Category Archives: Historical Fiction

November 11, 2024 · 5:55 pm

This Strange Eventful History – Claire Messud

This Strange Eventful History – Claire Messud

I have read The Women Upstairs and The emperor’s Children – I enjoyed the former more than the latter, but was keen to give this one a go. And then it was nominated for the Booker Prize (but didn’t make the shortlist), which was my project this year.

Here’s the blurb …

An immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history, from one of our finest contemporary novelists.

Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family’s strangeness; of François’s union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace.

First, I knew nothing about Algeria (I knew it had been a French colony, but nothing about its independence). It sounds like a beautiful place, although I suspect it’s a bit troubled now as many former colonies are. This is a story about Gaston and Lucienne, their children and their grandchildren. It’s about life, love and family. It’s based on the author’s own family.

A few bits I highlighted

I know also that everything is connected, the constellations of our lives moving together in harmony and disharmony.

A story is not a line; it is a richer thing, one that circles and eddies, rises and falls, repeats upon itself.

We were on the one hand interchangeable and on the other each our selves.

[…] we had agency over only some small aspects of our stories

This strange eventful history that made a life. Not good or bad – rather, both good and bad – but that was not the point. Above all, they had been, for so long, wildly curious. Just to see, to experience all that they could, to set foot anywhere, to speak to anyone, taste anything, to learn, to know.

The writing is beautiful, I can see why it was nominated.

A review.

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October 2, 2024 · 2:54 pm

The Safe Keep – Yael

The Safekeep – Yael Van Der Wouden

This is my fifth book from the Booker short list (2024).

Here’s the blurb …

‘A house is a precious thing…’An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge – for readers of Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan’s AtonementIt’s 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is well and truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel’s life is as it should be: led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel’s doorstep-as a guest, there to stay for the season… Eva is Isabel’s sleeps late, wakes late, walks loudly through the house and touches things she shouldn’t. In response Isabel develops a fury-fuelled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house-a spoon, a knife, a bowl-Isabel’s suspicions spiral out of control. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to desire – leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva – nor the house in which they live – are what they seem.

I bought this solely because it was on the short list. I knew nothing about the author or the novel – I didn’t even read the blurb before I started.

At first I thought this novel was probably not for me, Isabel is a very unsympathetic character (rude and judgmental). She seems to be paranoid – is the maid stealing things? And then Eva moved in, and gradually things changed. However, it was Eva’s diary that really captured me – and made me realise the background history of the house (I was a bit slow there). In the end I was enthralled and this novel needs to be read by more people.

It made me think about things I had never considered before, about houses and ownership, but also about the limited opportunities for women, and what happens when your life (and education) has been disrupted by war?

This one might win, I am now torn between James and this one.

A review

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September 23, 2024 · 5:40 pm

James – Percival Everett

James – Percival Everett

I am back on my Booker shortlist reading task – three down and three to go (and I am halfway through Creation Lake). I was loathe to read this one, I thought it was ticking too many boxes, but I read it (listened to it) and it was very good.

Here is the blurb …

A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

While many narrative set pieces of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.

Brimming with electrifying humor and lacerating observations, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.

I think I had to read Tom Sawyer when I was at school, but I haven’t read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

First, I just want to say that this was beautifully narrated by Dominic Hoffman,

As I mentioned above, I came to this as a new story with no pre-conceived notions of the characters; the judge, Mrs Anderson, etc. I think this is beautifully written – the setting, the characters and the dialogue are all fabulous. James is articulate, witty, intelligent, principled and determined to find a better life for himself and his family.

I am sure if you are familiar with Huckleberry Finn, you will get even more out of this novel.

As an Australian, I hope Charlotte Wood wins, but I think this will be the winner.

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September 12, 2024 · 3:12 pm

Held Anne Michaels

Held – Anne Michaels

I set myself the goal of reading the Booker Prize long list (I am not doing very well). I have read Stone Yard Devotional and Enlightenment and now this one.

Here’s the blurb …

The triumphant new novel from the author of the Orange Prize-winning Fugitive Pieces : a soaring and luminous story of chance and change

1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory – a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast – as the snow falls.

1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river – alive, but not still whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts whose messages he cannot understand .

So begins a narrative that spans four generations, moments of connection and consequence igniting and re-igniting as the century unfolds. In luminous moments of desire, comprehension, longing, transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later.

Held is a novel like no other, by a writer at the height of her affecting and intensely beautiful, full of mystery, wisdom and compassion.

This was beautifully written, poetical with beautiful sentences. The structure reminds me of Jenny Offil – seemingly unrelated paragraphs and chapters, but somehow all connected and telling a story. Having only read three of the longlist, I am going to go out on a limb and say this one is going to win. Not because I didn’t like Stone Yard Devotional or Enlightenment (this is one of my favourite reads of the year), but I think the structure and the writing will appeal to judges.

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August 19, 2024 · 8:46 pm

The Glassmaker – Tracy Chevalier

The Glassmaker – Tracy Chevalier

I am always going to buy Tracy Chevalier’s novels. My favourite is still A Single Thread, but I have liked them all.

