Tag: historical fiction

Day 793: The Lives of Others

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Cover for The Lives of OthersI probably haven’t read enough contemporary Indian novels, or maybe I wouldn’t be surprised that two of them are partially about the Naxilite rebellion of the 60’s and 70’s. Apparently, a good deal has been written about it without my being aware of it before.

The Lives of Others deals with the rebellion on the one hand and the lives of an upper-class family, the Ghoshes, on the other. Prafullanath Ghosh is a member of the wealthy Ghosh family, owners of an expensive jewelry store in Calcutta. But Prafullanath was robbed of his inheritance by his older brother when he was a young man. So, he has worked his way up to become the owner of several paper factories.

His family, however, is not so much interested in the business as in the benefits that accrue from it. His two oldest sons are dilatorily employed by the business while the third son wastes money through a publishing concern. The poor economic climate and Prafullanath’s ill-advised business decisions as an old man threaten the business, and then a strike shuts down the most productive factory.

But the family’s floundering fortunes aren’t so much the focus of the novel as the decadence of the family itself. With nothing much to occupy themselves, some of the wives and the sister bicker endlessly. The four-floor house is occupied according to prestige, with the more important family members living higher, away from the noise and dust. Purba, the widow of the youngest son, and her two children have one room on the ground floor while each other family has a whole floor. Purba is treated worse than the servants.

Although Prafullanath has been ill since his youngest son’s death, his other sons have their vices. Adinath is alcoholic, Priyo is subject to sexual obsessions, and Bhola practically throws money away. At first, Adinath’s son Supratik seems to have escaped the family decadence. He has left home and school without warning to work among the poor farmers and instruct them in Mao’s teachings. He is a Naxilite.

About a third of the novel consists of Supratik’s letters, written to someone who for a long time is not identified. He writes about the plight of the farmers, who are being plundered by large landowners in league with the police. He also writes about the activities of his small cadre.

Even though his deeds eventually become savage, for a long time Supratik seems to be the only Ghosh with praiseworthy motives, but this account is more nuanced than to paint anyone as simply good or evil. Almost all the adults in the novel are in some way corrupt.

Although set mostly in the 60’s and early 70’s with flashbacks to earlier times, an epilogue shows that the same kind of corruption is going on today. The Lives of Others is a novel that is powerful but difficult to read. It is an indictment of class and caste divides, corruption, and the imbalance between the rich and the poor.

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Day 791: Moloka’i

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Cover for Moloka'iIn late 19th century Honolulu, Rachel Kalama is only seven years old when she develops leprosy. It starts out as just a pink spot on her leg, but as soon as authorities spot it, she is examined and exiled to the leper colony on Moloka’i. Even though her beloved Uncle Pons is already on the island, she is not allowed to stay with him but must live in the girls’ dormitory at least until she is 16. The facilities on the island are primitive and the rules rigid. She is the youngest resident of the island. It’s tough for a little girl.

Although Rachel’s father Henry writes regularly to her from his travels as a seaman, she soon has her letters to her mother returned to her. She never sees her mother again. The novel tells the story of Rachel’s life from the time she is admitted to the colony until she is an older woman.

I have to admit that I hesitated to read a novel about lepers, thinking it might be too gruesome. But Rachel’s story isn’t depressing. Aside from lightly covering a great deal of the recent history of Hawaii, beginning with the deposing of the queen by the United States, the novel depicts a life in a tough environment that slowly becomes a community. If anything, at times the novel seems to depict a rosier environment than seems possible.

Owing to lack of characterization and the prevalence of description versus action and dialogue, I was not captured by this novel until almost the end. I was interested to see what would happen, but I didn’t find the characters very involving. Still, I found the end of the novel touching, and I enjoyed learning about the history and customs of Hawaii.

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Day 790: Jade

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Cover for JadeOf the Sally Watson books I rediscovered, Jade is one I haven’t read before. I’ve mentioned that Watson wrote several of her novels around a person from her own ancestry, but it is not clear to me if the outlines of each story are based on family legend or are just invented around the events of the time. This question becomes of special interest in regard to Jade, which is the least likely of Watson’s books to date, even if part of it is based on history.

Jade’s real name is Melanie Lennox, but she much prefers her old nickname. She is a rebellious girl completely taken up by her own ideas of right and wrong. She is especially incensed by slavery and women’s lack of rights, which makes early 18th century Williamburg an uncomfortable place for her and for her family, who doesn’t know what to do with her.

