Tag: historical fiction

Review 2502: Novellas in November! Picnic at Hanging Rock

~ whatmeread ~ 19 Comments

I have meant to read Picnic at Hanging Rock for years, so when I saw it on a list of short novels, I got a copy from the library for Novellas in November. It turns out I’m stretching a point with this one, though, at 204 pages, a little over the stated limit.

Let me warn you about this one. I suggest you don’t do too much poking around or read the Introduction before reading it. Even the Introduction suggests that you read it afterwards. Part of this suggestion has to do with a chapter that was removed at the suggestion of the original publishers. The Introduction to the Penguin edition summarizes this chapter, but I agree that the novel is much more powerful without it.

On a hot Valentines Day in 1900 Australia, most of the girls of Appleyard College for Young Ladies are bound for an outing—a picnic at Hanging Rock, an ancient local geographical and anthropological wonder. With them are three teachers and the coachman. The only student left behind is Sara, a 13-year-old orphan whom Mrs. Appleyard, the headmistress, uses as a scapegoat.

Although the girls are told to stay off the rock, after tea three senior girls ask to walk closer to it. They include Miranda, a girl loved by everyone at the school but especially by Sara. With her are her best friends, Irma, a beautiful heiress, and the brainy Marion. Edith, a younger girl who they think is a pest, tags along after them.

Although a couple of young men in a family party see them crossing a stream, no one sees them after that—or at least no one sees some of them. The girls fall asleep on a circular platform, and when they wake up very late, Miranda wanders away, seeming to hear no one’s calls. Later, Edith comes running screaming away from the rock but can’t remember anything except that she saw Miss McCraw, the mathematics teacher, running away without her skirt. By then, the party has been searching for the girls and has noticed that Miss McCraw is missing, too.

The whole countryside erupts into an uproar. On a subsequent search after the official police ones, the two young men who glimpsed the girls at the rock try searching again, and Mike Fitzhubert finds one of them barely alive. He is injured running for help, but his companion and groom, Albert Crundall, rescues them both.

Most of the novel is about the aftermath of the disappearances. This is an atmospheric and mysterious, even haunting novel that holds the attention. It’s an Australian classic.

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Review 2496: The Covenant of Water

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In 1900, a 12-year-old girl, later known as Big Ammachi, travels to meet her future husband and marry him. Almost immediately after her father died, her uncle married her off. She is lucky, though, because her thirty-some husband makes no effort to consummate the marriage until she is 19. In the meantime, she acts as a mother to his little son Jo Jo and takes care of the house.

Although they live in southwestern India, on the Malabar Coast, an area where people are constantly in boats or on the water, she notices that her husband and Jo Jo avoid the water. It is not until Jo Jo dies in a tragic accident that she learns some members of her husband’s family suffer from the condition of disorientation in water that often results in drowning.

In 1933 Madras, Digby Kilgour, a Scottish surgeon, arrives to take up a position at the hospital. Although he was at the top of his class, he has found that his origins as a poor Glaswegian have kept him out of the positions where he can work with a more experienced surgeon. At the urging of one of his professors, he has applied for a position in India.

He finds fairly quickly that his superior, Claude Arnold, is incompetent, so he begins spending time at another hospital, working with an Indian surgeon. He falls in love, however, and this ultimately results in tragedy, turning his life toward a different direction.

Verghese takes his time, introducing many characters and stories and taking the reader through two more generations to the 1970s. He moves between these stories, eventually linking them.

Verghese is an enthralling story teller. Although on occasion he gets a little too deep into medical topics, for the most part, he gets us involved, depicts vivid sights and smells, and carries us along with his tale. Like those of some other writers of Indian descent that I’ve read, his tales loop and branch, but they eventually converge and resolve.

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Review 2495: The House of Doors

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In 1947 South Africa, shortly after her husband Robert’s death, Lesley Hamlyn receives a package that has come a long way, through circuitous routes, to find her. It has no note and does not say who sent it, but it is a book written by Somerset Maugham more than 20 years ago.

This gift returns her memories to 1921, when she and Robert lived on the island of Penang and were visited by Maugham. The point of view shifts to that of Maugham, who soon learns that his broker has gone under and lost all his money. Although he is dreading his wife’s reaction from England, he is more afraid that Gerald, his secretary and lover, will leave him if he is broke.

He and Lesley begin to get to know each other. Eventually, she tells him about her life 10 years before. On the same day that she heard her best friend, Ethel, had been arrested for murder, she also learned her husband was having an affair.

Tan skillfully weaves the story of Lesley’s relationship with Ethel and the trial with her experiences resulting from meeting Dr. Sun Yat Sen, who has been attempting the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty in China. Lesley begins helping his organization translate its brochure and eventually has an affair with a Chinese man. They meet in the House of Doors.

I was interested in all these stories and although I know very little about Maugham, I spotted the seeds of more than one of his stories in them. For example, Ethel’s story is very similar to that of The Letter, which I am familiar with because of the movie with Bette Davis.

