Tag: historical fiction

Review 1892: Rizzio

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

The Scots mystery writer Denise Mina is still concerned with crime, but with this novel, she has turned to historical true crimes. Rizzio is a novella that deals with the 1566 murder of David Rizzio, a musician and favorite of Mary, Queen of Scots.

The murder has been engineered by Lord Lennox and Lord Ruthven, with the aid of Henry Darnley, Mary’s worthless husband. Darnley thinks the shock will cause his hugely pregnant wife to miscarry, most likely causing her to die. Then, he can be king. This is what came of their love match of the year before. To Lennox, Darnley’s father, this outcome would put him in power over his weak son. Lord Ruthven, almost dead already, is the tool of a group of aristocrats about to be dispossessed by parliament.

The novella is mostly description with little dialogue, but it has deep insight into the thoughts and personalities of its characters. It is mostly concerned with the activities of one night, March 9, 1566, in Edinburgh.

It is fast-paced and interesting. Mina has made no attempt to reflect the language of the time, and in fact wrote using modern idioms. Hence, perhaps, the lack of dialogue.

Note: At the time I reviewed this novel, I was unaware that it is one of the Darkland Tales, a series of re-imagined tales from Scotland’s history, written by well-regarded contemporary Scottish authors.

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Review 1890: Harlem Shuffle

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Colson Whitehead is certainly a story teller. In Harlem Shuffle, he tells the story of Ray Carney, whom he describes as “only slightly bent when it comes to being crooked.” Carney’s father broke knees for a living, and Carney hated him, so Carney has earned a degree in business and has worked hard to keep his furniture store going. He only occasionally deals in suspect merchandise.

However, Carney’s cousin Freddie, who grew up like a brother, is the type of guy who is always up to something and it never turns out well. In the first section of the book, Freddie is planning a heist with some guys, and when they need a fence, he suggests Carney. Carney knows this is way above his head, so he says no. He is tipped off that Freddie is in trouble when he gets a call from some men working for Chink Montague, a notorious criminal, looking for something that belongs to Chink. It turns out Freddie has not conveyed Carney’s refusal to the gang, and soon Carney finds himself in possession of a large emerald necklace that is part of the robbery of a hotel vault.

This novel is set in late 50’s and 60’s Harlem, and vividly depicts the events of this period at the beginning of the Civil Rights movement. Whitehead is clever about earning the readers’ sympathy for Carney despite his misdeeds. He makes it clear how difficult it was during this time for an African-American who starts with nothing to make a success of himself. Aside from Freddie’s plots, Carney has to deal with the slights of his in-laws, who think their daughter married beneath herself, as well as paying off both the thugs and the police, being cheated by supposedly respectable businessmen, and so on. Another absorbing novel by Whitehead.

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Review 1887: Edith Trilogy Read-Along: Grand Days

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I decided to participate in the Edith Trilogy Read-Along hosted by Brona of This Reading Life, but my copy didn’t arrive until June 29th, so I am late for the first one, which was to be read in June. I hope to be on time for the second in the series. This series introduces me to Frank Moorhouse, a highly regarded Australian writer.

On a train from Paris to Geneva to work at the newly created League of Nations, Edith Campbell Berry meets Major Ambrose Westwood, who will be a more senior officer in another section of the League. Edith is naïve and dedicated, a quirky person who has her Ways of Going but is determined to become more cosmopolitan than her Australian roots have made her so far. On the train, she and Ambrose share a kiss.

Edith and her coworkers are excited to be working for this important organization with its worldwide focus and its aim to prevent war. Edith conscientiously studies diplomacy from Ambrose and other senior officers and makes contributions of her own, enough to attract their attention and mentorship.

She does not always make the right choices and finds herself in some ridiculous situations. She also begins an affair with Ambrose, whose unusual proclivities lead her in unexpected directions.

At first, I wasn’t sure how much I liked Edith, particularly her habit of listing and examining what she thinks she knows and her almost aggressive questioning of ideas until she’s sure she understands them. I also noticed that she seemed not to pay much attention to events developing in Europe toward the end of the 20’s. But eventually I was charmed by her.

There were some pages toward the middle of the book when she was enumerating ideas that I skipped after reading several paragraphs, and shortly thereafter, when she was contemplating her poop, a scene I know was supposed to be funny, I was not amused. Still, I’m interested to read Cold Light, the next novel, especially because the book cover description contains a detail that I hope is wrong.

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Review 1884: John Saturnall’s Feast

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It’s 1625 when young John Saturnall and his mother are chased up into Buccla’s Wood by religious zealots who term her a witch. She is not a witch but a wise woman with ancient knowledge and stories of a magnificent feast that happened centuries before.

When John’s mother is dying in the wood, she sends him to Buckland Manor in the Vale, the home of Sir William Freemantle. There he learns that his mother worked in the manor before she became pregnant with him. He is taken into the kitchen, where he shows promise of becoming a great cook.

Just as John is becoming a Master Cook and Sir William’s daughter Lucretia is reluctantly betrothed to a wastrel in an attempt to save the Vale, the Civil War breaks out. As the Freemantles are supporters of King Charles I, the household has years of suffering before it.