The last straw for Jade’s father is when he finds she has been sneaking off to meet Monsieur Maupin, an elderly Frenchman, for fencing lessons. Tired of beating her, her father ships her off to Jamaica to live with her aunt and uncle. With her goes her slave Joshua, whom she’s been trying to free since she was 10.

In Jamaica, she is disgusted by the slave market and the treatment of field slaves, so her aunt and uncle are surprised when she wants to buy a proud untamed African woman, whom she names Domino. But Jade sees something in Domino that reminds her of herself. In fact, Jade isn’t really getting along any better in Jamaica, but doesn’t stay there long.

Jade’s aunt and uncle hear of yellow fever on the island, so they dispatch Jade and her two slaves back to Virginia. They return on the same ship they came on, but this time it is loaded with slaves. Jade decides to try to free the slaves, in which effort she doesn’t realize she’s assisted by the sardonic second mate, Rory McDonald (whose grandmother was Kelpie from Witch of the Glen).

I wasn’t quite prepared for what happens next, but maybe I should have been. Their ship is attacked by pirates and she and Rory and some other crew members and the slaves decide to join the pirates. Well, Jade and Rory are taken on board unconscious, but like Elizabeth Swann of Pirates of the Caribbean, Jade at first decides it’s “a pirate’s life for me.” Only later does her view of the life become more nuanced.

The novel’s plot is unlikely, even though it is based on the life of the famous pirate, Anne Bonny (spelled Bonney in the novel), whose ship our characters end up on. And Jade is not strictly likable, her character being so full of self-righteousness and so unbending that she can’t tell a polite lie. Also, the novel tends much more to the preachy than those I’ve read so far of Watson’s.

Still, this novel is probably a good one for insights into the abuses of the time, while still providing plenty of adventure. Little feminists in the making will be sympathetic to the restrictions Jade struggles with, such as her dislike of what she must wear, her lack of rights as a woman, and the limits to what she’s allowed to do. I personally think she’s too much of a 20th century girl, but young girls won’t even think of that.

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Day 788: The Secret Chord

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Cover for The Secret ChordBest Book of the Week!
The characters in Biblical stories have always provided fodder for fiction but are particularly popular since Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent. They can be interesting for me not because they’re telling something familiar but because they are not, since I have one of the spottiest Christian upbringings on the planet. This situation was caused by a combination of my parents’ lack of application and my own fundamental lack of interest from a very young age. I’ve always been fine with it except when I crashed and burned over Christian symbolism in graduate school. However, halfway through Brooks’ remarkable The Secret Chord, I was driven to Wikipedia and found I only knew two David stories, David and Goliath and David and Bathsheba.

The Secret Chord is about the life of David from the point of view of his prophet, Natan. When David asks Natan to write up his victories, Natan refuses, telling him that anyone can have their victories commemorated, but Natan wants to leave behind a true relation of David’s life, the good and the bad, so people in the future will understand him. David agrees and even gives Natan a list of people to interview.

Natan also remembers his own interactions with David, whom he met right after the rebel David murdered Natan’s entire family because his father refused aid to his men. It was then that Natan made his first prophetic utterance, the words of which he couldn’t even remember.

link to NetgalleyThis is truly a fascinating novel, beautifully written, that presents us with the complex man, including his glory and flaws. Brooks is wonderful at conveying his charisma and his faults, so that you feel for him in his sorrows even as he brings many of them on himself.

Brooks uses the names and place names of the time, lending authenticity to this colorful re-telling. The Secret Chord evokes a convincing time and place.

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Day 787: The Hunchback of Notre Dame

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Cover for The Hunchback of Notre DameWhen I was making my list for Classics Club, I thought I should finally read something by Victor Hugo. The obvious choices were Les Miserables or The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but I had tried Les Mis some years ago only to put it down in disgust when Jean Valjean hits the priest who has tried to help him over the head with the candlesticks he wants to steal. So, it was Hunchback for me.

I was interested to read in the Introduction that the French title of this novel was Notre-Dame de Paris and that Hugo hated the English title. And truly, the focus of the novel is more on Notre Dame and 15th century Paris than it is on the story we’re familiar with. In fact, one entire chapter just describes Paris as it looks from the tower of the cathedral in 1482, street by street. I have to say, though, that the chapter was almost meaningless to me, since I found myself unable to visualize what he describes, at least not in that detail.

