Tag Archives: historical fiction

#BookReview ‘The Good People’ by Hannah Kent #historical #folklore

4 Replies

The Good People by Hannah Kent is a powerful second novel from a writer whose debut was outstanding. It is a tale of rural people in a poor community where superstition and folklore become entangled with one woman’s grief, with tragic results. Conflicting systems of thought come into play – folklore, religion, medicine and legal – and fail to make sense of what happens to Nóra Leahy. The power of the story lies not in black versus white, or logic and education versus peasant superstition, it lies in its characters. Hannah KentCounty Kerry, Ireland, 1826. An isolated village, where gossip goes around and around, where people survive on milk and potatoes and burn turf on the fire. A place where petty grievances are not forgotten, there is no money to pay the doctor, but there are still random acts of kindness. In such a poor community, what happens when the unthinkable happens, where the doctor and priest have no explanation or solution?
The Good People is based on true events, a court case which did happen. In the same year in which her daughter died, Nóra’s husband drops dead in the field leaving her alone to care for her four-year-old grandson Micheál. He cannot walk or speak and neither the doctor nor the priest can offer hope. So Nóra keeps him hidden from the village gossips in the fear that his deformities may be an indication of fairy interference. Unable to cope alone, Nóra employs 14-year-old Mary to milk the cow and fetch the water, and principally to care for Micheál. Soon Mary hears the whispers at the well, that the unnatural child of Nóra Leahy is to blame for the poor harvest, the hens not laying, the thin milk. So Nóra asks Nance Roche for help. Nance is the wise woman of the valley, she knows the plants, the cures, and she talks to the Good People… the fairies.
When Nance suggests the screaming, fitting, feeble child is not really Micheál but a changeling left in his place by the fairies, the three women become embroiled in cures to banish ‘the fairy’. The darkness of the cures attempted on a disabled and sick child is disturbing and, ultimately tragic. The events unfold slowly through the stories of Nóra, Mary and Nance. The writing is beautiful and every page is steeped in the folklore of rural Ireland, this bleak village where poor people live at the edge of survival. It is impossible not to connect with the three women, each so different, while at the time seeing the inevitability of what is to come.
A little historical context. In 1801 the Act of Union was enacted which ended a separate parliament in Dublin with government switching to Westminster. In 1823 in Ireland, Daniel O’Connell began to set up Catholic associations around the country, seeking a repeal of the Act of Union. In 1826 an ‘old woman of very advance age’ known as Anne/Nance Roche was indicted for the wilful murder of Michael Kelliher/Leahy at the summer Tralee assizes in Co. Kerry.
A compelling read.

Read my reviews of Hannah Kent’s two other novels:-
BURIAL RITES
DEVOTION

If you like this, try:-
‘The Western Wind’ by Samantha Harvey
‘Master of Shadows’ by Neil Oliver
‘All the Birds, Singing’ by Evie Wyld

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE GOOD PEOPLE by Hannah Kent via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2×7

#BookReview ‘The Witchfinder’s Sister’ by Beth Underdown #historical

2 Replies

The horror which man can visit on his fellow man, or woman, on anyone slightly different or strange, is explored in this richly-written debut novel. The Witchfinder’s Sister by Beth Underdown is a fictional telling of a real seventeenth century witchfinder, Matthew Hopkins, and his invented sister Alice. It is a novel steeped in historical fact, with excerpts of documents including real people and trials. Beth UnderdownIt is 1645 and the Civil War in England is into its fourth year. There is a sense of brooding danger from the very beginning, and not just because of war. It is a time of religious fervour. A short prologue contains a list of women named as witches, their descriptions and accused crimes. Then in chapter one we meet Alice who is confined to one room. This novel is the account of her life.
When Alice’s husband dies in London in a work accident, she returns home, newly pregnant, to the Essex village where she grew up. Upon entering the home of her younger half-brother Matthew, she discovers he has become obsessed with punishing women for witchery. As her worry about his activities turns into fear, she is unable to escape his influence and is pulled into complicity with his acts. Despite attempts to break free, she too is under his power.
It is a fascinating historical read, the sort of book where you feel assured the author’s research is authentic. Told completely from Alice’s point of view, the other female characters are deeply drawn. The servants in her brother’s house, the creepy Mary Phillips and young Grace; Bridget, her step-mother’s former servant; and Rebecca West, accused of witchery. Some of it is difficult reading, particularly the Watching and Searching of suspects, who are subjected to difficult and demeaning conditions. The power of a few men over so many is frightening. With relevance to today’s society are the big issues of man’s inhumanity to man, intolerance and that ability to inflict cruelty which seems always to lurk just beneath the surface of civilised society.
A book that will stay with me for a long time, and which will be re-read.

