Tag: 19th century

The Witch’s Stone by Kirsty Ferry

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Jess Morgan is a genealogist and historical researcher who has returned to the area of Northumberland where she grew up to work on a new project looking into the history of a ruined chapel. There are plans to make it part of a Heritage Trail for tourists, so some interesting facts about the site are needed. Reacquainted with an old school friend, Nate, who is managing the project for the heritage group, Jess begins investigating the chapel’s past and discovers links with an ancient stone known as Isabel’s Stone – or the Witch’s Stone – and a woman called Eliza who is buried in the chapel graveyard.

A second thread of the novel is set in 1888 and follows Eliza, the twenty-two-year-old daughter of Lord and Lady Stratford of Stratford Chase. Eliza is recovering from an accident she suffered several months earlier which left her with damage to her spine and unable to remember what happened. All she knows is that Lucian Ashcombe, the man she loves, was somehow involved and was sent away, forbidden to see her again. But now Lucian has returned – and so has another man, Benedict Rochford, her intended husband. Can she trust either of them? If only her memories would come back!

Jess and Eliza are linked by a third woman: Isabel, the witch, whom it’s said can be summoned by running three times around her stone. I was interested to read at the end of the book that Kirsty Ferry was inspired by a brief record in an old book of a witch with an evil eye and a sinister cat who lived in a cottage near Brinkburn Abbey. Ferry’s portrayal of Isabel, the Brinkburn Witch, is much more sympathetic; she appears to the protagonists in times of need, tying the two storylines together. The two narratives merge further when Jess, who is staying in a room at Eliza’s old home, Stratford Chase, now converted into a hotel, begins to slip between past and present, and when Nate discovers an old hunting knife which seems to wield a strange power over him.

There are some supernatural elements, then, but they never completely dominate the novel; the focus is on the personal stories of the characters with Jess researching the history of the chapel and trying to rebuild her life after her recent divorce and Eliza struggling with her amnesia and looking for a way out of the marriage her parents and brother have planned for her. I was much more interested in Eliza’s story at first as it was where all the drama was taking place, but later in the book the two threads come together so well that it’s hard to separate one from the other. Not everyone in the story gets a happy ending, but that’s reality and I still found the final chapter very satisfying. I also loved the setting – not enough books are set in Northumberland! The fictional Stratford Chase and the ruined chapel are located in the Simonside Hills near Rothbury and the author describes the landscape beautifully.

This is the first Kirsty Ferry book I’ve read; she has written a large number of others and I’m not sure if any of them appeal to me, but I’ll certainly be looking out for The Snow Witch, due to be published later this year!

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

Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (re-read)

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I hadn’t been planning a re-read of this book, but when FictionFan announced a review-along I couldn’t resist joining in. I’m not sure exactly when I first read it, but it must have been around twenty years ago when I went through a phase of reading Victorian sensation novels (if you’re not familiar with the term, the sensation novel was a popular genre of 19th century fiction featuring shocking crimes in ordinary domestic settings). This is one that I particularly enjoyed so I was happy to read it again and am looking forward to reading the other review-along participants’ reviews to see what everyone else thought!

Lady Audley’s Secret was published in 1862 and was Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s most successful novel, although she wrote more than eighty others, as well as some short stories. The first thing I discovered when I started to re-read it is that I could barely remember anything at all about it, so it was almost like experiencing it for the first time again.

The novel opens with the marriage of Sir Michael Audley and Lucy Graham. Lucy is young and beautiful and Sir Michael, a middle-aged widower, is enchanted by his new wife. Little is known about her past before she arrived in the village as governess to the local doctor’s children, but Sir Michael doesn’t care – Lucy’s happiness is all that matters to him. Meanwhile, his nephew, Robert Audley, has just been reacquainted with his old friend George Talboys, who has been in Australia for three years. George, who had found himself struggling financially, had left his wife, Helen, in England while he went off to improve his fortunes. Now that he’s returned, he’s looking forward to seeing her again and is heartbroken when he discovers that she has died during his absence.

Robert does his best to comfort his friend and brings him to Audley Court to meet Sir Michael, hoping it will help to take his mind off things. However, when George disappears without explanation, Robert begins to grow suspicious of his uncle’s new wife. Convinced that George has been murdered and that the new Lady Audley is implicated, Robert begins to investigate her past and is shocked by what he discovers.