The novel has many characters, not just the three emphasized in all the movies. It begins with Pierre Gringoire, a hapless poet who is attempting to put on a play he wrote in celebration of Epiphany and the Festival of Fools. This great (and long) production is supposed to pay tribute to the betrothal of the Dauphin with Margaret of Flanders. The problem is that the people have been waiting since dawn to see it. It is past noon, when the play is supposed to have started, but the Cardinal and the Flemish ambassadors haven’t arrived yet. The crowd, egged on by the student Jehan Frollo du Moilin and his buddies, is getting disruptive.

Gringoire decides to start the play, and the crowd settles down, but the actors are still reciting the prologue when the Cardinal and the Flemish arrive, making a lot of noise. The students turn their attention to making rude remarks. Soon the crowd begins trying to select the Pope of Fools instead of watching the play. They choose the hideously deformed hunchback Quasimodo, the bellringer at Notre Dame, and everyone leaves. Poor Gringoire will not be paid, so will not be able to pay his lodging, and he goes off homeless to wander the street.

So, we meet Quasimodo, who was taken in as a child by Claude Frollo, the severe Archdeacon of Josas and older brother of Jehan Frollo. Claude Frollo is obsessed by his studies of alchemy until his eye lights on Esmeralda, a young gypsy dancer and street performer. He becomes infatuated and lustful and so (with the typical logic of zealotry) decides she must be a witch who has enchanted him. On the other hand, when Quasimodo is sentenced to the stocks simply because he is too deaf to hear the judge, the only person who is kind to him is the gypsy dancer. So are sewn the seeds of tragedy.

And make no mistake, there is tragedy in store for most of the characters in this novel. Justice is solely dependent upon the whims of powerful men, and the more powerful they are, the more scathingly Hugo treats them. We even spend some time with the king, Louis XI, who is depicted as grasping, arbitrary, and vicious. Hugo pretty much skewers everyone except Quasimodo and the gypsy girl, who are basically cardboard figures.

Hugo is interested in many things in this novel—the cathedral itself, its own architecture, and the architecture of Paris are strong presences. The transmission of culture from century to century is a preoccupation, as are the themes of the nature of love, loyalty, and not judging by appearances. As a son of the revolution, he also has an axe to grind about the aristocracy and the corruption in the church.

I have to confess, though, that I only mildly enjoyed this gothic novel. The only highly developed character is Claude Frollo, and he is a sickening person.

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Day 785: All Aunt Hagar’s Children

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Cover for All Aunt Hagar's ChildrenAs in his wonderful novel, The Known World, Edward P. Jones attempts to depict an entire community in the short stories included in All Aunt Hagar’s Children. This goal is more difficult to accomplish, because the community is a much larger one—the African-American citizens of Washington, D.C.—and the stories take place over much of the 20th century.

Several of the stories have to do with the migration of the characters from the rural South to the city. In “In the Blink of God’s Eye,” Ruth and Aubrey Patterson are a hopeful young couple from across the river in Virginia at the turn of the 20th century. Ruth, though, is homesick, and when she finds a baby boy in a tree one night, Aubrey becomes jealous. This story is first in the collection, but the last story echoes it. Anne Perry, of rural Mississippi, meets George Carter, a sleeping car porter, and moves with him to Washington. In the story “Tapestry,” Jones uses a technique he also employed in The Known World where he breaks off to tell Anne’s entire life. But he twice tells what her life might have been had she married a different man.

The emphasis on rural roots is also important in “Root Worker.” Dr. Glynnis Holloway’s mother has been treated for mental illness for years until her care worker, Maddie Williams, talks the reluctant doctor into consulting a root worker, a wise woman. In the rural North Carolina setting under the care of Dr. Imogene, her mother improves, and Dr. Holloway surprises herself by apprenticing herself to Dr. Imogene.

Another strong theme is that of moving into the middle class. It pervades many of the stories but particularly “Bad Neighbors.” When Sharon is in high school, her family has made it to the middle class, but they are disturbed when the Staggs move in across the street, for they are not considered respectable enough. Sharon’s father is responsible for encouraging the neighbors to club together to buy the Staggs’ house so they can evict the family. Years later, Sharon realizes some truths when she is saved by Terrance Stagg.

Perhaps the thread I least identified with was the presence of folk lore as if it were real, a sort of magical realism. For example, in “The Devil Swims Across the Anacostia River,” Laverne spends a lively afternoon at the grocery store fending off the devil. Years ago, her grandmother got away from him by wading into the Atlantic Ocean to go to heaven.

