Tag: historical fiction

Review 2729: Mrs. Kimble

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In 1969 Richmond, Virginia, Birdie Kimble is blindsided when her husband Ken leaves her to run off with a teenaged student at the college where he’s a pastor. The young mother of two children, she has no idea how to cope and takes to drinking instead. Her bills unpaid, her car breaking down, and her children unfed and uncared for, she comes close to having her two children, Charlie 6 and Jody 2, taken by protective services.

A few months after leaving Birdie, Ken Kimble appears in Florida with his young girlfriend Moira at her parents’ house. Although Ken is in his 40s, he now looks like a hippy. There, he meets Joan, a Jewish reporter from New York who is staying in the house she inherited from her wealthy parents while she recovers from a mastectomy. She likes Ken and invites him to stay after he and Moira break up. Soon, he has transformed himself into a real estate dealer with the help of her uncle—oh, and he’s discovered he’s part Jewish. She becomes Mrs. Kimble number two.

There’s another wife to come after Joan dies of a recurrence of her cancer, leaving Ken a wealthy man. This time, he marries Dinah, the girl who used to babysit for him and Birdie.

The tales of these three marriages are told from the points of view of the wives with an occasional look at what’s happening with Charlie. This is the story of a man who is charming, but it seems as if there’s no there there, a man who reinvents himself to get what he wants with no regard for morals or ethics.

It was interesting to me to read that Haigh began this novel as a story about Birdie and her children but became interested in exploring Ken Kimble. However, that’s what she doesn’t do, or only by inference. Despite some obvious preferences—for very young women, for example—Joan, who is near his age, is probably only acceptable because of the money—he is basically unknowable. And the section about Birdie, which is the longest, was almost unbearable to me because she is so hopeless and helpless. I’m sure there are women like this, but I just wanted her to snap out of it. She finally does, sort of, but it takes years.

I found the book relatively interesting, but it is not a favorite.

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Review 2728: Held

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Held is a poetic musing on some deep subjects framed in the fluid story of mostly one family, with a perplexing few sections about Marie Curie. It begins during World War I and goes forward for some time before looping backward and forward between (mostly) descendants and ancestors.

Returning painfully disabled from World War I, John reopens his photography studio. John and his wife Helena have a deep connection, but John is troubled by his war experiences. After he hires an assistant, an image that shouldn’t be there appears in a photograph, making him wonder if some essence of the dead exists after death.

John and Helena’s story takes up about a third of the book, and then we travel forward to 1951 and a very short section in which Helena agrees to model for a famous artist and awakens her own artistic tendencies, buried since the death of John. We also briefly meet their daughter, Anna.

Then it’s 1984, and Peter, Anna’s partner, is relieved to welcome home his daughter Mara, a doctor who works in war zones. Mara has met Alan, a journalist, who seems to share with her the same deep loving connection that each member of this family has with the others, and with their friends.

These are some of the bones of the stories, but these characters are thinkers as well as feelers, and they consider some weighty subjects. Nature is also intimately entwined in these stories.

I understand that many readers have found this novel difficult, especially because of its fluid structure and many characters. None of this bothered me, but I am not a person who dwells on the meaning of life, so I felt I was missing a lot of the more esoteric content. I still enjoyed it. It’s absolutely beautiful, and the kinds of relationships depicted are to be admired. The characters are good and kind.

I read this for my Booker Prize project.

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Review 2726: The Land in Winter

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For Britain, the winter of 1962-3 was one of the coldest on record, with massive amounts of snow in some areas. Miller has set his novel in a rural area near Bristol where two young married couples are neighbors.

Eric Parry is the local doctor. His wife Irene is early in pregnancy, but he is also having an affair with a wealthy married woman. Irene, somewhat isolated in their country home, is feeling her separation from her sister Veronica, who is in the U. S.

Next door are Bill and Rita Simmons. Bill is the son of a wealthy immigrant who has left his father’s world behind to become a farmer. Rita is about the same distance along in her pregnancy as Irene. She is a lively girl with a dodgy past, but she is haunted by voices, and her father is resident at a nearby asylum.

