#BookReview ‘Friends in Low Places’ by Simon Raven #historical

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Friends in Low Places by Simon Raven, second in the ‘Alms for Oblivion’ series, starts in April 1959 with an old character and a new. Widow Angela Tuck has taken up with a sleazy con man. Mark Lewson, who steals from Angela and then loses her money at the casino, is a loathsome character and she can’t wait to be rid of him. Rippling throughout the novel is the seemingly impossible plan hatched by Angela’s gambler friend to help her. He charges Lewson with buying or stealing a letter that incriminates the British Government in a scandal concerning Suez. Simon RavenThis is an enjoyable read about a bunch of charlatans and is a window on the behavior of a group of the English upper class in the Sixties, when the reverberations of the Suez Crisis continued to ripple throughout society. At the heart is the manipulation by everyone concerned during the selection process by the local Tory party to choose its parliamentary candidate for Bishop’s Cross. When the mysterious letter about the Suez scandal becomes available, a chase is on to first, possess the letter; and second, to use it as a bargaining chip for the candidature. The Suez errors are never defined, and perhaps by modern standards they would seem small beer, but the manipulations, double-crossing and blackmail seem, unfortunately, very believable today. Behind the smiles are knives. Do not take anyone at face value.
As well as Angela Tuck, familiar characters from the first book reappear, including rival parliamentary candidates Somerset Lloyd-James and Peter Morrison. Journalist Tom Llewellyn also features again, marring the daughter of the grandly named conservative minister Sir Edwin Turbot who may, or may not, be involved in the Suez scandal. Turbot’s friend Lord Canteloupe [the more outrageous the name, the more outrageous the satire] is put in charge of entertaining the working class population. His Westward Ho! caravan park is a political fudge designed for publicity purposes, which unwittingly becomes the hideout for a couple on the run from the law. This is a whirlwind of political shenanigans, sexual shenanigans, two-timing, betrayals and marriages of convenience.
Raven has a wonderful turn of phrase. For example, ‘Sir Edwin turned up his eyes and stuck his spoon into the middle of his peach melba, with the air of a soldier planting a sabre to mark a fallen comrade’s newly filled grave.’
Much easier to read than The Rich Pay Late, first in the series, I think because many of the same characters appear and I felt familiar with them. Well-written, humorous in places but not shocking when compared with modern politics.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

And here’s my review of the first book in the same series:-
THE RICH PAY LATE [ALMS FOR OBLIVION#1]

If you like this, try:-
‘All Among the Barley’ by Melissa Harrison
‘Union Street’ by Pat Barker
‘Pigeon Pie’ by Nancy Mitford

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES by Simon Raven https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3Xy via @SandraDanby

First Edition: ‘Five on a Treasure Island’ by Enid Blyton #oldbooks #bookcovers

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In the midst of World War Two, Enid Blyton [below] continued writing. The first of her Famous Five series, Five on a Treasure Island, was published on September 11, 1942, in London by Hodder & Stoughton [below]. Next in the series was Five Go Adventuring Again, published in 1943.

Enid Blyton

[photo: Wikipedia]

Enid Blyton

Illustrator of the first edition was Eileen A Soper, who illustrated her own books and those for Elisabeth Gould as well as Blyton. Her series of designs of children and animals were used for a china series by Paragon China in the 1930s.

Enid BlytonThe current Hodder Children’s edition [above] dates from 2017.
BUY

The story
Three children – Julian, Dick and Anne – spend their summer holidays with their Aunt and Uncle at Kirrin Cottage, in the village of Kirrin. There they meet their tomboy cousin Georgina, who prefers to be called George, and George’s dog Timmy. And so they become five. Exploring the nearby Kirrin Island, a storm descends and stirs up an old shipwreck from beneath the waves. Exploring the wreck, the five find a treasure map in a box and decide to find the gold. But when Uncle Quentin sells the box to an antique dealer, he wants the gold too.