At the beginning of each chapter is an excerpt from The Book of John Saturnall, written using the culinary language of the times. The novel is lushly written, full of the details of running a 17th century kitchen and household.

I was less interested in the unlikely romance, perhaps partly because Lucretia as a character is poorly defined. However, overall I found this novel deeply interesting.

By the way, the Grove Press edition is beautifully presented, with heavy paper, two colors of ink, and gorgeous woodcut-style illustrations.

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Review 1882: After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

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After the Fire, A Still Small Voice is Evie Wyld’s debut novel about how family trauma can pass down the generations. In alternate chapters, it follows Frank Collard in the present time and Leon 40 years earlier. Maybe I was dense, but it took me a while to realize that Leon is Frank’s father.

Frank has just split up with his girlfriend when he decides to restart his life. He leaves Canberra and drives to a shack on the eastern coast that his grandparents purchased years ago and where he spent holidays as a boy. He gets an occasional job loading boats. It’s a primitive life, and the loneliness starts to get to him.

Leon trains under his father to be a pastry chef and takes over the bakery after his father, in gratitude for the country that took in himself and his wife, World War II Jewish refugees, volunteers for the Korean War. Leon’s father returns damaged, unable to work, so his parents leave Leon, ending up in the beach shack. Then Leon is conscripted for Vietnam and has his own damaging experiences.

I can’t come up with the reference for this, but I remember several years ago reading a post by someone complaining about women writing like men. The implication was that they were doing so to be taken more seriously by male editors and publishers. In particular, Evie Wyld’s All the Birds, Singing was mentioned with the remark that you didn’t even know if the main character was male or female for some time. I didn’t agree that (1) just because you don’t know the sex of the main character means that the author is writing like a man (look at The Towers of Trebizond) or (2) Wyld was writing like a man in All the Birds, Singing. I certainly didn’t have that impression. However, the feel of After the Fire, a Still Small Voice is very masculine, which makes sense with her male protagonists.

The only other observation I have about the novel is that it seemed a bit all over the place for me. Perhaps this is because of my initial confusion about the relationship between the two main characters. I guess I wasn’t paying attention to last names, and Leon’s isn’t mentioned right away. In any case, for a long time I wondered where the novel was going. Also, I didn’t much like either Frank or Leon, although Leon was okay until Vietnam. But Frank’s problem isn’t really explained, and he has major anger issues.

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Review 1874: The Fire Court

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The second book in Andrew Taylor’s Marwood/Lovett series, The Fire Court begins shortly after the Great London Fire that was the setting of the first book. James Marwood’s father wanders off in his senility and discovers a salacious scene in chambers near where the Fire Court sits—a lascivious painting of a woman dressed like a whore stretched out on a couch.

His father comes home with blood on his sleeve babbling about what he has seen, but James thinks he has experienced a senile delusion. However, a few days later the body of a woman is discovered nearby in a pile of rubble. She is dressed up like a whore, but she is not one. She is Celia, the widowed niece of Mr. Poulton, a client of Mr. Hakesby.

Hakesby has given refuge to Cat Lovett, who has fled her family. She is now going by the name of Jane Hakesby, supposedly Mr. Hakesby’s cousin and servant. But Mr. Hakesby is very frail, suffering from an ague. Cat has been helping him with his architecture work, and he badly needs the custom of Mr. Poulton, who has a case before the Fire Court.

The Fire Court’s mission is to make decisions quickly about competing rights of property so that London can be rebuilt. Mr. Poulton wants to develop some property called Dragon yard that is mostly owned by himself and his niece Celia, and Hakesby is drawing up the plans. But Philip Limbury, an upperclass personage with influence at court, has some rights to Dragon Yard and also wants to develop it. Marwood is sent to look into the death of Celia, and he soon realizes that his father must have seen her murdered in the apartments of Mr. Gromwell, his father’s description of where he went being so vivid. Marwood begins to believe there is some sort of conspiracy going on involving the Fire Court, and both he and Cat are soon in danger.

Although I felt the characters in this book took too long to realize they were involved in real estate conspiracies, this was another complex and interesting novel in this series. The 17th century setting seems convincing, and James and Cat are interesting characters.

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Review 1872: The Bass Rock

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Told in three compelling narratives that take place over centuries, The Bass Rock is a novel about the history of violence toward women. The novel is located on the banks of the Firth of Forth, an area of Scotland dominated by the Bass Rock.

Early in the 18th century, the local priest comes upon some young men raping a very young girl, Sarah. The priest rescues her, but the young men claim she must be a witch because she enchanted them and forced them to do it. Soon, the men have burned down the priest’s house, and the entire household must flee toward the beach.

Post-World War II, Ruth and her husband Peter have recently moved into the big house in North Berwick. Ruth doesn’t quite understand the reason for the move, since Peter works in London. He says it is for the benefit of his sons by his previous marriage, Christopher and Michael, but they are being sent off to school. Soon, newly wed Ruth finds herself left very much on her own with only the housekeeper Betty for company. She begins to discover some secrets in the family.