Read my review of THE KEY IN THE LOCK, Beth Underdown’s second novel.

If you like this, try:-
‘Orphans of the Carnival’ by Carol Birch
‘The Miniaturist’ by Jessie Burton
‘The Penny Heart’ by Martine Bailey

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE WITCHFINDER’S SISTER by Beth Underdown via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2pJ

#BookReview ‘Quartet’ by Jean Rhys #historicalfiction #Paris

2 Replies

Quartet is the first, slim, novel by Wide Sargasso Sea author Jean Rhys. Published in 1928 it is its very different from its famous older sister which was not published until 1968. Semi-autobiographical, Quartet tells the story of Marya, marooned without money in Paris after her chancer husband Stephan is jailed for theft. It is a novel about loneliness and vulnerability and where that can lead. Jean RhysMarya is taken under the wing of the English couple, the Heidlers. They are spoken of as a unit, he is referred to as HJ, his wife is Lois. It is Lois who persuades Marya to move into the spare bedroom at their studio. HJ, she tells Marya, likes to ‘help people.’ But as days pass, Marya is drawn into their emotional and sexual influence. Not an accurate judge of character, Marya is let down but seems incapable of getting away. Visits to her husband in prison are fleeting and unsatisfactory, husband and wife face their own dilemmas and deal with them alone.
This is a melancholy story told beautifully. Marya is intelligent but weak, recognising she is trapped but unable, or unwilling, to extricate herself. ‘You see, I’m afraid the trouble with me is that I’m not hard enough. I’m a soft, thin-skinned sort of person and I’ve been frightened to death these last days.’ She tells her own story but there is often an observational feel almost as if she is standing to the side, commentating about someone playing herself. Some acute observations of other people are really just her transferring her own condition, her own sensibilities onto someone else.
I read the Penguin Modern Classics edition with an excellent introduction by Katie Owen, which sets this novel in the context of Rhys’ bibliography.

Here’s my review of another novel by Jean Rhys:-
AFTER LEAVING MR MACKENZIE

If you like this, try:-
‘A Wreath of Roses’ by Elizabeth Taylor
‘The French Lesson’ by Hallie Rubenhold
‘Islands of Mercy’ by Rose Tremain

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview QUARTET by Jean Rhys via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2c1

#BookReview ‘The Photographer’s Wife’ by Suzanne Joinson #historical

2 Replies

The smell and heat of Jerusalem rises off the page. Suzanne Joinson has travelled to, lived in and worked in a number of Middle East countries and this shows in The Photographer’s Wife. She creates a Jerusalem so vivid you can feel it on your skin. Suzanne JoinsonThis is the story of an eleven-year-old girl, Prue, as she grows up in 1920s Jerusalem with an absent mother and a father who lets her run wild, and the people she encounters. As a child she observes much, lurking in the shadows at her father’s parties. The political tensions swirl as the country recovers from the Great War and the next is anticipated.
Prue’s father, a city architect, employs a British pilot to overfly the area and provide him with reconnaissance photographs. In Jerusalem, the pilot Willie finds Eleanora, the girl he loved and lost in Britain before the Great War. Now his body bears the burn scars of his war, while she lives in Jerusalem and is married to an Arab photographer. So there are political tensions and romantic tensions, both underpinned by the use of photography to reveal or conceal the truth.
In the second strand of the story, Prue is an adult living in England, a sculptor and mother living in a beach hut at Shoreham. When an unexpected visitor arrives, what happened in Jerusalem is examined in detail. This novel is about truth, manipulation of the truth, and in particular the use of photography in the inter-war world of political influence and manipulation. It is not a spy novel, but it at its core is the rule of the British rule, the agitation of the nationalists, and the general exploitation of people for political ends.
What did Prue see and hear? What did she give her friend Ihsan? What is it that Willie wants when he visits Shoreham? And did everyone use eleven year old Prue for their own ends?
This novel demands patience and I think will reward re-reading, some subtle plot points passed me by and so I never fully bought-into the tension at the end. In places it seemed unnecessarily complicated with perhaps one or two characters too many. In particular, the title suggests the story is about Eleanora, but I wanted to read more about Prue. It is really her story so perhaps the title should be ‘The Architect’s Daughter.’

