Tag: historical fiction

Book Review: Precipice by Robert Harris – history unfolds in a fascinating drama involving love and war

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

I’d not read a Robert Harris novel before, but was curious about the events Precipice describes – the indiscretion of a prime minister writing endless letters to his much younger mistress, revealing state secrets. The potential for said letters to get into the wrong hands as Britain tips into World War One.

In the author’s notes at the beginning and at the end of the book, you learn that all of the above events are quite well documented, historians have devoted entire books to the subject, and that the letters written by the prime minister as they appear in the book are authentic. My interest even more piqued, I happily plunged in.

The story begins describing the life of the Hon. Venetia Stanley, a member of a somewhat fast set known as the Coterie who live in London, enjoying the excess afforded to them by money and privilege, and amusing themselves in various daring ways. It’s the summer of 1914, and Venetia is expected to attend a boat party on the Thames, an invitation the PM, H.H Asquith begs her to cancel in favour of meeting him. He needs help with the Irish question, as he tells her in his letters. The boating trip ends in disaster, just as well Venetia cried off at the last minute, and we meet policeman, Paul Deemer.

Deemer, an invented character, is a nice contrast to the elevated world of the PM and Venetia. He’s just an ordinary sergeant at the Met, has a young brother rescued from various scrapes by a promising career in the army, while Paul having recently broken off an engagement, is not sure about his future. His parents are dead, and he’s a quiet, lonely sort, ideal for a hush-hush project with Special Branch.

Asquith writes to Venetia several times a day (postal deliveries numbered twelve a day in London at the time), the two meet at various social occasions, and go for a Friday “drive” together, where the PM shares with Venetia the burdens of his role, the decisions he is tussling with and often revealing copies of telegrams and other top secret documents. Venetia is intelligent, offers a sounding board and emotional encouragement. He’s like a politician who has made it to the top job, only to discover it’s a lot harder than he’d anticipated.

She liked him for his kindness, his cleverness, his fame and power, which he wore lightly. Her father had been a Liberal MP: she had grown up surrounded by talk of politics. Now she was probably the most well-informed woman in the country. And if she was honest, she also enjoyed the thrill of it – the secrecy, the illicitness, the risk.

In the background, as war is declared we meet lots of the key players, such as Lord Kitchener, Winston Churchill and and Lloyd George. I’ve never read such a clear account of how WWI began, nor how agonising it was for the British government to make the final decision to declare war on Germany. As the months pass, the huge confidence of those like Churchill is put to the test as troop losses start to take their toll on morale.

This is all quite fascinating, while Paul spends his days doing things he’s not comfortable about in his new role. Harris has done an amazing job in weaving in the letters with events they describe as they unfold. But anyone wanting a riveting spy novel might be disappointed. This is much more a story about three characters and their emotional journey as the world turns to chaos. And it’s well done, carrying with it a depth of research that makes everything that happens seem very real. I’ll certainly read another Robert Harris; Precipice is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue – a gripping read set during the Spanish Flu epidemic

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

Emma Donoghue’s novels are always worth checking out and quickly immerse you into all sorts of situations and topics. I loved Akin and was fascinated by Haven, but The Pull of the Stars is one of the most intense stories I’ve read in a while. Perhaps it is due to the short time-frame of the narrative, and its setting shortly before the Armistice of 1918. We’re in a struggling Dublin hospital where thirty-year-old nurse Julia Power is assigned to a tiny maternity ward for women infected with the Spanish Flu.

Julia is suddenly given the charge of the day shift for the three bed ward, a former storage room, taking over from the stern nun working through the night. The hospital is woefully understaffed and undersupplied, but Julia has good midwifery skills. A helper, Bridie Sweeney, is sent from a kind of convent workhouse and finally a doctor, Kathleen Lynn, who while being extremely caring and experienced, is wanted by the police for her involvement with Sinn Fein.

Over the four chapters, named for the four colours a flu victim’s skin turns, from early fever through to oxygen deprivation and even death, the reader is given a nail-biting ride into complications of childbirth. There are some pretty grisly details, and I confess to being somewhat squeamish when it comes to descriptions of operations, but this kept me reading, the life and death situations surrounding the women’s care quite fascinating.

