life at the Pooles’ house, Ruth becomes captivated by the beautiful Lizzie Poole and is delighted to find that Lizzie returns her love. But when Lizzie’s religious and political beliefs draw her into the conflict between King Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, the lives of both women could be in danger.

Ruth is a fictional character and her story is imagined by the author, but Elizabeth Poole was a real historical figure who really did claim to have visions and argued against the execution of King Charles I. It seems that there is not a lot of information available about Elizabeth’s life and she eventually disappears from historical records, allowing Katherine Clements to come up with an interesting conclusion to her story. In her author’s note she does explain where the story has moved away from the known facts about Lizzie.

This book is set during a fascinating period of history and one that I wish more historical fiction authors would write about. Ruth’s relationships with Lizzie, with Joseph and with Oliver Cromwell form the basis of the novel, but other subjects and themes are included too, particularly witchcraft and the witch hunts that were so common in seventeenth century England. These were superstitious times and anyone who led an unconventional life could find themselves under suspicion. Through Joseph we also learn a little bit about army life and what happened at Naseby, while Lizzie’s storyline involves prayer meetings and the writing of religious pamphlets.

As the story is narrated by Ruth in the first person, I felt that I got to know her better than any of the other characters. However, I didn’t like the character of Elizabeth Poole and this made it hard for me to understand Ruth’s love for her. It frustrated me that she continued to remain so devoted and loyal, despite the way Lizzie often treated her. Apart from this, my only problem with the book was that it was written in the present tense which I almost always dislike, although I can understand the reasons for choosing to write in that way – it does give the story a sense of immediacy and intimacy.

I did enjoy The Crimson Ribbon and as this is Katherine Clements’ first novel I will be looking out for news of a second!

Thanks to Headline for sending me a review copy of this book.

Girl on the Golden Coin by Marci Jefferson

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Girl on the Golden Coin For more than three hundred years, an image of Britannia with her shield and spear or trident has been depicted on the reverse of certain British coins. In the 17th century, the model for Britannia was said to be Frances Stuart, who was described by Samuel Pepys as a great beauty and who famously refused to become a mistress of King Charles II. Girl on the Golden Coin is Frances Stuart’s story.

At the beginning of the novel, Frances is one of a family of Royalists who have been living in exile in Paris since Charles I was defeated in the English Civil War. With the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the Stuart family return to favour and Frances joins the household of Henriette Anne, Charles II’s younger sister, who has just married the brother of Louis XIV of France (the ‘Sun King’). When Frances catches Louis’ eye, he sends her to the English court where she is faced with the task of seducing Charles, converting him to Catholicism and helping to form an alliance between England and France.

The rest of the novel follows Frances at the court of Charles II, exploring her relationships with the King, his noblemen and the other women of the court including the young Queen, Catherine of Braganza, and the King’s favourite mistress Barbara Palmer, Lady Castlemaine. As Frances grows closer to Charles and begins to replace Castlemaine in his affections, she finds herself under pressure from the Queen Mother, the French ambassadors and various courtiers to use her influence with the King to help further their political intrigues – and failure to do so could result in her own family secrets being exposed.

Girl on the Golden Coin is Marci Jefferson’s first novel and was only published in February, but has been attracting some excellent reviews already. I can see its appeal, but unfortunately I didn’t enjoy it as much as most other readers have. It was fun to read but it was too light for me and didn’t have the depth I prefer in my historical fiction – although to be fair, that’s what I had suspected before I started reading but decided to still read it anyway as the Restoration is such an interesting period of history and I had never come across a book written from Frances Stuart’s perspective before.

I suppose given who Frances was and her position at court, it’s understandable that so much of the novel concentrates on her love life, but I would personally have preferred less romance, fewer descriptions of pretty silk dresses and beautiful jewels, and more focus on the history. The novel does touch on important issues such as religious conflict (in the form of two of Frances’ servants, one of whom is a Catholic and the other a Quaker), and the Anglo-Dutch War but I was disappointed that there were only a few pages devoted to some of the most significant historical events Frances lived through, such as the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London. I couldn’t help making comparisons with Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor, another historical romance set at the court of Charles II, but which captures the drama and atmosphere of the Restoration period in a way which, in my opinion, this book doesn’t.

I don’t want to sound too negative because I didn’t actually dislike Girl on the Golden Coin – it was a quick read that kept me entertained for a few days and a good introduction to the life of Frances Stuart, someone I previously knew almost nothing about. As the response to this novel so far has been overwhelmingly positive I’m sure Marci Jefferson has a very successful career ahead of her. This just wasn’t the right book for me.

Thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy via NetGalley.

Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson

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Quicksilver Quicksilver is the first of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, a series of novels set during the 17th century. I had been interested in reading this book for a long time but was putting off reading it because of its length (over 900 pages) and its reputation for being a very difficult, challenging read. I don’t have a problem with long, difficult books but need to be in the right frame of mind to begin reading them.

At the beginning of the novel, the mysterious Enoch Root arrives in Boston, Massachusetts, to deliver a letter to Daniel Waterhouse, an English Puritan and natural philosopher, asking him to return to England to solve a dispute between the mathematicians Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz over who was first to invent calculus. As Daniel voyages home across the Atlantic, pursued by the pirate Edward Teach, we are given a series of flashbacks to the 1660s and his time at Trinity College, Cambridge where he first met Isaac Newton and the other famous scientists of the period.

At the end of the first part, we leave Daniel Waterhouse’s story behind for a while, to be picked up again later. The middle section of the book follows the adventures of Jack Shaftoe, a ‘vagabond’, who rescues a beautiful slave, Eliza, from a Turkish harem during the 1683 Siege of Vienna. Together they travel across half of Europe, ending in Amsterdam, where Eliza becomes involved in the world of trade and banking. We then rejoin Daniel Waterhouse again just before the death of King Charles II and the Glorious Revolution.

In the two paragraphs above I have only given a very basic outline of what Quicksilver is about. It would be impossible for me to mention everything! The book covers almost every important historical event of the period including the plague, the Great Fire of London and the Restoration – and there are appearances from everyone you can think of, from Newton and Leibniz to Samuel Pepys, William of Orange and Benjamin Franklin. Stephenson also mixes some different forms of writing into the novel, so that although most of the book is written in normal prose there are also some sections presented as a play or as minutes from a meeting or letters written in code.

As I said, I had been curious about this book for a while but now that my curiosity has been satisfied I can safely say that I won’t be continuing with the other two books in the trilogy! There were parts of the book that I enjoyed but overall I thought it was too much effort for too little reward – and I say that as someone who is usually happy to read big, complex books that require effort from the reader. Part of my problem could have been that I probably tried to rush through the book too quickly (if you can call spending two months on a book ‘rushing’; I started reading one day in November and finished just before the New Year). Maybe I should have tried reading it over six months or even a year, putting it aside for a while when I got bored with it – looking at other reviews, this seems to be what a lot of people recommend. But really, once I got halfway through I just wanted to be finished with it.

I should point out that I didn’t actually hate Quicksilver and there were times when I became completely immersed in its world. I enjoyed reading about the early days of the Royal Society and the work of its members and here I was reminded of An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears. There were detailed descriptions of their experiments and discoveries and we learn about a wide range of scientific topics including sundials, clocks and telling the time, the development of language and vocabulary, the formulation of the laws of gravity and the development of calculus. Most of this was fascinating (though be warned that there are some gruesome experiments on animals described in graphic detail) and I particularly loved the characterisation of Isaac Newton as an eccentric genius, forgetting to eat and sleep, and sacrificing his health in the name of science. Often, though, the story seemed to disappear under pages and pages of exposition (sometimes complete with diagrams and notes) and I felt I was reading a science textbook rather than a work of fiction.

There were also a few other things that I found very irritating, such as the spelling of the word fancy as phant’sy and the fact that, in the middle section of the book in particular, there is absolutely no attempt to use dialogue suitable to the time period. I understand that this is not your average ‘historical fiction’ novel and Stephenson probably had a good reason for his choice of language, but modern slang spoken by historical characters is something that nearly always annoys me, whatever the reason.

But the biggest problem, for me, was that the novel has no real plot – or at least, there’s no single plot that runs through the book from beginning to end. Instead there are lots of disjointed subplots, lots of ideas and concepts, but they never come together at any point to form an engaging story. When I came to the end of the book I didn’t feel the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that I felt on finishing other long books like War and Peace, for example, or Clarissa or Les Miserables; all I felt when I finished Quicksilver was relief – and that was disappointing after the time I’d invested in it and the high expectations I’d had. On a more positive note, I do feel that I’ve learned a lot about 17th century science, religion and politics – though whether I understood it all is a different matter!

