Tag: historical fiction

Day 548: The Good Lord Bird

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Cover for The Good Lord BirdBest Book of the Week!
Henry “Onion” Shackleford is a boy working with his father in a barber shop when John Brown and his followers ride into town. He relates his story many years later when he is more than 100 years old.

Henry and his father are African-American slaves living in the Kansas Territory near Laurence, a hotbed during the Border Wars, referred to as Bleeding Kansas. Brown has come to help the Free Staters, those who want Kansas to be free of slavery. But Brown’s ultimate goal is to rid the country of slavery, and he doesn’t care how he does it. In the resulting fight, Henry’s father is killed, and Brown “frees” Henry by kidnapping him.

Because, as Henry points out several times in his narrative, John Brown sees only what he wants to see, he mistakes Henry in his potato sack clothing for a girl. From then on, Henry is a girl as far as Brown’s followers are concerned, and Brown calls him Onion.

What follows is an an account of the deeds of John Brown, leading up to the assault on Harper’s Ferry. This tale is often cynical or ironic, boundlessly energetic, irreverent, and funny as well as touching. Brown is depicted as a sort of half-crazed, raggedy zealot, who is capable of stopping midway across a stream while being pursued by his enemies to pray for half an hour. Only his son Owen is brave enough to interrupt him and try to get him on his way.

Onion and other slaves they encounter are reluctant to be freed, afraid they’re going to end up in hotter water than they started. They have some cause. Onion, in fact, is almost always planning how he’ll escape the group and does so several times. But he always ends up back with Brown. His adventures lead him to residence in a whorehouse, a visit with Frederick Douglass (who gets drunk and tries to seduce “Henrietta”), and a more impressive meeting with Harriet Tubman in Canada. All the while, Brown attempts to “hive the Negroes” to revolt at the appropriate time.

The wonder is that with all this poking fun, McBride somehow manages to make us care deeply for John Brown and to honor his place as a trigger for the Civil War. This is an unusual novel—highly entertaining yet also deeply serious.

Day 545: Twelfth Night

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Cover for Twelfth NightFans of the Lady Julia Grey mystery series will probably enjoy this novella, which seems as if it was written for Christmas even though published in June. It is a simple little holiday story, a bagatelle.

The Marches, Lady Julia’s family, have gathered together during the holidays to celebrate Twelfth Night. Every decade the family itself performs the Revels, which are attended by the countryside around. During the rehearsals, an abandoned baby is found in the stables.

Lady Julia’s father asks her husband Brisbane to try to find the mother, but Brisbane’s initial inquiries turn up nothing. Lady Julia has heard her young niece and nephew buzzing about a witch living in an abandoned cottage, and then Lady Julia catches her niece Perdita sneaking out at night to see the witch.

http://www.netgalley.comThis short piece doesn’t involve much of a mystery, but it is always enjoyable to spend time with Julia and Brisbane.

Day 543: The Royal Succession

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Cover for The Royal SuccessionThe recently married Queen Clémence of France is already a widow and expecting a child at the beginning of this fourth book of The Accursed Kings series, The Royal Succession. Her husband Louis X reigned for only 18 months and in that short time managed to create chaos in France and impoverish the country.

Louis’ older brother, Philippe of Poitiers, is occupied in Lyons with the problem of the election of a pope when he hears of his brother’s death. The cardinals seem to be hopelessly deadlocked, and France wants a pope who will be friendly to its interests. Philippe is caught between his desire to finish his mission and his ambition to be appointed regent to the unborn child. Finally, he locks all the cardinals inside the Church of the Jacobins, telling them they will not be freed until they elect a pope. Then he rides to Paris to claim the regency.

Philippe is unaware that he has come into power with the help of his mother-in-law Mahaut of Burgundy, who had his older brother poisoned. Hugue de Bouville, the queen’s protector, is keenly aware of the threat to the queen and her child. Later in the novel, his and his wife’s fears cause them to make a fateful decision.

As usual, Robert of Artois is creating as much havoc as possible for his aunt Mahaut. He is supported at a distance by Philippe’s uncle Charles of Valois, who wanted the regency for himself.

Although Guccio Baglioni spends most of the novel locked up with the cardinals, the Cressay brothers bring his wife Marie to Guccio’s uncle in disgrace. They do not believe the couple is married, and in any case won’t accept their sister’s marriage to a merchant. Marie is expecting, so Uncle Spinello Tolomei takes her to a convent. A twist of fate makes her the wet nurse to the baby King Jean.

