Category Archives: book reviews

#BookReview ‘My Name is Yip’ by Paddy Crewe #historical

5 Replies

Through the course of his story, Yip Tolroy founds out who he is and who he isn’t. My Name is Yip by Paddy Crewe is a historical novel with a difference, a first person narrative about an extraordinary, ordinary, boy and what he learns about friendship. Paddy CreweYip is 4 ft 8 in tall and unable to speak. His father disappeared on the night of Yip’s birth and so he and his mother muddle along together. He is assumed by everyone who lives in Heron’s Creek to be slow, with no understanding of what is going on around him. But the opposite is true. Yip watches and learns. He is a great observer. He is fifteen when old gentleman Shelby Stubbs recognises Yip’s intelligence, teaches him to read and write and presents him with a portable slate and chalk which Yip uses to communicate. A new world opens up before him but he must find the courage to take the first step.
The voice at first seemed awkward, but by the third or fourth page I knew this was Yip’s own voice and the awkwardness disappeared. Yip has a clear sense of right and wrong, of kindness and cruelty. As a growing child, he sits on a stool beneath a tree outside his mother’s store and watches the world go by. Until events conspire to change his world. Set in Georgia in 1830, gold is discovered near Heron’s Creek, a man disappears and Yip commits a crime. He goes on the run with a newcomer in town, Dud Carter; a man Yip has only seen once before. ‘A tall gangly figure with a crop of hair what the rain had plastered to his short forehead.’ These unlikely companions go on a road trip, with Yip’s constant horse Gussie, facing trials and danger, learning about themselves, each other and the things man is capable of doing to man.
This is an original story with an everyman message about being true to yourself. As Yip says at the end, ‘You got to keep yourself whole & be who it was you was set here to be.’
Very different. Don’t miss it.

If you like this, try:-
‘Barkskins’ by Annie Proulx
‘At the Edge of the Orchard’ by Tracy Chevalier
‘Days Without End’ by Sebastian Barry

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview MY NAME IS YIP by Paddy Crewe https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5S4 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘City of Masks’ by @SD_Sykes #historical

3 Replies

It is 1358 and Lord Somershill, Oswald de Lacy, is in Venice with his mother on route to the Holy Land. But Venice is at war with Hungary and the pair are stranded in this city of secrets. City of Masks, third in the Oswald de Lacy medieval mystery series by SD Sykes, sees the young lord investigating the death of a friend. SD SykesVenice is a wonderful setting for Oswald’s detecting. A closed city with its own rules, customs, prejudices and culture, it is a minefield for a stranger seeking information. Oswald relies on acquaintances and new friends for help. But all is not as it seems. Not all deceivers wear a traditional grotesque Venetian mask, some are in full sight. Oswald’s mother continues to be an irritant to him but is full of surprises and there is tension in the house of their hosts, John Bearpark and his young wife, who is due to give birth. As Oswald’s investigations progress, so do strange happenings at the Bearpark house. Plus, Oswald has the feeling he is being followed everywhere he goes. Even to the dangerous military complex, the Arsenale, to the island of lepers and to the gambling dens where he wins, and loses, money.
In this instalment we learn more of Oswald’s inner devils. He is accompanying his mother on this pilgrimage not because he shares her beliefs but because he is running from a bad memory at home. This dark shame within him will not be repressed and as he closes in on the murderer, his thought processes become fickle and his decision-making unreliable. As the days pass, Oswald must solve the murder or an innocent woman will be executed. And Oswald owes money he doesn’t have, money lost at cards, to a thug named Vittore. Venice is portrayed as a repressive, autocratic society with abuse of the poor and infirm. The surface glitters with beautiful houses but beneath, the foundations are rotting. Each island in the lagoon is a separate territory, outsiders are watched, exploited, killed.
Oswald is an impetuous investigator. He assumes possibilities are fact and pursues numerous wild goose chases. He is not an ideal detective. He stumbles on truths and walks straight into danger. He is emotional and naïve. But hidden in his to-ing and fro-ing around Venice and other islands in the Venetian Lagoon, are hints of the real crime, the real culprits. Venice is riddled with deception and Oswald must learn to see beyond the disguises and dissembling, to apply scepticism to everyone and everything around him.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Click the title to read my reviews of the first two books in this series:-
PLAGUE LAND
THE BUTCHER BIRD

If you like this, try:-
‘The Almanack’ by Martine Bailey
‘The Leviathan’ by Rosie Andrews
‘Dangerous Women’ by Hope Adams

