Category Archives: Historical Fiction

November 27, 2021 · 12:24 pm

The Librarian – Salley Vickers

The Librarian – Salley Vickers

I have liked Salley Vickers ever since I read Miss Garnet’s Angel and I have blogged about Dancing Backwards (way back in 2010!). I borrowed this one from the library.

Here’s the blurb

A charmingly subversive novel about a library in 1950s England, by the acclaimed author of The Cleaner of Chartres

Sylvia Blackwell, a young woman in her twenties, moves to East Mole, a quaint market town in middle England, to start a new job as a children’s librarian. But the apparently pleasant town is not all it seems. Sylvia falls in love with an older man – but it’s her connection to his precocious young daughter and her neighbours’ son which will change her life and put them, the library and her job under threat.

How does the library alter the young children’s lives and how do the children fare as a result of the books Sylvia introduces them to?

This was written in a contemporary style (it felt very 1950s to me). It is a story about books and reading, but also about relationships and betrayal.

A review from the Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/03/mirror-shoulder-signal-curry-eating-reading-and-race-the-librarian-salley-vickersreviews-arifa-akbar

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November 25, 2021 · 3:32 pm

A Town Called Solace – Mary Lawson

A Town Called Solace – Mary Lawson

I have read Road Ends and Crow Lake and enjoyed both, and then this one was longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, so I was super keen to read it.

Here’s the blurb …

A Town Called Solace–the brilliant and emotionally radiant new novel from Mary Lawson, her first in nearly a decade–opens on a family in crisis: rebellious teenager Rose been missing for weeks with no word, and Rose’s younger sister, the feisty and fierce Clara, keeps a daily vigil at the living-room window, hoping for her sibling’s return.

Enter thirtyish Liam Kane, newly divorced, newly unemployed, newly arrived in this small northern town, where he promptly moves into the house next door–watched suspiciously by astonished and dismayed Clara, whose elderly friend, Mrs. Orchard, owns that home. Around the time of Rose’s disappearance, Mrs. Orchard was sent for a short stay in hospital, and Clara promised to keep an eye on the house and its remaining occupant, Mrs. Orchard’s cat, Moses. As the novel unfolds, so does the mystery of what has transpired between Mrs Orchard and the newly arrived stranger.

Told through three distinct, compelling points of view–Clara’s, Mrs. Orchard’s, and Liam Kane’s–the novel cuts back and forth among these unforgettable characters to uncover the layers of grief, remorse, and love that connect families, both the ones we’re born into and the ones we choose. A Town Called Solace is a masterful, suspenseful and deeply humane novel by one of our great storytellers.

This is a beautiful book, the story is told from three very different perspectives and each voice was unique and compelling. It moves through different times and places, and it’s about relationships, connections and family (our biological one and the ones we create for ourselves).

Another review

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November 23, 2021 · 1:27 pm

The Mystery Woman – Belinda Alexandra

The Mystery Woman – Belinda Alexandra

A friend lent this to me – she calls it a spacer, something a bit lighter to read between more serious tomes.

Here’s the blurb …

In a small town, everyone is watching … Secrets, scandal and betrayal in 1950s small town Australia: the stunning new novel from bestseller Belinda Alexandra

She had thought Shipwreck Bay was simply a remote town where people were bored senseless with their little lives. Now she saw its virtuous facade hid something darker, more sinister.

Rebecca Wood takes the role as postmistress in a sleepy seaside town, desperate for anonymity after a scandal in Sydney. But she is confronted almost at once by a disturbing discovery – her predecessor committed suicide.

To add to her worries, her hopes for a quiet life are soon threatened by the attentions of the dashing local doctor, the unsettling presence of a violent whaling captain and a corrupt shire secretary, as well as the watchful eyes of the town’s gossips. Yet in spite of herself she is drawn to the enigmatic resident of the house on the clifftop, rumoured to have been a Nazi spy.

Against the backdrop of the turbulent sea, Rebecca is soon caught up in the dangerous mysteries that lie behind Shipwreck Bay’s respectable net curtains.

‘This intriguing mystery with its gothic undertones, its salute to Du Maurier’s Rebecca, and its melange of colourful characters will have readers racing through the pages, trying to piece together the puzzles that have long haunted Shipwreck Bay. They’ll also be cheering for main character Rebecca as she struggles against the societal norms of 1950s Australia, fighting to be true to her unconventional self, and to forgive herself – and to perhaps even find happiness.’ Natasha Lester, bestselling author of The Paris Secret.

I liked it. I always like the trope of moving to a small town and starting again.

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November 22, 2021 · 2:27 pm

Light Perpetual – Francis Spufford

Light Perpetual – Francis Spufford

I really enjoyed Golden Hill and then I listened to this podcast and I was super keen to read this book.

