Tag: historical fiction

Day 433: Black Sheep

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Cover for Black SheepI hadn’t read this Georgette Heyer novel in some years. Although it is not one of my absolute favorites, reading it is still a relaxing, amusing way to spend a few hours.

When Abigail Wendover is away from her home of Bath visiting her family, she hears disturbing rumors that her niece Fanny, an heiress, is being courted by a fortune hunter named Stacy Calverleigh. Returning home, she finds that her 17-year-old headstrong niece believes they are madly in love, and she is not ready to listen to arguments that Calverleigh, a much older man, has not behaved as he should. He has also worked his way into the good graces of Abigail’s foolish sister Selina.

Abigail encounters a man named Calverleigh in a hotel parlor, and she is shocked to find him neither of good looks nor address and much older than she is herself. He is further prone to uttering the most shocking remarks that unfortunately make her laugh. Soon Abigail finds that this Calverleigh is not Stacy but his uncle Miles, the black sheep of the family, who was sent away to India after a youthful scandal and has now returned. However, he is unwilling to interest himself in the situation between her niece and his nephew. He is only interested in Abigail herself.

Although Abigail knows she shouldn’t encourage his attentions and finds some of his views about family and duty shocking, he never fails to make her laugh. Soon she discovers that he is even more unsuitable a companion than she thought, for his youthful indiscretion was to run off with Fanny’s own mother, who later married Abigail’s older brother!

Abigail is one of Heyer’s more mature heroines, an intelligent, sensible woman with a sense of humor some of her relatives consider unfortunate. Of course, the journey out of the tangle her niece is in will be enjoyable and entertaining. Although this novel is not as funny as some of my favorites, it is always a pleasure to spend time with Heyer’s creations.

Day 426: A Fatal Likeness

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Cover for A Fatal LikenessIn A Fatal Likeness, Lynn Shepherd has created her own gothic horror around the mysteries in the real lives of two fans of the gothic, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife, the writer Mary Shelley. It is not only a dark story, but some of it is relatively plausible, given the research Shepherd has done into their lives. Ever since I read Shepherd’s astounding reworking of Bleak House, The Solitary House, I have been a fan of her narrative skills, her writing skills, and her imagination.

Shepherd’s detective, Charles Maddox, is summoned to the home of Percy Shelley, the son of the deceased poet. Shelley and his wife have established a shrine to the poet’s memory and say they are worried about some papers someone is offering to sell them. Mrs. Shelley in particular has been responsible for destroying any papers that would tarnish Shelley’s legacy. They hire Charles to find out what is contained in these papers.

Charles has his own reasons for taking the job, for his beloved great-uncle, also Charles Maddox, the master detective who trained him and is his only family, suffered a stroke upon receiving a calling card bearing the name of his client. Charles learns from his assistant Abel that his great-uncle was employed on a case years before for William Godwin, the brilliant philosopher and Mary Shelley’s father. When the file on this case is located, though, some of the pages have been torn out.

Charles takes a room in the home of the person purveying the papers, whom Charles has been told is an Italian man, and it is not long before he realizes his landlady is Clair Clairmont. Clair, the step-sister of Mary Shelley, infamously ran off with Shelley and Mary when both the girls were only sixteen and Shelley was still married to his first wife, Harriet.

Charles is soon to realize that everyone involved in this case has ulterior motives, those of the Shelleys to find out whether a record of the earlier case still exists, as it certainly contains damaging information. With his great-uncle only slowly recovering, it is up to Charles to discover what mysteries lurk in the Shelleys’ past. As he investigates the earlier case, he finds records of an even earlier encounter with his great-uncle.

The Shelleys’ past is a rat’s nest, with two young suicided women, Shelley’s first wife and Mary’s other step-sister, with several dead infants, with Shelley’s own history of delusions, hallucinations, fits, and obsessions. Each person’s story of the fraught years of the Shelleys’ relationship is different, and it is difficult to know what or whom to believe. It is not long before Charles is to think Percy Shelley was something of a monster.

Doubles are a theme throughout the novel. Shelley is always involved with two women at once, two young women commit suicide, Shelley is obsessed with the idea of a doppelganger and thinks he has encountered a monster with his own face. Charles’ great-uncle was partially deceived long ago by the likeness he perceived between the young Mary Godwin and a lost love.

Shepherd’s writing style is distinctive. She writes in limited third person but overlays this voice occasionally with observations from a more knowing narrator of a later time, perhaps the present. The effect is slightly facetious and ironic in tone.

