Tag: 19th century

Clear by Carys Davies – #ReadingWales25

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Clear is a book I hadn’t really considered reading until it appeared on the Walter Scott Prize longlist in February and I was pleased that I was still able to get a copy through NetGalley. Carys Davies is also a Welsh author, which is perfect for Reading Wales Month ’25, hosted this year by Karen at BookerTalk.

Clear is a beautifully written novella set in 1843 and telling the story of a friendship that forms between two men who should be enemies. John Ferguson is one of many evangelical ministers who have broken away from their church to form the Free Church of Scotland. Having given up his job and his home to establish this new church, John is struggling financially and, out of desperation, accepts an offer of work from a landowner who wants him to travel to a remote Scottish island and evict the last remaining tenant from the land. Forced evictions like these, known as Clearances, have been happening all over the Scottish Highlands as landlords remove the people living on their estates so that they can use the land for other purposes such as sheep farming. It’s a traumatic and often cruel process and not something John is looking forward to being part of.

The man John will have to evict is Ivar, who has lived alone on his island in the far north of Scotland since the deaths of his remaining family members. It’s an isolated life, but Ivar is content and has his horse, Pegi, for company. One day, he finds a man unconscious on the beach under the cliffs and takes him to his home to nurse him back to health. This is John Ferguson, who has met with an accident soon after arriving on the island. Ivar finds a picture of John’s wife, Mary, in his belongings and becomes infatuated with her, the first woman he’s seen for a long time – but as the injured man begins to recover, Ivar switches his affections to John himself. He has no idea why John is there, however, and because the two men speak different languages, he’s unable to ask.

Language forms an important part of the novel. Ivar speaks only Norn, a now extinct language once spoken in Shetland and Orkney, and John speaks English with a small amount of Scots. Over the course of the book, we see how two men unable to communicate in words are still able to bond and connect until eventually they do begin to learn each other’s language. In her author’s note Davies explains how the novel was inspired by Jakob Jakobsen’s Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland and she scatters Norn words throughout the book with a glossary at the back. Norn appears to have been a fascinating language; John is surprised to discover how descriptive it is and how many different words there are for mist, fog, wind and other types of weather.

Some parts of the novel are written from the perspective of Mary, John’s wife, who becomes concerned about the work her husband has been sent to do – she’s heard that the evictions can be unpleasant and violent – and decides to follow him to the island. I enjoyed reading Mary’s story and thought her sections of the book perfectly complemented Ivar and John’s. Mary’s thread of the novel comes together with the others near the end, and although I’m not going to tell you how the book ends I can say that it wasn’t what I expected but I was quite happy with it!

Carys Davies’ writing is beautiful and also very readable and I found this a quick, absorbing read. For such a short book, there’s a lot packed inside it. It reminded me a lot of Claire Keegan’s novella Small Things Like These, so if you enjoyed one book I would recommend trying the other.

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

The Resurrectionist by A. Rae Dunlap

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It’s 1828 and James Willoughby has just arrived in Edinburgh to begin his medical studies at the university. Having found himself completely unsuited to the career in the church that his parents had planned for him, James has decided that medicine is his true vocation. After speaking to some of his fellow students, he discovers that due to the large class sizes the university can only offer very limited opportunities for practical experience. In order to gain the surgical knowledge he desires, it will also be necessary to attend one of the city’s private anatomy schools where he’ll be able to dissect and study the human body for himself.

Although James comes from a wealthy family, they have fallen on hard times since his father’s death. There’s enough money to pay for his lodgings at the Hope and Anchor Inn, but not much else. If he wants to go to anatomy school, he’ll have to find a way to pay the fees himself. Signing up for Dr Malstrom’s prestigious school, James confides in the doctor’s apprentice, Aneurin MacKinnon, explaining his financial difficulties. Aneurin – or Nye, as he prefers to be called – tells him he may have a solution to the problem. And with that, James finds himself drawn into the secretive, macabre world of body snatching – taking corpses from graves under cover of darkness and selling them to anatomists for study and research purposes.