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
CITY OF MASKS by @SD_Sykes #bookreview https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5RO via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘London Rules’ by Mick Herron #spy #thriller

8 Replies

‘Cover your arse’ is the first rule to live by for Jackson Lamb’s team of spies in London Rules, fifth in the Slough House thriller series by Mick Herron. Life in Britain is going to the dogs. A troublesome Brexiteer MP is being loud-mouthed again. Number two spy at Regent’s Park HQ, ‘Lady Di’ Taverner, has a new boss. And there’s an unprovoked gun attack by men in jeeps on a small village in Derbyshire. Mick HerronLamb’s team of reject spies is adjusting to life after a recent attack on the premises. Shirley Dander is counting down the days to her last anger management session while trying to resist the packet of cocaine in her pocket; River Cartwright visits his grandfather, the ‘OB,’ now suffering from dementia; and Louisa Guy distracts herself from grief with a shoe obsession. Contrary to some descriptions, this is not a series about one man but about a team of colleagues. Each is flawed, and compelling.
When IT guy Roddy Ho is attacked in the street in broad daylight, the action can’t be ignored. The Slough House desk-bound spies leap into action. Their long-ago training lends them a basic knowledge of tradecraft which is useful, but their ignorance and ability to blindly charge into a dangerous situation can be a liability as well as an advantage. When a pipe bomb is lobbed into the penguin enclosure at a zoo and a bomb is found on a train, the team begin to wonder if JK Coe’s wild theory – that someone is implementing a theoretical five-stage terrorist plan to destabilise a state – could be happening in Britain. If so, how did the terrorists get the top secret plan? Was someone duped into leaking secrets or is there a mole at Regent’s Park?
Meanwhile the grind of daily politics continues. As the publicity-seeking MP prepares to announce he is going to cross the floor of the House of Commons, he is warned by new Lady Di’s new boss Claude Whelan that a deeply-hidden secret is about to be made public. In Birmingham, the media-friendly aspiring Muslim mayor, tipped for success and who has the ear of the PM, also has a ‘bagman’ with a criminal past. Could they be a threat, or in danger? And what has any of this to do with JK Coe’s theory?
In each book, the team of reject spies changes slightly though some old favourites, such as River Cartwright, and of course the chief, Jackson Lamb, continue. This time there are a number of curious things going on. No one can understand why Kim, beautiful girlfriend of the dysfunctional Ho, is actually with him. What secret is sleazy politician Dennis Gimball hiding from his wife, Dodie, who thinks she knows every dirty little thing he has done? And why is Ho taken to Regent’s Park and locked in an isolation room with a tap and a metal drain?
The plot twists inside out and round about and through it all cuts the acerbic cynicism of Lamb. If JK Coe’s theory is correct will Lamb believe his silent, intense, anti-social spy and act? If Lamb disobeys orders again, could Slough House be shut down?
The dark humour of this series never fails to make me laugh out loud while the scenarios are one frightening step away from feeling possible. I do long, though, to hear Lamb’s inner thoughts. We are shown the mind of other Slow Horses but not Jackson Lamb. What really makes him tick?

Click the title to read my reviews of the other books in the Slough House series:-
SLOW HORSES #1SLOUGHHOUSE
DEAD LIONS #2SLOUGHHOUSE
REAL TIGERS #3SLOUGHHOUSE
SPOOK STREET #4SLOUGHHOUSE
JOE COUNTRY #6SLOUGHHOUSE
SLOUGH HOUSE #7SLOUGHHOUSE
BAD ACTORS #8SLOUGHHOUSE

If you like this, try:-
‘Waiting for Sunrise’ by William Boyd
‘Never’ by Ken Follett
‘This is the Night They Come for You’ by Robert Goddard

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview LONDON RULES by Mick Herron https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5Rx via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Thornyhold’ by Mary Stewart #romance #mystery