Rita comes calling on Irene, and the two women get along well. Irene finds Rita pulling her out of herself and getting her out of the house.

Both of the households have some class differences, although they are noted rather than seeming to cause problems. Irene is quite posh in origin, whereas Eric’s father was a railroad worker. Bill has attended university and seems to be a bit ashamed of his father, who is a slum landlord, while Rita’s past hints at darker things.

This novel was more moody than anything else. For some reason, perhaps in time setting and themes, it reminded me of The Ice Storm (although that is set ten years later), the movie not the book, which I haven’t read. There’s the sterile life of the housewives, the weather, the rowdy party, and the infidelity.

Of the books I’ve read by Miller, this is not my favorite, but it is certainly atmospheric and had me genuinely worried about some of its characters. I read it for both my Walter Scott Prize project and my Booker Prize project.

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Review 2724: Ancestry

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I wasn’t looking forward to reading Ancestry, because I haven’t really enjoyed either of the other books I’ve read by Simon Mawer. However, he keeps getting shortlisted for the Walter Scott Historical Fiction prize, which is one of my projects, so I keep having to read him.

For this novel, Mawer has tracked down records about his own family, going back four generations on both sides, and written a novel trying to make sense of what he found. I have to say that I found this idea interesting, although Mawer still managed to fit in a reference, not to labia, which seems to be a fascination, but to female pubic hair, which is about the same.

In the first half of the 19th century, Isaac Block is growing up on the Suffolk coast as a subsistence agricultural worker. However, as a young teenager, he gets an opportunity to go to sea and takes it. Later, as a young man on leave, he meets Naomi Lulham, a single mother lodging with his Uncle Isaac.

This story is interesting, but Mawer was obviously able to find out more about the Mawer side, because he spends a lot more time on the story of George Mawer, a corporal in the Queen’s 50th regiment, who marries an Irish girl, Ann Scanlon. This story leads up to and spends a great deal of time on the Crimean War.

I found a lot of the details about these people’s lives interesting, but with all of Mawer’s novels, apparently, there is such distance from the characters that I didn’t get that involved with them, again.

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Review 2723: The Three Musketeers

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My reading rate really slowed down in late January to mid-February because I read two real chunksters one after another. This one was the second, and A Fortunate Man was the first. This one was a lot more fun.

D’Artagnan is a youth on his way to make his fortune in Paris, carrrying an introduction to Monsieur de Tréville, who leads the King’s musketeers. D’Artagnan is a truculent lad, and he rubs up against two people who are going to affect his life. One is a stranger who makes fun of D’Artagnan’s peculiar horse, and the other is a beautiful, mysterious woman known as Milady. D’Artagnan is attacked by the man’s underlings and his letter is stolen.

Nevertheless, he presents himself to de Tréville upon his arrival, and he almost immediately meets the musketeers Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. They are being rebuked for having been in a dispute with Cardinal Richilieu’s guards.

Although D’Artagnan has been taught to revere both King Louis XIII and the Cardinal, he quickly learns of the rivalry between the supporters of the King and of the Cardinal, whose machinations are the focus of much of this book. Then there is Anne of Austria, the Queen, who is at odds with both, but especially with the Cardinal.

When D’Artagnan tells de Tréville about the loss of his letter, de Tréville is very interested and tells him he will help D’Artagnan get a place with the Cadets. Almost immediately upon leaving, D’Artagnan falls afoul, separately, of each of the three musketeers and agrees to meet them one after another. I felt as if the whole of Paris at this time (1625) must have been overrun by swordfights, as these guys are all so ready to fight. Somehow, instead of killing or being killed by these men, D’Artagnan ends up their fast friend.