If you like this, try:-
‘Summertime’ by Vanessa Lafaye
‘The Dance Tree’ by Karen Millwood Hargrave
‘The Rose Garden’ by Tracy Rees

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S WIFE by Suzanne Joinson http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Z3 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘At the Edge of the Orchard’ by Tracy Chevalier @Tracy_Chevalier #historical

8 Replies

Tracy Chevalier is a ‘must buy’ author for me and At the Edge of the Orchard does not disappoint. It is a story about roots – of family and trees – about the pioneers who populated built America’s mid-west and west coast, battling swamp and mountains. Most importantly it is about apples. Tracy ChevalierThe scent of the fruit imbues every page. But this is not a romantic story. The Goodenough family live an at-times brutal life as they try to establish an apple orchard in Ohio’s Black Swamp in 1838. Love them or hate them, the apples affect the direction of their lives.
The story started slowly for me as we hear the family’s daily life told by mother Sadie and father James. The two are so antagonistic that you wonder how they ever married. They battle the elements, each other and Sadie’s need for applejack, to put food in the mouths of their surviving children. In winter they wade through mud, in summer they battle swamp fever. Sadie is an almost completely unsympathetic character, hiding in a bottle while her husband hides with his apples. The children, if they survive, are adults before their time.
The story really took off for me when we hear what happens to Robert, the youngest son, who one day simply walks away from the farm. Fifteen years later he is an itinerant worker on boats and even in the Gold Rush, before a chance meeting in California with a plant collector [the real William Lobb] changes his life. He writes home to the family in the Black Swamp, but hears nothing. Is his family dead? Why did he really leave? Can Robert leave behind the apple legacy and become his own man? Will he ever shake off memories of his difficult upbringing and forge close relationships himself? Having seen the Californian sequoias which Robert discovers, I loved the second half of this book.

Read my reviews of Tracy Chevalier’s other novels:-
A SINGLE THREAD
NEW BOY
THE GLASSMAKER
THE LAST RUNAWAY

If you like this, try:-
‘The Knife with the Ivory Handle’ by Cynthia Bruchman
‘If I Knew you were going to be this Beautiful, I never would have let you go’ by Judy Chicurel
‘Time will Darken It’ by William Maxwell

And if you’d like to share a link:
#BookReview AT THE EDGE OF THE ORCHARD by Tracy Chevalier @Tracy_Chevalier via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2dY

#BookReview ‘The Penny Heart’ by Martine Bailey @MartineBailey #historical

8 Replies

This is the sort of novel which creates a world into which you can sink. It is a story of revenge, cookery and two women in 18th century England, connected by one man. The story of The Penny Heart by Martine Bailey is told by the two women, who cannot be more different. It is about the nature of truth, the passage of time and the difficulty of deciphering the lies hidden within truth. Martine BaileyIn 1787 when Mary Jebb is caught playing a confidence trick on a young man, she is sentenced to the colonies. Before she leaves, she sends two pennies, each engraved with a promise, to the two men she blames for her fate. These are the penny hearts. In contrast, virtuous and timid Grace Moore marries handsome Michael Coxon in a property deal arranged by her father and husband. She soon learns that her husband is not what he seems. At the isolated and rundown Delafosse Hall she is lonely but finds a friend in her new cook, Peg.
By halfway through I really didn’t want to put the book down and the last third runs along with an ingenious ending that was impossible to foresee. Whose story to trust? Mary, resourceful and struggling to survive in a world which gives her nothing. Or Grace, who escapes a drunken father and finds herself marooned with an exploitative husband? Will Grace realize Peg is not what she seems? Will Peg’s plans work out? And which facts are true, and which lies? This is not a pretty historical story set in which involves a few recipes. It is a dark story of murder, double-crossing and lies.