Druon relates the story of complex politics, venality, chicanery, and outright evil in his usual acid tones. We sympathize with Philippe, who is plainly more able and upright than his brother, but he is already finding that the path to power corrupts, even those with the best intentions. This series continues to be terrific.

 

Day 540: Empire Girls

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Cover for Empire GirlsRose and Ivy Adams are stunned by the death of their father, but his will astonishes them. He has left the house that Rose loves to a brother the girls did not know existed. He has also left them in heavy debt. His attorney, Mr. Lawrence, explains that if they can’t find their brother Asher to clear up the will and pay off the taxes within three weeks, the bank will repossess their beautiful house in upstate New York. All the sisters have to go on is a postcard from a place called Empire House in New York City.

The two sisters make an uncomfortable team. Rose has always been the caretaker, treated by their father as the plain sister who takes care of the house. Ivy he thought beautiful and talented. Ivy is thrilled to go to New York, envisioning a brilliant future for herself as an actress. Rose, who is a homebody, only goes to save the house. The two are almost always at odds—Rose prim and disapproving, Ivy spoiled and childishly complaining that Rose ruins everything.

The girls go to stay at Empire House, a rooming house in Greenwich Village, hoping to find Asher. No one there admits to knowing him, but the girls think they are all lying.

After some initial coolness, Rose begins to fit into the household. She accepts a job doing housework from Nell, the owner of Empire House, and sews for Cat LeGrand, who owns a dress shop and speakeasy. She also almost immediately falls in love with the Empire House cook, Sonny Santino. Although Ivy at first seems to be in her element of 1920’s gaiety and gets a job as a waitress at Cat’s, she does not adjust as easily.

Written in alternating chapters by each sister, the novel doesn’t really evoke a colorful picture of the 20’s. Only the amount of drinking seems to reflect the time period.

The characters of the two sisters are almost cartoonish at first—they are so polarized. Yet at the same time their voices are indistinct enough that when I was reading a chapter, I would often forget which sister was speaking.

http://www.netgalley.comThe reasons the inhabitants are lying to the girls and what they are lying about seem contrived. The timeline of the novel is absurdly short and yet the girls only make a few feeble attempts to find Asher. Although Asher’s situation has some secrets, too, the ultimate fate of the  sisters is perfectly predictable. I found this novel lightweight and silly.

 

Day 539: The Hours

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Cover for The HoursBest Book of the Week!
One of our Pandora channels repeatedly plays Philip Glass’s music from the movie soundtrack of The Hours. So, as soon as I began reading it, the intricate notes of the score became a mental accompaniment to the novel. That is, I got an ear worm.

I came to the novel with the slight disadvantage of being unfamiliar with Mrs. Dalloway, having been traumatized by To the Lighthouse in a college English class. But you don’t have to be familiar with it to appreciate this lovely, cleverly constructed novel, an homage to Woolf’s own.

The novel begins with Virginia Woolf’s suicide. But later it returns to 20 years before, when she is writing Mrs. Dalloway.

First, though, we meet a middle-aged woman, Clarissa Vaughn, whose best friend calls her Mrs. Dalloway. Like her namesake, Clarissa is eagerly going out into a crisp, clear morning to buy flowers for her party. This is New York, though, in the late 1990’s, and Clarissa’s party is for her dearest friend Richard, a poet who is dying of AIDS. He has recently been chosen to receive a prestigious prize for poetry, and the ceremony is that night.

Back in 1920’s Richmond, England, Virginia Woolf is trying to decide the plot of Mrs. Dalloway. Someone will die, she thinks, but will it be Mrs. Dalloway herself? Woolf also copes with her own fears about her mental state, her yearning to return to living in London, and a visit from her sister Vanessa Bell.

In 1950’s Los Angeles, Laura Brown struggles with being a suburban housewife and mother. Although she loves her husband and small son, she feels unsuited to this life.

Cunningham presents us with three stories, and a theme of threes recurs. Woolf has bouts of mental illness, Richard suffers from dementia caused by his illness, and Laura is struggling with depression. The jellyfish shapes and voices of Woolf’s migraine visions appear in Richard’s episodes of dementia. And Laura briefly sees a grayish jellyfish cloud floating over her son’s head. A forbidden kiss and the color mustard feature in more than one story. And other links that I will not name are more intrinsic to the plot. The three stories are so cleverly interwoven, we’re not sure if the events of one cause the events of the other.

This is a novel of astonishing beauty, cleverly constructed and entertaining. I’m going to find a copy of Mrs. Dalloway.

Day 538: Treasure Island

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Cover for Treasure IslandIf I had to guess which of Robert Louis Stevenson’s books is the most popular, I’d pick Treasure Island. My own favorite is Kidnapped, though, and I probably wouldn’t have reread Treasure Island except that it came free with a reading app for my iPad. Still, it’s a pretty good adventure story.