Her research into this time period and into the lives of the Shelleys is clearly extensive. She impressed me with The Solitary House and here she continues to do so with a fascinating, disturbing tale about some turbulent personalities.

Day 425: The Gods of Gotham

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Cover for The Gods of GothamBest Book of the Week!

New York in 1845 is a turbulent city. The political campaign between the Democrats and the Whigs is crooked and violent, and the recent influx of Irish poor is causing some Protestant leaders to preach against Papists. The recent establishment of a police force has been fought against by those claiming it impinges on their civil liberties.

Timothy Wilde is a bartender who has managed to save up $500 and intends to ask the woman he loves, Mercy Underhill, for her hand. A huge fire that ranges more than twenty blocks changes his plans, for his home is burned down with all his money in it and so is his place of work. His face is badly scarred as well, so Timothy believes his future is ruined.

His older brother Valentine, with whom he has a rocky relationship, has plans for him. Val has just been made a captain in the new police force and believes the copper stars–for that is what they are soon called because of their badges–is the place for his brother. Timothy is distrustful of Val’s intentions. His brother is a popular and charismatic leader of the firemen and the Democratic party, but Timothy also knows him as an opium addict and a wild man who hangs out with thugs. Timothy soon finds that the job suits him, however.

He is not long on the job before a child runs into him late one night, hysterical and covered with blood, saying “He’s going to tear him to pieces.” Wilde sees that she is a kinchin mab, or a child prostitute. He brings her home to the Dutch widow who is his new landlady instead of taking her in for questioning. When the girl recovers herself, she identifies herself as Bird and tells him a pack of lies. He soon finds out what she was talking about, however, when the body of a young male child prostitute is found in a trash receptacle.

Timothy’s investigation results in the discovery of a field full of bodies on the edge of the city–a total of 19 dead children with a cross carved into their torsos. Although the authorities try to keep this a secret, the word soon gets out. Then someone begins writing letters blaming the deaths on the Irish. Soon the city is a powder keg.

This novel is even better than Faye’s acclaimed first, Dust and Shadow. It depicts New York in all its grit and dissension and feels historically grounded. It introduces an honest, kind, and clever hero whom I hope we’ll see more of. The plot is full of twists, and although I managed to spot a perpetrator well in advance, the story was much more tangled than I expected. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.

Day 424: Mutiny on the Bounty

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Cover for Mutiny on the BountyMutiny on the Bounty did not seem like the type of book I would normally pick to read, but when my friend Karen learned I had never read it, she sent me a copy. Now that I have read it, I’m glad she did, for it is a true adventure story, extremely interesting and well written.

The story of the famous mutiny is told by Roger Byam, the only fictional character on the ship. At the beginning of the novel Lieutenant Bligh (not, apparently, a captain at the time) meets the young man socially and invites him along on the journey because of Roger’s facility with languages. One of Bligh’s directives for the voyage besides its mission to collect breadfruit trees is to draft a dictionary of the Tahitian language, a task for which Bligh does not feel competent.

Once aboard, Byam soon learns how ill-fitted Bligh is to command men. Byam commends him as an excellent navigator, but Bligh has no control over his temper and abuses all his men verbally, no matter their station. He is prone to order the most vicious punishments for slight or even imagined offenses. As time goes on, the men also come to believe that Bligh is cheating them out of their due rations with the connivance of Mr. Samuel, his clerk. Bligh even accuses his officers of the theft of cheeses that he himself had delivered to his own house before departure.

Bligh’s clash with Fletcher Christian is perhaps inevitable. Christian is one whom Bligh first views as a friend and promotes to second-in-command over the head of the ship’s master. However, Christian is an upright man whose attempts to soften Bligh’s behavior and whose rebukes in the name of fairness are not well received. And Christian is victim to his own passions. Nordhoff and Hall build slowly to the famous mutiny, which takes place shortly after the ship has departed Tahiti for home.

Although Christian is depicted more positively than Bligh, his fault lies in taking actions that affect the lives of the men who are innocent of the mutiny. Fully half the novel deals with the aftermath of the mutiny, culminating in the trial of eight men, three of whom are innocent.

The novel is carefully researched and the tale told is enthralling, from the details about shipboard life in the 18th century to the customs and culture of Tahiti. Even though the first chapter makes you aware of Byam’s fate, as he is tried for mutiny although entirely innocent, the suspense at the end of the novel still holds you to the page.