Here’s the blurb …

Venice, 1486. Across the lagoon lies Murano. Time flows differently here – like the glass the island’s maestros spend their lives learning to handle.

Women are not meant to work with glass, but Orsola Rosso flouts convention to save her family from ruin. She works in secret, knowing her creations must be perfect to be accepted by men. But perfection may take a lifetime.

Skipping like a stone through the centuries, we follow Orsola as she hones her craft through war and plague, tragedy and triumph, love and loss.

The beads she creates will adorn the necks of empresses and courtesans from Paris to Vienna – but will she ever earn the respect of those closest to her?

This had an interesting structure with time. Chevalier used the metaphor of skipping a stone over water to explain the way time worked in this novel. The rest of the world might skip 100 years, but Orsola and the people close to her only aged 8 years. In this way, we could witness the evolution of glassmaking from the 1400s to now.

I enjoyed this novel, but the end felt quite melancholic. Orsola was grappling with ideas of Tourism and Making. Is she adding to the world’s problems by making things that no one really needs? But surely there is a place for beautiful things? And tourism? Good or bad? All that air travel?

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August 11, 2024 · 12:53 pm

Enlightenment – Sarah Perry

Enlightenment – Sarah Perry

This is my favourite novel (so far) this year. I am glad it has been long-listed for the Booker Prize. I have read other Sarah Perry novels – The Essex Serpent (which I loved and the TV series), After Me Comes the Flood (not my favourite), and Melmoth.

Here is the blurb …

Thomas Hart and Grace Macauley are fellow worshippers at the Bethesda Baptist chapel in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Though separated in age by three decades, the pair are kindred spirits – torn between their commitment to religion and their desire for more. But their friendship is threatened by the arrival of love. Thomas falls for James Bower, who runs the local museum. Together they develop an obsession with the vanished nineteenth-century female astronomer Maria Veduva, said to haunt a nearby manor, and whose startling astronomical discoveries may never have been acknowledged. Inspired by Maria, and the dawning realisation James may not reciprocate his feelings, Thomas finds solace studying the night skies. Could astronomy offer as much wonder as divine or earthly love? Meanwhile Grace meets Nathan, a fellow sixth former who represents a different, wilder kind of life. They are drawn passionately together, but quickly pulled apart, casting Grace into the wider world and far away from Thomas. In time, the mysteries of Aldleigh are revealed, bringing Thomas and Grace back to each other and to a richer understanding of love, of the nature of the world, and the sheer miracle of being alive.

I loved this book. The talk of physics and comets, but also God and grace, the nature of time, and human connection. It is beautifully written and the descriptions are superb – I could see Grace’s outfits, and the comet dress, and the little church (with the sea drenched Harmonium). The characters were complex and their situations intriguing.

Some of my favourite quotes…

Everything still happens within me – how else can I make sense of time? How else can I explain that I am lonely, and never lonely – that I despise my friend and miss her – that James Bower causes me the worst pain I ever knew, and no pain at all?

It was small, strange, curtailed and poor, but every day made new by the beauty she detected in torn table linen, dying stems of forecourt carnations, silk ribbons sold for a pound in charity shop baskets: she was free to think as she liked, to say what she liked, to do as she pleased…

I have lived. I have felt everything available to me: I’ve been faithless, devout, indifferent, ardent, diligent and careless; full of hope and disappointment, bewildered by time and fate or comforted by providence – and all of it ticking through me while the pendulum of my life loses amplitude by the hour.

A review.

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August 8, 2024 · 2:47 pm

The Glovemaker – Ann Weisgarber

The Glovemaker – Ann Weisgarber

My mother-in-law lent me this one (we often exchange books). Here’s the blurb …

In the inhospitable lands of the Utah Territory, during the winter of 1888, thirty-seven-year-old Deborah Tyler waits for her husband, Samuel, to return home from his travels as a wheelwright. It is now the depths of winter, Samuel is weeks overdue, and Deborah is getting worried.

Deborah lives in Junction, a tiny town of seven Mormon families scattered along the floor of a canyon, and she earns her living by tending orchards and making work gloves. Isolated by the red-rock cliffs that surround the town, she and her neighbors live apart from the outside world, even regarded with suspicion by the Mormon faithful who question the depth of their belief.

When a desperate stranger who is pursued by a Federal Marshal shows up on her doorstep seeking refuge, it sets in motion a chain of events that will turn her life upside down. The man, a devout Mormon, is on the run from the US government, which has ruled the practice of polygamy to be a felony. Although Deborah is not devout and doesn’t subscribe to polygamy, she is distrustful of non-Mormons with their long tradition of persecuting believers of her wider faith.

But all is not what it seems, and when the Marshal is critically injured, Deborah and her husband’s best friend, Nels Anderson, are faced with life and death decisions that question their faith, humanity, and both of their futures.

I really enjoyed this novel and, unusually, I didn’t think it needed editing. For me, it was about moral dilemmas and what to do when neither outcome is good, but one outcome is slightly better for you, but much worse for the other party? What makes a person good?