After Ruth’s death as an old lady, Michael’s daughter Viv is hired by the family to sort through the things left in the house so it can be sold. She has recently had some mental issues and feels like she is the family failure. Almost despite herself, she befriends Maggie, a homeless occasional sex worker who has an interesting take on things. Maggie tells her there is a ghost in the house.

This is a powerful novel. Although its theme is grim, its main characters are relatable and sometimes likable. I loved All the Birds, Singing, and this is another winner from Wyld.

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Review 1866: The Bird Artist

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The Bird Artist, I find, is listed as the first in Howard Norman’s Canadian trilogy, of which The Haunting of L. is the third. I’m not sure I understand the grouping, since I have read several other books by Norman and they are all set in Canada, so far. However that may be, I continue to be charmed by his work even though it all seems to explore some dark places.

Fabian Vas is the narrator of the novel, and he tells us right off the bat that he has murdered someone. Then he goes on to describe his life in the remote village of Witless Bay, Newfoundland, where he becomes a bird artist and boat fixer, beginning his story in 1911.

Two complicated sets of relationships affect Fabian’s future when he is a young man. One is that between Alaric, his mother, and Orkney, his father. The other is between himself and Margaret, his longtime friend and lover. Margaret is acerbic, and Fabian seems ambivalent. Alaric hates Margaret, so she talks Orkney into arranging a marriage for him with a cousin he has never met. It is this arrangement that kicks off a series of events ending in some fatalities.

That makes it sound like a dark novel, but it is not. In fact, it has a lightness to it, in tone, in its insights in its characters. It is about betrayal and guilt but also about redemption. Another fine novel from Norman.

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Review 1861: Great Circle

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After getting fired from a hit TV series with a cult following for damaging the brand, Hadley Baxter thinks her career might be over. However, she is approached about starring in an independent film about the life of Marian Graves, an early aviator who disappeared in 1950 while attempting to circumnavigate the earth via the poles.

Although the novel sometimes follows Hadley as she tries to figure herself out, its main focus is on Marian and her twin brother, Jamie. As babies, they are on their father’s ship when it sinks, and because he chooses to save them rather than go down with his ship, he serves time in jail. They are raised in Missoula, Montana, by their alcoholic artist uncle, who lets them run wild.

When a pair of barnstormers stop over, Marian is bit by the flying bug. She is already doing men’s work, so she begins working harder to earn enough for flying lessons. But no one will teach her until she meets Barclay Macqueen, a bootlegger.

Great Circle is a broad-ranging novel that takes us from bootlegging in the West to serving mining camps in Alaska to ferrying planes in England before the flight around the world. I found Marian’s story more compelling than Hadley’s but still found the novel fascinating. Since I read it, it has been nominated for the Booker prize, so is part of my project.

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Review 1860: Luckenbooth

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I just loved Jenni Fagan’s other books, so I was expecting a lot from Luckenbooth. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite deliver.

The devil’s daughter launches herself off the island where she was born, using her own coffin for a boat. She arrives at a tenement in Edinburgh to take on the function her father has sold her for, to be the surrogate mother for Mr. Uldam’s child with his fiancée Elise.

This is the first of nine story threads that proceed up the nine floors of 10 Luckenbooth Close, a building of secrets and horrors. The novel has a specific structure. It is split into thirds, with each third featuring the tales of residents on three floors of the building, and each thread advancing a decade in time, beginning in 1910. On the second floor, a transgender woman attends a transgressive party in 1928. On the third floor, a black Southern American works in the bone library of a veterinary school in 1939, and so on. The building hides some horrors that are finally revealed in 1999, when Dot, who is squatting in the derelict building, rips out the walls of the lower floors. But these secrets are no big surprise.

The stories are written in modern vernacular, which I suppose is a stylistic choice, but found it grating, especially for Levi’s letters to his brother. He’s the black American from Louisiana, and besides not sounding 1939ish, he doesn’t sound American, he doesn’t sound black, and he definitely doesn’t sound Southern. In fact, the more I think about it, I feel this choice to use modern vernacular indicates a general attitude of laziness. As an example, Levi chooses to explain things to his brother that his brother would know—like the building being called tenement, as if the U. S. hasn’t had tenements for hundreds of years. In fact, Levi is unbelievably naïve for a black man from the American South. The rich get everything while the poor get nothing? What a surprise!

Another example is that for a gothic novel that is supposed to convey the dark history of Edinburgh, there is an amazing lack of a sense of place (except for in the building) until 1999. Does this suggest that the author thus evaded any research into the appearance of Edinburgh in the past?

I can go on about this, but I just want to bring up a few more things. One is the polemic passages in the novel. There are long passages of ranting about such subjects as the treatment of the poor or women. I would have thought these ideas could have been worked in differently.

Next, I don’t know anything about William S. Burroughs, for example, whether he believed what Fagan has him say. All I know is, after the first few paragraphs when he started talking, I started flipping pages.

Finally, there is a gangster standoff in 1977 where what is said is so unlikely that I could barely stand it. It seems like it might have been a juvenile idea of a “cool” scene.

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