I was surprised to learn that this novel is the first of a trilogy. Men Against the Sea, which I had not heard of, tells the story of Bligh and the other men set adrift in a small boat, and Pitcairn’s Island, which I had heard of, relates what happened to the men who left with Fletcher Christian on the Bounty after they departed Tahiti for the second time. I will certainly read these other two novels.

Day 422: Studio Saint-Ex

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Cover for Studio Saint-ExAnia Szado has written an interesting historical novel based on the writing of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic The Little Prince. The novel centers around a relationship between the famous aviator and author and a young French-American woman, Mignonne Lachapelle. This relationship is fictional, although Saint-Exupéry, or Saint-Ex, as he is called in this novel, was known to have such connections.

Mignonne is a recent graduate of design school who is struggling to start a career in fashion design during the early days of the American involvement in World War II. Although with Paris out of the picture things are looking up for American design, no one is ready to hire a rank beginner for a design position. So, Mignonne is forced to turn to Madame Véra Fiche, her instructor from design school who stole Mignonne’s ideas for a dress collection to open her own atelier. Fiche takes her on under a vague promise of partnership.

Mignonne has just returned from Montreal, where she has been staying with her mother, but she is already under the spell of the middle-aged Saint-Exupéry, whom she tutored in English the year before. They have carried on a sort of dalliance. On the scene, however, comes Saint-Ex’s tempestuous wife, Consuelo, whom he continually tries to dodge. He claims he cannot get any peace while she is around and cannot work, yet their relationship is more complex than that.

Saint-Ex himself worked to get America involved in the war in an effort to save his beloved France. Lately, he has been lobbying to join the services, but he is considered too old and too frail to fly, having crash-landed his airplanes many times in the course of his adventures. To calm his frustration and anxiety, he begins writing The Little Prince and seeks refuge from Consuelo in the Atelier Fiche studio to work and see Mignonne. Soon Mignonne is caught up in a tangled relationship with Saint-Ex and Consuelo.

This novel is well written and evokes its time successfully. I don’t think I was taken with its characters so much, though. I had some sympathy for Mignonne, but in her own way she is almost as difficult as Consuelo. Consuelo herself seems almost uniformly manipulative and conniving, and it is difficult to comprehend why Saint-Exupéry stays loyal to her, albeit in his own way. I frankly find Saint-Exupéry himself to be not so much a spellbinder as a high-strung and excitable man encouraging the attentions of a beautiful young woman without really paying much heed to her. I don’t find him romantic so much as also manipulative.

Nevertheless, I was engrossed in the story and found the details of Mignonne’s work and her sensual descriptions of the fabric fascinating even though I don’t pay attention to fashion. The story of the launching of The Little Prince around a fashion show and play was interesting, too.

I won this book in a giveaway from Unabridged Chick blogspot.

Day 421: The Ghost of the Mary Celeste

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Cover for The Ghost of the Mary CelesteI haven’t read anything by Valerie Martin since her creepy Mary Reilly, which of course was a reworking of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I understand her novel Property won the Orange Prize, however, and The Ghost of the Mary Celeste was certainly worth reading, so I will look for some of her others.

This novel is based on the mysterious history of the Mary Celeste, a merchant ship that is famous for having been discovered in 1872 completely abandoned in the Atlantic Ocean. The captain, Benjamin Briggs, had his wife Sarah and two-year-old daughter Sophie aboard the ship, which had no other passengers, just the crew. No explanation has ever been found for the disappearance of everyone on board.

Martin’s book doesn’t so much attempt to offer us an explanation as add to the mystery surrounding this event.

The novel begins, though, with an earlier maritime tragedy. Captain Joseph Gibbs and his wife Maria go overboard in 1859 during a fearsome storm while she is trying to board a lifeboat.

Back at home after their deaths, Sallie Cobb is concerned about her younger sister Hannah, who claims their cousin Maria wants to take away her son Nathan, the little boy Hannah has been caring for since his parents were lost at sea. Maria’s family, the Gibbs, have been very unlucky at sea. Many of them having died there, including, of course, Maria. Sallie is worried about Hannah’s well-being, as she also claims that their mother, who died when Hannah was young, has been coming to talk to her.

Nathan only lives another few months, and Sallie is concerned about Hannah’s sorrow and her insistence that she has talked to both Maria and their mother. Sallie thinks that Hannah, who has always been fanciful, may be deranged from grief. Sallie is self-absorbed, however, for she is being courted by her childhood friend and cousin, Benjamin Briggs, Maria’s brother and also a sea captain, with whom she is in love.