6 Replies

Browsing at the library I came upon a Mary Stewart novel I hadn’t heard of. Thornyhold. Of course, I couldn’t resist picking it up and putting it on top of my To-Read pile. It’s a small novel, only 212 pages and I read it in two sittings. Published in 1988, Thornyhold is one of Stewart’s last – her first was Madam, Will You Talk? in 1955 – and this is very different from the romantic suspense stories for which she is known and loved. Mary Stewart Gilly Ramsey inherits Thornyhold, a remote cottage, from her mysterious godmother Geillis. Now alone after the recent death of her father, Gilly plans to start a new life at Thornyhold. As she explores the cottage – its mysterious attic which doubles as a pigeon loft, a still room for drying herbs and making herbal cures – she learns more about her benefactor. There are more questions than answers. As a child, Gilly had always found Geillis enigmatic; she appeared when Gilly seemed to need her, one time producing a crystal ball from her bag. Now, as she meets her new neighbours, Gilly learns the history of the house and her godmother’s reputation as a herbal healer. But was she more, a witch or wise woman? Although odd dreams, a barking dog and strange messages sent by carrier pigeon, unsettle her, Gilly has an inner belief that she belongs at Thornyhold. Nothing will make her leave.
Having recently a read a lot of contemporary novels with dense repetitive emotional description and complicated plots, reading Thornyhold felt like drinking a tall glass of water when desperately thirsty. Such a wonderful turn of phrase, clever and thoughtful, but accurate and never over-done. Gilly meets a neighbour who she describes as having smooth rosy cheeks and ‘the wrong red too thick on a small mouth,’ and I know exactly what she means.
Beautifully written, not a word out of place, not a character too many. Delightful. An instant favourite.

Click the title to read my reviews of other Mary Stewart novels:-
MY BROTHER MICHAEL
THE IVY TREE
THE GABRIEL HOUNDS
THIS ROUGH MAGIC
TOUCH NOT THE CAT

If you like this, try these:-
‘The Diabolical Bones’ by Bella Ellis
‘Ferney’ by James Long
‘The Good People’ by Hannah Kent

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THORNYHOLD by Mary Stewart https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5Rn via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Birdcage’ by Eve Chase #mystery

3 Replies

Three half-sisters, an artist father, a crumbling house on a cliff in Cornwall and a mystery event in their past which no-one discusses. The Birdcage by Eve Chase is about fractured families, the unity and division of a shared secret and the need to acknowledge the past in order to face the future. Eve ChaseTold in two timelines – 2019 and 1999 – the story unfolds slowly and takes a while to settle down. The story of the mystery is a long time coming. Three half-sisters – Lauren, Flora, Kat – are summoned to their father’s summer home in Cornwall. Artist Charlie Finch has a chequered history with women, demonstrated by assorted female nude sketches his daughters find in his studio. Charlie is cagey about the reason for summoning them to Rock Point; is he ill, dying, retiring, moving house? As well as trying to work out what’s going on with their father, the three sisters must also unravel their own demons. Lauren is mourning the death of her mother Dixie. Flora, accompanied by two-year old son Raff, struggles beneath the suffocating control of her husband. Kat’s relationship has broken up and her business is in trouble. Add in Charlie’s art studio assistant Angie, former cleaning lady Viv and a mysterious stranger who walks a black dog on the nearby cliffs, and there’s a lot going on.
Everything hangs on an incident twenty years earlier. In 1999, the three teenage sisters are gathered at their grandparents’ house Rock Point for summer with their father who is painting in his studio. The sisters live with their mothers and see each other rarely. It is the summer of the total eclipse of the sun on August 11, a true event. Chase makes much of the strange atmosphere that day, something in the air, the sense that something was going to happen. The story takes a while to get to the secret which is at the root of the constant sibling sniping and jealousy, but this is a journey the sisters personally must travel in order to understand how it made them into the complex adults of 2019.
By the end of the book I still wasn’t one hundred per cent clear which mother belonged to which daughter. The timeline jumps around and many peripheral characters are mentioned lightly and either never or infrequently appear at Rock Point. The final section, after the big reveal, takes a long time to wrap up. Curiously, the Cornish location is incidental. Rock Point, which could be situated on an isolated cliff anywhere, is the strong point. With its idiosyncratic furnishings, aviary of birds, creaks and rumbles, what secrets does this house have to tell?
An atmospheric read – weather plays a big part plus anonymous notes, a dark stranger, talking parrot and slashed car tyre – and the 1999 eclipse at its heart.