I won’t discuss the plot in any more detail as I don’t want to give too much away, but all the typical elements of a sensation novel are here: murder, arson, family secrets, stolen letters, faked telegrams, blackmail, hidden identities, thunderstorms and all sort of lies and deception! The book also touches on some more serious topics, such as the subject of madness, how it was viewed in the 19th century and how it was often used as a convenient excuse to have women locked away in order to avoid embarrassment or scandal. It’s not really difficult to guess some of the secrets but, remembering that this was one of the first and most influential books of its type, I expect readers at the time would have found it more shocking and unpredictable. It would also have had some extra relevance for Victorian readers, as Braddon took inspiration from the high profile Constance Kent murder case of 1860, which also inspired parts of Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone and, much later, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale.

One thing I had forgotten from my previous read was how little of the story is actually written from Lady Audley’s perspective. Instead, we spend most of the novel in Robert Audley’s company as he tries to get to the bottom of his friend’s disappearance. Although ‘detective fiction’ didn’t really exist in 1861 in the way we know it today, Robert, who is a lawyer, takes on the role of an amateur detective, tracing clues, gathering evidence and speaking to witnesses. It’s fascinating to watch him gradually begin to unravel the truth, although I didn’t always agree with what he did with the information he uncovered! Because most of what we see and learn of Lady Audley is from Robert’s point of view, she’s very much the villain of the book, but I think it’s clear that Braddon wants us to at least have some sympathy for her circumstances, if not her actions. I was a bit disappointed that George’s sister, Clara Talboys, doesn’t play a bigger part in the story, though – when she’s first introduced, it seems she’s going to join Robert in his investigations, but she barely appears again until the end.

I enjoyed my re-read, then; it’s a very readable book and although it’s quite a long one and the pace slows down at times, I still flew through the pages faster than you would expect. I’ve also read two other books by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, both of which I’ve reviewed on my blog: Aurora Floyd and The Doctor’s Wife. The first has quite a similar feel to Lady Audley’s Secret, although I didn’t find it as exciting, but the latter is very different. I’ll definitely try to explore more of Braddon’s books soon, but I would also like to revisit East Lynne by Ellen Wood and some of my favourite Wilkie Collins sensation novels.

Here are the reviews of the other review-along participants. Let me know if I’ve missed yours!

FictionFan’s Book Reviews

Rose Reads Novels

Novel Deelights

Kelly’s Thoughts and Ramblings

What? Me Read?

The Cromarty Library Circle by Shona MacLean

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My experience of Shona MacLean’s work has so far been limited to her historical thriller, The Bookseller of Inverness, set in Scotland in the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite Rising (and published under the name SG MacLean). Her newest novel, The Cromarty Library Circle, is very different – the only similarity is that it’s also set in Scotland.

Cromarty is a town in the Scottish Highlands, situated at the tip of the Black Isle. The story takes place in 1831, when a group of people get together to form a circulating library and discuss which books they should order for it. They’re a select group, referred to by the town clockmaker (who has not been invited, despite being better read than they are) as ‘the great and the good’. They include Sir William and Charlotte Mackenzie, the local laird and his wife; her best friend, Rachel who is married to the minister, Alasdair Mackay; the previous minister, Micah Fraser, now retired; the hotel keeper Mrs Cameron and her son Ludovic, who works in a bank; two spinster sisters, the Misses Rose; a newly arrived schoolteacher, John Learmonth; an antiquarian, Isaac Fordyce, and the owner of a rope factory, Willie Hossack.

If you feel overwhelmed by this list, I can tell you that there are even more characters – those outside of the library circle – who also play a part in the story. Maybe it would have been better if I’d read this book in physical form and could easily turn back to the character list at the beginning, but I read it on my Kindle and struggled to keep track of who was who. It didn’t help that we switch from one perspective to another every few pages, rather than being given time to get to know one character before meeting another. Once I eventually managed to settle into the book and keep the many residents of Cromarty straight in my head, though, I found a lot to interest me.