I loved this book! As a debut novel it’s very impressive and I’ll certainly be looking out for more by A. Rae Dunlap. From the very first page she captures the formal feel of the 19th century novel and manages to avoid using the sort of inappropriately modern language that could have so easily pulled me out of the historical setting. As with Ambrose Parry’s Raven and Fisher series, there are lots of insights into the medical world of 19th century Edinburgh, with the focus here being on the study of anatomy and surgery and how progress was hampered by the lack of human cadavers for students to work with. Edinburgh itself provides an atmospheric setting for the novel, especially as most of the action, for obvious reasons, takes place at night. There are lots of suitably Gothic descriptions of lonely cemeteries, dark alleys and disreputable inns, all forming the backdrop to the trade of body snatching.

The Resurrectionist is narrated by James Willoughby, whom I really liked and believed in as a character. He begins the novel as an innocent, well-meaning young man who has led a somewhat sheltered life and who gradually grows as a person as he has his eyes opened to things and experiences he had never imagined. Over the course of the novel, we see a friendship form between James and the more worldly Nye, which eventually develops into something more. I thought the story was already interesting enough without adding a romance, but it does seem to arise naturally from the characters’ interactions rather than being forced in for the sake of it. It also provides an extra sense of danger, as both men are under no illusions as to the importance of keeping their relationship secret and what could happen to them if they are found out.

Although James and Nye and their friends are fictional, several other characters in the book really existed, most notably the infamous Burke and Hare, probably the best known body snatchers – or ‘resurrectionists’ – in history. As competition amongst the city’s anatomists increases and tasked with providing a steady supply of corpses for their employer Dr Knox, Burke and Hare decide that in addition to grave robbing, there could be another way to meet the demand for bodies. I knew very little about Burke and Hare before reading this book, so I enjoyed seeing how things played out for them and how Dunlap seamlessly worked them into James and Nye’s fictional story while also staying true to the historical facts.

The end of the novel wraps things up enough to make this a satisfactory standalone, but also sets up a potential sequel. This one felt very much like a coming of age novel for James, so I would be interested to see what the future has in store for him. If Dunlap has decided to move on and write something different, though, I will be equally interested to read whatever it is!

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

The Queen of Fives by Alex Hay

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The Queen of Fives. They breathed the title with reverence on the docks, down the coastline. A lady with a hundred faces, a thousand voices, a million lives. She might spin into yours if you didn’t watch out…She played a glittering game: lifting a man’s fortune with five moves, in five days, before disappearing without a trace.

I enjoyed Alex Hay’s first novel, The Housekeepers, about a group of servants staging a heist during a ball in a grand London house. I hoped for something similar from his next book – and that’s what I got! If anything, this one is more complex, ambitious and inventive.

It’s 1898 and Quinn Le Blanc has five days to convince the Duke of Kendal to marry her and trick him out of his fortune. Why five days? Because Quinn is the ‘Queen of Fives’, the leader of a network of London con artists based at a house known as The Château who play by a specific set of rules. Their current game is called False Heiress and there are a number of steps that have to be carried out on each day of the con. The Château has been operating for generations and there have been many previous Queens. During Quinn’s eight-year reign, however, things have started going wrong: debts are mounting and the house is falling into disrepair. She desperately needs this latest scheme to be a success.

Quinn is assisted by Mr Silk, whose job is to serve the Queen and to guard the all-important Rulebook, which contains the instructions for the Château’s various games. But watching from the shadows is the mysterious Man in the Blue Silk Waistcoat – and also the equally mysterious Woman in the Cream Silk Gown – who will do whatever it takes to stop Quinn in her tracks.

As you can see, this is an unusual story based on an unusual premise and, to be honest, I was never fully convinced by it. I didn’t really understand why it was so important to complete the game within five days and to stick so rigidly to the Rulebook, when allowing more time or adapting the rules to fit unforeseen circumstances could have made it easier to win. Still, I managed to just suspend disbelief and go along with it! After a slow start, with time spent introducing the characters and the history of the Château, things gradually pick up pace and by the middle of the book I was gripped.