Click the title below to read my reviews of two other novels by Eve Chase:-
THE GLASS HOUSE
THE VANISHING OF AUDREY WILDE

If you like this, try:-
‘Birdcage Walk’ by Helen Dunmore
‘My Husband the Stranger’ by Rebecca Done
‘Whistle in the Dark’ by Emma Healey

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE BIRDCAGE by Eve Chase https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5Re via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Never’ by @KMFollett #thriller

12 Replies

I’ve read and enjoyed the excellent historical Kingsbridge series by Ken Follett but have never read one of his contemporary thrillers. Never, his latest, is a fast-moving story that, despite being a hefty 832 pages, I read hungrily. Ken FollettInternational politics, terrorism, drug smuggling form an unstoppable chain of events that move the world, inch by inch, to the edge of horrifying conflict. This is the content of so many dramatic films and books and is the basis for Follett’s story. He makes it powerful by letting the events unfold through the eyes of five people in different countries, each involved in local matters with far-reaching implications. As events spiral, I didn’t want to put the book down. It’s an uncomfortable read, the sensible cautious voices are at times shouted down by the brashest, loudest hard-liners and, like all the best thrillers, it makes you think ‘could this happen’ and ‘what would I do.’
Follett’s narrative is premised on how events unfolded prior to the First World War when a chain of seemingly small things culminated in a global conflict. Never starts in Northern Africa. Abdul works undercover, tracking cocaine shipments used to fund IS’s operations in the region. Tamara Levit works for the CIA in Chad where climate change is edging the rural population closer to starvation, forcing many to trek north to Europe in search of a better life. Border conflict with neighbouring Sudan is a daily threat. Chad’s president is an unpredictable dictator and terrorists are using North Korean and Chinese weapons.
In China, the government is polarising. Chang Kai is 45 and vice-president for international intelligence. He is communist royalty. His father is one of the Chinese old guard, a political hardliner, a traditionalist, but Kai is new generation Chinese. He studied at Princeton and is married to a television actress. President Chen is talked at by both sides. Prior to his election he had the ear of the traditionalists but since has taken moderate decisions. Now the North Korean neighbours are causing trouble. When there are problems in the north, it inevitably draws in not only South Korea but also the Americans and Japanese. In America, President Green is dealing with a truculent teenage daughter, an unhappy husband, and a populist challenger who fills the airwaves with dangerous rhetoric.
This is a scary thriller that makes you gobble up the pages without realising. The story is wide-ranging and is better for it. Well researched and expertly paced. The early chapters are slower as characters and situations are introduced and explored, then as the political tensions and dangers increase the story pace picks up. The ending comes in a rush but that is what happens when communications are down and control is lost.
It leaves you asking, ‘what if.’

Click the titles to read my reviews of other Follett novels:-
THE EVENING AND THE MORNING #PREQUELKINGSBRIDGE
THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH #1KINGSBRIDGE
WORLD WITHOUT END #2KINGSBRIDGE
A COLUMN OF FIRE #3KINGSBRIDGE
THE ARMOUR OF LIGHT #4KINGSBRIDGE

If you like this, try:-
‘Exposure’ by Helen Dunmore
‘The Travelers’ by Chris Pavone
‘Last Light’ by Alex Scarrow #1LASTLIGHT

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview NEVER by @KMFollett #thriller https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5R4 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Diamond Eye’ by @Kate_Quinn #WW2

4 Replies

What a wonderful book is The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn. The fictionalised story of a real Soviet female sniper fighting in what is now Ukraine in the early years of the Second World War, this is a novel I didn’t want to put down. Kate QuinnThe life of Kiev resident Mila Pavlichenko, young mother and history student, changes when the Nazis invade. Already an accomplished shot with a rifle, she leaves her young son Slavka with her mother and goes off to war. In the 18 months of her time on the frontline as a sniper, the real Mila scored 309 official ‘kills’. She is injured fighting in Sevastapol and, once recovered, is ordered to join a diplomatic mission to the USA to persuade the Americans to join the European war. The action in America is probably the most fictionalised part of The Diamond Eye which is based in part on Mila’s memoir. Quinn states in her Author’s Note that parts of the memoir are clearly Mila’s own voice, other entries seem like Soviet propaganda.
This is not just a war story with guns and death and trenches. Quinn tells the story of a young woman, torn from all that is familiar, who finds strength inside herself and with her comrade snipers, to do what must be done. Some of her fellow soldiers have brief times at her side; others, the most skilled snipers, survive. She discovers how difficult it is, when you know you may die tomorrow, to open yourself up to friendship, or love. She acquires a nickname, ‘Lady Death,’ and spurns the frequent attentions of her senior officers. Her girlfriends also volunteer, her estranged husband turns up as a combat surgeon, but there are few light moments in her life. Her primary motivation is to defend her homeland, that is the only thing keeping her away from home. Between missions she gathers leaves and sends them to Slavka, she carries her dissertation with her and takes it from her backpack to read to remember the life she once had. Quinn alternates the dark story of Mila’s fighting, first at Odesa and then at Sevastapol, with her later trip to Washington in 1942 plus excerpts from the diary of the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, who Mila met on that trip.
This is a shocking story and a compelling one. The sections about sniper technique and tactics are not for the faint-hearted but the current war in Ukraine adds a reality check and there are light-hearted moments in Washington as Mila meets the American press, not alerting her hosts to the fact that she can speak English. Also lightly woven through the fighting sections are snippets of Russian folklore, a reminder that Mila’s country has roots and traditions much older than the Soviet Union.
Quinn creates a heroine we care for. Brave and determined with a sharp edge of sarcasm, this is Mila’s story as imagined by the author. The two parts of the story – the fighting, the subsequent trip to America – are key to the growth of an unusual and exceptional young woman. So what if the final section lurches into ‘thriller’ territory, it made the pages turn even faster.
Highly recommended.