The plots and adventures in this novel are too complicated for me to describe in this review, but it’s the musketeers against the Cardinal, who employs the treacherous Milady as his agent. There is a plot to incriminate Anne of Austria and the Duke of Buckingham, and D’Artagnan’s mistress, who conveys messages to and from the Queen, is kidnapped. And there is a plot to assassinate the Duke of Buckingham, who is helping defend some Huguenots holed up in la Rochelle, by combining an attack of France with the Spanish (although this part of the plot does not match with what I read in Wikipedia about how Buckingham was killed).

In any case, most of the novel is a battle of wits between the four men and Milady, who is truly evil. Although she is the Cardinal’s tool, he comes off as a little more balanced, although ruthless.

This novel moves right along from one adventure to another. Dumas has to remind his readers a few times that the men’s behavior was acceptable at the time, and that is an even bigger reminder for readers today. However, in general, this is quite a fun book to read. It was a pleasure to read it for my Classics Club list.

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Review 2720: An Historical Mystery [A Murky Affair]

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I think a friend gave me this book, or perhaps I bought it, because I occasionally buy old books, and this one is dated 1891. It is the 59th book in the series Balzac called La Comédie humaine.

The novel is based on a true incident. It begins in 1803 with Michu, a bailiff with an evil appearance who is feared by many and called a Judas to his previous employers. In reality, he has been working for them the whole time. His previous master, the Marquis de Simeuse, had been unable to secure his estate of Gondreville before it was taken from him and sold to Senator Malin, the current owner. The Marquis’s two young twin sons are in exile working for the return of the Bourbons. With them are the two sons of the D’Hauteserres, the guardians of young Mademoiselle Laurence de Cinq-Cygne, who, near the beginning of the novel, hides the four young men in a ruin in the middle of the forest.

The revolt is defeated, but the authorities are searching for the young men, and Laurence is under suspicion. Eventually the young men are able to get a pardon in exchange for their oath that they will not work against the regime.

The young men all go to live at Cinq-Cygne, where the two twins are both in love with Laurence. Laurence cannot choose between the new Marquis and his younger twin brother, however.

The young people are prideful and incautious, saying things in front of people that can be misunderstood. After the young men’s release, an old relative, Monsieur de Chargeboeuf, comes to warn them to stay away from Gondreville, as they have enemies and something is going on there. However, the young people are heedless. They have learned that Michu is in danger, so he sells his property prior to leaving, and the four young people and Michu spend the day in the forest retrieving the family fortune from where Michu has hidden it. On the last trip they ride too near Gondreville, which they tend to treat as their own property, and Laurence is seen.

Later, the young men are arrested, because while they were moving the money, five horsemen who look very much like them attacked Gondreville and kidnapped the Senator.

We know they are innocent, but the representatives of justice are prejudiced against them, and they have been foolhardy in their words and actions.

I didn’t really understand all the ramifications of the political situation but still found this novel really interesting. Although Napoleon, in a brief appearance, comes off fairly positively, Balzac is cynical about the honesty of government officials in general. He handles the trial with a good sense of suspense, although in the explanation of events that finally comes at the end, he takes some time to make the connection with the events of the novel.

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Review 2719: The Bewitching

~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

Maybe this isn’t fair, but I make it a practice to write up every book I read, even if I don’t finish it. In this case, I didn’t get very far in at all.

I liked Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic well enough to finish it even though it was a slow starter and had a frankly ridiculous concept. (At least it was original.) However, it did maintain a suspenseful atmosphere. So, I picked up The Bewitching by impulse at the library.

This story, set in two time frames and two countries, is really a slow starter.

In 1998, Minerva is a graduate student at a New England university who is having trouble getting access to the information she needs about the life of horror writer Beatrice Tremblay for her Master’s thesis. (As a former graduate student in English, I would like to point out that biography is not a usual focus of literature theses.) Oh well, unexpectedly she gets a chance to talk to the woman who has the source material she needs.

In 1908 Mexico, Minerva’s grandmother Alba lives what she considers a provincial existence and is entranced by her sophisticated but apparently ne’er-do-well uncle.