As with The Housekeepers, the reader is in the rare position of wanting the villains, in this case Quinn and her friends, to succeed. However, we also get to know the victims, the Duke of Kendal and his sister, Tor (short for Victoria). Tor is a single woman in her thirties who still lives with her brother and their stepmother and she is worried about losing her home should the Duke decide to marry. Tor is immediately suspicious of the woman who appears out of nowhere and introduces herself as Miss Quinta White, but the Duke himself seems unsuspecting. Later, we discover that he has reasons of his own for wanting to marry quickly, so Quinn’s attentions aren’t unwelcome to him – though, of course, he has no idea who she really is or what her plans are.

There are some great twists towards the end of the book and although in hindsight I feel I should probably have seen them coming, I didn’t and was taken by surprise. I think overall I preferred The Housekeepers, but both books are fun and I’m already looking forward to a third book by Alex Hay, whenever and whatever that may be.

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

God is an Englishman by RF Delderfield – #1970Club

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My final book for this week’s 1970 Club hosted by Simon and Karen is one I was almost certain I would love – and I did! I’ve read several of RF Delderfield’s other books and particularly enjoyed his A Horseman Riding By trilogy, set in rural England during the first half of the 20th century. God is an Englishman, published in 1970, is the first in another trilogy, known as the Swann Saga, which promises to be equally enjoyable.

The novel begins with soldier Adam Swann fighting in India during the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. In the chaos of the battlefield, Adam stumbles upon a valuable ruby necklace in a broken casket. With no way of finding its rightful owner and reluctant to hand it over to the East India Company, he decides to use it to start a new life for himself. Disillusioned by his experiences with the Mutiny and previously the Crimean War, Adam has been considering resigning from the army anyway and the money from the sale of the necklace will enable him to launch a new business venture.

On his return to England, Adam contemplates investing in railways but a better plan soon begins to emerge. What about the areas of the country that can’t be reached by train? He rides out into the countryside to investigate the possibility of a horse-drawn delivery service and after passing through Seddon Moss, a mill town near Manchester, he has his first encounter with the mill owner’s daughter, Henrietta Rawlinson, who is running away to avoid marriage to a man she doesn’t love. The rest of the novel follows the formation and expansion of Adam’s new business, Swann-on-Wheels, and his relationship with Henrietta as they marry and start a home and family.

At almost 700 pages in the edition I read, this book was quite a commitment, especially as I needed to finish it in time to review this week and should probably have started it earlier. However, once I became absorbed in the story, the pages went by a lot more quickly than I’d expected and I was sorry to reach the end.

While the Horseman Riding By books were set in the countryside with a focus on farming and rural life, this one is set in the very different world of trade, business and industry. It’s fascinating to see how Adam starts with nothing except some jewels and some good ideas and slowly builds up Swann-on-Wheels into a successful haulage company with depots all over the country. Adam gives each region a name (the Border Triangle, the Mountain Square, the Western Wedge…) and each one presents its own unique set of challenges and opportunities depending on the terrain, the existing infrastructure and the industries already operating in that area. He also puts a manager in charge of each area and although some of them are not much more than names on the page, others are brought to life and have adventures of their own.

The broad geographical setting and large number of characters allows Delderfield to address many specific topics and social issues relevant to life in Victorian Britain. Through Henrietta’s father, the miller Sam Rawlinson, we see first the dissatisfaction of the mill workers with their pay and working conditions and later the impact of the reduction in the supply of raw cotton due to the American Civil War. The fate of homeless children and the dangers facing young boys used as chimney sweeps are also explored – and if all of this makes you think of Charles Dickens, there’s a cameo appearance from the man himself as he and several of the Swann family become involved in the Staplehurst rail accident of 1865.

At the heart of the novel, though, is the relationship between Adam and Henrietta and how it develops as both characters grow and change and make discoveries about themselves and each other. Henrietta, being a lot younger than Adam, is immature, innocent and frivolous at the start of the novel and there’s a sense that although Adam loves her he doesn’t fully understand or respect her. It’s only after the introduction of another woman, Edith Wadsworth, into both their lives, that Henrietta begins to take control of her future and Adam comes to see her as more of an equal. Ironically, Edith, the daughter of one of Swann-on-Wheels’ area managers, is in love with Adam herself, but I won’t tell you what happens there or whether she acts on her feelings!