The plot is familiar to everyone. Jim Hawkins and his parents run the Admiral Benbow Inn in an isolated location near the English seashore. A shifty old sailor comes to stay. He seems to be on the watch for someone, and asks Jim to alert him to strangers. Soon more shifty sailors arrive looking for him. The Hawkins’ guest is drinking himself to death, though, and he dies soon after Jim’s father does. In his sea chest is a treasure map.

Jim has gone for help to the Squire Trelawny and Dr. Livesey. Soon they prepare a ship to go collect the treasure, taking Jim with them. A crucial misstep occurs when the Squire hires the crew without waiting for the captain (something that seemed not only improper but stupid to me). He hires as the cook a one-legged man named Long John Silver. Silver and a good part of the crew turn out to be pirates who know about the map and want the treasure.

I was struck by a few cases when the protagonists behave nonsensically, the biggest being abandoning the ship when they find out a mutiny is afoot. Almost all the sailors are ashore at that point. It seemed like they should just sail away to another part of the island.

Still, the novel is written really well, and Stevenson is good at building suspense. I’m sure that successive generations of young people are thrilled to discover this adventure story.

Day 535: The Known World

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Cover for The Known WorldBest Book of the Week!
I found The Known World disorienting for some time. I think this was because the standard blurb describes it as being about Henry Townsend, an African-American owner of slaves who is mentored by his white owner. The novel starts with Henry Townsend’s death, and I kept waiting for it to circle back around and cover his history. But it’s not so much about him as about the world around him. Once I settled in to the world Jones creates, I began to appreciate the novel.

Henry Townsend’s act of becoming a slave owner is so shocking to his parents that they refuse to stay in the house he built with his slave, Moses. His parents, Augustus and Mildred Townsend, worked hard to buy themselves and their son free. Augustus at one point muses that he may have made a mistake in buying Mildred first, leaving Henry too long under the influence of William Robbins, his white master and the richest man in the county. We actually don’t see much mentoring going on between Robbins and Henry, except when Robbins chides Henry for rough-housing with his new slave Moses.

Jones’ focus is on a larger story than that of one man. His story is about the life on Henry Townsend’s plantation and in the county and how it is affected by slavery—particularly by the decision of African-Americans to own slaves.

At first, I found it difficult to keep all the characters straight—or even the timeframe—for Jones has a habit of fixing on a character for a brief moment and telling about that character’s entire life. He also interjects facts and census details about Manchester County. These details are so convincing that he had me believing it was a real place. It is not.

This nonlinear narrative means we don’t fully know any one character. Henry himself is one of the biggest enigmas, and we see more of his slave Moses than we do of Henry himself. Certainly, a handful of characters are more important than others, but that handful keeps changing. Still, some threads of the people’s stories are captivating, and even surprising. Does Augustus, kidnapped by unscrupulous slave dealers when he is returning from a job, ever see his home again? Did Moses actually murder his wife Priscilla in hopes of marrying Henry’s widow?

If I had to state briefly the theme of this unusual novel, I would say that slavery corrupts. Characters who start out with good intentions do despicable things because they have absolute power over other people. When we see the effect of the “institution” of slavery on people, especially upon Henry’s blameless parents, it is sometimes shocking.

There are true villains in this novel but no heroes. Some of the characters are doing the best they can; others are not.

Day 532: The Daylight Gate

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Cover for The Daylight GatePurely by accident, I recently read two books based on historical fact that feature witches. In Corrag, women are falsely accused of witchcraft, and the only thing even approaching the paranormal is a woman with second sight. The Daylight Gate is about the Lancashire witch trials. It supposes that witchcraft exists and that some of the women were witches.

As in Corrag, some of the characters are based on actual people. The novel hinges on the inexplicable condemnation of one woman, Alice Nutter, who was a completely different type of person from the other accused. She is the novel’s principal character. While the Device family and the others are poor, degraded beings who practice witchcraft as well as incest and other abominations, Alice Nutter is a wealthy and apparently blameless older woman who lets them stay in a tower in the wilds of her property.

We soon find that most of the authorities’ attention toward Alice is politically motivated. Alice is known to be linked to Christopher Southworth, a Catholic priest who is implicated in the Gunpowder Plot and has fled to France. In the mind of King James, the Catholic mass and the Black Mass are indistinguishable. So too believes the repellent Thomas Potts, a lawyer who is driving the attempt to build a case against Alice. He is also writing a book about witchcraft in Lancashire. It behooves him, then, to find some actual witches.