Could she be hungry for her breakfast? Unlikely, in her state; patients with serious flu cases had no appetite. Haggard at thirty-three years old, pale but for those flame-red cheeks, her belly a hard hill. Eleven previous deliveries, it said on Ita Noonan’s chart, seven children still living, and this twelfth birth not expected for another two and a half months. (Since Mrs. Noonan had been able to tell us nothing about when she might have conceived or when she’d felt the quickening, Sister Finnegan had had to make a stab at the due date based on the height of the uterus.)
My job wasn’t to cure all Ita Noonan’s ills but to bring her safe through his particular calamity, I reminded myself, to push her little boat back into the current of what I imagined to be her barely bearable life.

Poverty is described in all its forms here, made all the worse by the war. We learn of the harsh social cost of carrying a child out of wedlock – we’ve all heard about the convent laundries – but the orphanages seem to be just as bad. Young Bridie is an orphanage girl, not sure of her age – “about 22” – undernourished and unpaid. For all that, she’s eager to help and enjoys the work, is kindly with the women in the ward and strikes up a friendship with Julia.

At home Julia has a brother, who has never spoken since returning from war service, the two making an odd sort of couple, Julia earning a living, Tim keeping the house and making meals. Talk of women’s suffrage and the division of opinion about the Easter Rising hover in the background. The character of Kathleen Lynn is based on a real person, and in the book she inspires Julia to think about political issues differently.

This is a dramatic and intense read about friendship in the face of adversity, changing political and social times, a microcosm that tells so much about the wider picture. I loved the book, though it was tough-going at times with the harsh realities of birth trauma and fever as grim as any battle story. In fact the two are compared more than once in the book. For all that there is a positive ending that gives you a glimpse of hope, so don’t let me put you off – this is such a brilliant story – a five-star read from me.

Book Review: Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell – a story about Shakespeare, his family and the tragedy that haunted them

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Maggie O’Farrell’s one of my favourite authors, but for some reason I forgot to read Hamnet. Then the movie came out and reminded me. To be fair, I wasn’t sure I would enjoy a story which involves the death of a child. And yes, there’s suffering as well as grief here. But O’Farrell also fills the book with so much life and sensation, vividly bringing you into the English countryside, the period, and the small town where Agnes/Anne and William Shakespeare live.

The first and biggest chunk of the book is a dual timeframe story which tells you how William Shakespeare meets Agnes Hathaway, when he is sent to tutor her young half-brothers. They are both extraordinary people and can see that in each other as soon as they meet. Agnes, because who wouldn’t notice a tall, striking woman carrying a falcon; and William, because Agnes can see into people with a kind of extra-intuition, and observes in the bored eighteen year old, the huge imagination and talent that will make his name.

The story flips between their love story and over a decade later when young Hamnet and his twin sister Judith are in the yard together. Judith starts to feel ill and goes inside to lie down. The twins live with their older sister and mother in a narrow house sharing a yard with Agnes’s in-laws. They are in and out of each other’s houses. But when Judith falls ill, her mother is at her brother’s farm, tending her bees. The other women, his grandmother and aunt are out, and his grandfather ill-tempered and volatile, leaving Hamnet running desperately into the street to find help.

She grows up feeling wrong, out of place, too dark, too tall, too unruly, too opinionated, too silent, too strange. She grows up with the awareness that she is merely tolerated, an irritant, useless, that she does not deserve love, that she will need to change herself substantially, crush herself down if she is to be married. She grows up, too, with the memory of what it meant to be properly loved, for what you are, not what you ought to be.
There is just enough of this recollection alive, she hopes, to enable her to recognise it if she meets it again. And if she does, she won’t hesitate. She will seize it with both hands, as a means of escape, a means of survival. She won’t listen to the protestations of others, their objections, their reasoning. This will be her chance, her way through the narrow hole at the heart of the stone, and nothing will stand in her way.

In a few scenes, Maggie O’Farrell shows us how their family works, the town they live in, the period, and the surrounding countryside. It’s all so vivid and full of the young boy’s energy, his desperation. By the time the women return, Judith is gravely ill, and there are the tell-tale signs of the plague. Time passes slowly and fast at the same time. Hamnet’s waiting for help, then slipping into sleep next to his twin, but everyone else around them is too busy to notice where the children are, only cross they haven’t done their chores.

We all know what happens, it’s on the back cover even if you’ve forgotten the history. But it’s still nerve-wracking reading. ‘Go upstairs,’ you want to tell the grown-ups. ‘Check on your children.’ In the meantime we have the alternate chapters describing Agnes and William’s marriage, William’s ongoing restlessness, his father’s endless displeasure with him, the plans to go to London. There are peripheral characters too. Agnes’s sensible brother and bitter step-mother, the story of Agnes’s own mother, long dead, but who had an affinity with nature, and the healing skills that Agnes herself has inherited.