As much as I enjoyed The Garden of Evening Mists, I think I liked this novel even more. Although I read it for my Walter Scott Prize project, I probably would have read it anyway.

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Review 2492: #RIPXIX! The Witching Tide

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In 1645, Martha is a mute middle-aged serving woman who has worked for the Crozier family since her master Kit was a baby. She is also a midwife and healer, who at the beginning of the novel is called out to help with a difficult birth. She takes along the young housemaid, Prissy, who is learning to be a midwife.

The birth doesn’t go well. The baby is born with a deformed nose and mouth that wouldn’t allow him to live, and the mother is bleeding too much. The baby soon dies.

Martha and Prissy return to taking care of their own difficult mistress, Agnes, Kit’s upper-class wife, who is heavily pregnant. However, everyone soon hears that a witch master has come to their town, and Prissy is one of the first to be taken.

It is Martha who actually has a poppet, given to her by her mother. Martha doesn’t really know how to use it, but she feels she should have been taken instead of Prissy, as Prissy is of course being blamed for the deformed baby.

In his attempts to free Prissy, Kit arranges for Martha to be one of the women who examines the accused for witch marks, hoping Martha can help her. But marks are found on Prissy, and Martha can do nothing. Prissy is one of the first to be hanged.

Others have doubted whether Martha isn’t a witch herself, and Martha is torn between fear and guilt. Soon, many of the women are accused, along with the community’s innocent, naïve young minister.

This novel evokes a constant feeling of dread. In addition, it is unsparing in its descriptions of the conditions of the time. It is also fully aware of the underlying misogyny of the witch trials. I think it qualifies for RIPXIX!

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Review 2488: #1970Club! Charity Girl

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Georgette Heyer is always a pleasure, and I was delighted to reread this one for the 1970 Club. As usual, on my first post for the club, here is a list of some other books from 1970 that I have reviewed:

Now for my review.

While visiting friends in the country, Viscount Desford goes to a party to see the latest beauty. He notices someone watching the party from upstairs. Thinking that she’s a child, he speaks to her, only to find she is older, a naïve relative who has been taken in out of charity.

The next day on his way to London, he finds the girl, Cherry Steane, on the road, running away from her aunt. Desford tries to talk her into returning, but she has been treated as a drudge and accused of trying to attract Desford to herself away from her beautiful cousin. He finally agrees to take her to her grandfather’s house in London, but upon arriving there, finds the house shut up.

Desford tries to think where he can take Cherry without ruining her reputation. His parents’ house is out of the question, not only because his father is suffering from a gout attack but also because Lord Desford despises both Wilfred Steane, Cherry’s father, who disappeared without paying her school fees, and Steane’s father.

Desford decides to take her to his best friend, Henrietta Silverdale. At one point, Lord Desford tried to arrange a marriage between Desford and Henrietta, but both refused. However, when Desford brings Cherry in, Henrietta feels pangs, fearing he may be attracted to her.

This novel features one of Heyer’s romping plots, with Desford encountering a slew of memorable characters while he tries to find a place for Cherry.

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Review 2487: The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

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In 1930s Pottstown, Pennsylvania, the Jewish residents are beginning to move away from the Chicken Hill neighborhood where they’ve always lived with their Black neighbors. But Chona Ludlow refuses to leave the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store that her father established even though her husband Moshe would like to live in a neighborhood where the streets aren’t muddy and there is running water and sewage.

Chona is beloved by most of her neighbors for her kindness. She runs a tab for anyone who needs it and hands out marbles and small toys to the neighborhood children.

There is always some kind of trouble on Chicken Hill. Chona herself constantly writes letters to city officials complaining of unfairness to various Jewish or Black residents. But trouble from higher up arrives when Moshe’s trusted friend and employee, Nate Timblin, and his wife Addie take in his 12-year-old deaf nephew Dodo, whose parents have died. The trouble starts when Dodo stays out of school because he can’t hear the instruction and is being mocked. Officials decide to institutionalize him by placing him in a horrible insane asylum called Pennhurst under the assumption that since he can’t hear, he’s an idiot.

Nate, who is Black, asks Moshe if he will hide Dodo at the store. So Dodo moves in and helps out at the store and hides in the cellar if the authorities come by. But word gets out that Chona is hiding Dodo.

A combination of criminal and tragic events result in Dodo being caught. Can he be rescued from forces against him, including the racist Doc Roberts, a prominent member of society and also of the Ku Klux Klan?

McBride tells a great story, peopled with lots of colorful characters. There’s a lot going on in Chicken Hill, and it makes for fun and sometimes touching reading.

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Review 2483: In the Upper Country

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In 1850, Lensinda Marten lives in an all-Black town in Canada north of Lake Erie. She is a healer, but she is puzzled when she is summoned to the side of a slave catcher who has come after a group of escaped slaves that are hiding on Simion’s farm. Puzzled because the man is dead. When she hears that an old woman, one of the escapees, has been arrested, she realizes she is wanted to write a story about the woman for the Abolitionist paper.