I think some readers will probably enjoy this book more for the Swann family storylines and others for the insights into the building of a business empire. I found both interesting and felt that Delderfield got the balance between the two just about right. I will be continuing with the second book, Theirs Was the Kingdom!

Book 45/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas

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In the Upper Country came to my attention earlier this year when it was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize and as I’ve been looking out for historical fiction set in Canada (see my Historical Musings post from last year) it’s one I was particularly interested in reading.

The novel opens in 1859 in Dunmore, Ontario, a fictional town settled by people fleeing slavery in the American South. It is home to Lensinda Martin, a young black journalist who works for a local newspaper. When an old woman who has recently arrived in Dunmore through the Underground Railroad kills a slave hunter and is arrested, Lensinda is sent to interview her in jail. The old woman insists that if she’s going to tell her story, Lensinda must tell one in return and so, over the course of several days, the two women begin to exchange tales.

The stories they tell reveal not only how the old woman came to be in Dunmore and to kill a man, but also the journeys of other slaves and the significance of all of this on Lensinda’s own life. They also explore the connections between the Black and Indigenous communities of North America – something which Kai Thomas in his author’s note points out is usually ignored in other novels about slavery. It’s certainly not a subject I know much about, so I found that aspect of the book interesting.

Although Dunmore is not a real place, Thomas explains that it’s inspired by similar towns that did exist, such as North Buxton, Ontario. It had never occurred to me that there were whole towns settled by slaves in Canada; in fact, everything I’ve previously read about the Underground Railroad has focused more on how the slaves manage to escape and begin their journey rather than on what happens to them after they reach their destination. It’s a book with lots of interesting themes and topics, then – and it’s always good when you reach the end of a novel feeling that you’ve learned something new.

On a more negative note, the structure of the book didn’t work very well for me at all. There were too many different stories, too many different voices and I found it difficult to follow what was happening and engage with the characters. I almost abandoned it several times because I just couldn’t get into the flow of the writing, but I kept going and did manage to finish it. I don’t regret reading it, but for me it was definitely more of an educational book than an enjoyable one!

This is book 17/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2024.

Book 35/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

House of Shades by Lianne Dillsworth

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I enjoyed Lianne Dillsworth’s first novel, Theatre of Marvels, so I was looking forward to her new book, House of Shades, which sounded like an atmospheric Gothic mystery. It turned out to be not quite what I expected, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The setting is London, 1833. Hester Reeves is a young black woman whose mother has recently died, urging Hester to take care of her younger sister, Willa. Unfortunately, Willa already seems to be getting herself into trouble, having caught the eye of Rowland Cherville, the manager of the factory where she works. Rowland is running the factory on behalf of his invalid father, Gervaise, and with the differences in race and social status, Hester is sure his intentions towards her sister are not good. If only Hester and her husband, Jos, could improve their financial situation, then they could move out of the slums of King’s Cross and get Willa away from Rowland’s influence…

Hester’s chance to make some money comes when the local vicar puts her name forward for a job at Tall Trees, home of the elderly Gervaise Cherville, who has a serious medical condition and wants someone to nurse him through it. Hester is considered suitable for the position as she is a ‘doctoress’ – not really a female doctor, as it will still be several decades before the first woman earns her medical degree and even longer for the first black woman to do the same, but someone with a knowledge of herbs and healing potions. However, Hester soon discovers that Mr Cherville has another task in mind for her.

The Chervilles made their fortune through mahogany and they own slaves on a plantation in Honduras. With the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 stating that slavery is to be abolished across most of the British Empire, it seems that Gervaise has developed a conscience and wants to give compensation to his slaves – not the ones in Honduras, though, whom he has never met, but two who once lived at Tall Trees before running away. Aphrodite and Nyx have been missing for many years and Gervaise wants Hester to help track them down so he can make amends.