It’s in the last section of the book that things really come together. We are not waiting for help this time, but for William to return home, urgently sent for to see for the last time his dying child. The passing years, William’s continued absences. How it all comes together is brilliantly done and the ending is stunning. Again you have the immediacy in how O’Farrell brings you into the lives of her characters. We feel what they feel, the sensations coupled with their own internal monologue are so well crafted.

Hamnet is such a beautifully put together story, and the ending so brilliantly done that you finish the book well satisfied. This alone is worth the five stars I’m giving this book. I’m also pleased to report that Maggie O’Farrell has a new book, Land, due out in June.

Book Review: Traitor’s Legacy by S J Parris – a fab new series of historical thrillers set in Elizabethan England

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been a big fan of S J Parris’s Giordano Bruno series of historical thrillers, which follow a heretic priest on the run from Rome, recruited by Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster Francis Walsingham. In this new series S J Parris has shifted the narrative along a decade or so and reintroduced a peripheral figure from the Bruno books as her main character, sleuth and spy. This would be Sophia de Wolfe, now thirty-five and a woman of means, living quietly in London. Queen Elizabeth is in her final years, but the threats to her sovereignty have not gone away, particularly since there is the big question of who will succeed the throne when the queen dies.

Traitor’s Legacy begins with the burial of a body – just a young girl – at a site where a band of players, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, has just removed its theatre, ready to rebuild on the other side of the Thames. It’s winter, and the dismantling of the theatre happens quietly, undercover of darkness, with a young boy called Badger paid to keep a look out. What Badger also sees, is the two men who hide the girl, as well as the jewelled clasp one of them leaves behind. There are documents with the body, too, written in code.

We flip to Sophia’s home where she is being tutored in the skill of swordsmanship. She wears her specially made duelling breeches, not an outfit any right-minded woman of the age would be seen in, but the canny reader knows they’re going to come in handy later on, along with her skills with the sword. Her session is interrupted by a visit from Thomas Phelippes, an envoy from Robert Cecil, Walsingham’s replacement. He has news of the body, an Agnes Lovell, and Cecil wants to see Sophia immediately. The coded documents are in Sophia’s cypher, from her days as one of Walsingham’s spies.

Thinking her days of espionage long over, Sophia is now tasked with discovering who might have written a warning in her code and left it with the girl’s body. Sophia will have to dig into who might have killed the girl and why, and whether the warning has links to the Queen’s determination to bring the Irish into line. Or something else entirely. Young Agnes was a ward under the guardianship of the powerful North family, and Sir Thomas North and his son had both served in the Irish War. But Agnes’s uncle was a known Catholic sympathiser – so there’s that. And then there’s the theatre company whose site was so convenient to the murderer – so many threads to unravel.

Sophia’s own history will come into play, particularly when the son she gave up for adoption at birth, now a teenage boy and member of the Chamberlain’s Men, becomes accused of the murder. There are threats against Sophia herself, some daring rooftop escapes and more bodies turning up to keep the story humming along. In the background you have Parris’s depth of research which brings Tudor England to life, not just the powerful players at court, such as Cecil and the Duke of Essex, but the ordinary folk – the street kids, like Badger, living off their wits, the servants that know more than they’d like to let on, the women working in brothels. There’s lots of insight into the precarious place of women in all levels of society too, something Sophia understands only too well.

This is such a rich and layered novel, keeping the reader on their toes, with a cast of interesting characters. I loved the scenes in the theatres – the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were Shakespeare’s troupe. But there’s also a rival group, the Admiral’s Men, and their playwright, Anthony Munday – a former spying colleague of Sophia’s who gets involved in the case. There’s some unfinished business for Sophia to sort out with both her son and with Munday – so plenty of interesting threads as the series continues.

I was delighted to listen to this as an audiobook read by Kristin Atherton, who does all the voices so well, it’s hard to believe they’re all the same narrator. And I’m also delighted that the next book in the series, Rebel’s Gambit, is out in May. Traitor’s Legacy is a five-star read from me.