In terms of plot, not much actually happens in the first half of the book. MacLean takes her time setting the scene and introducing the characters, focusing on all the gossip, snobbery, rivalries and minor scandals that go along with being part of a small 19th century community with a clearly defined social structure. I was strongly reminded of Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. The drama is saved for later in the book, when the troubled marriage between Sir William and Charlotte Mackenzie reaches breaking point, the secret past of schoolmaster John Learmonth is revealed, and the people of Cromarty have finally had enough of the arrogant, bullying attitude of the ropemaker’s son, Farquhar Hossack. I was more invested in the story by this point, so I think, for me, it was worth persevering through the slow, confusing beginning.

The lives of the characters play out against the backdrop of wider political and social changes affecting Scotland and the world as a whole. One of these issues is the debate around the abolition of slavery; this is of particular significance to our story because Sir William owns a plantation in the Caribbean and another character, Hester, is a formerly enslaved woman from Demerara who now works as a servant at the Camerons’ hotel. There’s also a lot of discussion in Cromarty of the Reform Act about to be passed in parliament which will extend the right to vote (although still not to women or most working class men). Then there’s the cholera epidemic gradually moving closer and closer to Cromarty and we even hear about the recent Polish uprising against Russia through the character of Stanislas, the clockmaker’s apprentice. The novel touches on so many different things that I felt the library circle storyline got a bit lost in the background, although it serves its purpose of bringing the central group of characters together now and then.

I had a mixture of feelings about this book, then, but in the end I enjoyed getting to know the people of Cromarty. I’ll look out for Shona MacLean’s next book, but I still have one of her earlier ones, The Redemption of Alexander Seaton, waiting to be read.

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

The Blind Woman of Sorrento by Francesco Mastriani

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Translated by Idara Crespi

Francesco Mastriani is a completely new author for me – I’m sorry to say I hadn’t even heard of him until I was offered a review copy of his 1852 novel, The Blind Woman of Sorrento, but it seems he was a very prolific Italian writer, producing over two hundred works of fiction during the 19th century. Espresso Publishing House, an imprint focusing on neglected foreign-language novels, have made this one available in its first modern English translation.

The ‘blind woman’ of the title is Beatrice, daughter of the Marchese di Rionero. She wasn’t born blind, but at the age of three she witnessed the brutal murder of her mother and lost her sight due to the shock and trauma she suffered. Now, seventeen years later, an English doctor, Oliviero Blackman, has arrived in Sorrento and believes he can help her to see again. Unknown to Beatrice, however, Dr Blackman is not all he appears to be. Who is he and does he have another motive for promising to restore Beatrice’s sight?

We also get to know Gaetano Pisani, the son of the man who killed Beatrice’s mother all those years earlier. Gaetano’s life has also been affected by the events of that terrible night and he can’t escape the shame and guilt of knowing that his father was hanged for murder. When he crosses paths with his father’s accomplice and gets his hands on a box of jewels stolen from the murdered woman, it seems that he may still have a chance to find redemption.

I don’t want to say much more about the plot as I would prefer future readers to discover all the twists and turns of this fascinating novel for themselves, as I did. The publisher compares it to Wilkie Collins, which is a good comparison as this book does share many of the elements you would often find in Collins’ work and other 19th century sensation novels such as murders, stolen jewels, family secrets, revenge plots and hidden identities, as well as lots of melodrama! I was particularly reminded of Poor Miss Finch, which also deals with the subject of blindness in a similar way (although that book was published twenty years after this one and the plot itself is quite different). I also think if you’ve enjoyed books by authors like Alexandre Dumas or Rafael Sabatini, there’s a good chance you would enjoy this one too.

Although I would have preferred Beatrice to have been a stronger character (she has a tendency to faint and swoon), I did find it interesting to see how Mastriani writes about her blindness. For a book published in the 1850s, he handles the topic quite sensitively, never implying that she’s any less intelligent because of her condition – on the contrary, she is more observant and perceptive than most people, with her other senses being heightened to compensate. Gaetano is also a complex character: although his actions and motives are sometimes questionable, I could never really think of him as a villain, but at the same time he’s not entirely heroic either.

I found Idara Crespi’s translation very clear and easy to read and I appreciated the translator’s note at the beginning, explaining why certain words and spellings had been chosen. There’s also an introduction, which you can read before or after the novel itself (I got more out of it reading it afterwards), a glossary and some notes on historical Naples. Naples was Mastriani’s own place of birth and both that city and nearby Sorrento are vividly brought to life through his descriptions. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and was entertained by it from beginning to end.