If you can accept the rather unlikely plot (for a start, is it really believable that a wealthy 19th century gentleman like Gervaise Cherville would bring an unknown young woman from a slum community into his home as a nurse?), this is quite an entertaining novel. Like Dillsworth’s first book, it has a likeable heroine, it’s easy to read and the pages go by surprisingly quickly. There are a few twists, although they’re fairly predictable and I was hoping for one or two more! Apart from Hester herself, most of the other characters lack depth and nuance – there’s no real explanation for why Rowland is such a wicked person with seemingly no redeeming qualities at all, and we don’t see much of Willa’s good side either, which makes it difficult to understand why Hester views her as such a beloved sister, putting her needs above those of herself and her husband.

The most interesting aspect of the book is Gervaise Cherville’s desire for atonement and his attempt to make reparations for the harm he has caused. It seems clear that, at least at first, Cherville’s main motive is to assuage his own guilt, but Hester reflects that “maybe when it came down to it, all apologies were like that, even when they were heartfelt.” I would have liked more depth here as well, but maybe that would have been difficult as the whole novel is narrated by Hester and we never get inside Cherville’s head to see what he’s really thinking or whether his feelings are genuine.

House of Shades is a book with lots of good ideas and interesting themes, but I struggled to get past the implausibility of the plot and on the whole I preferred Lianne Dillsworth’s first book.

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

Book 32/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

The Meiji Guillotine Murders by Futaro Yamada

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Translated by Bryan Karetnyk

It’s 1869 and Japan has entered the Meiji era. The Tokugawa shogunate has fallen and the Emperor Meiji has been restored to the throne. After centuries of isolation, Japan is finally opening up to foreign trade and undergoing social, industrial and military reform. In Tokyo, a group of corrupt rasotsu (policemen) have found ways to exploit this period of change and upheaval for their own gain. With the arrival of two Chief Inspectors from the Imperial Prosecuting Office, Kawaji and Kazuki, it seems that the rasotsu will be forced to mend their ways – although the two men have other things to occupy their time as well as dealing with corruption.

With a number of bizarre murders taking place around Tokyo, Kazuki and Kawaji (based on a real person who is considered the founder of Japan’s modern police system) engage in a friendly competition to see who can solve the crimes first. A separate chapter is devoted to each case, which at first seem to be unrelated, making the book feel almost like a collection of short stories. There are five cases for the two detectives to solve, with the help of Esmeralda, a young Frenchwoman from a family of executioners whom Kazuki has brought to Japan along with that most deadly of French weapons: the guillotine. Despite the title, the guillotine is not necessarily used to carry out all of the murders in the book, but it represents the changes that Japan is experiencing as the country becomes exposed to modern, western influence. It also provides a reason for Esmeralda’s presence in Tokyo, which is important as she has a significant role to play in the solving of the mysteries.

The Meiji Guillotine Murders was first published in 1979 and is one of several Japanese crime novels that have recently been made available in English by Pushkin Press. However, although I’ve loved some of the others, I didn’t enjoy this one quite as much. Bryan Karetnyk’s translation is clear and readable (I’m already familiar with his work through some of his other translated novels), but I had problems with other aspects of the book. I struggled with the number of characters, particularly as so few of them have clearly defined personalities and with more and more of them being introduced with each new case the detectives investigate. My lack of engagement with the characters made it difficult for me to concentrate on following the plot, which is important as all of the separate cases are quite complex and you do need to be paying attention! I persevered and was rewarded with the final section of the book where, after some surprising twists and turns, everything is tied together perfectly.

I did like the historical setting of the book and felt I was learning a lot about Japan during the Meiji era. At times it seemed more like historical fiction than a murder mystery, which was fine with me, but I think someone picking the book up expecting a more traditional crime novel may be surprised by the amount of historical detail. It’s an interesting, unusual book, and although I’m not sure whether I would read any more by Yamada, I do hope more of them are translated into English for those readers who loved this one. I’m enjoying discovering Japanese crime authors through Pushkin and so far my favourites have been Seishi Yokomizo and Akimitsu Takagi.

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

This is book 7/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2024.

Book 24/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024