Other editions

Films
The 1957 film, Five on a Treasure Island, starred Rel Grainger, Gillian Harrison, Richard Palmer and John Bailey, with Daga as Timmy. Watch it at You Tube.
Or watch the part one of the first episode of the 1995 television series, starring Jemima Rooper, Marco Williamson, Paul Child, Laura Petela and Connal as Timmy.
Read more about the Famous Five, and Enid Blyton’s other books, here.

If you like old books, check out these:-
‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce
‘The Hobbit’ by JRR Tolkien
‘Watership Down’ by Richard Adams

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
First Edition: FIVE ON A TREASURE ISLAND by Enid Blyton #oldbooks #bookcovers https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3VL via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Bright Center of Heaven’ by William Maxwell #historical #classic

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This is the first novel by William Maxwell, author of Pulitzer finalist So Long, See You Tomorrow and fiction editor of The New Yorker magazine. He was there from 1936-1975 and worked with Cheever, Updike, Salinger and Nabokov, among others. Not a novel published singly, I found Bright Center of Heaven in an American anthology of Maxwell’s early work. This is a quiet read though ambitious in its subject matter, and well worth spending time with before reading Maxwell’s later works. William Maxwell He follows the time-honoured structure of placing a group of people in one place over a limited time period and observing what happens. It is a contemplative novel and, although it does work to a climax, it is more an insight into the mind of each character as events unfold.
Widow Mrs West and her two teenage sons Thorn and Whitey live at Meadowland, a dilapidated farm that they can no longer afford to run, with her husband’s sister Amelia and her son Bascomb, German cook Johanna and farmer Gust. Thorn feels close to the land to the ten-acre field gifted to him by his father on his sixth birthday. Now Thorn helps Gust to work the fields. Gust is all that remains of the farm in its agricultural days when talk around the dinner table was of crop yields and mechanisation. Whitey runs errands for his mother ‘Muv’ and tends to his canoe. Into this quiet rural world come the summer lodgers – a teacher, artist, pianist and actress – and with it the dinner conversation changes. It changes again when Mrs West’s invitation becomes known; Jefferson Carter, a Harvard-educated New York intellectual who is black, is coming to visit.
It took me a while, at least halfway through, before I figured out the relationships and identities. Each person’s viewpoint is shown, their outward behaviour explained by inner worries. There is an intricate network of connections between them as well as individual stories, invisible from the outside, which Maxwell reveals piece by piece. Carter does his job as the catalyst for trouble around the dinner table. First he is blanked by Amelia, a hypochondriac Southern lady, old before her time; next, he argues with teacher Paul. Carter’s bewilderment and growing anger at this group of people serves to add a voice from outside Meadowland, another view of the world; he is as convinced he is correct about racial equality, as they are. “These seven people,” he thinks, “had no meaning beyond themselves, which was to say that they had no meaning at all. They did not express the life of the nation. They had no visible work. They were all drones and winter would find them dead.”
“Bright Center of Heaven was published in 1934 [the same year as F Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night], before Maxwell joined The New Yorker, and was out of print for almost 70 years until this Library of America edition published in 2008. It is the beginning of Maxwell the novelist, a sensitive writer who takes his time and needs to be read without hurry. His are delicate stories without shouting. Maxwell was later unimpressed by Bright Center of Heaven, describing it as“hopelessly imitative” and “stuck fast in its period.” In The Paris Review he said, “My first novel… is a compendium of all the writers I loved and admired.” Virginia Woolf is a particular influence. Ten years after the novel’s publication, he reread it and wrote, “I… discovered to my horror that I had lifted a character—the homesick servant girl—lock, stock, and barrel from To the Lighthouse.”

Try my reviews of these other novels by William Maxwell:-
THE FOLDED LEAF
THEY CAME LIKE SWALLOWS
TIME WILL DARKEN IT

And read the first paragraphs of TIME WILL DARKEN IT and THE CHATEAU.