Although overall, the stories are not as effective as the novel The Known World, they are compassionate to even the lowest of their characters. I particularly found touching “Adam Robinson Acquires Grandparents and a Little Sister,” about Noah Robinson, whose grandson Adam was lost after his drug addict parents abandoned him. The little boy is found, illiterate and frightened, and Noah faces a future of raising his grandchildren instead of the carefree retirement he envisioned.

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Day 779: The Quickening Maze

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Cover for The Quickening MazeThe Quickening Maze is the first book I read purposefully because it’s one of the finalists for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. By coincidence, I had already read half a dozen finalists and winners, and when I learned that Helen of She Reads Novels was trying to read them all, I decided to join her.

This novel is based on events in the life of the poet John Clare, known as the “peasant poet,” a man of rural background who was steeped in his natural surroundings. Unfortunately, Clare is having some mental problems and is staying in an asylum in Epping Forest. Nearby is Alfred Tennyson, whose brother Septimus also resides there.

John Clare seems to be doing well under the treatment of Dr. Matthew Allen. When we first meet him, his movements are relatively unrestrained and except for some confusion about a girl he knew named Mary, he seems sane enough. He is soon given a key to the gate so that he can walk in the forest.

Another patient important to the novel is Margaret, who is regularly transfixed by visions of angels and messages from god. At one point as Clare’s mental state deteriorates, he mistakes Margaret for his Mary.

Dr. Allen seems to have a gift for dealing with his patients during a time when mental health practices were deplorable. However, he also has a fascination with risk, and soon he is trying to talk his friends and the Tennysons into investing in his new invention, a machine for following the shape of furniture and carving additional pieces.

Hannah Allen at 17 has decided that Alfred Tennyson is the man she’d like to marry. She boldly begins seeking him out, not realizing that he is preoccupied with his brother and with grief over the death of a good friend.

Although this novel is more about the internal workings of some of the characters’ minds than its historical setting, it is beautifully written and atmospheric. I was interested in this narrow slice of history and curious to look at some of Clare’s poetry.

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Day 774: Miss Emily

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Cover for Miss EmilyLast year, I read the novel Amherst, which was mostly about Emily Dickinson’s brother Austin but depicted Emily hazily. The excellent biography White Heat, about Emily’s relationship with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, portrayed her more fully but she still seemed hard to grasp. The Irish poet Nuala O’Connor presents a more fully realized character—Emily in her middle age*—through her relationship to a (fictional) Irish maid.

Ada Concannon is a good worker but a bit too much of a free spirit for her Irish employer. She arrives at work one too many times smelling of the River Liffey, in which she has bathed on the way to work. She is demoted to scullery maid, and her mother decides there is nothing to be done but send her to America to find better opportunities.

Ada has good luck at first. She finds a pleasant home with her aunt and uncle in Amherst, and they soon learn that the Dickinsons need a new maid.

Emily Dickinson has insisted that her parents get a new maid after the old one left, because she is spending all her time on housework and none on writing. Although she loves baking, she is not really interested in most of the other chores. Other than poetry, her main interest is in her warm relationship with her sister-in-law, Sue, but Sue is busy with her family. When Ada arrives, Emily becomes fascinated by the small, neat maid.

Ada soon finds she is being courted. Daniel Byrne shows he likes her right away, and she is attracted to him. His boss’s son, Patrick Crohan, is also trying to get her attention, but she dislikes him.

When Ada finds she needs help, she has only Emily to turn to. Emily, in her turn, goes to her brother Austin.

link to NetgalleyThis novel is beautifully written, sometimes poetically, with delightfully old-fashioned chapter titles. It explores the relationship between two women across a class divide. The two main characters are interesting and convincingly developed. Austin is also developed more fully than the others, but is not as likable.

I enjoyed this novel, which made me feel as if I understood O’Connor’s fictional Dickinson as a person. Although Dickinson at 16 was just beginning to develop some of the quirks she becomes well known for, O’Conner her thinking believable.

*I originally said that Emily was 16, but Caroline of Rosemary and Reading Glasses pointed out that I was mistaken. I thought I saw a reference to her age, but perhaps I got the age reference mixed up with one about Ada. My e-copy is expired, so I couldn’t go back and look it up.

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Day 772: The Haunting of Maddy Clare

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Cover for The Haunting of Maddy ClareBest Book of the Week!
The Haunting of Maddy Clare has been on my reading list for a while. I’ve finally read it, and my first reaction is to immediately look for another book by Simone St. James. It’s not often I encounter a good ghost story. This one is really good.