Here are my reviews of other novels by Kate Quinn:-
THE BRIAR CLUB
THE ROSE CODE

If you like this, try:-
‘The Bear and the Nightingale’ by Katherine Arden #1WINTERNIGHT
‘Midnight in Europe’ by Alan Furst
‘Corpus’ by Rory Clements #1TOMWILDE

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE DIAMOND EYE by @Kate_Quinn https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5QW via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Drowned City’ by KJ Maitland #historical #crime

4 Replies

The Drowned City by KJ Maitland is first in the Daniel Pursglove historical crime series. Maitland is a new author for me and the premise is fascinating. KJ MaitlandAfter the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, King James I is nervous of Catholic rebellion. Pursglove is plucked from prison and offered amnesty if he tracks down an elusive Catholic conspirator, Spero Pottingar, believed to be in Bristol. While there, Daniel must also prove if the recent deadly Bristol flood was a natural disaster or witchcraft. I enjoyed the Jacobean setting, unusual in historical crime novels, but found it slow to get going. Daniel’s introduction – we first meet him imprisoned in Newgate – is negative. Why he’s imprisoned isn’t explained, nor do we learn about his life prior to being locked up. But we do know he’s a magician and this sleight of hand proves useful as the story unfolds. I finished the book with no clear idea who Daniel Pursglove is.
The description of the Bristol flooding – a true event – is well done, visceral and moving. Death, destruction, disease, loss of livelihood. Maitland doesn’t spare the reader in her descriptions of violence and rotting corpses. People simply disappeared – drowned, safely embarked on a ship before the flood, or slipped away to start afresh somewhere new. Daniel has no idea if Pottingar is a real person or an invention. He may be in Bristol, have fled, or never been there at all. This gives wonderful opportunities for fictional twists and turns and when the twist came at the end, I was surprised.
The Drowned City is steeped in historical detail but at the expense of plot and character development, possibly because this is the first in the series. More is sure to be unveiled in further books but as the first book, this failed to keep me interested. Daniel’s reason for being in Bristol got lost at times in detailed description and the convoluted factions, with so many clues and red herrings that I got lost and the tension left the page. The middle section was particularly slow.
So, not a page-turner for me but if you like dense historical crime mysteries it may suit you.

If you like this, try:-
‘Winter Pilgrims’ by Toby Clements #1Kingmaker
‘Cecily’ by Annie Garthwaite
‘The Silver Wolf’ by JC Harvey #1Fiskardo’sWar

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE DROWNED CITY by KJ Maitland https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5QM via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Postcard from Italy’ by Angela Petch #WW2