The next section of the book leaps ahead in time to 1881 to follow Arthur Conan Doyle on a trip to Africa, where he is working as a ship’s doctor. It is during this trip that he decides to write a story about the Mary Celeste. Unfortunately, the story, which proposes a lurid explanation for the mystery, is understood by many to be true, even though he didn’t bother to research it and has almost all the facts wrong. Although he is taken aback by the response, especially of the victim’s families (whom he never considered), this story begins his writing career. Later he meets a spiritualist who has a connection with the Mary Celeste.

http://www.netgalley.comThrough such meanderings, including documents, newspaper clippings, journals, a journalist’s memoir, and visits with spiritualists, we eventually find ourselves back on the Mary Celeste by means of Sallie’s journal. This journal has found its way into the hands of Conan Doyle.

This story is haunting and melancholy, and Martin is not so much interested in what exactly happened aboard the Mary Celeste as in the event’s repercussions. Evocatively written, this novel will carry you along with it.

Day 419: The Bones of Paris

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Cover for The Bones of ParisHappy Halloween! I tried to select a book that was appropriate for the occasion, although I didn’t have a ghost story lined up.

Laurie R. King’s series about Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes is very popular, but I prefer her Kate Martinelli series or, even better, some of her dark psychological stand-alone novels. Folly is my favorite. With The Bones of Paris, she brings some of that darker sensibility to what looks like the beginning of a new mystery series.

Harris Stuyvesant is an ex-FBI agent who has been scraping a living in Europe by taking private investigation work. Among the hordes of American expatriates in 1929 Paris, he is searching for a young woman, Pip Crosby, whose relatives have not heard from her in months. A cause for possible embarrassment or worse is that Harris met Pip in Nice the year before and had a brief fling with her. Ever since a disastrous incident that ended his career and cost him his fiancée, he has been living an aimless and bohemian existence.

Two of Harris’ first stops in his search for Pip are Pip’s flatmate, Nancy Berger, and the Paris Missing Persons Bureau. Nancy seems to have a hangover but is actually suffering the effects of travel. She just returned from an archaeological dig in Greece and has not seen Pip for months. Harris finds the police officer, Doucet, concerned about what may be a series of killings.

Harris’ attentions soon narrow on three men connected with the art world whose names keep surfacing in connection with Pip and who all have a fascination with the macabre. The artist Man Ray‘s photographs of Pip focus on a gruesome scar from an accident in her youth. Count Dominic de Charmentier is a wealthy patron of the arts who owns a theatre that alternates grotesque and frightening scenes with comic ones. He also hosts parties that feature macabre decorations and terrifying staged events. Didi Moreau is a creepy, disturbing artist who makes displays of found objects, including human bones. Pip has a few of these displays in her room, as well as some of Man Ray’s photographs. When Harris begins investigating these men more closely, he finds to his alarm that his ex-fiancée, Sarah Grey, is working as de Charmentier’s assistant.

King evokes the time and place with mastery, introducing us to a dissolute café culture populated with famous figures such as Cole Porter and Josephine Baker. She also cleverly raises the creep factor by interjecting short chapters about the bones that underlie parts of Paris, foreboding snippets of conversation, and other indications that something monstrous is going on behind the scenes of glittering nightlife.

Day 414: Seven Locks

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Cover for Seven LocksSeven Locks contains a surprise. I can say no more about it, for fear of spoilers, except that I suspected it from very early on.

In the Hudson River Valley of 1769, a woman is struggling. It is a difficult life on the small farm outside the village, full of hard work, and she is not getting the help she needs from her husband. He prefers to hang out in the village tavern or go hunting with his dog. He is a man of great charm, but he likes to think and daydream and lie in the fields drinking instead of doing his work. His wife has had to learn to chop wood, and the hay spoils in the fields. Her husband has a knack of turning every request for help into an argument, ending with him stomping out with his gun. Soon, she has the reputation of a scold.

One day he does not come back, leaving her alone with her two children. After waiting a few days, she rallies the men of the village to look for him, but he is nowhere to be found. Now she has a harder life, trying to rally her children to help her so they can continue to care for the animals, keep the house warm, and put food on the table. The villagers, at first helpful, turn against her, though, and soon rumors are floating about. She drove her husband away, or worse.

