Category Archives: Historical Fiction

The Invisible Life of Addie Larue – V E Schwab

The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue – V E Schwab

After the success of listening to The Lady’s Guide to Fortune Hunting, I decided I needed to listen to something else. I found this one on Mr H’s audible list.

Here’s the blurb …

France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever-and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.

Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore, and he remembers her name.

First, the narrator (Julia Whelan) was fabulous. I really enjoyed listening to this novel. The story was fascinating; it was told from two different times – contemporary and historical. In the historical section, we learn how Addie copes with the curse and discovers its limitations and advantages. In the contemporary section, she has been living with the curse for three hundred years and she meets (finally) Henry, the first person in three hundred years to remember her. The writing was beautiful, I particularly enjoyed the start of each part.

I am not sure how I feel about the ending, however, I am also not sure how I wanted it to end.

A review.

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Euphoria – Lily King

Euphoria – Lily King

Having really enjoyed Five Tuesdays in Winter, I was keen to read a novel. This was the only one available at my library.

Here’s the blurb

English anthropologist Andrew Bankson has been alone in the field for several years, studying the Kiona river tribe in the Territory of New Guinea. Haunted by the memory of his brothers’ deaths and increasingly frustrated and isolated by his research, Bankson is on the verge of suicide when a chance encounter with colleagues, the controversial Nell Stone and her wry and mercurial Australian husband Fen, pulls him back from the brink. Nell and Fen have just fled the bloodthirsty Mumbanyo and, in spite of Nell’s poor health, are hungry for a new discovery. When Bankson finds them a new tribe to divert them from leaving Papua New Guinea, the artistic, female-dominated Tam, he ignites an intellectual and romantic firestorm between the three of them that burns out of anyone’s control.


Set between two World Wars and inspired by events in the life of revolutionary anthropologist Margaret Mead, Euphoria is an enthralling story of passion, possession, exploration, and sacrifice.

Once again the writing was beautiful, but the subject didn’t appeal to me.

Another review

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Mother’s Boy – Patrick Gale

Mother’s Boy – Patrick Gale

I saw this in the recommended section at my library, and having read Notes from an Exhibition, I was keen to read this one.

Here’s the blurb

One of the joys of Gale’s writing is how even the smallest of characters can appear fully formed, due to a charming wickedness alongside deeper observations. Irish Times

Laura, an impoverished Cornish girl, meets her husband when they are both in service in Teignmouth in 1916. They have a baby, Charles, but Laura’s husband returns home from the trenches a damaged man, already ill with the tuberculosis that will soon leave her a widow. In a small, class-obsessed town she raises her boy alone, working as a laundress, and gradually becomes aware that he is some kind of genius.

As an intensely privately young man, Charles signs up for the navy with the new rank of coder. His escape from the tight, gossipy confines of Launceston to the colour and violence of war sees him blossom as he experiences not only the possibility of death, but the constant danger of a love that is as clandestine as his work.

MOTHER’S BOY is the story of a man who is among, yet apart from his fellows, in thrall to, yet at a distance from his own mother; a man being shaped for a long, remarkable and revered life spent hiding in plain sight. But it is equally the story of the dauntless mother who will continue to shield him long after the dangers of war are past.

A writer with heart, soul, and a dark and naughty wit, one whose company you relish and trust. Observer

I really enjoyed it, it was beautifully written with lots of detail about all sorts of stuff – laundry, coding, writing poetry, being in the navy.

I have another one from the library A Place Called Winter

A review

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The Lady’s Guide to Fortune Hunting – Sophie Irwin

The Lady’s Guide of Fortune Hunting – Sophie Irwin

I was looking for something to read on my Kindle that had an audible book and I found this one in my electronic pile.

It was fabulous; the love child of Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen.

Here’s the blurb …

A whip-smart debut that follows the adventures of an entirely unconventional heroine who throws herself into the London Season to find a wealthy husband. But the last thing she expects is to find love…

Kitty Talbot needs a fortune. Or rather, she needs a husband who has a fortune. Left with her father’s massive debts, she has only twelve weeks to save her family from ruin.

Kitty has never been one to back down from a challenge, so she leaves home and heads toward the most dangerous battleground in all of England: the London season.