Potts has Southworth’s sister Jane, a completely innocent Protestant, arrested with the Devices and their cohorts in an attempt to lure her brother back to England. It works, and Alice is at least guilty of harboring Southworth. As Alice skates closer and closer to danger, we learn that she will not turn back because of love, for two very different people.

This is an interesting novel rather than an affecting one. I sympathized with Alice, and even with the magistrate, Roger Nowell, who does not believe in witchcraft. Other characters, though, are despicable and some events distasteful. Details of the Devices’ lives are picaresque. Not all of the novel was to my taste.

Day 531: Midnight in Europe

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Cover for Midnight in EuropeChristián Ferrar is a lawyer and Spanish émigré who lives in Paris during the time of the Spanish Civil War. He wants to do what he can for the Spanish Republic against the fascists. The Republican government contacts him to help with the occasional arms deal. Getting arms is difficult, because the fascist governments of Europe are on the other side. Besides, the US and other countries have banned sales of weapons to the Republic because of atrocities committed by the communists.

Working with Ferrar on these dangerous transactions is a Swiss citizen named Max de Lyon who used to be an arms dealer. The two of them get into some sticky situations during missions to Poland and Odessa.

For someone doing secret work, Ferrar is oddly unsuspicious of a Spanish marquesa who comes to his office to consult him and seems open to his advances. It was so obvious to me that she was a spy that I’m giving away a plot point.

I occasionally enjoy a good spy thriller and had heard good things about Furst, but I did not find Midnight in Europe involving. None of the characters have much depth, and Furst doesn’t successfully build any tension. I remember enjoying an earlier book of Furst’s years ago, so perhaps my problem is that I have lately been reading the master, John Le Carré.

http://www.netgalley.comThis period is a fascinating one, and I would have hoped Furst would do more with it. For one thing, he explains very little about the war, seeming to assume that everyone will automatically know the Republic is the good guys. Perhaps he thought that explanations would slow down the action, but the action never really gets going. Interestingly, he only mentions atrocities committed by the side we’re supposed to favor, although there were plenty on the other side. He does a better job evoking the growing threat from Nazi Germany.

Day 528: A Tale of Two Cities

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Cover for A Tale of Two CitiesIt has been a long time since I read A Tale of Two Cities, and I did not remember anything except its broadest outlines. The novel is unusual for Dickens in two respects. It is his only historical novel, and it is probably the grimmest. Although he handles some weighty subjects in other novels—the poor laws, the civil justice system, mistreatment of children, abusive schools—this novel about the French revolution shows little of his celebrated sense of humor.

The novel centers around a much smaller cast of characters than usual for Dickens. It begins with Dr. Alexandre Manette, long a resident in a French prison for reasons we do not learn until the end of the novel. When the book begins, he is free but severely disturbed from trauma. His daughter Lucie travels with his banker Jarvis Lorry from England to bring him back to London.

Five years later, he is living contentedly with his daughter in England. Their friend French émigré Charles Darnay is tried for treason on bogus charges, but he is released when his defense proves that the principal witness cannot tell him apart from Sidney Carton, a barrister. These characters will soon become well acquainted.

When the novel returns to France, it shows us the extreme poverty of the poor as well as grim depictions of their mistreatment by aristocrats. Darnay returns to France to meet his uncle, the Marquis St. Evrémonde, and renounce his inheritance. St. Evrémonde’s careless slaughter of a young child when he runs over him in his carriage and his disdainful treatment of his nephew are all we see of him before his murder.

Secretly, a revolutionary society is growing and taking note of atrocities such as those committed by Evrémonde. Wine shop owners Monsieur and Madame Defarge are involved, and at first we have sympathy with their cause.

Charles Darnay marries Lucie Manette in London, but Sidney Carton has fallen in love with her as well. Although he considers himself unworthy of her, he pledges to do anything he can for her or for anyone she loves.

Meanwhile, France falls into revolution and brutal chaos. It becomes a place where revenge is more important than justice.

The fates of the main characters reach a climax when Charles returns to Paris to help an old retainer and is denounced by the revolution. Although he has committed no crime, his relationship to St. Evrémonde puts him in peril. Dr. Manette’s sanity is also threatened when he, Lucie, and Jarvis Lorry travel to Paris to try to help Charles.

The novel is a little more melodramatic than I prefer, unleavened as it is by Dickens’ usual antics. Only a couple of major characters provide momentary relief, and Madame Defarge is like a heavy dark cloud hovering over everything. The novel is also a bit disjointed through moving back and forth between the two cities. Still, Dickens always manages to bring tears to my eyes.