Tag Archives: novels set in France

#BookReview ‘Daughters of War’ by Dinah Jefferies @DinahJefferies #WW2 #adventure

7 Replies

It’s a while since I read a book in gulps, not wanting to put it down, not wanting to leave the story. Daughters of War by Dinah Jefferies is the first of a World War Two trilogy about three sisters. And what characters they are, each individual, quirky, vulnerable, stubborn, brave and refreshing. I lurched from having one favourite, then another. At the end I was equally drawn to each. Dinah JefferiesIn the Dordogne live three sisters – Hélène, Élise and Florence – alone in their mother’s house during the German occupation. Hélène is the eldest, a nurse, the mother hen, the worrier. Élise is the rebel, helping the Resistance, disappearing at night. Florence, the youngest, is a gardener, a cook, a nature lover. They are tired of the war, terrified by the Germans and their increasingly violent and indiscriminate reprisals, desperate for a normal life without remembering what that might be.
Backstory is important and there are many mysteries, unspoken memories and fears, which can only by explained when something happens to trigger understanding. We see the girls’ mother Claudette, in England for the war, only through their memories but she is a pivotal character nonetheless.
The story opens in spring 1944 when the girls’ quiet life at their stone cottage in the woods is altered by two arrivals. Jack, a British Special Operations soldier, has parachuted in with orders to train the Resistance in preparation for the invasion. Tomas, a young German soldier, has deserted and is found hiding in their garden shed. What follows is a tale of innocence, love, bravery, cruelty, loyalty and honour.
Jefferies’ descriptions of the French countryside – the trees, the birds, the wildflowers, the Dordogne scenery, coupled with the descriptions of Florence’s cooking – work as a shocking juxtaposition to the horror of war in this oh so beautiful tranquil place.
A page-turner.

Here are my reviews of the next books in the series:-
THE HIDDEN PALACE #2DAUGHTERSOFWAR
NIGHT TRAIN TO MARRAKECH #3DAUGHTERSOFWAR

Read my reviews of these standalone novels by Dinah Jefferies:-
THE SAPPHIRE WIDOW
THE TEA PLANTER’S WIFE
THE TUSCAN CONTESSA

If you like this, try these:-
‘Dangerous Women’ by Hope Adams
‘The Blue Afternoon’ by William Boyd
‘Birdcage Walk’ by Helen Dunmore

Here’s a link to share THIS post:
#BookReview DAUGHTERS OF WAR by Dinah Jefferies @DinahJefferies https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5vI via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The City of Tears’ by Kate Mosse #historical

5 Replies

Steeped in the historical detail of sixteenth-century religious tension and war in France, The City of Tears by Kate Mosse continues the story started in The Burning Chambers. Through the eyes of Minou and Piet we experience the Saint Bartholomew’s day massacre of Huguenots and its aftermath as the story moves from Paris and Chartres to Amsterdam, home to refugees and a protestant uprising. Kate MosseIt is 1572 and the action starts in Puivert, Languedoc, where the Reydons have found a fragile peace from Catholic persecution of the Huguenots. Minou and Piet take their family to Paris to witness the diplomatically-sensitive royal wedding of catholic King Charles’s sister Marguerite to the protestant Henry of Navarre. Unknown to the Reydons their old enemy Cardinal Valentin, also known as Vidal du Plessis, is in Paris planning to kill Huguenots. What follows drives the old enemies together and sets in motion Mosse’s story. The Reydons are forced to flee to save their lives, leaving behind one daughter possibly dead or missing. They run to Amsterdam where they establish a new life though their grief for Marta ruptures their previous marital harmony. But religious extremism follows them and once again they must face the threat of violence. As Piet’s past catches up with him, an uncomfortable family secret is revealed. The need to find the truth once and for all takes them to Chartres and the home of a hunter of religious relics.
These books need be read with full concentration. This period of history is a gap in my knowledge, which made The City of Tears an interesting read. The story lacked drama, though I find it difficult to pin down why. Minou is the heart of this book and it is she who pulled me on through some of the heavy historical detail. I settled into the book better when I gave up trying to remember the historical fact and let Minou’s fictional story take over.
As in The Burning Chambers, the Prologue is set in South Africa two centuries later. And still the woman featured in 1862 is a mystery. The City of Tears is set at a time of change in French Protestantism and the birth of the Dutch Republic and is one of a series of novels covering 300 years of religious turmoil in Europe. Mosse follows the geographical movement of the Huguenot refugees from sixteenth-century France and Amsterdam to the Cape of Good Hope in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. No word on how many novels this series will finally comprise.
I think I will always prefer Labyrinth.

And here are my reviews of other novels by Kate Mosse:-
CITADEL #3LANGUEDOC
THE BURNING CHAMBERS #1JOUBERT
THE TAXIDERMIST’S DAUGHTER

If you like this, try:-
‘The Ashes of London’ by Andrew Taylor #1FIREOFLONDON
‘The Witchfinder’s Sister’ by Beth Underdown
‘The Last Hours’ by Minette Walters #1BLACKDEATH

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE CITY OF TEARS by Kate Mosse https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5gU via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Burning Chambers’ by Kate Mosse #historical