Book Review: The Elopement by Gill Hornby – an engaging story inspired by Jane Austen’s family

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

I’d already enjoyed Gill Hornby’s earlier book, Miss Austen, a novel about Cassandra, Jane Austen’s sister. But there’s obviously a lot more to tell, for the Austen’s are an interesting bunch. The Elopement is the third book about the family by Hornby, picking up their story with Fanny Knight, Jane Austen’s favourite niece, and Mary Dorothea, Fanny’s step-daughter.

This is a story of country life among the gentry in the early 1800s, large families and the rocky path to love. It begins with Fanny, in her late twenties, feeling as if she has missed the marriage boat, having spent many years mothering her younger brothers and sisters. When she is courted by an older neighbour, the politically ambitious Sir Edward Knatchbull, she accepts his hand.

Married life at Hatch, the Knatchbull manor house, includes five motherless children but somehow Fanny never quite takes a shine to the Knatchbull offspring, particularly the eldest, Mary Dorothea, the only girl. The boys get sent off to school from a young age, so are barely there. Fanny and Sir Edward contrive to have Mary educated with Fanny’s younger siblings at Godmersham Park, where Mary Dorothea becomes a firm favourite.

The story flips mostly between the two female characters: Fanny’s marriage to the pompous, devout and domineering Sir Edward, with whom she finds contentment, her avoidance of maternal responsibility for his children, her own struggles to be a mother; and Mary Dorothea, who seems like two – people quietly inoffensive with Fanny, and fun-loving and gossipy with Fanny’s sisters, particularly Cassie. As Mary and Cassie grow up, they bloom and go to balls – there’s a hint of a Jane Austen novel here, with suitors appearing in the wings. But no one is ever good enough to please everybody, particularly parents.

Sir Edward finds the young male Knights flippant and too fun-loving, particularly the eldest, Ned. So of course, Mary finds them charming, Ned in particular. The story follows the problems of making a match agreed on by the girls’ families. Not just Mary and Cassie but also Marianne, who ends up stepping in as a mother figure for her younger siblings after Fanny’s marriage.

Of course, when hunting or killing or hitting a thing, Ned moved like quicksilver. In the world beyond sport, though, he knew no sense of urgency and was rarely disturbed. Yet here he was, eschewing all greetings – Fanny prayed Sir Edward would opt, just on this one occasion to not take offence – and – what was this? – spluttering about yet another drama of Marianne’s making.
‘A proposal?’ Fanny fell back into the depths of the worn leather sofa. ‘A proposal from whom, might one ask?’
It was to her eternal credit that Fanny’s first thought was given not to Godermersham’s domestic arrangements and her own convenience, but that the gentleman’s identity did, in fact, take priority.
‘Billington,’ she repeated, once informed. ‘Billington?‘ Now she was thoroughly mystified. ‘But, Ned dearest,’ she explained in her patient voice, ‘we have no knowledge of any Mr Billington.’ As if that put an end to the matter.

It all gets a bit fraught for the young couple at the centre of the story, Sir Edward remaining intransigent, while Fanny is caught in the middle. A dutiful wife, she’s also strangely unaware of the secret trysts going on under her nose. You want to like Fanny, who means well, but it’s hard to see in her the niece of Jane Austen. She must have been brought up on the famous stories, and the recurring theme of the difficult path to love. Couldn’t she have a little more sympathy? More mettle?

I enjoyed The Elopement, but although the story is full of drama and conflict, the plot is a little slow-moving at times, sticking closely, it would seem, to events noted in Fanny’s collection of diaries. But you do get a good sense of the time, particularly of a woman’s lot; whether as wife, unmarried and useful relative, or as a mother. Hornby notes that giving birth was like Russian roulette, with dying in childbirth a distinct possibility even after a number of healthy births. The Austen’s were particularly fecund, producing endless large families – ample opportunity for losing a mother.

With the recent Jane Austen commemorations – 250 years since Jane Austen’s birth on 16 December – it was a good time to revisit her world. I enjoyed meeting Cassandra Austen again, still stepping in with wisdom and caregiving, an ageing mother at home, nieces requiring guidance, to say nothing of visits to the deserving poor. Gill Hornby does a brilliant job of capturing the tone of an Austen novel, and the book has the ring of authenticity, reflecting solid research. I’ve still Godmersham Park to read by Hornby, and wonder if there will be more Austen stories to look forward to after that. The Elopement is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: The Silence In Between by Josie Ferguson – a remarkable historical novel about a family divided by the Berlin Wall

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

I’ve read quite a few books about World War II from the Allies’ point of view – the families caught up in the war, on either side of the Channel, the people who helped Jewish children escape at risk of their lives and the SOE recruits dropped behind enemy lines to help the Resistance or lead downed Allied airmen out of occupied territory. Loads about Bletchley Park too. But I haven’t come across nearly so many about what it was like from the German perspective.