This was such a slow starter, and I thought I could foresee at least part of silly Alba’s story. Each time the novel went back in time, her story kept slowing down whatever pace the more modern story managed to accumulate. I only made it about 50 pages but decided to quit when the narrative again slowed down to a slog. I generally am patient with slow-moving novels, especially if I’m being entertained in some way, but in this case, I just didn’t feel as if my patience was going to pay off.

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Review 2712: The Teutonic Knights

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I don’t really remember what led me to read With Fire and Sword years ago. It is the first book of a trilogy by Henryk Sienkiewicz, a writer of historical fiction and Nobel Prize winner who was publishing around the turn of the 20th century. While I was reading that book, a friend who was born of Polish parents in England just after World War II told me that Sienkiewicz’s books were the books of her childhood, although they are certainly meant also for adults.

I found With Fire and Sword to be exciting and interesting and went on to read the whole trilogy, although my blog just has the review I wrote for Nancy Pearl‘s blog about the first book. And then just recently I came across a used copy of Sienkiewicz’s The Teutonic Knights, which he considered to be his best book.

You might think that a book entitled The Teutonic Knights would have them as heroes, but you would be wrong. In fact, although Sienkiewicz’s portrayal is more nuanced, many of them are quite dastardly.

The novel is set 150 years before With Fire and Sword, beginning in 1399. The two main characters, the knight Macko of Bodaniec and his young nephew and squire Zbyszko are returning from war in Lithuania against the Teutonic knights. The knights were invited into the Baltic area many years before to keep the Prussians in line, but since then they have expanded to an order with incredible power and have been making incursions on the neighboring areas of Poland and Lithuania, using as an excuse conversion to Christianity. The only problem with this is that Poland is already Christian and Lithuania has been converted as a result of the marriage of the Lithuanian King Jagiello with the Polish Queen Regnant Jadwiga. Teutonic knights who are beginning to see a loss of their purpose have been refusing to convert their neighbors, preferring to enslave them and take their property.

Macko and Zbyszko have stopped at an inn when likewise the entourage of Duchess Anna Danuto stops for a rest on the way to the royal birth of King Jagiello and Queen Jadwiga’s first child. In her train is a beautiful young girl, still a child at 12, Janusia, the daughter of Count Jurand of Spychow, a hated enemy of the Teutonic knights, who killed her mother. Young Zbyszko is so taken with her that he makes her a knightly vow to present her with three peacock feathers that Teutonic knights wear in their helmets, which means he has to fight them.

Macko and Zbyszko are invited to accompany the duchess, and as they approach Cracow, Zbyszko sees a knight wearing peacock feathers. Thinking God has answered his prayer to meet his vow, he dashes at the knight and is only stopped when a Polish knight breaks his lance, because the man is Kuno Lichtenstein, an envoy to the king. Attacking an envoy is punishable by death.

So, Zbyszko is imprisoned while various important people try to get him off, pleading his extreme youth and impetuosity. But Lichtenstein insists on his punishment, and King Jagiello feels he has no other option.

On the day of the execution, an old custom is invoked. Janusia throws her veil over Zbyszko and claims him as hers. This saves his life and engages them to be married.

Macko and Zbyszko finally make it home to Bogdaniec, which was destroyed before they left and their entire family killed. Zbyszko is only returning temporarily, intending to go meet his vow, while Macko has now enough spoils from war to begin returning the estate to prosperity. But now we meet Jagienka, the neighboring damsel, who is healthy and beautiful and can use a crossbow or kill a bear with the best of them. She was Zbyszko’s childhood friend, and now she falls in love with him. This made me very curious about what would happen, as Zbyszko is also attracted to her.

And I’m not going to say much more except that this novel, although 780 pages long, rattles along at a pretty good clip and features kidnappings, knightly deeds, dastardly acts, fights unto death, and climaxes with an enormous, exciting battle. In amongst the action, Sienkiewicz shows a great deal of knowledge about Medieval history, dress, and customs.

This is another page turner, and I have already put another book by Sienkiewicz on my next Classics Club List.