Here’s the blurb …

From the critically acclaimed and award?winning author of Golden Hill, an “extraordinary…symphonic…casually stunning” (The Wall Street Journal) novel tracing the infinite possibilities of five lives in the bustling neighborhoods of 20th-century London.

Lunchtime on a Saturday, 1944: the Woolworths on Bexford High Street in South London receives a delivery of aluminum saucepans. A crowd gathers to see the first new metal in ages—after all, everything’s been melted down for the war effort. An instant later, the crowd is gone; incinerated. Among the shoppers were five young children.

Who were they? What futures did they lose? This brilliantly constructed novel, inspired by real events, lets an alternative reel of time run, imagining the lives of these five souls as they live through the extraordinary, unimaginable changes of the bustling immensity of twentieth-century London. Their intimate everyday dramas, as sons and daughters, spouses, parents, grandparents; as the separated, the remarried, the bereaved. Through decades of social, sexual, and technological transformation, as bus conductors and landlords, as swindlers and teachers, patients and inmates. Days of personal triumphs and disasters; of second chances and redemption.

Ingenious and profound, full of warmth and beauty, Light Perpetual “offers a moving view of how people confront the gap between their expectations and their reality” (The New Yorker) and illuminates the shapes of experience, the extraordinariness of the ordinary, the mysteries of memory, and the preciousness of life.

This was a lovely book, I particularly enjoyed seeing what happened to everyone after the gap in the narrative – a reminder that things change and life moves forward.

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November 15, 2021 · 12:03 pm

The Good Wife of Bath – Karen Brooks

The Good Wife of Bath – Karen Brooks

I like historical fiction and if it’s women-centred then so much the better. I have never read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but that is not necessary to enjoy and appreciate this novel.

Here’s the blurb …

In the middle ages, a poet told a story that mocked a strong woman. It became a literary classic. But what if the woman in question had a chance to tell her own version? Who would you believe?

England, The Year of Our Lord, 1364

When married off aged 12 to an elderly farmer, Eleanor Cornfed, who’s constantly told to seek redemption for her many sins, quickly realises it won’t matter what she says or does, God is not on her side – or any poor woman’s for that matter.

But Eleanor was born under the joint signs of Venus and Mars. Both a lover and a fighter, she will not bow meekly to fate. Even if five marriages, several pilgrimages, many lovers, violence, mayhem and wildly divergent fortunes (that swoop up and down as if spinning on Fortuna’s Wheel itself) do not for a peaceful life make.

Aided and abetted by her trusty god-sibling Alyson, the counsel of one Geoffrey Chaucer, and a good head for business, Eleanor fights to protect those she loves from the vagaries of life, the character deficits of her many husbands, the brutalities of medieval England and her own fatal flaw… a lusty appreciation of mankind. All while continuing to pursue the one thing all women want – control of their own lives.

This funny, picaresque, clever retelling of Chaucer’s ‘Wife of Bath’ from The Canterbury Tales is a cutting assessment of what happens when male power is left to run unchecked, as well as a recasting of a literary classic that gives a maligned character her own voice, and allows her to tell her own (mostly) true story.

I really enjoyed it – it’s a fast paced, entertaining read about England (rural and London) during the late 1300s.

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October 14, 2021 · 9:10 pm

Labyrinth – Kate Mosee

Labyrinth – Kate Mosse

I do like historical fiction and a friend recommended this one (and what was even better lent me her copy).

Here is the blurb …

In the Pyrenees mountains near Carcassonne, Alice, a volunteer at an archaeological dig, stumbles into a cave and makes a startling discovery-two crumbling skeletons, strange writings on the walls, and the pattern of a labyrinth. Eight hundred years earlier, on the eve of a brutal crusade that will rip apart southern France, a young woman named Alais is given a ring and a mysterious book for safekeeping by her father. The book, he says, contains the secret of the true Grail, and the ring, inscribed with a labyrinth, will identify a guardian of the Grail. Now, as crusading armies gather outside the city walls of Carcassonne, it will take a tremendous sacrifice to keep the secret of the labyrinth safe.

It reminded me a bit of the Da Vinci Code – the intrigue, the hunt for the grail. I enjoyed it, particularly the sections set in the medieval time. Its three out of five for me.

I think anyone who likes historical fiction, plus intrigue and suspense will like this novel. I have the next one Sepulchre in my tbr pile (also from the very kind friend)

Review

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September 13, 2021 · 3:21 pm

Any Human Heart – William Boyd

Any Human Heart – William Boyd

I have read Sweet Caress and Love is Blind and I am sure I watched an adaptation of this (with Matthew Macfadyen) and I have had a copy on my Kindle for a very long time.