While The Silence In Between describes what happens to ordinary people in East Berlin when the Wall went up, it also dips back to follow the lives of a mother and daughter during the war and the terrible treatment they received at the hands of Soviet forces in 1945. Events of both periods are firmly linked.

The book opens in 1961 with the Wall. Lisette has just had a baby, and while she is ready to take little Axel home, the hospital want to keep him in for a bit longer. She goes home to fetch some things for him and to spend the night with her husband and daughter, and that’s when the Wall goes up. Overnight, Lisette and Axel are separated. The situation is made more poignant by Lisette’s admission to herself that she loves Axel more than her daughter, teenage Elly. As the days and weeks pass with no means of contacting the hospital or any news of Axel, Lisette sinks into despair, losing her speech.

Elly’s life goes from carefree outings with friends to trying to manage her mother. She decides the only way to save her family is to bring Axel back herself. The Wall is patrolled by armed Soviet officers sent over from the USSR, ordered to shoot anyone attempting to cross the border. By chance Elly meets the one soldier who doesn’t shoot. She has a gift for hearing music in other people, and the music the soldier Andrei has tells her she can trust him. In the background is the awareness that there are people watching and reporting back, a spy in every apartment block. Secrecy is of the essence.

The voice on the radio crackles, static eating the man’s words. I recognise the presenter, but his voice sounds more high-pitched than usual, as if he’s being strangled.
‘A fence…barbed wire? What’s he talking about? When did this happen?’
‘Elly, please, stop with the questions.’ Papa is still crouched down beside Mama. ‘There will be a way to cross,’ he says. But I can hear he doesn’t believe his own words.
‘Come, let’s go down,’ he says, gently touching Mama’s shoulder. ‘We’ll speak to them at the border. Explain.’
Mama won’t look at me. She simply howls once more and it’s then I see the empty wooden cot in the bedroom beyond, the crumpled sheet poking through the bars. I finally understand the full horror of the situation.
‘Axel?’ My voice is a whisper.
Papa looks at me, his eyes strained. ‘He’s on the other side.’

The story follows Elly’s plan to cross to West Berlin, which is told from Elly’s perspective, interwoven with Lisette’s narrative of her survival in Berlin during WWII. Lisette witnesses many terrible events, the barely acknowledged rounding up of the Jews; the pressure from nosy neighbour, Frau Weber, to meet her nephew, a Nazi officer; the lack of food; the fear of bombing, which becomes a reality as the war progresses. We learn why she never bonds with Elly, her worries for Julius, the boy she loves, fighting on the Eastern Front in a war he doesn’t agree with.

Throughout the book is music. Lisette is an accomplished pianist and gives lessons to a young girl who becomes like a sister. Elly has her own kind of musical synasthesia and a keyboard in her bedroom, which she loves to play, but for reasons she doesn’t understand, it only upsets her mother. If you check out Josie Ferguson’s website, there are pieces of music you can listen to that relate to some of the characters, composed by the author’s brother.

The Silence in Between is a gripping novel, beautifully written that had me constantly on edge. On the one hand I couldn’t wait to see what happened next, while also being almost too anxious to find out. I almost broke my rule about not reading the back of the book to see how it ended. But the book is much more than its story, and gives a good picture of what life was like on either side of the Wall, and the lot of women in Berlin during the war. Some of this makes for grim reading.

The Silence in Between is a brilliant debut, well-researched and gripping, offering a different view of the war as well as Berlin in 1961. Well recommended, it’s a five-star read from me.

Book Review: Ghost Wedding by David Park- characters in two time-frames at a place where the past seeps into the present

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

This is one of those books that makes me say to myself, I must read more by this author. David Park is such a sensitive writer, his characters so subtly drawn, the storytelling original and thought-provoking.

Ghost Wedding takes us to a country manor near Belfast, now a wedding venue which Alex and Ellie are visiting. It’s the kind of place you have to book a year in advance, but Ellie has her heart set on it. So when the manager suggests that the newly refurbished boathouse might be available in time for their wedding, Alex agrees – anything to make Ellie happy.