And here are my reviews of other novels by Martine Bailey:-
AN APPETITE FOR VIOLETS
THE ALMANACK #1TABITHAHART
THE PROPHET #2TABITHAHART

If you like this, try:-
‘The Miniaturist’ by Jesse Burton
‘Gone are the Leaves’ by Anne Donovan
‘The Other Eden’ by Sarah Bryant

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE PENNY HEART by Martine Bailey @MartineBailey via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2ii

#BookReview ‘Fair Exchange’ by Michèle Roberts #historical

2 Replies

This story by English/French author Michèle Roberts starts with a woman dying, she has a secret to confess. We must wait until almost the end of the book to find out the truth. In a village near Paris, Louise is dying, it is the early 1800s, after the French Revolution and during the subsequent English/French war. Fair Exchange is the story of that secret, of Louise’s part in it and how she impacts on the lives of two other women, one English one French. Michèle RobertsIn an Author’s Note, Roberts explains the inspiration for the story: William Wordsworth’s love affair, at the beginning of the French Revolution, with Annette Vallon. This is not a true account, it is historical fiction about the romances of two couples – English poet William Saygood and Annette Villon [note the mis-spelling], and Jemima Boote [sketchily based on Mary Wollstonecraft] and Frenchman Paul Gilbert. Roberts’ telling of the story combines the detail of poverty at that time – the grinding daily life of Louise and her mother Amalie in the village of Saintange-sur-Seine near Paris – with sumptuous description. Louise is picking plums: ‘The plums were so ripe that they fell into her hands. They smelled fragrant in the warm sunlight, as though she were biting them off the tree and tasting their sweet juice. Flies rose up in clouds as she pushed into the web of branches and she beat them away from her face in clouds. They had got there first, settling, in blue glints of jewelled wings, on minute cracks in the fruit that oozed gold.’
This is a period of history about which I am ignorant. First Annette, and then Jemima, arrive in Saintange-sur-Seine, single women, and pregnant. Louise is drawn into their lives, caring for them, supporting them, observing them. Fascinating stuff.

Read my review of THE WALWORTH BEAUTY also by Michèle Roberts, and try the first paragraph of FAIR EXCHANGE.

If you like this, try:-
‘An Appetite for Violets’ by Martine Bailey
‘The Knife with the Ivory Handle’ by Cynthia Bruchman
‘Gone are the Leaves’ by Anne Donovan

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview FAIR EXCHANGE by Michèle Roberts http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Of via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Under A Pole Star’ by Stef Penney #historical #adventure

3 Replies

In 1883, twelve-year-old Flora Mackie is taken by her father, captain of the Vega, a whaling ship, to the Arctic. She returns to the Arctic as a young woman, a meteorologist, heading her own expedition. ‘Under a Pole Star’ by Stef Penney is Flora’s story and that of the troubled 1891 Armitage-de Beyn expedition to Greenland. Stef PenneyThe story starts in 1948 as an American group leaves New Jersey, the purpose unclear. Onboard the plane are scientists, air force men, a television crew, a journalist, and Flora Mackie. The Snow Queen. What unfolds is the story of the two rival expeditions: the British, told by Flora, and the American, told by Jakob de Beyn, geologist with the Armitage party. It is quite a while before there is even a hint of what the controversy may be. Until then, we follow the lives of Flora in Dundee and London, and Jakob in New York, as they grow from children to adults. Finally the separate Greenland expeditions set off, unaware of each other. When Flora and Jake meet in Greenland in 1892 there is a spark between them. At this point I was unsure what the book was about – Arctic exploration, romance, a thriller?
Penney’s writing about the Arctic makes me want to go there. The ice, the light, the endless horizon. But this is not just a story of women crossing boundaries at the end of the 19th century, it is a mystery with claim and counter-claim from rival explorers. Ultimately, this is a story of what men, and women, will do to be the first to their goal.
A fascinating story which moves slowly at times with some things left unexplained. It makes me want to read more of Penney’s books, but I was left with the feeling that the story could be tighter with a stronger spine of mystery.