Here’s the blurb …

Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary, but Logan Mountstuart’s – lived from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century – contains more than its fair share of both. As a writer who finds inspiration with Hemingway in Paris and Virginia Woolf in London, as a spy recruited by Ian Fleming and betrayed in the war and as an art-dealer in ’60s New York, Logan mixes with the movers and shakers of his times. But as a son, friend, lover and husband, he makes the same mistakes we all do in our search for happiness. Here, then, is the story of a life lived to the full – and a journey deep into a very human heart.

Any Human Heart will be enjoyed by readers of Sebastian Faulks, Nick Hornby and Hilary Mantel, as well as lovers of the finest British and historical fiction around the world.

I enjoyed it – I do like learning a bit of history along the way. 4 out of 5.

A proper review

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July 21, 2021 · 4:31 pm

The End of Longing – Ian Reid

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The End of Longing – Ian Reid

Mr Reid lives in the same city as me and he came to my book club (historical books) to give a presentation. As that was such a kind thing to do, I wanted to buy one of his books (we did read one for that particular book club).

Here’s the blurb …

Frances, a New Zealand woman, is laid to rest in an unmarked grave in Jamaica in 1892. Her enigmatic husband, the Reverend William Hammond, cannot be found. Frances is not Reverend Hammond’s first wife, and his movements have always been elusive. Reverend Hammond has travelled by steamship and rail across continents, but when Frances joins him, the thrill of exotic travel is soon overshadowed by a sense of foreboding. Does he really want her or is she in the way? Later on, reports are sent to Frances’s brothers, alleging cunning, fraud, and possible murder. The End of Longing is a thrilling, bitter-beautiful novel which skillfully explores identity through circumstance, redemption, and love. It is a lyrical, mature, and interesting story about a confidence trickster in the late 19th/early 20th century, set as a travelogue of escape through Melbourne, Canada, Japan, the US, and through to New Zealand. There is a substratum of fact to The End of Longing. A couple bearing the same names as the two main characters did travel to the places described in this novel at the times indicated, and had some similar experiences. Indeed, the main female character is based on author Ian Reid’s distant relative.

I found it to be compelling – very much a page turner. I am not sure if it would be possible now to move on and escape your past.

4 out of 5.

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April 12, 2021 · 3:42 pm

Hinton – Mark Blacklock

Hinton – Mark Blacklock

I like historical fiction and I like maths. So when I read about this on the Walter Scott prize instagram, I bought a copy immediately.

Here’s the blurb …

Howard Hinton and his family are living in Japan, escaping from a scandal. Hinton’s obsession is his work, his voyages into mathematical pure space, into the fourth dimension, but also his wife and sons, each of whom are entangled in the strange and unknown landscapes of Hinton’s science fictions.

In a bravura and startling meeting of real and philosophical elements, Mark Blacklock has created a ravishing period piece of late-Victorian social, scientific and domestic life. Hinton is about extraordinary discoveries, and terrible choices. It is about people who discover and map other realms, and what the implications might be for those of us left behind.

I can’t say that I was that taken with it. I did try to read it while I was on holiday in Broome, so not conducive to concentration.

Here’s a much better review.

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January 20, 2021 · 6:08 pm

The Viscount Who Loved Me – Julia Quinn

The Viscount Who Loved Me – Julia Quinn

I am sure we have all been watching the fabulous The Bridgertons – well this is the second novel in the series. This is the one where Anthony gets married. I think this might be my favourite so far – Kate is a fabulous heroine.

Here’s the blurb …

1814 promises to be another eventful season, but not, This Author believes, for Anthony Bridgerton, London’s most elusive bachelor, who has shown no indication that he plans to marry. And in all truth, why should he? When it comes to playing the consummate rake, nobody does it better…

–Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers, April 1814

But this time the gossip columnists have it wrong. Anthony Bridgerton hasn’t just decided to marry–he’s even chosen a wife! The only obstacle is his intended’s older sister, Kate Sheffield–the most meddlesome woman ever to grace a London ballroom. The spirited schemer is driving Anthony mad with her determination to stop the betrothal, but when he closes his eyes at night, Kate’s the woman haunting his increasingly erotic dreams…

Contrary to popular belief, Kate is quite sure that reformed rakes to not make the best husbands–and Anthony Bridgerton is the most wicked rogue of them all. Kate’s determined to protect her sister–but she fears her own heart is vulnerable. And when Anthony’s lips touch hers, she’s suddenly afraid she might not be able to resist the reprehensible rake herself…

This is a fun, easy read with lots of period detail. Georgette Heyer, but sexier!

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