“All day, the colours had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths. Briefly visible above the vapour, Kanchenjunga was a far peak whittled out of ice, gathering the last of the light, a plume of snow blown high by the storms at its summit.”
‘The Inheritance of Loss’ by Kiran Desai
Yet again, Philippa Gregory brings history alive. The Lady of the Rivers is the story of Jacquetta of Luxembourg, from her first encounter with Joan of Arc, kept me riveted. She is so attuned to the period and the language that her writing is seamless. At no point does the research show itself. And there is a lot of research, Gregory herself admits she does four months of solid research before starting to write. She also says that she often finds the idea for a different novel when she is researching another. 
It may seem to the outsider that Gregory re-invents the same story – ‘what another Tudor woman?’ But this could not be further from the truth. Witchcraft is an intriguing story thread throughout this book, something introduced in The White Queen about Jacquetta’s daughter Elizabeth Woodville. Women are obliged to hide their knowledge and skills in order to survive, knowledge that today we would think of as alternative medicine and gardening by the phases of the moon. My knowledge of the period, the Wars of the Roses, the various kings and factions, is definitely improving though I was concerned that the reverse-telling of the Cousins’ War series would eliminate some of the tension. After all we know the fate of many of the characters, but her plotting and the scheming of the characters kept me reading.
I do think, though, that the titles and cover design is getting a little repetitive and lends confusion. I have been given duplicate copies as gifts, because of confusion between The Red Queen and The White Queen.
Read my reviews of these other Philippa Gregory novels:-
THE LITTLE HOUSE
THREE SISTERS THREE QUEENS
Read the #FirstPara of THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL, also by Philippa Gregory.
If you like this, try:-
‘Dark Aemilia’ by Sally O’Reilly
‘A Column of Fire’ by Ken Follett #3KINGSBRIDGE
‘Kings and Queens’ by Terry Tyler
And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE LADY OF THE RIVERS by Philippa Gregory https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4aC via @SandraDanby
“I was born in the city of Bombay… once upon a time. No, that won’t do, there’s no getting away from the date: I was born in Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home on August 15th, 1947. And the time? The time matters, too. Well then: at night. No, it’s important to be more… On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined palms in respectful greeting as I came. Oh, spell it out, spell it out: at the precise instant of India’s arrival at independence, I tumbled forth into the world. There were gasps. And outside the window, fireworks and crowds. A few seconds later, my father broke his big toe; but his accident was a mere trifle when set beside what had befallen me in that benighted moment, because thanks to the occult tyrannies of those blandly saluting clocks I had been mysteriously handcuffed to history, my destinies indissolubly chained to those of my country. For the next three decades, there was to be no escape. Soothsayers had prophesied me, newspapers celebrated my arrival, politicos ratified my authenticity. I was left entirely without a say in the matter. I, Saleem Sinai, later variously called Snotnose, Stainface, Baldy, Sniffer, Buddha and even Piece-of-the-Moon, had become heavily embroiled in Fate – at the best of times a dangerous sort of involvement. And I couldn’t even wipe my own nose at the time.”
‘Midnight’s Children’ by Salman Rushdie
“The first person I met at Eden-Olympia was a psychiatrist, and in many ways it seems only too apt that my guide to this ‘intelligent’ city in the hills above Cannes should have been a specialist in mental disorders. I realize now that a kind of waiting madness, like a state of undeclared war, haunted the office buildings of the business park. For most of us, Dr Wilder Penrose was our amiable Prospero, the psychopomp who steered our darkest dreams towards the daylight. I remember his eager smile when we greeted each other, and the evasive eyes that warned me away from his outstretched hand. Only when I learned to admire this flawed and dangerous man was I able to think of killing him.”
‘Super-Cannes’ by JG Ballard
“Gina turned the car off the road and into the driveway of Allersmead. At this point she seemed to see her entire life flash by. As the drowning are said to do. She thought of this, and that the genuinely drowning can never have been recorded on the matter.”
‘Family Album’ by Penelope Lively
If you have read the time-travelling Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, you will be familiar with the character of Lord John Grey. Lord John and the Private Matter is a historical detective story starring Lord John in his own right, without Jamie and Claire Fraser. Many Gabaldon fans will bemoan the lack of the Frasers, but Lord John is a quite capable protagonist. 
