Tag Archives: Mary stewart

#BookReview ‘The Ivy Tree’ by Mary Stewart #mystery

A strange encounter on Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland kicks off this mystery of assumed identity and deceit. The premise of The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart reminded me immediately of Josephine Tey’s masterpiece about a fraudulent heir, Brat Farrar and Stewart’s characters refer to the Tey book. Mary StewartDays after a young man mistakes Mary Grey for a local woman who disappeared eight years earlier, Mary sees a strange woman watching her in the Newcastle café where she is waitressing. What follows is a complex plot to secure the fortune and property of an elderly gentleman, his health failing, before he should die. Mary, at the behest of sibling partnership Connor Winslow and Lisa Dermott, will impersonate Annabel Winslow, the woman she so resembles, in order to win the Winslow’s farm Whitescar for Con. Unscrupulous, immoral? Or redressing a wrong perpetuated in a will which needs updating before Matthew Winslow’s imminent death? Throughout the first half of the story, which works up to the false Annabel’s arrival at Whitescar and the hurdles of lies and pretence she must negotiate, I suspected Mary Grey of being the real Annabel. But at the halfway mark in the story, everything changes as new information bursts on the scene. And all set in the glorious summer setting of rural Northumberland, where abundant roses tumble through the hedgerows and a cat named Tommy has kittens.
More a mystery with an odd touch of romance, than a romantic mystery, Stewart has populated the story with edgy unlikeable characters. Apart from Annabel’s grandfather and her young cousin Julie, who was only eleven when Annabel was assumed dead after mysteriously disappearing. Julie’s naïvely-recounted memories of what passed eight years earlier help the reader, and ‘Annabel,’ to grasp the complexities of the Winslow family politics. But as for everyone else, I didn’t trust any of them.
The ivy tree of the novel’s title is not of course made of ivy, it’s a large old oak tree now swamped by ivy. ‘Eventually the ivy would kill it. Already, through the tracery of the ivy-stems, some of the oak boughs showed dead, and one great lower limb, long since broken off, had left a gap where rotten wood yawned, in holes deep enough for owls to nest in.’ As the story unfolds, the significance of this tree becomes clearer. Stewart, as always, writes with such a brooding sense of atmosphere, almost acting as an extra character. And she handles the balance of trickery, of information withheld, suspected, hinted and revealed, like a master craftsman.
A story with so many twists it seems the knot will never be untied. But it is, in a final thrilling scene involving the old ivy tree. Another Mary Stewart classic. She makes you feel as if you’re there, watching as the story unfolds around you.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE ABOUT ‘THE IVY TREE’

Click the title to read my reviews of other Mary Stewart novels:-
THIS ROUGH MAGIC
THORNYHOLD
TOUCH NOT THE CAT
THE GABRIEL HOUNDS

Click the title to read my review of BRAT FARRAR by Josephine Tey.

If you like this, try these:-
My Husband the Stranger’ by Rebecca Done
Wolf Winter’ by Cecilia Ekback
Little Deaths’ by Emma Flint

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

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

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 HERE FOR MORE ABOUT ‘THORNYHOLD’

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

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:
THORNYHOLD by Mary Stewart #BookReview https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5Rn via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘This Rough Magic’ by Mary Stewart #romance #suspense

Until re-visiting Mary Stewart again I’d forgotten the exoticism of her settings and so, inspired by The Gabriel Hounds which is set in Lebanon, I quickly moved onto This Rough Magic. I remember being enchanted by this book when I read it as a teenager. The magic of Corfu, the beating heat, the warm dust, the blue sky. My memories didn’t let me down. Mary StewartSet in Greece, this is another fantastic romantic suspense novel from Mary Stewart which to be honest is more adventure story than romance. Difficult to believe it was first published in 1964 [here’s the cover of the Hodder & Stoughton first edition]. More moody and atmospheric than the disappointingly generic front cover of the current edition.

Mary Stewart

The Hodder & Stoughton first edition of ‘This Rough Magic’ in 1960

When young actress Lucy Waring goes to stay with her sister Phyl in Corfu, she meets the neighbour living at the adjacent mysterious Castello dei Fiori. None other than Shakespearean master Sir Julian Gale. Although Sir Julian is flattering, sharing his theory that Shakespeare based The Tempest on Corfu and that Prospero’s cave is nearby, his son Max is cool and unwelcoming. So later, when Lucy is on the nearby beach where she meets a tame local dolphin, shots ring out that nearly hit her, she automatically suspects Max.
This is a story of passing encounters, mysterious deaths, enigmatic locals with classical Greek names, a somewhat naïve but plucky heroine and a Shakespearean ‘sir’ who in my mind I pictured as Sir Ralph Richardson.
Read it for the sultry heat, the mysterious Castello… and the dolphin. Re-reading it is like meeting an old friend.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE ABOUT ‘THIS ROUGH MAGIC’

Click the title to read my reviews of the other Stewart books I’ve re-read so far:-
TOUCH NOT THE CAT
THE GABRIEL HOUNDS

If you like this, try these:-
The Forgotten Sister’ by Nicola Cornick
The Animals at Lockwood Manor’ by Jane Healey
The Seventh Miss Hatfield’ by Anna Caltabiano

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
THIS ROUGH MAGIC by Mary Stewart #bookreview https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5A2 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Gabriel Hounds’ by Mary Stewart #romance #suspense

A rollicking, sensuous tale set at a rundown Lebanese palace involving two cousins, an eccentric great-aunt, various chases and subterfuge, The Gabriel Hounds by Mary Stewart is a classic 20th century suspense romance. The hounds of the title are a legend saying that when the dogs run howling around the palace of Dar Ibrahim in the gloriously-named Adonis Valley, death is sure to follow. Mary StewartChristy Mansel leaves her guided tour of Syria and Lebanon to visit the palace of her Great-Aunt Harriet. When she arrives at the beguiling, almost Gothic building, she finds a staff who are incommunicative and protective of their boss who prefers her solitude and will not receive visitors until dark. Waiting to hear if her relative will see her, Christy sets out to explore the passages, gardens, walls and secret places, trying to ignore the glares of the servants and avoid the saluki hounds she has been warned are guard dogs and aggressive to strangers.
The descriptions of Lebanon make the story come alive as do the stories of legends researched by the great-aunt’s assistant, John Lethman. Published in 1967, the story develops slowly compared with current publishing tastes but the settings are luscious and the pace picks up in the second half when the vague suspicions of Christy and her cousin Charles that all at Dar Ibrahim is not as it seems begin to feel real.
This is Beirut and the Lebanon pre-Civil War, pre-the kidnappings of John McCarthy and Brian Keenan, pre-Isis. In creating the character of Great-Aunt Harriet and Dar Ibrahim, Stewart acknowledges her debt to the real life of Lady Hester Stanhope, 19th century traveller and adventurer. ‘She finally seems to have believed in her own mystical destiny as Queen of the East who would one day ride crowned into Jerusalem at the side of the new Messiah.’
I read Mary Stewart as a teenager and remember my delight at the romantic, other-worldly stories in destinations so far from my own life. The Gabriel Hounds is definitely worth re-visiting.
BUY THE BOOK

Here’s my review of Stewart’s TOUCH NOT THE CAT.

If you like this, try these:-
The Seventh Miss Hatfield’ by Anna Caltabiano
The Forgotten Sister’ by Nicola Cornick
The Silent Companions’ by Laura Purcell

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
THE GABRIEL HOUNDS by Mary Stewart #bookreview https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5s3 via @SandraDanby