4 Replies

I’ve never been to Puglia in Italy, the south-eastern coast down to the heel, except in the pages of The Postcard from Italy by Angela Petch. Vividly she brings to life the coastline, the stone-built trulli houses, the caves. It is a magical setting. Stretching backwards from today to the closing months of the Second World War, this is an enthralling family story of love and separation.  Recognising love when it’s there, but also understanding when it’s absent. Angela PetchIn 1945, Puglia, a young man awakes, injured, disorientated. He doesn’t know who he is or how he came to be in a trullo, a rural stone house, cared for by strangers. The teenage boy Anto explains how his grandfather Domenico saw him fall from a warplane. Called ‘Roberto’ by his rescuers, his memory stubbornly refuses to return. He can speak English and Italian but knows nothing about fishing or farming. As he helps them in their daily routines, gathering food, catching fish, tending vegetables, repairing the trullo, his nights are full of confusing dreams.
In present day Hastings, England, Susannah mourns the recent death of her father Frank and the descent of her grandmother, Elsie, into the clouds of dementia. Clearing Elsie’s house, Susannah finds a yellowing postcard of a beautiful farmhouse in Puglia and a message of love. Realising this is the same farmhouse in a painting by her father but unaware of family links with Italy, she can’t reconcile this message of love with her brittle, acidic grandmother who always preferred Susannah’s blonde-haired younger sister Sybil. So, while a friend looks after her antique bric-a-brac shop at home, Susannah takes a holiday in Puglia. Determined to find the house in her father’s painting, she learns to heal herself, to speak a little Italian and in so doing falls for two handsome men.
Petch uses conventional wartime story themes – amnesia, separation of loved ones, the vulnerability of loneliness and grief, and the fear of those who exploit war for gain – and adds the twists and turns of flirting and love. Petch has written four novels set in Tuscany, so Puglia is a new setting for her but her knowledge of Italy shines on every page. Susannah’s holiday is extended as she turns detective but the clues, when she finds them, bring more questions rather than answers.
Susannah is the spine of the story but my favourite character was Anto, so complex, so brave, so intriguing. This is a wonderful book to sink into, a perfect holiday or weekend read.

Here are my reviews of other novels also by Angela Petch:-
THE GIRL WHO ESCAPED
THE TUSCAN SECRET

If you like this, try:-
‘Another You’ by Jane Cable
‘The War Child’ by Renita d’Silva
‘The Tuscan Contessa’ by Dinah Jefferies

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE POSTCARD FROM ITALY by Angela Petch https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5Qk via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Duchess’ by Wendy Holden @Wendy_Holden #historical #royal

3 Replies

The Duchess by Wendy Holden turned out to be a surprising read. After all, we all know the story of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, don’t we? I started the book half-expecting not to finish it, unsure whether I could empathise with Wallis Simpson. But having read Wendy Holden’s first novel – Simply Divine, published in 1999 – and many since, I was curious about her subject matter. I finished it wanting to go back to the beginning again, reading it with fresh eyes. Wendy Holden Holden, a former journalist, has done her research to portray the middle-aged American divorcee. Wallis arrives in London in 1928 with her second husband Ernest, determined to be a part of the party scene. Scrimping and saving, and with the quick mind and equally quick tongue of her mother, she learns to deal with the snubs, putdowns, cold shoulders and snobbishness, all the time backed by her steady husband. After a difficult childhood raised alone by her mother without much money, followed by an abusive first marriage, Wallis now reads the Court Circulars and newspaper stories about the parties of the Bright Young Things and longs to have fun. But she hadn’t bargained on the British class system. With her own sense of chic and by altering cheap dresses herself, Wallis catches the eye of Coco Chanel who offers some salutary advice.
The dual timeline, always from Wallis’s viewpoint, alternates between the Duke of Windsor’s funeral in 1972, and Wallis’s life in England from 1928-1936. After a lot of hustling, scrimping, spending money they don’t have, the Simpsons meet the Prince of Wales and are invited to his home at Fort Belvedere, Windsor, for the weekend. There we see the divisions between the prince’s public role and private political views. Holden juxtaposes the freedom and ‘what if’ American approach to life with the stuffy 1930s British ‘not possible’ view. This culminates finally in the Abdication. The final twist is intriguing.
The first few pages are a slow read and felt more like a historical record – there is a lot of emotional and historical baggage wrapped up in this story – but the story gets going once Wallis is in London. She struggles to be accepted, hosting cocktail ‘open evenings’ that no one attends, always being sparkling and entertaining despite Ernest’s misgivings. We see her vulnerabilities as the difficulties of her childhood, and her first marriage, are revealed. I finished the book with new-found respect for Ernest Simpson.
I read The Duchess in two days on holiday. Compulsive, wicked, sad and funny, I was left with a feeling of regret about the Windsors, and for Ernest, though with the obvious footnote that this is a fictional account not a biography. Even taken with a large pinch of salt, I came to empathise with Wallis; simultaneously head over heels in love but also exasperated, despairing, trapped, powerless, lonely and maligned.
Definitely food for thought. A compulsive fictional take on royal history

And here’s my review of THE PRINCESS, also by Wendy Holden.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Glass House’ by Eve Chase
‘The Orphan’s Gift’ by Renita D’Silva
‘The Cottingley Secret’ by Hazel Gaynor

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE DUCHESS by Wendy Holden @Wendy_Holden https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5Qe via @SandraDanby