Gabaldon is an experienced storyteller and she paints a picture of London in 1757 which the reader trusts as authentic. The plot pushes on as Lord John gets involved in two separate matters which in the beginning I found a little confusing, but which inevitably became neatly entwined. Along the way he encounters an eccentric German, a sweet whore and a dodgy molly house, all of which he deals with in his distinctive charming and intelligent manner. Lord John is certainly worthy of his own standalone series, and can be read independently of the Outlander series. This book is more than just a tale for readers suffering from Fraser-withdrawal syndrome. And it is also much shorter, Gabaldon could never be accused of writing novellas.
If you like this, try:-
‘The French Lesson’ by Hallie Rubenhold
‘The Lady of the Rivers’ by Philippa Gregory
‘The Secrets of Gaslight Lane’ by MRC Kasasian #4GOWERDETECTIVE
And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview LORD JOHN AND THE PRIVATE MATTER by Diana Gabaldon @Writer_DG https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4ax via @SandraDanby
“Though I haven’t ever been on the screen I was brought up in pictures. Rudolph Valentino came to my fifth birthday party – or so I was told. I put this down only to indicate that even before the age of reason I was in a position to watch the wheels go round.”
‘The Last Tycoon’ by F Scott Fitzgerald
It’s a while since I read a book I didn’t want to put down, a book that made me continue reading in bed gone midnight. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson is that book. 
Atkinson manages the macro settings and the micro details with ease, from the petty sibling squabbles at Fox Corner to the camaraderie of the ARP wardens in the Blitz. Before I started reading Life after Life I read the phrase ‘Groundhog Day’ a few times in reviews, which belittles the intricate weaving of Ursula Todd’s lives. In the way that Logan Mountstuart’s life runs parallel to the great historical moments of the last century, Ursula’s life stories are book-ended by the approach and aftermath of the First and Second World Wars. Ursula, little bear, is an engaging character we see born and die, again and again through her own personal déjà vu. I wasn’t sure how this was going to work but once I stopped worrying about it and surrendered myself to Ursula, I was transfixed.
This is another work of art, as mesmerising as her first Behind the Scenes at the Museum. It is such an ambitious novel, that I can only guess at the intricacy of the writing process and admire her for it.
Read my reviews of these other novels by Kate Atkinson:-
A GOD IN RUINS
BIG SKY #5JACKSONBRODIE
DEATH AT THE SIGN OF THE ROOK #6JACKSONBRODIE
NORMAL RULES DON’T APPLY
SHRINES OF GAIETY
TRANSCRIPTION
… and try the #FirstPara of EMOTIONALLY WEIRD
If you like this, try:-
‘Homeland’ by Clare Francis
‘The Aftermath’ by Rhidian Brook
‘The Translation of Love’ by Lynne Kutsukake
And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview LIFE AFTER LIFE by Kate Atkinson via @SandraDanby https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4aw
“When she was home from her boarding-school I used to see her almost every day sometimes, because their house was right opposite the Town Hall Annexe. She and her younger sister used to go in and out a lot, often with young men, which of course I didn’t like. When I had a free moment from the files and ledgers I stood by the window and used to look down over the road over the frosting and sometimes I’d see her. In the evening I marked it in my observations diary, at first with X, and then when I knew her name with M. I saw her several times outside too. I stood right behind her once in a queue at the public library down Crossfield Street. She didn’t look once at me, but I watched the back of her head and her hair in a long pigtail. It was very pale, silky, like burnet cocoons. All in one pigtail coming down almost to her waist, sometimes in front, sometimes at the back. Sometimes she wore it up. Only once, before she came to be my guest here, did I have the privilege to see her with it loose, and it took my breath away it was so beautiful, like a mermaid.”
‘The Collector’ by John Fowles
“The news about Walter Berglund wasn’t picked up locally – he and Patty had moved away to Washington two years earlier and meant nothing to St Paul now – but the urban gentry of Ramsey Hill were not so loyal to their city as not to read the New York Times. According to a long and very unflattering story in the Times, Walter had made quite a mess of his professional life out there in the nation’s capital. His old neighbours had some difficulty reconciling the quotes about him in the Times [“arrogant,” “high-handed,” “ethically compromised”] with the generous, smiling, red-faced 3M employee they remembered pedalling his commuter bicycle up Summit Avenue in February snow; it seemed strange that Walter, who was greener than Greenpeace and whose own roots were rural, should be in trouble now for conniving with the coal industry and mistreating country people. Then again, there had always been something not quite right about the Berglunds.”
‘Freedom’ by Jonathan Franzen
SANDRA DANBY'S BOOK REVIEWS 