If you like this, try:-
‘Barkskins’ by Annie Proulx
‘Housekeeping’ by Marilynne Robinson
‘A Thousand Acres’ by Jane Smiley

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview BRIGHT CENTER OF HEAVEN by William Maxwell https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3vV via @SandraDanby

#Bookreview ‘File under Fear’ by Geraldine Wall #genealogy #mystery

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Second in the series about probate researcher turned genealogy detective Anna Ames, File Under Fear by Geraldine Wall takes off running from where the previous book left off. This is a well-written, page-turning series that combines family history, crime, family and secrets. But for me, the touchstone that makes it special is the sub-plot of Anna’s home life and her husband Harry’s dementia. If you haven’t read book one in the series, I suggest you start there to see the full emotional depth. Geraldine Wall Anna’s new contract sounds boring: to write a business report on Draycotts, the company which makes Drakes lurid orange and green drink, analysing how the family members coordinate together to run a successful business. But there is a secret element to her contract, to locate a missing person for CEO Gerald Draycott. This case sees Anna physically and emotionally intimidated and encompasses bullying, illegal smuggling and rape. An intense story with red herrings and wrong assumptions made about family members, the actual crimes being committed and in which Anna questions who to trust. Backing her up are her very likeable family and the multi-talented more-than-workmate Steve. Some of the resolutions fall into place a little conveniently at the fast-paced ending, but this is a satisfying tale.
What makes this series so different, and adds the emotional depth in spades, is Harry’s illness and how the family and friends cope. Sometimes they struggle but ultimately they manage the reality of their life with compassion, humour and love. This series is maturing nicely.

Here’s my review of the first in this series by Geraldine Wall:-
FILE UNDER FAMILY #1ANNAAMES

If you like this, try:-
‘Run’ by Ann Patchett
‘Shadow Baby’ by Margaret Forster
‘Deadly Descent’ by Charlotte Hinger

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview FILE UNDER FEAR by Geraldine Wall https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3Ue via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Warlow Experiment’ by Alix Nathan #historical