P. S. Sienkiewicz is most well-known for Quo Vadis, his novel about Christianity in Ancient Rome. This is just my opinion, but I think his Polish novels are a lot better.

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Review 2709: The Town House

~ whatmeread ~ 13 Comments

The Town House is the first book in Norah Lofts’ Suffolk Trilogy. Fairly early in the book, a 14th century serf, who later calls himself Martin Reed, escapes from his manor with the knowledge that if he can live in a walled city for a year and a day without being captured, he is free. With him is Kate, the young woman he intends to marry.

The novel follows three generations of Martin’s family. At first, everything he tries comes to nothing. Already trained as a smith by his father, he serves an extra year of apprenticeship only to have the guild decline to make him a member, which means he cannot be a smith. Hired by a carter and asked to privately shoe horses, his work is discovered and the guild attacks him and leaves him for dead. All these years, his family lives in abject poverty. It is not until he does a favor for the church that he finally gets an opportunity, but it is too late to save his family from tragedy.

The book is divided into five parts, from the point of view of different characters. The first is Martin himself. The second is Old Agnes, a homeless woman he takes as housekeeper after the tragedy. The third is Anne Blanchefleur, the young woman of good family but no fortune who marries Richard, the now wealthy Martin’s son. The fourth is Maude Reed, Martin’s granddaughter. The fifth is Nicholas Freeman, Martin’s secretary.

Although the beginning of this book is almost identical to that of Cathedral of the Sea (The Town House is written earlier), I was more involved in The Town House. Martin’s prosperity and home are built on tragedy and betrayal. This is a story of complex characters, many with deep faults. I found it interesting in both the story it told and in the background details about Medieval life, especially in the section narrated by Maude, who goes to live for a time in the household of a wealthy and noble cousin. I have already ordered the second book in this series.

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Review 2704: #ReadingIrelandMonth26! Glorious Exploits

~ whatmeread ~ 10 Comments

There seem to be lot of novels out recently that are set in the world of ancient history or myth. I have read a few of them, but it’s not really a time of interest for me. In fact, I am so ignorant of the Peloponnesian War that I thought it only involved Athens and Sparta. But it was a lot more widespread than I thought.

If it hadn’t been for my Walter Scott shortlist project, I wouldn’t have chosen this book to read. (For one thing, I find the cover off-putting.) And it didn’t start off very well for me. It is written completely in modern vernacular with an Irish accent, which I initially found grating. But I got used to it.

Lampo, our narrator, and Gelon are two mates, essentially layabouts. Lampo is 30 years old and still lives with his mother. They are Syracusans; it is 412 BC, a few years after the Athenians attacked Sicily. The Athenians were eventually beaten, and 7000 Athenian soldiers were imprisoned in the quarries of Syracuse, basically just left there.

Now Gelon decides to go to the quarry to feed the Athenians. He is a huge fan of the plays of Euripides, and he is afraid that with the defeat of Athens, Athenian culture will die out and Euripides’ work will be lost. So, he decides to put on a play using the Athenian soldiers for actors, paying them with food.

On the way into the quarry, Lampo and Gelon run into a grieving father, Biton, who has just beaten an Athenian to death and is working on his friend. Gelon talks Biton out of it, and this is when he announces his plan to direct Medea. They rescue the other Athenian, Paches, and Lampo decides he must be in the play. Much to Lampo’s astonishment, they manage to find funding for this project from a wealthy foreigner.

In the meantime, no-hoper Lampo has fallen in love with Lyra, a Lydian slave girl who works at his local bar. Her owner wants an exorbitant fee to sell her to Lampo so he can set her free, more money than he can hope to ever earn, but that’s what he vows to do. With these twin goals, Lampo begins to pull himself together.

“Riotously funny,” as the blurb calls it, this book is not, but I found Lennon to be a terrific storyteller. This novel is about the power of friendship, the importance of art, and personal loyalty. I would never have read it on my own, but it is rough, touching, and terrific.

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