Read my review of THE BEASTS OF PARIS also by Stef Penney.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Surfacing’ by Cormac James
‘The Leviathan’ by Rosie Andrews
‘Devotion’ by Hannah Kent

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview UNDER A POLE STAR by Stef Penney via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2bx

#BookReview ‘The French Lesson’ by Hallie Rubenhold @HallieRubenhold #historical

3 Replies

The French Lesson by Hallie Rubenhold is an entertaining account of Henrietta Lightfoot’s time in the Paris of 1792 during the French Revolution, a period of which my knowledge is scanty. This is a women’s story told with authority by social historian Rubenhold, at a time when the new order replaced the old and changed women’s lives in the process. Hallie Rubenhold Years after the event, Hettie writes her account of what happened at the request of a benefactor. As the novel opens, she is living in Brussels with the love of her life, George Allenham, 4th Baron Allenham of Herberton, expecting to be married and so calling herself Mrs Allenham. But when Allenham’s mysterious work takes him to Paris, he does not return. She receives a letter from him saying Paris is dangerous and though he must stay there for his work, she must return to England for her safety. But Hettie follows her heart to Paris.
With the Revolution threatening, she is attacked, robbed, rescued and so finds herself indebted to Mrs Grace Elliot, an English woman who survives in Paris as a lover to rich important men. Hettie is drawn into this life too. The French Lesson is an enjoyable account of a fast-paced, thrilling and bloodthirsty moment in history, combining real characters – d’Orleans, known as Philippe Égalité after the Revolution; his current mistress, Agnès de Buffon; and former mistress, Mrs Elliot – with fictional characters Hettie and Allenham.
As always in war, people are not what they seem. Hettie is driven on first by love, then by the need to survive. She is told by Mrs Elliot not ‘to trust’ and it is a hard lesson to learn.
I learned after reading The French Lesson that it is the second of a trilogy – the first is Mistress of My Fate – though I read it happily as a stand-alone novel.

If you like this, try:-
‘In Another Life’ by Julie Christine Johnson
‘An Officer and a Spy’ by Robert Harris
‘Citadel’ by Kate Mosse

And if you’d like to share a link:
#BookReview THE FRENCH LESSON by Hallie Rubenhold @HallieRubenhold via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1ZV

#BookReview ‘The Translation of Love’ by Lynne Kutsukake #WW2 #war

2 Replies

How to describe The Translation of Love by Lynne Kutsukake? What a charming and unusual novel it is, if at some times a trifle confusing. The setting is unusual, post-war Tokyo when the country is being run by the US General MacArthur and at times it reminded me of Rhidian Brook’s wonderful The Aftermath set in post-war Berlin. It is about war and what it does to us, how a broken society can ever begin to heal, how the young will ever be able to live a normal life, when the word normal ceases to exist. Lynne KutsukakeSensitively written, each page draws a picture of Tokyo from a different point of view – Aya, a Japanese-Canadian schoolgirl feels the odd one out in her new school; her classmate Fumi misses her elder sister who left home to find work; Sumiko has a job in a dance hall dancing with the GIs but is ashamed to tell her family what she is doing; Kondo Sensei, the teacher of the younger girls and also part-time translator and writer of letters; and Matt Matsumoto, the Japanese-American soldier who translates the letters sent to General MacArthur by Japanese citizens.
Letters are an important tool in this story which is essentially a young girl’s quest to find her sister. When Fumi finds out that Aya can write in English, she asks for her to write a letter to General MacArthur asking for his help to find her Sumiko. As the letter changes hands and Matt and a colleague become involved in searching for Sumiko, the story unfolds gently against a terrible backdrop of bomb damage, poverty, starvation, pride, culture clash and above all the determination to survive.
It was a while before all the Japanese characters, and some of the Japanese vocabulary, started to fall into place. A touching story inspired by the letters written by Japanese citizens to MacArthur, it draws a picture of a period in Japanese history of which I knew nothing.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Bird in the Bamboo Cage’ by Hazel Gaynor
‘The Aftermath’ by Rhidian Brook
‘Homeland’ by Clare Francis

And if you’d like to share a link:
#BookReview THE TRANSLATION OF LOVE by Lynne Kutsukake via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2cE