It’s just after World War I, and Sarah Piper has been living a safe but impoverished and lonely life in London taking temporary secretarial jobs, when her agency sends her to Alastair Gellis. Gellis has an unusual request. He is a wealthy young man who can afford to turn his interests into employment, and his interest is in ghosts.

Alastair’s regular assistant is away, and he has been summoned to the site of a haunting. Sarah’s job is to assist him in recording evidence of a ghost.

Maddy and Alastair travel to Falmouth House and an interview with Mrs. Clare, an elderly woman. She explains that Maddy came to her doorstep years ago as a child. She had been beaten and was barely dressed and covered with mud. She could hardly speak. The Clares took her in and tried to find her people, with no success. She was obviously of the servant class, so they employed her as a maid. She was with them for several years, always frightened and never leaving the house. Then one day she hanged herself in the barn.

Maddy haunts the barn, and Mrs. Clare wants Alastair to get her to leave. She already tried an exorcism, with terrible results. But Mrs. Clare says that Maddy hated men, which is why she asked Alastair to bring a woman.

Sarah learns she is expected to go into the barn accompanied only by a wire recorder and a camera. She finds the experience terrifying. Although she does not see Maddy, Maddy plants images in her mind and asks Sarah to find someone. What she wants is not clear, but Sarah decides to continue.

Shortly thereafter, Alastair’s partner Matthew Ryder arrives. Although he is badly scarred from the war, Sarah is immediately attracted to him. Matthew, on the other hand, thinks Sarah is too fragile for the work and should be dismissed. In the meantime, Sarah has sensed a threatening presence in the village.

This novel drags you in from its first sentences. It also tells a deliciously creepy yet heart-rending story about why Maddy is haunting the barn. If you like ghost stories and enjoy some romance in  your historical fiction as well, you’ll like this novel.

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Day 770: Captain in Calico

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Cover for Captain in CalicoThe foreword to Captain in Calico, written by George MacDonald Fraser’s daughter, says that it is closely based on the careers of the pirates Captain Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny (Bonney). I would suggest it is more loosely based. With the little I know about the subject, I spotted inaccuracies, and the novel has a completely fabricated ending.

Calico Jack Rackham arrives in the Bahamas full of hope. Although he fell into piracy against his will, he’s kept at it for the past few years, and he and his shipmates have captured a ship full of Spanish silver. But he has heard about a pardon being available, and he hopes to take his pardon so he can marry the girl he left behind, Kate Sampson.

Governor Woodes Rogers isn’t content to simply give his pardon. Jack must betray his shipmates and be captured along with the silver before he gets a pardon. What the governor knows and Jack does not is that his betrayal will be for nothing. Kate Sampson is engaged to be married, to the governor himself.

So, Jack betrays his crew, loses his fortune, and gets his pardon, but he does not get Kate. Afterwards, drunk and angry, he ends up in a duel and is wounded. A voluptuous married woman named Anne Bonney takes him home to heal him and promptly seduces him.

Soon Anne is trying to talk him back into piracy. She has heard the governor is shipping treasure, and she knows the name of the ship. She wants Jack to raise a crew, steal a boat, and stop the ship on the high seas. Jack thinks it’s a risky business, but she talks him into it. In turn, he persuades his friend Major Penner, with whom he had signed on as a privateer, to join him.

George MacDonald Fraser’s novels are marked by more realism and less romanticism than most historical novels, especially from his time. His protagonists are often unsavory types. In this case, Jack starts out by betraying his friends, but I presume we are supposed to be sympathetic with him. I wasn’t. In Fraser’s Flashman novels, in contrast, we are amused by Flashman’s lack of scruples but find his morals abhorrent. Next, Fraser’s novels are usually marked by impeccable research, but this one differs in several respects from the other reading I’ve done on Anne Bonny. For one thing, she ran away to marry Bonny, a poor sailor. In this novel, she was basically sold to Bonney, a rich plantation owner.

link to NetgalleyFinally, this novel falls into a genre that leaves a bad taste in my mouth, wherein a man’s troubles are the fault of a seductive, unprincipled woman. I really don’t like these novels. No matter which sex is leading the other astray, it’s presumed the victims can’t think for themselves. Since a large proportion of the women in American prisons are there for abetting their partners in crime (a statistic I read a while back, so I can’t back it up with a citation), this does seem to happen to women, but in literature it is much more frequently the men who are betrayed. Why do you think that is? (That’s a rhetorical question, but you can answer it if you like.)

So, not one of Fraser’s best, as he frankly admitted. Still, Fraser is a good writer who always manages to keep your attention.

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