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This is a story of two men. One plays at being a god. The other grabs a chance to escape poverty. The Warlow Experiment by Alix Nathan is about power, ambition, control, the disintegration of respect and vanishing of common sense. What a breath of fresh air this book is; it is so unusual. The country gentleman who conducts the experiment, Powyss, is an isolated character. He has no family and, when he has the idea of experimenting with the life of another man, thinks he is doing good by supporting the man’s family. In truth he seeks the approbation of the Royal Society. Alix NathanWarlow is a farm labourer who scrapes a living at the edge of starvation, struggling to feed this family. When he sees an advertisement asking for a man to take part in Powyss’s experiment, he sees it as an escape. So what is the experiment? Powyss is a man who experiments with exotic seedlings and plants. He sources them from abroad and studies them, experimenting with conditions – soil, temperature, water – to see which flourish in the climate of the Marches climate. It is a short step for him to wonder how a man would fare without seeing a human face for seven years. A cellar is converted in Powyss mansion, furnished with carpets, bedstead and comfortable mattress, an organ, books, writing equipment and a dumb waiter lift which is the only means of communication with above. He is forbidden to talk to anyone; his needs are communicated by notes sent up in the lift. But Powyss forgets to vary Warlow’s conditions, whose surroundings remain the same. He is below ground with no natural light; the only sign of changing daylight and season is from the frogs that find their way into his cellar via a grating. At the beginning both men are happy with the scheme; both think they benefit. Powyss makes his observations; Warlow escapes his grinding life of work and poverty. He was knocked around by his father, and now knocks around his own kids. He longs for something better and decides that when he gets out, he will have earned enough money not to work and so will drink all day instead. Neither man realise what they have undertaken.
The story is told by three people; Powyss, Warlow and Catherine, a servant in the Powyss household. I would also like to have heard the first hand story of Mrs Warlow, who has quite a part to play. The beginning of Warlow’s viewpoint reminds me of Emma Donoghue’s Room; the repetition of simple detail as he studies his surroundings, he focuses on the functional. He is barely literate but, as Powyss impresses on him that it is part of his job to write a journal, Warlow begins to write. Nathan’s portrayal of the early attempts of this uneducated man to write, the bad spelling, the stumbling expression, are convincing; later I wanted his stream of consciousness ramblings to be more concise. The imprisonment represents only the first part of the story; there is more to tell than the experiment itself. The servants in Powyss household become uncomfortable with their part in the proceedings, they also observe Mrs Warlow as she visits the house to receive the payment from Powyss promised as part of Warlow’s contract. Unknown to her, Mrs Warlow becomes the subject of a secondary report into the ‘lateral effects’ on the man’s family.
A sub-plot sets this story in its time. Revolution rumbles on in France and there are demonstrations in London against the King and prime minister Pitt. Head gardener Abraham Price is a rebel who seduces housemaid Catherine with talk of improvement, of rights, of freedom without masters. This country mansion in the Marches reflects the class tensions in the country – rich/poor, vote/no vote. Powyss receives the latest information about politics and uprisings in letters from his London correspondent. In exchange for boxes of fruit, Fox is the only voice Powyss hears from outside his insular world. He questions the morality of the experiment but Powyss refuses to listen; he also fails to see how the servants observe the experiment with dislike. He is a naïve man who fails to understand he is destined to be part of the experiment too.
This is such an unusual subject and in an Author’s Note, Nathan explains where she got the idea. She read a report of a man in 1797 who conducted such an experiment as that of Powyss. She was intrigued and wrote two short stories, one from the viewpoint of each man. After that, she realised there was a bigger story to tell. I’m glad she did. It is an unusual, absorbing read. It deserves time to be read, so please don’t rush it.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Quick’ by Lauren Owen
‘The Night Child’ by Anna Quinn
‘Master of Shadows’ by Neil Oliver

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE WARLOW EXPERIMENT by Alix Nathan https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3UJ via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 118… ‘The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“In the middle of the lonesome town, at the back of John Street, in the third house from the end, there is a little room. For this small bracket in the long paragraph of the street’s history, it belongs to Eneas McNulty. All about him the century has just begun, a century some of which he will endure, but none of which will belong to him. There are all the broken continents of the earth, there is the town park named after Father Moran, with its forlorn roses – all equal to Eneas at five, and nothing his own, but that temporary little room. The dark linoleum curls at the edge where it meets the dark wall. There is a pewter jug on the bedside table that likes to hoard the sun and moon on its curve. There is a tall skinny wardrobe with an ancient hatbox on top, dusty, with or without a hat, he does not know. A room perfectly attuned to him, perfectly tempered, with the long spinning of time perfect and patterned in the bright windowframe, the sleeping of sunlight on the dirty leaves of the maple, the wars of the sparrows and the blue tits for the net of suet his mother ties in the tree, the angry rain that puts its narrow fingers in through the putty, the powerful sudden seaside snow that never sits, the lurch of the dark and the utter merriment of mornings.”
Sebastian BarryFrom ‘The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty’ by Sebastian Barry

Read my reviews of these novels by Sebastian Barry:-
A LONG LONG WAY
A THOUSAND MOONS
DAYS WITHOUT END
OLD GOD’S TIME
THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS MCNULTY

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Slaves of Solitude’ by Patrick Hamilton
‘Such a Long Journey’ by Rohinton Mistry
‘Sea Glass’ by Anita Shreve

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS MCNULTY by Sebastian Barry  https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3Js via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Stanley and Elsie’ by @nicolaupsonbook #art #historical