The Night Hag by Hester Musson

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Have you ever suffered from sleep paralysis – the feeling that you’re awake but can’t move your body? Maybe it’s accompanied by a sensation of pressure on your chest, as if something is pinning you to the bed, or the impression that someone is in your room. It’s more common than you may think – many people will experience it at least once or twice in their life – and it inspired the famous painting, The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli. In fact, the word ‘nightmare’ itself (originally hyphenated as night-mare) comes from the idea of a mythological female demon (a ‘mare’ or ‘hag’) sitting on the chest of a sleeping person. Someone who has had a lot of experience of these terrifying night-mares is Lil Vincent in Hester Musson’s new novel, The Night Hag.

It’s 1886 and Lil Vincent has been free of the night-mares, as she calls them, for many years, but recently they have started again and are becoming increasingly intense. Frightened and desperate, Lil writes a letter to the renowned Edinburgh doctor, Dr Lachlan. Relieved to be able to open her heart to somebody at last, even somebody she’s never met, she finds herself telling him all about her childhood, growing up as the daughter of a medium who forced her to participate in fraudulent séances.

Her childhood has left scars that still persist, even today as she tries to build a new life for herself as an archaeologist. Lil is assisting Nils and Effie Jensen with a dig on what they believe is a Bronze Age burial mound in the fictional Scottish village of Pitcarden. When they come across two cinerary urns and a bronze knife, Lil thinks they are on the verge of a significant discovery, but it seems that the villagers are unhappy with their presence and they may not be allowed to complete their excavations.

This is the second novel I’ve read by Hester Musson, the first being The Beholders. Although I found this one a more original and intriguing story, I did have some of the same problems I had with the other book – mainly that the first half is very slow and it took me a long time to become immersed in it. It didn’t help that there are several different threads to the story – Lil’s sleep disturbances, the séances and the archaeological dig – and they all feel very separate, never really coming together until the end.

Once I did get into the story, I found it interesting. There’s a good sense of time and place, with the community of rural Pitcarden steeped in superstition and folklore. The second half of the book drew me in much more than the first half did, and I began to have a lot of sympathy for Lil as she discovers that almost everyone in her life has been lying to her or deceiving her in one way or another. The way one particular character betrays her trust is quite shocking and Lil is deeply affected by it all. But although it’s a dark book, there are some glimmers of hope in the final chapters and the ending is satisfying, so I’m glad I persevered with it.

If you read this book and enjoy it, I would also recommend reading The Hill in the Dark Grove by Liam Higginson, another book about archaeology and superstition in a rural setting. It has a similar tone and atmosphere and I think it may appeal to the same readers.

Thanks to 4th Estate and William Collins for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Twelve Days of Christmas by Susan Stokes-Chapman

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I’ve previously only read one short story by Susan Stokes-Chapman (in the anthology The Winter Spirits) and I was interested in reading more of her work. This seemed like the perfect time of year to read her new book, The Twelve Days of Christmas!

The book is loosely based on the Christmas carol of the same name, with each chapter inspired by one of the gifts traditionally mentioned in the song – for example, Chapter 1 features pear trees and a character called Miss Partridge (“a partridge in a pear tree”) and Chapter 6 revolves around a game involving hidden goose eggs (“six geese a-laying”). In some cases this is done quite subtly, but in others it’s more heavy-handed; I can appreciate that it’s probably not easy to work all of these references into a novel without it beginning to feel unnatural!

Each chapter feels almost like a separate story (a few of them probably would work as standalones), but they are also linked together through shared characters and a shared setting. That setting is the little English village of Merrywake during the Regency period, with the Napoleonic Wars playing out in the background. Beginning on Christmas Day and ending on Twelfth Night, we join Viscount Pepin of Wakely Hall and his family, friends and servants as they celebrate the festive season. There’s a lovely Christmassy atmosphere as we watch the characters decorate the house, kiss under the mistletoe, open gifts, write and solve riddles, and prepare for the grand Twelfth Night Ball. But although it may all sound idyllic, not everyone at Wakely Hall is having a happy Christmas…

Stokes-Chapman explains in her author’s note that this book is her tribute to Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer and you can definitely see the influence of both. The Viscount and Viscountess Pepin (the name also has links to the song The Twelve Days of Christmas) with their five daughters immediately made me think of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice – the chapter based on “five gold rings” deals with the five girls and their hopes of marriage. The servants, though, are given just as much attention as the upper classes: there are stories about Loveday Lucas, the new kitchen maid, who can’t seem to do anything right; Will Moss the under-gardener, who appears to have fallen in love with someone completely unsuitable; and Mrs Wilson, the cold, strict housekeeper who is shocked to find that her staff consider her heartless.