Alex has all kinds of doubts, mostly because of guilt. For something that happened with his friends some time ago, for the way his father runs the family business and his own inability to please him. And then there’s his unhappy childhood and his mother’s mental health. How can Alex ever be worthy of Ellie? And why do they have to make such a big thing of getting married – the perfect wedding, the venue, the dress, the cake and everything else?

It’s a lot of pressure on Alex, who has been sent by his father to tell the tenants of an old arcade of shops and businesses that their lease is soon to expire. If only he was made of sterner stuff and hadn’t become so friendly with Anton, who has a sick child, the tattoo artist and others. Then there’s the history of the commercial buildings Alex’s dad buys up with a view to selling on to developers. Where his father sees profits, Alex imagines the lives of those who once worked there.

It isn’t the smoke that attracts them – they are used to men smoking – nor is it the sound of his feet moving from room to room, however quietly he manages to do it. It is to do with some almost imperceptible disturbance of the air, the shifting of what has settled for so long into different patterns, the slow ebb and flow of new currents. The dissolving and reforming of time itself, the constant layering of what has once been with what is still to come. So they slowly stir now from their past lives and form about him, just as they do in every one of the city’s derelict or discarded buildings when Alex comes to mark them out for a different future.

Alex is a good guy with regrets in the present day storyline that runs through the book, just as George Allenby does in the storyline that takes place a hundred years before. He’s the junior architect in charge of the construction of a lake and boathouse at the substantial home of the Remingtons. It’s back-breaking work and the digging out of mud during rainy weather only reminds George of his wartime experiences, in particular the comrades he lost at the Somme. He sees them from time to time when they shouldn’t really be there.

When the weather prevents his usual return home to Belfast one evening, George accepts the Remington’s offer of a bed for the night. Dinner is awkward between Mr Remington and his son Edward, who too young for the war, has done nothing with his life – another son who has disappointed his father. There’s also an attraction across the divisions of class when George meets Cora, one of the maids who work for the Remingtons – something George is ill-equipped to deal with.

The story switches between the two time-frames, and while there are ghosts of a sort, this isn’t really a ghost story, in the traditional sense, as the images of the dead tend to be connected with the feelings of our main characters, of their sense of the past. There’s sadness and inevitability about what happens, although there’s hope as well. It’s a beautifully crafted novel, David Park capturing the missteps between characters and their struggles to communicate, so they remain locked in their feelings of doubt and misery.

There’s a lot about class in the book – old money versus new money, the morality of making money, particularly that tied up with property, in both storylines. And the way the war not only tainted its survivors, but also made them somehow more worthy, not that they can ever talk about it. Secrets bubble away and not all are revealed, however troubling they may be. It all adds up to a layered and satisfying novel, as I would expect from David Park. Ghost Wedding is a four and a half star read from me.

Book Review: Death of a Stranger by John Pilkington – an entertaining historical mystery and the start of a promising new series

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

John Pilkington is an old hand when it comes to historical mysteries, with a number of series under his belt, among them the Thomas the Falconer series. Death of a Stranger takes us back to Elizabethan England in the first book featuring Matthew Cutler, a constable in the parish of Spitalfields. It’s 1594, when the murder of an Italian perfumer causes a need for answers, as well as anxiety among the other “strangers” or immigrants of the parish.

When a further threat against a French button maker occurs, the obvious conclusion is that someone is targeting the local “strangers”, either for being possible Papists or other reasons of their own. Matthew is fed assorted leads, a stonemason with a bitter nature since the loss of his daughter to the plague; a former acting friend of Matthew’s who had had a dispute with the perfumer. They’re all dead ends, but rather than dropping the matter as his employer, Alderman Skinner requests, Matthew determines to find justice for the dead man. Could someone be planting false clues?

What Matthew doesn’t yet know is how far his search for the truth will take him into the world of the movers and shakers of Elizabethan society, the perfumer having made house calls to favoured customers, some of them bored wives of powerful men. So there’s a lot to set the story going in interesting directions. Matthew hits wall after wall before he can convince his superiors that the case is worth pursuing.

As an investigator, Matthew is an interesting character. To begin with he’s educated, having fallen out with his magistrate father, and dropped out of his Cambridge studies after a year to become an actor. He lost his wife to the plague not long ago, and has two daughters in his care, his wife’s aunt living with them as housekeeper. He has come to the role of constable at the request of his gunmaker father-in-law.