We also follow this story from the point of view of Judith, her daughter. She misses her father but is loyally supportive of her mother. Her brother resents the added work, and she would rather read, so neither of them is as helpful as their mother could wish. As the nation moves toward revolution, especially after her brother joins the army, Judith wants only freedom from the farm and her mother’s life.

Seven Locks provides us an unusual look at the remnants of the life of the early Dutch settlers and the ways they were forced to change with the emergence of the new nation. It is a touching portrayal of the difficulty of one family’s life and of one woman’s spirit. Sparely but vividly told, it is a tale to make you thoughtful.

Day 412: Stone’s Fall

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Cover for Stone's FallBest Book of the Week!
Ever since Iain Pears wrote the stunning An Instance of the Fingerpost, I have been waiting for him to come out with something that could match it for complexity and interest. He has finally achieved this with Stone’s Fall.

Did he fall or was he pushed? might be the question journalist Matthew Braddock is asked to answer when Elizabeth Stone hires him after her husband falls to his death from his office window. Instead, she asks him to find the child John Stone mentioned in his will. Stone’s estate is tied up during the search for this unknown heir, but Elizabeth says she has no ulterior motives except a sincere wish to follow her husband’s wishes. As Stone was an extremely wealthy but private arms manufacturer and the only person who could understand the complex structure of his inter-related companies, many are concerned in his affairs, even the British government.

Completely infatuated with the older woman and feeling wholly unqualified to find the child, Braddock instead concentrates on investigating the last days of Stone’s life and the state of his corporations. In doing so, he finds evidence that Stone’s net worth was not nearly as large as everyone thinks. He also has questions about the involvement of Henry Cort, a mysterious figure believed to work for the Foreign Office. Braddock relates the tale of what he discovered quite some time after his 1909 investigation, in 1953 after Elizabeth Stone’s funeral.

Braddock’s story does not answer many questions even though he believes he has found some facts, but after his narrative, he includes a manuscript sent to him by Henry Cort. Cort takes his own story back further, to events in Paris of 1890, when he befriends Elizabeth after having known her years before.

The final section of the novel takes us to Venice in 1867, when as a young man John Stone meets Cort’s parents and the man who invented the torpedo that began Stone’s empire. It is in this final section of the novel that we begin to understand the answers to the mysteries of John Stone’s life and death.

This series of narratives is like a set of nested gift boxes–as we unwrap each one, we learn more and go deeper into the story, finally beginning to understand the mysterious Stone. The novel is impeccably plotted and beautifully written–a great reading experience for those who appreciate a mystery that is not formulaic.

Day 411: Bellman & Black

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Cover for Bellman & BlackWhen I heard that another book by Diane Setterfield was coming out, I was really excited, having enjoyed The Thirteenth Tale immensely. Although the previous novel was about a teller of fables, I enjoyed other aspects of the novel more than the fables themselves. Bellman & Black is actually an extended fable with a vaguely 19th century setting rather than a more traditional novel, and as such, I did not enjoy it as much.

William Bellman is a capable boy, liked by all, with a golden future. But one day when he is fooling around with his friends, he takes what seems to be an impossible shot with his slingshot and kills a rook without actually intending to. The boys go to bury the rook but end up desecrating it instead. They have no idea how these actions will affect their futures.

Bellman goes on to work at his uncle’s mill, where he proves himself more than capable and earns his uncle’s trust. He begins a career that eventually brings him great wealth, and his attention to the details of his enterprises is phenomenal. In his personal life, however, he is not so lucky, as he loses most of those closest to him to death. After a particularly wrenching loss, he is so grief-stricken that he can barely function, and at that point he makes a bargain with a Mr. Black, the details of which he can’t quite remember.

As I mentioned before, the story is told as an extended fable, in the style of a folk tale. Most of the characters are emblematic of a single characteristic rather than fully developed. Even Bellman, in his single-mindedness, seems one-dimensional. The writing is gorgeous and replete with detail, the setting atmospheric. It is easy to imagine the scenes Setterfield describes, but her characters remain enigmas.

http://www.netgalley.comPeriodically, a chapter ends with a few paragraphs about rooks, their appearance, habits, mythology. When we are told that the rooks in the tree by Bellman’s house are descended from the rooks in Norse mythology named Thought and Memory, this information is vital for understanding the story.

Even at the end of the novel, I did not feel I fully understood everything about the bargain Bellman made. In any case, beautifully written as the novel is, I sometimes found my attention wandering.