I also enjoyed learning a bit about the Mormons in Utah, how they moved around to avoid persecution, but also, for some, to avoid the domination of the church in their lives.

There’s also a bit of a woman question – if women don’t have children, then what is their purpose?

A review

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July 30, 2024 · 2:15 pm

Essex Dogs, and The Wolves of Winter – Dan Jones

Essex Dogs, and Wolves of Winter – Dan Jones

I listened to these one after another (narrated by Ben Miles – such a nice voice). I received Essex Dogs for my birthday (possibly more than 2 years ago) and then it came up on Borrowbox and I decided it was time.

Here’s the blurb to Wolves of Winter

The epic sequel to Essex Dogs, continuing the New York Times bestselling historian’s trilogy of novels following the fortunes of ten ordinary soldiers during the Hundred Years’ War.

For the Dogs, the war has only just begun. Caught up in the siege of Calais, in the midst of a brutal eleven-month blockade of a small port on the French coast, the band of brothers known as the Essex Dogs are no longer blindly walking into the unknown. But the men still have more questions than answers about what faces them – and why.

What are they really fighting for? And why does the king care so much about taking such a small French town?

Soon, their journey will reveal who really wants this war to last for a hundred years. And as the battle rages, they hear the first, faint, chesty rattle of a natural disaster that is sweeping towards the Dogs and their world . . .

Spanning the siege city built outside Calais’ walls, to the pirate ships patrolling the harbour, and into the dark corners of oligarchs’ houses, where the deals that shape—and end—lives are made, this captivating and brutal story brings the 1300s effortlessly to life.

I have one of Dan Jones’s history books (Power and Thrones), which I enjoyed and as I really like historical fiction, and medieval history these two novels were perfect for me.

The world did come alive – in all of its filth, illness and violence, I had no idea Prince Edward was such a knob. I had quite a romantised idea of the Black Prince. The writing is engaging with lots to hold your interest and the characters are well-written. It’s witty and moving and made me think about how these big battles are mostly forgotten. And there is the money men behind the power manipulating everything (some things never change). I am looking forward to the third novel.

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July 29, 2024 · 2:37 pm

The Group – Mary McCarthy

The Group – Mary McCarthy

I bought this novel in London – Waterstones Piccadilly maybe? I do like a story about young women set in New York in the 20th Century (Rules of Civility, The Best of Everything)

Here’s the blurb …

Written with a trenchant, sardonic edge, The Group is a dazzlingly outspoken novel and a captivating look at the social history of America between two world wars. “Juicy, shocking, witty, and almost continually brilliant.”–CosmopolitanAward-winning Mary McCarthy’s most celebrated novel follows the lives of eight Vassar graduates, known simply to their classmates as “the group.” An eclectic mix of personalities and upbringings, they meet a week after graduation to watch Kay Strong get married. After the ceremony, the women begin their adult lives — traveling to Europe, tackling the worlds of nursing and publishing, and finding love and heartbreak in the streets of New York City. Through the years, some of the friends grow apart and some become entangled in each other’s affairs, but all vow not to become like their mothers and fathers. It is only when one of them passes away that they all come back together again to mourn the loss of a friend, a confidante, and most importantly, a member of the group.

This novel was published in 1963 (and was on the New York Times best seller list for almost two years). It must have created buzz or a bit of a scandal – there was pre-marital sex, affairs (apparently it was banned in Australia). I found it fascinating.

The Guardian has a fabulous review with quotes from various women writers (AS Byatt, Claire Tomalin, Hilary Mantel) with their thoughts on The Group.

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July 28, 2024 · 12:15 pm

Long Island – Colm Toibin

Long Island – Colm Toibin

I really enjoyed Brooklyn, so I was keen to read this sequel.

Here’s the blurb …

Long Island is Colm Tóibín’s an exquisite, exhilarating novel that asks whether it is possible to truly return to the past and renew the great love that seemed gone forever. The sequel to Colm Tóibín’s prize-winning, bestselling novel Brooklyn.

A man with an Irish accent knocks on Eilis Fiorello’s door on Long Island and in that moment everything changes. Eilis and Tony have built a secure, happy life here since leaving Brooklyn – perhaps a little stifled by the in-laws so close, but twenty years married and with two children looking towards a good future.

And yet this stranger will reveal something that will make Eilis question the life she has created. For the first time in years she suddenly feels very far from home and the revelation will see her turn towards Ireland once again. Back to her mother. Back to the town and the people she had chosen to leave behind. Did she make the wrong choice marrying Tony all those years ago? Is it too late now to take a different path?

Once again the writing is beautiful, and it covers the anxiety people living far from home feel. Is this the right place for me?, where do I fit?, did I make the right choice? All of the main characters from Brooklyn are here and we see what has happened to them during the 20 years. When I read Brooklyn, I liked Tony, so I was very disappointed to hear what he had done. This has clouded my thoughts about this novel. I don’t like it as much as I probably should.

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