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My knowledge of English artist Stanley Spencer was sketchy to say the least when I started reading Stanley and Elsie by Nicola Upson. This is a biographical novel that walks a difficult line between true fact and imagined conversation and walks it with skill, delicacy and drama. Definitely a novel for anyone who loves art. Nicola UpsonUpson takes us into the Spencer household at Chapel View, Burghclere after the Great War when Elsie Munday starts work as a housemaid. Stanley Spencer has been commissioned to paint the inside of a chapel; his wife Hilda, also a painter, minds their young daughter Shirin. Through Elsie’s eyes we see the lives of this family, their ups and downs, the artistic differences, the selfishnesses of Stanley and Hilda, smoothed by the tact, diplomacy and efficiency of Elsie. The title could make some people assume Stanley and Elsie were romantically attached but theirs is a master/servant relationship that deepened into mutual respect and friendship. Stanley, selfish, focussed, is a difficult master, a difficult husband, and Elsie finds herself caught in the middle of disputes between husband and wife. Often she is exasperated with both of them. Instead she becomes indispensable to the household.
Upson gives us an insight into the lives of this family, their daily tasks, the squabbles, the unexpected joys. She combines small inconsequential details of painting with, through Elsie’s growing appreciation of art, the big picture destruction, grief and lasting devastation of war on Stanley’s generation of men. Upson is excellent at portraying place; the Spencers move between Burghclere, Cookham and Hampstead Heath as their marriage disintegrates, a separation complicated by Stanley’s obsession with another woman. No one could have forseen the consequences of this obsession. Stanley is selfish and self-absorbed, Hilda also but to a lesser degree; both can be loving with their children one minute and dismissive the next. At times, neither are particularly likeable; Elsie is the one who picks up the pieces.
Elsie is the core of this story. As narrator we not only see the Spencers through her eyes, we also see her grow from young girl to competent, confident young woman.
The ending was under-whelming but I see it must have been difficult to know how and when to end the novel.
A delightful read. I particularly enjoyed picturing the paintings in my mind as I turned the pages. Reading Stanley and Elsie makes me want to visit Sandham Memorial Chapel near Newbury, Hampshire, now a National Trust property, and also to explore Upson’s other novels.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

Read my review of AN EXPERT IN MURDER #1JosephineTey, also by Nicola Upson.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Gustav Sonata’ by Rose Tremain
‘The Goldfinch’ by Donna Tartt
‘Life Class’ by Pat Barker

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview STANLEY AND ELSIE by @nicolaupsonbook https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3Zx via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Wonder’ by Emma Donoghue #Irish #faith

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What a compulsive read this is, starting slowly until its questions had me sneaking a few pages when I should have been working. The premise of The Wonder by Emma Donoghue sounds straightforward: a nurse and a nun are employed to observe and accompany an eleven-year old girl in rural Ireland who is surviving on ‘manna from heaven’. Is she a miracle or a fraud? Emma DonoghueThis story is very far from straightforward. The task of Nurse Elizabeth Wright, who trained under Miss Nightingale at Scutari during the Crimean War, is to watch and and ensure no food is secretly passing the child’s lips. Strangely, for a nurse, Lib is not responsible for the health of the girl. A local committee, set-up to establish if Anna O’Donnell is secretly eating or if there is a religious wonder living in their village, pays the wages of two nurses, Lib and Sister Michael, for two weeks.
Accepting nothing until she can prove it herself, Lib approaches her task with professional thoroughness, observing, measuring, weighing. Feeling isolated in a cramped home, surrounded by a religion she does not practise or understand, Lib gets little help from local doctor Mr McBrearty or priest Mr Thaddeus. Not knowing who she can trust, she trusts no one; turning away visitors to the O’Donnell home who want to see the holy girl, visitors who donate alms to a collecting box near the door. When a journalist from Dublin says it is clearly a hoax and accuses Lib of speeding Anna’s death – that the all-day watch is denying her the morsels of food she must have been earlier fed – she is horrified and is forced to reassess her role.
The first half is a slow slow build but so worth it for the second half; with an ending I didn’t expect. This story has many layers. Lib, with her scientific approach to religion, is appalled at what she sees as inconsistencies and fantasies of the O’Donnell family’s Catholic beliefs. They accept and do not question. As the story progresses, Lib untangles Anna’s beliefs and in the process re-examines her own.
Not an easy read, The Wonder tackles the emotional subjects of religion and abuse set within the context of rural Ireland in the 1850s. Donoghue is an author who defies description; each novel is so different from its predecessor. With The Wonder, she has again confounded my expectations. Excellent.