I loved the world Stokes-Chapman created at Wakely Hall, but it was also nice to get some insights into the lives of the other residents of Merrywake, such as the village toymaker whose son, a drummer in the British army, has failed to come home from France. The toymaker’s story was one of the highlights of the book for me and together with the chapter that follows, about another army musician (a piper, as you may have guessed), it shows that the impact of the Napoleonic Wars is being felt all over the country, in even the smallest of communities.

The Twelve Days of Christmas is a lovely book and despite it obviously being very contrived in places, I found it completely absorbing. I particularly liked the way so many different characters from such varied backgrounds are all given their chance to shine, while each chapter also cleverly builds on the one before. I was sorry to say goodbye to the people of Merrywake and would love a sequel so we could catch up with them again in the summer!

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

The Elopement by Gill Hornby

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This is the third novel Gill Hornby has written based on the lives of members of Jane Austen’s extended family. I loved Miss Austen and Godmersham Park, so I was looking forward to reading The Elopement, which focuses on Jane’s niece, Fanny Knight, and Fanny’s stepdaughter, Mary Dorothea Knatchbull.

Fanny’s father is Jane’s brother Edward, who was made the legal heir of their wealthy Knight relatives and inherited three estates at Steventon, Chawton and Godmersham (Fanny appears as a secondary character in Godmersham Park). For a long time it seems likely that Fanny is going to remain a spinster until, in 1820, she marries Sir Edward Knatchbull of Mersham-le-Hatch at the age of twenty-eight. She doesn’t love him and he doesn’t love her, but Fanny has always been a practical person and decides that it could still be a marriage that works well for both of them.

Sir Edward has five children from his previous marriage and Fanny is sure she can be a good stepmother to them. However, there’s tension between Fanny and the only daughter, Mary Dorothea, from the beginning. Fanny is not a naturally loving or compassionate person and Mary finds it impossible to warm to her, viewing her as aloof and distant. Things come to a head when Mary falls in love with a man her father considers unsuitable. She knows she can expect no empathy or understanding from Fanny, so is forced to do something drastic.

It took me a while to get into this book. The pacing is uneven, with the first half being very slow and the second much more gripping. The title is maybe slightly misleading, as the elopement doesn’t happen until late in the book and doesn’t really play a big part in the story, although the buildup and consequences do. I think I would have preferred not to have known there was going to be an elopement so I wouldn’t have spent most of the book wondering when it was going to happen.

Hornby focuses less on Mary Dorothea’s romance and more on the relationship between stepmother and stepdaughter, which gets off to a bad start and worsens throughout the book. I went from feeling sympathetic towards Fanny to disliking her more and more as she tries to align herself with her husband’s views and closes her mind to Mary’s feelings. Still, the portrayal of Fanny and Sir Edward’s marriage illustrates the limited options available to 19th century women who would often marry out of duty, necessity or to meet society’s expectations. Mary is trying to do something different and marry for love.

In her author’s note at the end of the book, Hornby explains that she has based the novel on Fanny Knight’s own diaries which she kept from 1804 to 1872. I haven’t read the diaries so I don’t know how the personality of the real Fanny compares to the fictional one, but I was sorry not to have liked her more considering that Jane Austen apparently described her as her “favourite niece”.

I’ve learned that following the recent TV adaptation of Miss Austen which was shown earlier this year, The Elopement is also going to be adapted under the title Miss Austen Returns (I’m not sure why they’ve missed out Godmersham Park). Cassandra Austen, the star of Miss Austen, only appears once or twice in this book so I imagine she’s going to be given a much bigger role in the new adaptation. I’ll be interested to see what Gill Hornby’s next book will be about; I’m sure there’s still more she could write about the Austen family and there seems to be a never-ending appetite for it by readers and TV viewers!

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