Tag Archives: Elisabeth Gifford

#BookReview ‘A Woman Made of Snow’ by Elisabeth Gifford #historical

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A Woman Made of Snow by Elisabeth Gifford is a historical mystery moving between post-World War Two Scotland and the Arctic in the nineteenth century. Elisabeth GiffordThis is an ambitious, well-researched dual timeline story encompassing exploitation of the Inuit people, the whaling industry, racial prejudice, the maintenance of sprawling country estates and the iron will of a mother for her son to marry the woman she prefers rather than the woman he loves. In 1949, Caro moves to Kelly Castle near Dundee with husband Alasdair and new baby Felicity, to live with his mother Martha. As the two women scratch along together, Martha asks Caro to organise the family records which have fallen into confusion. Sorting the piles of documents, Caro finds an intriguing photograph of Oliver Gillan, Alasdair’s great-grandfather, and two unknown young women. As she sets out to identify the strangers, workmen on the estate uncover bones of a woman in an unmarked grave. Caro jumps to the assumption that the bones might belong to one of the women in the photograph.
This 1949 storyline is alternated with that a century earlier of Oliver, a medical student, who grew up at Kelly Castle. Gifford lays clues for the reader – could Caro’s mysterious bones be those of one of two girls befriended by his family when he was growing up? And are these the girls in the mystery photo? He is keen on Louisa, her sister Charlotte is keen on Oliver; his mother is keen on neither girl. Oliver leaves home to study medicine in Edinburgh but finds himself instead in Dundee as medical officer on a whaling ship, the Narwhal, bound for the Arctic.
I finished the book with mixed feelings. I loved the Arctic sections and wanted more. The 1949 sections left me feeling curiously flat and wonder if the viewpoint affected my response. I so wanted to hear Yarat’s voice directly, instead we see her only through Oliver’s diary and Caro’s imagination.
This was a slow read for me, I delayed picking it up again which surprised me as I loved Gifford’s The Lost Lights of St Kilda. Erratic shifts between chapters didn’t help, the jerky changes of subject took me away from the page and the mystery interested me less than the story of Oliver’s life. I most enjoyed reading about the Arctic and the emotional upheaval of falling in love with a woman so alien to your own home and the repercussions that must be faced.

Read my 5* review of THE LOST LIGHTS OF ST KILDA also by Elizabeth Gifford

If you like this, try:-
‘The Surfacing’ by Cormac James
‘Dark Matter’ by Michelle Paver
‘Rush Oh!’ by Shirley Barrett

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A WOMAN MADE OF SNOW by Elisabeth Gifford @elisabeth04liz  https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5Hc via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Lost Lights of St Kilda’ by Elisabeth Gifford #historical

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Told in two timelines, 1927 and 1940, this a story of love – between two people, and for an island and an endangered way of life. In The Lost Lights of St Kilda by Elisabeth Gifford, the beautiful yet harsh landscape of the island is made vividly alive. This is a delight to read, a novel about love, trust, betrayal and forgiveness. Elisabeth GiffordIn 1940 Fred Lawson, a Scottish soldier from the 51st Highland Division, is imprisoned at Tournai, captured at St Valery in retreat as other soldiers were being evacuated at Dunkirk. Through the darkest moments of fighting, his memories of St Kilda sustain him. ‘It was your face that had stayed with me as we fought in France. It was you who’d sustained me when we were hungry and without sleep for nights as we fought the retreating action back towards the Normandy coast.’ Fred escapes and heads for Spain, forced to trust strangers, not knowing who is a friend and who is an informer, but drawn on by his memories of St Kilda.
At the same moment in Scotland, a teenage daughter longs to know more of her birth. Says Rachel Anne, ‘My mother says I am her whole, world, and she is mine, but all the same I would still like to know at least the name of my father.’
In 1927, geology student Fred travels to the remote Scottish island of St Kilda with his university friend Archie Macleod whose father owns the island. No one knows that three years later the island will be abandoned, the population on the edge of starvation. Archie, the laird’s son, has a privileged position on the island. As a teenage boy he played with the island children, play acting at the work their fathers do, learning their future trades – farming, catching puffins and fulmars – on the dangerous cliffs. And he flirts with Chrissie Gillies. But by the time Archie returns to the island in 1927 with Fred, he has developed an arrogance and a liking for whisky. Over the long summer months, Fred falls in love with the island and with Chrissie. Everything changes when tragedy strikes.
This is a beautiful read, contrasting the softness and closeness of romance with the harsh facts of life as the difficulties of island survival are laid bare. Life in the summer months seems an idyll of isolation and peace, a return to the basics of life that matter. But inevitably winter approaches and, as the real world is complicated, a misunderstanding occurs. But hope is never abandoned. Despite being separated by the years and by lies, Fred and Chrissie never forget each other.

Read my review of A WOMAN MADE OF SNOW also by Elizabeth Gifford.

If you like this, try:-
‘Days Without End’ by Sebastian Barry
‘Rush Oh!’ by Shirley Barrett
‘After the Party’ by Cressida Connolly

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE LOST LIGHTS OF ST KILDA by Elisabeth Gifford @elisabeth04liz  https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4yq via @SandraDanby