Read my reviews of these other Donoghue novels:-
AKIN
FROG MUSIC
THE PULL OF THE STARS

Read the first paragraph of ROOM.

If you like this, try:-
‘Birdcage Walk’ by Helen Dunmore
‘Day’ by AL Kennedy
‘House of Names’ by Colm Tóibín

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#BookReview ‘You’ll Never See Me Again’ @LesleyPearse #WW1 #romance

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When a character in a film says ‘never’ it’s a sign that the impossible thing will definitely happen before the end. Such is the title of the new novel from Lesley Pearse,You’ll Never See Me Again. Lesley PearseIt is 1917 and a storm is thrashing the Devon coast at Hallsands. Betty Wellows is with her shell-shocked husband Martin at his mother’s home, safely up the cliffs. Martin no longer recognises Betty, he is a different man from the fisherman who went to war. Betty is working all hours to support her husband and his mother, putting up with insults, petty grievances, grief for the loss of her husband. As the storm becomes wild and dangerous, Agnes instructs her daughter-in-law to go to her own house beside the beach to rescue her belongings from the flood. Afraid, Betty escapes the older woman’s abuse and runs into the storm. As the waves crash into her home, Betty realises this is her chance to escape Hallsands, Agnes and Martin.
The dramatic opening grabbed my attention and my emotions. Betty is trapped in a life of poverty with a husband who no longer recognises her and a mother-in-law who takes her money and treats her like a skivvy. When she has the chance to escape, Betty takes it. I spent the whole novel chewing over Betty’s dilemma; was she right to run, should she have stayed. Pearse maintains this dilemma throughout the book as Betty goes to Bristol where she changes her name to Mrs Mabel Brook, a widow. You’ll Never See Me Again is the story of how a lone woman in the middle of the Great War is able to strive to improve her lot in life. Mabel suffers setbacks, encounters thieves and frauds, and sheds copious tears. There are moments where her life seems to have reached a settled, easier place; but, of course, more trauma lies ahead.
This is a cleverly plotted book that kept me guessing to the end. Mabel at times is her own worst enemy, and she finds it difficult to accept help. Then she accidentally discovers a talent she never knew she had. When she moves to Dorchester, Dorset, to be a live-in servant/housekeeper for illustrator Miss Clara May, Mabel’s life takes a new turn. Nearby is a prisoner of war camp and one of the inmates, Carsten, looks after Clara’s garden. Carsten and Mabel fall into a state of mutual liking when Spanish flu strikes at the camp; afraid for Carsten’s health, Mabel volunteers as a nurse.
Mabel ran away from Hallsands to be free, but her past travels with her. Finally she must confront her origins in order to move on with her life. Mabel has a strong sense of honesty and justice, which sounds odd given the way she ran away in chapter one. But she is unselfish, never turning away from difficult decisions and transforming herself in a short space of time into a beautiful, assured woman that her neighbours at Hallsands would not recognise.

Here’s my review of THE HOUSE ACROSS THE STREET, also by Lesley Pearse.