6 Replies

The story starts in winter, 1562, in the South of France. In a prison in Toulouse, a man is being tortured, while in Carcassonne a young woman awakes from a bad dream, a sad memory. The Burning Chambers by Kate Mosse is heavy on atmosphere and historical detail and, like Mosse’s Languedoc trilogy, is slow to start. Despite my confusion, and I admit to being confused in parts for two-thirds of the book, I read on because Mosse is an expert storyteller who spins a tale and reels you in so you sit up late at night reading just one more chapter. Sometimes though, I wished she would cut some of the detail. Kate MosseThis is a story of religious war, of prejudice and violence, of loyalty and love, and principally a woman and a man who find themselves on opposite sides of the religious divide. Minou Joubert is a Catholic, the daughter of a bookseller who believes in selling books of all faiths for everyone to buy freely. When she receives an anonymous letter, sealed with a family insignia she does not recognize and comprising only five words ‘SHE KNOWS THAT YOU LIVE’, she is mystified. That same day, fate crosses her path as Huguenot convert Piet Reydon flees capture. And so starts this spiraling and twisting story of a fight for control of Toulouse between Catholics and Huguenots, the mysterious quest of Minou’s fragile father Bernard, Minou’s mysterious letter, a Bible, traitors who smile and friends who are taciturn. Letter forgotten, Minou and her young brother Aimeric are sent to Toulouse for their safety. There they stay with their mother’s aunt but find themselves in a bad-tempered house where Huguenots are hated and their uncle is a political agitator. Toulouse seems more dangerous than Carcassonne or is the danger following Minou?
Minou is a great heroine and I await the next installment of the series with curiosity. The Prologue and Epilogue hint that this is not a standalone book, set in 1862 in South Africa, a woman is seeking answers in a graveyard. Is this the beginning of book two?

And here are my reviews of other novels by Kate Mosse:-
CITADEL #3LANGUEDOC
THE CITY OF TEARS #2JOUBERT
THE TAXIDERMIST’S DAUGHTER

If you like this, try:-
‘In Another Life’ by Julie Christine Johnson
‘Fair Exchange’ by Michèle Roberts
‘The French Lesson’ by Hallie Rubenhold

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE BURNING CHAMBERS by Kate Mosse https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3wV via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘In Another Life’ by Julie Christine Johnson #contemporary #romance

4 Replies

In Another Life is the debut novel by Julie Christine Johnson but you’d never know it. She handles her subject matter – Cathar history, Languedoc setting – with confidence and has put together a compelling story of love, history and mystery. Julie Christine JohnsonLisa Carrer returns to France, to the place where her husband was killed in a cycling accident, drawn by the comfort of the place and the proximity of her best friend. She is looking to start anew and finish her research into Cathar history. But a strange experience on her first night in her new house is the first of a trail of events which entwine her own life in the present with people from the past, from the actual time in history she is researching.
The story moves along quickly and kept me turning the pages, told in two strands – present day, and 1208. Originally inspired by a holiday in the Languedoc-Roussillon region, Johnson explains in her ‘Author’s Note’ at the end of the book, that she has draped “layers of fantasy over a scaffolding of fact”. This worked for me, I have a shallow understanding of the historical period and trusted her storytelling.
It is a love story which involves reincarnation, it is not about time travel. Comparisons to Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander and Audrey Niffeneger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, are misleading. In Another Life reminded me in style of Kate Mosse’s Languedoc trilogy, though the stories are completely different. Both authors clearly love Languedoc and know their Cathar history.

And here’s my review of THE CROWS OF BEARA, also by Julie Christine Johnson.

If you like this, try:-
‘Ferney’ by James Long
‘The Lives She Left Behind’ by James Long
‘Citadel’ by Kate Mosse #3LANGUEDOC

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview IN ANOTHER LIFE by Julie Christine Johnson https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-1Rb via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Citadel’ by Kate Mosse #historical

8 Replies

I read a lot of books. Amongst those with the strongest sense of place, the ones that linger in my imagination, are the Languedoc trilogy by Kate Mosse. Citadel, the third novel in the series, is set in ad342 and 1942 during World War Two. Unusually with a trilogy, you don’t have to have read the other two books in order to enjoy this one. Certainly it is some years since I read Labyrinth and Sepulchre and the details are hazy, each book stands on its own. Kate MosseI enjoyed this book immensely. The story centres on a small group of women who fight against the Nazi regime and who, by the very fact that they are women, are able to slip unnoticed along the night-time streets of occupied Carcassonne. The Prologue describes ‘the woman known as Sophie’ and the reader is left to wonder, which of the women in the story is ‘Sophie’?
I must point out that the story is slow to get going, I had to be patient, but I trusted Mosse. It did make me question whether my attention span is shortening, I hope not. If it is I must read longer novels to re-stretch my brain.
A note in the 2014 edition, which I read, explains that the story was inspired by a plaque in a village near Carcassonne, commemorating the ‘martyrs of Baudrigues’. Days before the Languedoc was freed by its own people, as the Nazis were fleeing, 19 prisoners were killed, two women are to this day still unidentified. These facts started Mosse wondering who those women were: that was her starting point for Citadel.
It is clear that both time strands are set in the same place, the countryside of the Languedoc, the forests, the mountains, its people and language, and the weather, anchors the reader firmly in southern France. In ad342, Arinius is looking for a hiding place. You know not what for, only that it must be safe for ‘centuries’. “He had no particular destination in mind, only that he had to find somewhere distinctive and sheltered, somewhere where the pattern of the ridges and crests might retain their shape for centuries to come… Forests might be cut down or burn or drowned when a river bursts its banks. Fire and word and flood. Only the mountains stood firm.”

And here are my reviews of other novels by Kate Mosse:-
THE BURNING CHAMBERS #1JOUBERT
THE CITY OF TEARS #2JOUBERT
THE TAXIDERMIST’S DAUGHTER

If you like this, try:-
‘Dominion’ by CJ Sansom
‘Homeland’ by Clare Francis
‘Midnight in Europe’ by Alan Furst

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview CITADEL by Kate Mosse via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-Xt