As the story progresses, Matthew’s education and acting talent come in handy for questioning people of high public standing, an idea brought to him by Margaret Fisher, a comfortably off widow, friend and potential love interest. At first Matthew’s not convinced it’s a good idea – he’s used to being able to gain confessions from miscreants with the threat of the law and its grim punishments, but it’s a different story with the upper classes. I can imagine there will be plenty of potential for Matthew to don the clothes of Margaret’s late husband and the role of Sir Amos Gallett again in future books.

John Pilkington obviously knows his Elizabethan era well, for while Death of a Stranger is an entertaining story on its own, the period details make the story come alive. It was interesting to see a little of how humbler folk lived – so many historical novels concentrate on those at court – but I liked reading about the work of the gunsmith, the night watchman or the people at the local tavern, which doubles as a venue for the inquest.

Death of a Stranger is an enjoyable historical mystery, with John Pilkington writing in a style that sounds Elizabethan enough to add colour without being difficult for the modern reader. And Matthew Cutler is an engaging enough character for me to want to find out what he does next. I’ll certainly be on the look-out for the next book in the series. This first instalment is a four star read from me.

I read Death of a Stranger courtesy of Netgalley and Boldwood Books. The book is due for release on 14 November.

Book Review: The Night of the Scourge by Lars Mytting – the stunning conclusion to an epic trilogy

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

I was worried that I would have forgotten too much about the previous books in Mytting’s Sister Bells trilogy by the time the third book arrived. Should I have reread the previous two (The Bell in the Lake and The Reindeer Hunters) before setting out on the ominously titled The Night of the Scourge? In the end, it didn’t seem to matter, although I did think I would happily sit down and read them all again one day, one after the other, for this is one of those series that could become a firm favourite..

The setting of the trilogy is for the most part the tiny Norwegian settlement of Butangen, beginning with the first book in 1880 or so, when Kai Schweigaard arrives as a young pastor. He has to battle suspicion from the locals and a determination to remember the old ways, including pagan ideas and myths. This is particularly so for the magic accorded the Sister Bells, the two bells in the tower of the old stave church he takes over. There is the story of the Hekne weave, an almost magical tapestry completed by conjoined twins three hundred years before, while Kai feels himself drawn towards Astrid Hekne, their descendant.

The second book follows the next generation, with another set of Hekne twins, and a world war. The Night of the Scourge brings us up to the 1930s and another war and a new generation of Heknes, the family who still farm the same land nearby, and are prominent in their community with their dairy and general store. Running through all three books is the character of Kai Schweigaard, still the priest, and still grappling with his faith, his connection to the Heknes and the magic of the bells. There’s also his own guilt over losing the old stave church, which was removed to Dresden in book one.

With the rise of Nazism, there is new interest in Aryan connections between Norway and Germany, and their joint mythology. So much so that when the Germans invade Norway, the remaining Sister Bell is requisitioned to join its pair in Dresden. Kai sees an opportunity to step up and redeem himself. And throughout the story he can’t forget the prediction he has seen in the Hekne Weave that seems to predict his own death.

The novel describes the hardships the Butangen people face under the occupation, as well as schisms in the community – those siding with the Germans as well as those secretly doing what they can to resist and undermine the occupiers. The story switches between characters, but mostly it’s about Kai and Astrid, the young granddaughter of the Astrid that Kai fell in love with, a young woman of courage and intelligence. She’s not the sort to take the occupation lying down and gets herself involved in dangerous situations, which keep you on the edge of your seat.

Astrid was calmer now. She looked around her. Everything in here seemed so rough. Rusty suspensions, worn bell rope, dull bronze.
A gust of wind disturbed a pyramid of snow and caught her attention. On the other side of the belfry, on a crossbeam, something glinted at her.
She went over to it and blew the dust off it.
A ring. It must be gold. Heavy and wide. So that an observer should really notice it. Smooth. Without a single scratch, as though it had been crafted that morning.
She lifted it up to the shafts of light and saw an inscription inside.
1881. Eternally yours, Kai.
Had Kai been married? No, the ring looked unused. Had he come up here? Stood here alone and set it carefully aside?
She held it tentatively over her finger. Let it slide over her nail, past her knuckle.
It was then that the church bell began to ring.