If you like this, try:-
‘One Step Too Far’ by Tina Seskis
‘Sometimes I Lie’ by Alice Feeney
‘The Girls’ by Lisa Jewell

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview YOU’LL NEVER SEE ME AGAIN by @LesleyPearse https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3ZO via @Sandra Danby

#BookReview ‘Wakenhyrst’ by Michelle Paver #gothic #mystery

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Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver is a creepy atmospheric novel that has been described as a ghost story, but the only ghosts in it are in the minds of the people. Which of course makes them enormously powerful and frightening. I found myself eager to return to this book, resenting time away from it. Paver is a skilled storyteller and I am coming to anticipate her new books with relish. If you haven’t read her adult novels, you are in for a treat. Michelle PaverThe story starts with a newspaper article written in 1966 entitled ’The Mystery of Edmund Stearne’. The journalist, who has spoken to Stearne’s daughter Maud about the conviction of her father for murder in 1913, casts doubt on Maud’s version of events. Could Maud be the guilty one? The story is set at Wake’s End, a country house at Wakenhyrst, a village beside the Guthlaf’s Fen in Suffolk. Paver creates this setting with all the intensity and atmosphere with which she created the Arctic in Dark Matter and the Himalayas in Thin Air. The fens haunt every aspect of life at the house and on bad days, when the weather closes in and the mind is in turmoil, the fens invade the rooms too. The rotting stench. A scratching at the windows. Damp and infection. Edmund hates the fens and forbids Maud and her older brother Richard from crossing the bridge; Nurse too is full of scary stories of ferishes and hobby-lanterns that entice people to their death. Others are more pragmatic, depending on the fens for their living and for food.
When Maud’s mother dies in childbirth everything changes at Wake’s End. Richard is sent away to school and thirteen-year old Maud becomes housekeeper and then secretary for her father who is a medieval historian. Edmund’s odd behavior begins when he uncovers an ancient painting in the graveyard of local church St Guthlaf’s. He imagines that the eyes of the Doom, the painted devil, are staring at him with purpose, that the devil knows his secret. The Doom is restored and hung again in the church, but in a locked room. When Edmund kills Maud’s favourite magpie, Chatterpie, her dislike of her father becomes a mission to fathom the truth of his odd behavior.
This is a thoughtful mystery rather than a thriller, the danger and threats unfold at a steady pace and the questions continue until the end. What was Edmund’s crime and how far will he go to hide the truth? Why does he hate the fens so much? How exactly do the strands of waterweed appear on his pillow? Not so much a ghost story as a mystery of rational understanding clouded by folktale, medieval legend and tales of ancient witchcraft and superstition.
The story unfolds through Maud’s eyes and the excerpts she reads of her father’s diaries, plus Edmund’s translations of a medieval mystic Alice Pyett and The Life of St Guthlaf. Although Edmund is an unsympathetic character, I did pause at one point to wonder the reliability of Maud’s account. Maud is an impressive character; denied education because she is a girl she reads secretly and resents her father’s nightly use of her mother, multiple pregnancies which eventually lead to Maman’s death. Paver is good at drawing a picture of the community; fen-dweller Jubal Rede, assistant gardener Clem Walker, servant Ivy, rector Mr Broadstairs, Dr Grayson and village wisewoman Boddy Thrussel. Modern medicine beside folk remedies. Church of England beside centuries-old folklore.
So creepy is the story, so isolated is this house beside the fen, that the setting feels older than Edwardian England. It could easily be set in the 19thcentury, excepting the references to trains and telegraphs. The isolation of the community is key to the crimes committed; truth may disappear, be disguised and denied, but someone always sees, someone always knows. The fen holds the answers.
Excellent.

And read my reviews of other novels by Michelle Paver:-
THE OUTSIDERS #1GODS&WARRIORS
THIN AIR
VIPER’S DAUGHTER #7WOLFBROTHER

If you like this, try:-
‘The Witchfinder’s Sister’ by Beth Underdown
‘Deerleap’ by Sarah Walsh
‘The Confessions of Frannie Langton’ by Sara Collins

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview WAKENHYRST by Michelle Paver https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3Yb via @SandraDanby