I moved straight onto this one after finishing A Little Hatred. That way it will all still be fresh in my mind.
Here is the blurb …
Conspiracy. Betrayal. Rebellion. Peace is just another kind of battlefield…
Savine dan Glokta, once Adua’s most powerful investor, finds her judgement, fortune and reputation in tatters. But she still has all her ambitions, and no scruple will be permitted to stand in her way.
For heroes like Leo dan Brock and Stour Nightfall, only happy with swords drawn, peace is an ordeal to end as soon as possible. But grievances must be nursed, power seized and allies gathered first, while Rikke must master the power of the Long Eye . . . before it kills her.
The Breakers still lurk in the shadows, plotting to free the common man from his shackles, while noblemen bicker for their own advantage. Orso struggles to find a safe path through the maze of knives that is politics, only for his enemies, and his debts, to multiply.
The old ways are swept aside, and the old leaders with them, but those who would seize the reins of power will find no alliance, no friendship, and no peace, lasts forever.
These novels are very interesting. We follow a few characters; Orso, Leo, Savine, Broad, Vic and Rikke. All of the characters are likeable (except maybe Savine) and it easy to follow their thoughts and to understand why they end up doing what they do (betrayal, sedition, etc.). My sympathies change depending on the point of view. Although, I will always have a soft spot for Orso – he seems to be reaping the rewards for other people’s mismanagement and poor judgement. And he is charming.
This novel is funny, violent and thought-provoking plus there are some astonishing, unexpected sneaky plans.
Once again, the world building is amazing – the battle scenes in particular.
I a very dear friend lent this one to me. I didn’t know what to expect, but I trust her judgement. It is great – one of my favourite reads of the year (so far).
Here’s the blurb …
From the Booker Prize finalist author of The Island of Missing Trees, an enchanting new tale about three characters living along two rivers, all under the shadow of one of the greatest epic poems of all time. “Make place for Elif Shafak on your bookshelf… you won’t regret it.” (Arundhati Roy)
In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.
In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the stinking, sewage-filled River Thames. With an abusive, alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, Arthur’s only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a leading publisher, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, and one book in particular catches his interest: Nineveh and Its Remains.
In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a ten-year-old Yazidi girl, is diagnosed with a rare disorder that will soon cause her to go deaf. Before that happens, her grandmother is determined to baptize her in a sacred Iraqi temple. But with the rising presence of ISIS and the destruction of the family’s ancestral lands along the Tigris, Narin is running out of time.
In 2018 London, the newly divorced Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames to escape her husband. Orphaned and raised by her wealthy uncle, Zaleekah had made the decision to take her own life in one month, until a curious book about her homeland changes everything.
A dazzling feat of storytelling, There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers—the Tigris and the Thames—transcend history, transcend fate: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”
This novel has the structure of a water molecule – H2O. The two Hs are Narin and Zaleekah, and the O is Arthur. Their stories are separated by time, but connected. This is a watery novel with multitudes of water descriptions, metaphors and similes.
[about a rain drop] Inside its miniature orb, it holds the secret of infinity, a story uniquely its own.
But now a sense of foreboding tugs at his [Arthur] insides, like the pull of a river’s undercurrent
Just as a drop of rain or a pellet of hail, water in whatever form, will always remember, he too, will never forget.
It is as if love, by its fluid nature, its riverine force, is all about the melding of markers, to the extent that you can no longer tell where your being ends and another’s begins.
Yet the key element for her is, and always has been water. She says it washes away disease, purifies the mind, calms the heart. Water is the best cure for melancholy.
Time is a river that meanders, branching out into tributaries and rivulets, depositing sediments of stories along its shows in the hope that someday, someone, somewhere, will find them.
It’s also about women and their place (or lack of place) in the world. Nisaba, the goddess of storytelling, replaced by Nabu. ISIS taking the Yasidi women and girls making them slaves (all kinds of slavery).
He does not look at her. It does not occur to him that he might frighten her with his proximity, having never had cause to feel such fear himself.
It’s about family and what people are prepared to do for family.
It’s about colonialism and who owns the ancient artifacts.
Westerners take our past, our memories. And then they say, “Don’t worry, you can come and see them anytime”.
He [Arthur] firmly believes that he is here to help excavate and preserve antiquities that will surely be better off in the hands of Europeans than the natives.
This novel is breath-taking in its scope; Mesopotamia, Victorian London, modern London and modern Iraq. The writing is beautiful, the sense of place exquisite. Like all good writing, I feel like I have been on an adventure; trying to decipher cuneiform with Arthur, listening to Narin’s grand mother’s stories about their culture and heritage, cheering Zaleekah on as she explores new options (and realising just how far her family is prepared to go to protect one of its own).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