Not that this is a pacy read. It evolves gently, filling in more details, including ones about the original Hekne twins and another time of persecution, with the witch hunts of the 1600s. The seasons change, there’s lots of snow, and a ton of atmosphere. Kai is a contemplative man in his eighties, so time spent with him is more about parish matters, politics and trying to handle the occupiers in a way that keeps everyone, and the remaining bell, safe. Still, we are conscious that we are heading towards his end, however that may turn out.

There is so much to get lost in, including shifts of setting to Germany and Scotland, as well as interesting details about technology and historical events. You can tell Mytting has done a ton of research, and that he also has an interest in the making of guns, particularly hunting rifles, something that pops up in his earlier book, The Sixteen Trees of the Somme. Everything comes together brilliantly, a hefty 520 pages that never flags for a moment. I loved, as I knew I would, and already miss the characters I’ve got to know and care for. I do hope Mytting has more books in the pipeline – everything I’ve read by him so far has been a treat. This book’s a five-star read from me.

Book Review: The Predicament by William Boyd – a return to the complicated world of a reluctant spy

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

This is the second novel of a planned trilogy which began with Gabriel’s Moon – the story of travel writer Gabriel Dax whose little trips abroad researching locations to write about have become conveniently put to use by MI6. We’re in 1960s Britain, so there’s the Cold War going on, JFK’s the president of America, and as always, there’s a difficult political problem somewhere in the world for MI6 to poke its nose into.

Gabriel has never wanted to be a spy. He’s a successful writer, publishing popular books that earn him a respectable living. When we catch up with him at the start of The Predicament, his MI5 handler, Faith Green, who Gabriel’s a little bit in love with, has got him acting as a double agent, meeting up with a Russian counterpart and accepting bribes in return for information. He’s not happy about this, but the money has helped him buy a country cottage where he can forget about the shadier side of his life and pretend he’s just a writer.

With another couple of chapters in his Rivers book to write, Gabriel is sent off to Guatemala to interview a presidential hopeful in a country plagued by unrest. He’s posing as a writer again, so again it’s convenient for MI6, but nothing quite goes to plan and Gabriel can’t help feeling he’s not being fed enough information. This doesn’t stop him from making acute observations, particularly about potential CIA involvement.

The Guatemala sojourn is interesting in that it describes the way political interests of American businesses and the Mafia hold sway. You also get the benefit of Gabriel’s expertise as a travel writer in the descriptions of the setting. But before long he’s off again, to West Berlin this time, where JFK is about to make his famous “Berliner” speech and an assassination plot has been hinted at. So we really are in the thick of the period, of history being made, with Gabriel a bit-part player.

‘Their job is to look for traitors in the British security services – MI6, MI5, the Foreign Office, the army, the navy, etcetera – looking for double agents,’ he said. ‘They call them “termites”.’
‘Termites?’
“Just a slang word. A word they use among themselves.’
‘Termites. I must remember this.’
Gabriel suddenly realized that, in fact, Varvara Suvorina, and indeed the KGB, probably knew everything about the Institute. ‘Termites’ was the only piece of information that intrigued her. So why, he asked himself, had he been set this redundant task? Was it indeed some kind of test, as Faith had suggested? If he had lied or claimed not to know much about the Institute would they begin to suspect him?

Through all this, Gabriel is emerging as quite a good spy even if he is reluctant to get his hands dirty. He’s observant, can think on his feet, and thanks to Faith Green and her cohorts at “the Institute”, has learned not to take everything at face value. He’s even getting quite good at self-defence. But Gabriel is also self-aware and constantly examining his feelings, not only about the spy business, but also about himself as a man. When it comes to women, he can’t help feel that he should be looking elsewhere, but Faith Green seems to have him on a string.

Pulling off the second book in a trilogy can be tricky, but William Boyd has made The Predicament work at least as well as Gabriel’s Moon, with plenty of tension, some exciting action scenes, and Boyd’s wonderfully crafted prose to enjoy. There are some amusing more worldly characters who contrast nicely with Gabriel’s sensitive writerly persona – such as Ulsterman Sergeant Major Begg who teaches him self-defence and his old lock-picking mate Tyrone who does the odd “no questions asked” job for Gabriel from time to time.

As, Gabriel gets so much better at being a competent agent, you can only wonder if this will be his lot in life. We’ll have to wait until Book 3 to find out. I have a feeling Boyd will ramp things up even more and bring out some excellent twists. I can’t wait. The Predicament is a four-star read from me.

The Predicament is due for publication on 4 September – I read an advance copy courtesy of Netgalley.