I think I’ll end this post here before it becomes as long as Quicksilver itself. Clearly there are a lot of people who have loved this book and the other two in the Baroque Cycle, so if this sounds like something you would enjoy please don’t let me put you off it!

Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

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Twenty Years After At last! I’ve been meaning to read the sequel to The Three Musketeers for about five years now and I regret not having read it earlier as I loved it every bit as much as I expected to. I’ve done my best to avoid any big spoilers here but if you haven’t read The Three Musketeers yet you might prefer not to read the rest of this post until you have.

Twenty Years After, as you might have guessed, is set twenty years after The Three Musketeers. The political situation in France has changed during this time period: Cardinal Richelieu is dead and has been succeeded by the Italian Cardinal Mazarin, who is in league with the widowed Anne of Austria, mother of the young King Louis XIV of France. The French people are divided between Mazarin’s supporters and his opponents, the Frondeurs, who are unhappy with the way the country is being run. As Twenty Years After begins, France is close to civil war and when Mazarin meets our old friend d’Artagnan and hears of the brave exploits he has performed in the past, he asks him for help, along with his companions, the three musketeers – Athos, Porthos and Aramis.

D’Artagnan and his three friends have drifted apart over the years but he sets out to find them and invite them to join him in the Cardinal’s service. But while Porthos (hoping that Mazarin will reward him with a barony) is happy to go along with d’Artagnan, the other two have already taken the opposite side in the conflict. The story that follows is the story of how the friendship between d’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis is tested by their differing political views and loyalties. Their work takes them to England, where King Charles I is facing capture and execution, and again they find themselves in opposition – but ultimately their loyalty is still to each other, especially when faced with a new enemy in the form of Mordaunt, the son of Milady, the previous book’s villain.

I found Twenty Years After a much more complex book than The Three Musketeers; I’m completely unfamiliar with this period of French history and even after finishing the book I’m not sure I really understood all of the historical background or exactly which of the various princes and dukes was on which side of the conflict. It’s a more mature book too – the characters are twenty years older and have different motivations and priorities, which allows Dumas to explore some different ideas and themes. But there’s still plenty of swashbuckling adventure and I definitely thought this book was just as much fun to read as the first one. As in The Three Musketeers there are some great and memorable scenes and set pieces – the scene on the scaffold during the execution of Charles I is one of the best – and I also loved the sequence of chapters describing the imprisonment of the Duc de Beaufort and his attempts to escape (which involved a trained dog, lobsters, some tennis balls and a giant pie).

The novel begins with an introduction to Cardinal Mazarin, but we don’t have to wait too long until we meet d’Artagnan again, still a lieutenant in the musketeers and dreaming of a captaincy. The other three musketeers and their servants are then reintroduced gradually one by one: first d’Artagnan’s old valet, Planchet, then Aramis with Bazin, Porthos and Mousqueton, Athos and finally Grimaud. I was a bit disappointed, though, that I had read more than 200 pages before all four of our heroes were reunited and together again in the same scene. And that was really the only problem I had with this book – the fact that throughout most of the story the four are divided into two pairs working towards different goals, with Porthos and d’Artagnan on one side and Athos and Aramis on the other.

The basic personality traits of the musketeers are the same, but they have also changed in many ways since the previous book, which is what you would expect after a gap of twenty years. D’Artagnan has matured from the naïve, passionate, brave young man we met in The Three Musketeers into a clever, cunning, quick-thinking man of forty who is now the natural leader of the group. Aramis has fulfilled his ambition of entering the church but isn’t fully committed, still being too interested in women and fighting. As d’Artagnan tells him, “when you were a musketeer you were forever becoming the abbé, and now you are an abbé you appear to me to have a strong leaning to the musketeers.”

Athos was my favourite character in The Three Musketeers but in this book he has become so honourable and saintly that I found him very frustrating at times. I still liked him but I much preferred the younger Athos of the wine cellar and the Bastion Saint-Gervais! In contrast, Porthos, who was never the brightest of the four, seems to have become even less intelligent. I’m sure he wasn’t quite as stupid in the first book! It does result in some great comedy moments though, and I do admire Dumas for making changes rather than leaving his characters static and undeveloped. It was also good to see that the musketeers’ four servants are given more personality in this book, particularly Grimaud and Mousqueton who even have some separate adventures of their own.

As I expected, Twenty Years After has definitely been one of my most enjoyable reads of the year! The Vicomte de Bragelonne awaits…