Kitty may be neither accomplished nor especially genteel—but she is utterly single-minded; imbued with cunning and ingenuity, she knows that risk is just part of the game.

The only thing she doesn’t anticipate is Lord Radcliffe. The worldly Radcliffe sees Kitty for the mercenary fortune-hunter that she really is and is determined to scotch her plans at all costs, until their parrying takes a completely different turn…

This is a frothy pleasure, full of brilliant repartee and enticing wit—one that readers will find an irresistible delight

Currently, this is my favourite read of the year. Well-written, clever and witty.

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Cloud Cuckoo Land – Anthony Doerr

Cloud Cuckoo Land – Anthony Doerr

For some reason I wasn’t super keen to read this one, and then my book club selected it and Miss A had a damaged copy from work, so the stars aligned and I read it.

Here’s the blurb …

When everything is lost, it’s our stories that survive.

How do we weather the end of things? Cloud Cuckoo Land brings together an unforgettable cast of dreamers and outsiders from past, present and future to offer a vision of survival against all odds.

Constantinople, 1453:
An orphaned seamstress and a cursed boy with a love for animals risk everything on opposite sides of a city wall to protect the people they love.

Idaho, 2020:
An impoverished, idealistic kid seeks revenge on a world that’s crumbling around him. Can he go through with it when a gentle old man stands between him and his plans?

Unknown, Sometime in the Future:
With her tiny community in peril, Konstance is the last hope for the human race. To find a way forward, she must look to the oldest stories of all for guidance.

Bound together by a single ancient text, these tales interweave to form a tapestry of solace and resilience and a celebration of storytelling itself. Like its predecessor All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr’s new novel is a tale of hope and of profound human connection.

This is one of my favourite reads of this year, I couldn’t tell you which of the stories was my favourite, they were all engaging and compelling. It is long, but (unusally for me) I don’t think it needs editing. I enjoyed All The Light We Cannot See, but I think this one is better.

Another review

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The Rose Code – Kate Quinn

The Rose Code – Kate Quinn

A dear friend, whose recommendations are always good, recommended this one. I originally got it from the library, but it was due back before I finished it, so I ended up buying a copy on my Kindle.

Here’s the blurb …

1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything—beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses—but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Imperious self-made Mab, product of East-End London poverty, works the legendary code-breaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband. Both Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts. But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear the three apart.

1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends-turned-enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter—the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. A mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now Osla, Mab, and Beth must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together. But each petal they remove from the rose code brings danger—and their true enemy—closer… 

I liked it – I found the history interesting (I always like a story about Bletchley Park). As is often my way, I thought it could have been edited.

A review

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A Civil Contract – Georgette Heyer

A Civil Contract – Georgette Heyer

I do like Georgette Heyer regency romance novels and when a friend told me A Civil Contract was her favourite – well I had to read it. I found it really hard to find a copy, in the end I found an eBook at Booktopia and I read it on my Ipad.

Here’s the blurb …

Adam Deveril is one of the Duke of Wellington’s captains, and a hero at Salamanca. When his father, a crony of Prince Regent, is killed in the hunting field, Adam becomes the 6th Viscount Lynton of Fontley Priory, Lincolnshire. But he returns from the Peninsular War to find his magnificent home in disrepair and his family on the brink of ruin, with the broad acres of his ancestral home mortgaged to the hilt. He is madly in love with the beautiful Julia Oversley but soon realises that the drastic measure of a marriage of convenience is the only answer. Enter Mr Jonathan Chawleigh, a City man of apparently unlimited wealth with no social ambitions for himself, but with his eyes firmly fixed on a suitable match for his one and only daughter, the quiet and decidedly plain Jenny Chawleigh. A marriage is arranged.

Adam chafes under Mr. Chawleigh’s generosity, and Julia’s jealous behavior upon hearing of the betrothal nearly brings them all into a scandal. But Adam didn’t reckon with the Jenny nobody knew, or the unknown quality that lay hidden behind her demure and plain facade, who bring him comfort and eventually more…

I do like a romance novel where the heroine is plain and unassuming. This is classic Heyer; well-researched, lots of cant terms. I was a little bit disappointed in the ending when Jenny realises that she is not going to inspire in Adam the same passion he felt for Julia.

Here are Jennifer Kloester’s thoughts on it (she wrote Georgette Heyer’s Regency World)

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Great Circle – Maggie Shipstead

Great Circle – Maggie Shipstead

I should record why I choose to buy books. I can’t remember the reason behind this one. I know it sat in my secondary ‘to be read’ pile for a while. Maybe a friend from book club?

I really enjoyed it – it was an enormous book, but I didn’t want it to end.

Here’s the blurb …

I was born to be a wanderer. I was shaped to the earth like a seabird to a wave

In 1920s Montana, wild-hearted Marian Graves spends her days roaming the rugged forests and mountains of her home. When she witnesses the roll, loop and dive of two barnstorming pilots, she is determined that one day, she too will take to the skies.

In 1940s London, after a series of reckless romances and a spell flying to aid the war effort, Marian embarks on a treacherous, epic flight in search of the freedom she has always craved. She is never seen again.

More than half a century later, Hadley Baxter, a troubled Hollywood starlet beset by scandal, is irresistibly drawn to play Marian Graves in her biopic, a role that will lead her to probe the deepest mysteries of the vanished pilot’s life.

GREAT CIRCLE is an enthralling drama of struggle and submission, of scale and intimacy, of lives lived on the edge. At once a love letter to our fragile planet and a story of bending the world to our will, Maggie Shipstead has delivered an epic of extraordinary depth and beauty that marks her as one of the greatest storytellers of our time.

The story is told from two time frames – Marion’s in the early 20th century and Hadley’s in contemporary times. Hadley is a troubled actress playing Marion in a bio-pic.

There must have been a lot of research involved in writing this (the flying, the war, boot legging), but it just creates a convincing world.

This book is for anyone who likes historical fiction or women’s fiction.

Review from the Guardian.

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The Weight of Ink – Rachel Kadish

The Weight of Ink – Rachel Kadish

I have been wanting to read this book for a long time and then I found a copy in my local Dymocks.

Here’s the blurb …

An intellectual and emotional jigsaw puzzle of a novel for readers of A. S. Byatt’s Possession and Geraldine Brooks’s People of the Book.

Set in London of the 1660s and of the early twenty-first century, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect: Ester Velasquez, an emigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi, just before the plague hits the city; and Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a love of Jewish history.   

As the novel opens, Helen has been summoned by a former student to view a cache of seventeenth-century Jewish documents newly discovered in his home during a renovation. Enlisting the help of Aaron Levy, an American graduate student as impatient as he is charming, and in a race with another fast-moving team of historians, Helen embarks on one last project: to determine the identity of the documents’ scribe, the elusive “Aleph.”   

Electrifying and ambitious, sweeping in scope and intimate in tone, The Weight of Ink is a sophisticated work of historical fiction about women separated by centuries, and the choices and sacrifices they must make in order reconcile the life of the heart and mind.

This is a fabulous book, best read, so far, of this year. The research, the settings, the characters, all are brilliant.

Here’s the Kirkus Review.

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Falling to Earth – Kate Southwood

Falling to Earth – Kate Southwood

A family member lent this to me – out of the blue she just asked if I wanted to read it and as I knew her taste was good I jumped at the chance.

Here’s the blurb …

“Kate Southwood has written an absolutely gorgeous – and completely modern – first novel” — New York Times Book Review

March 18, 1925. The day begins as any other rainy, spring day in the small settlement of Marah, Illinois. But the town lies directly in the path of the worst tornado in US history, which will descend without warning midday and leave the community in ruins. By nightfall, hundreds will be homeless and hundreds more will lie in the streets, dead or grievously injured. Only one man, Paul Graves, will still have everything he started the day with –– his family, his home, and his business, all miraculously intact.

Based on the historic Tri-State tornado, Falling to Earth follows Paul Graves and his young family in the year after the storm as they struggle to comprehend their own fate and that of their devastated town, as they watch Marah resurrect itself from the ruins, and as they miscalculate the growing resentment and hostility around them with tragic results

It was fabulous – beautifully written. I found it compelling – the way their lives slowly unravel around them.

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