She goes to visit the old woman in jail and finds that she isn’t ready to tell her story. Instead, she wants to swap stories with Lensinda. In doing so, a history of cruelty is reveealed, and the two women find connections between each other.

Thomas says in the Afterword that he heard and read many stories about Canada’s history of slavery, its treatment of First Nations people, and the War of 1812, but he could find no story that did everything he wanted. So, he chose this method of telling several stories that interface.

Although I found the information interesting and the settings and historical details to be convincing, I’m afraid his approach didn’t work that well for me. Just as I was getting interesting in Lensinda’s story, the novel appeared to move away from her. There were quite a few characters whose connections aren’t immediately clear, and I kept getting them confused as we jumped from story to story. Eventually, the stories connect, but that wasn’t clear for quite a while.

I read this novel for my Walter Scott prize project.

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Review 2482: These Old Shades

~ whatmeread ~ 12 Comments

In trying to fill some of the holes in my Century of Books project, I noticed that These Old Shades, which I haven’t read for many years, would help. This novel is Heyer’s first, and it is also the first of four about the Alastair/Audley family. (The others are The Devil’s Cub, Regency Buck, and An Infamous Army.)

Late on a mid-18th century night, His Grace of Avon Justin Alastair is walking through a Paris slum when a boy collides with him. The boy is fleeing his brutish brother. On impulse, the Duke buys the boy, but it is clear he is up to something. He takes the boy home and makes him his page.

The boy, Léon, has fiery red hair and dark eyebrows. The Duke has noticed this resemblance to his enemy, the Comte Saint-Vire, and takes Léon around to embarrass him. However, he begins to have other thoughts about the resemblance because of Saint-Vire’s reaction.

Soon, though, it is revealed that Léon is really Léonie, disguised as a boy since she was 12. The Duke takes her to England and leaves her with his sister while he arranges a chaperone, announcing that he intends to adopt her as his ward. Léonie is starting to enjoy being a girl when she is kidnapped by Saint-Vire.

This is an adventurous, amusing romantic novel. The Duke is enigmatic and Léonie is charming and feisty. Although the Duke has a bad reputation and is known as Satanas, as his relationship with Léonie develops, he becomes more human. Some of the interviews between Saint-Vire and Avon struck me this time as a little unsubtle, but overall, it is a great start to Heyer’s career and I enjoyed it very much.

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Review 2477: The Time of Women

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In 1950s Soviet Union, Antonina has a child out of wedlock. She is lucky to be allotted a room in a house with three old ladies, making a deal with them to cook and clean if they’ll take care of the baby while she’s at work at the factory. The deal becomes even more important when they realize Suzanna isn’t talking at the right time. They all become terrified that the girl will be institutionalized or at least that Antonina will be forced to take her from one doctor to another.

So, Suzanna stays out of school and the grannies teach her to read and write and even to understand French. She imbibes Russian fairy tales as well as some strange beliefs and superstitions, and the grannies sneak her to church to have her baptized.

All goes well until a man at work, Nicholai, starts paying attention to Antonina. Although they have done nothing but have tea, the union people at work assume they are having an affair and begin pressuring them to get married.

Then the situation turns serious. Antonina has cancer. How will the grannies be able to arrange to keep Suzanna after Antonina dies?

This novel effectively depicts the poor living conditions and the uncertainty of life in Soviet Russia, where the state can become involved in the details of anyone’s private life. The narration moves from person to person, and a lot of action is conveyed in somewhat elliptical dialogue, so I wasn’t always sure what was going on. Dreams and stories are also given a lot of importance.

I found the ending, which is another story, fairly unsatisfying, though.

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Review 2476: Hungry Ghosts

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I feel safe in saying that if I wasn’t reading Hungry Ghosts for my Walter Scott project, I wouldn’t have read it at all. It is absolutely brutal.

In 1940s Trinidad, Krishna lives with his family in the Barracks, run-down ex-military barracks that are leaky and filthy, where five families live in each building, one to a room. Krishna’s father Hans has aspirations for better and insists that Krishna attend school in the village, but there he is mercilessly teased and bullied by other students as well as teachers. Krishna and his cousin Tarak have begun to hang with two twin brothers, Rudra and Rustrum, who have a bad reputation because their father was a murderer.

Hans works for Dalton Changon, a prosperous man. Changon’s wife Marlee has recently noticed some disturbing changes in his behavior—a heightened paranoia and a tendency to hallucinate. Then he disappears during a night when there’s a terrible storm.

Marlee receives a threatening note, so she offers Hans a large amount of money to stay on the property overnight as a guard. He accepts, thinking to save a down payment on a house. However, soon he is involved in a torrid affair with Marlee, not even returning to his home when his wife, Shiveta, is hospitalized for an infected foot.

Meanwhile, Krishna, defending himself from some village boys who try to drown Tarak’s dog, injures Dylan Badree. Because Dylan’s father is a policeman, Krishna is put in jail and is only released after Marlee’s intervention. But the boys’ feud begins to go in evermore dangerous directions.

This book contains graphic descriptions of drowned dogs and murdered dogs and the killing of a rabbit. Everyone in it who seems like a good person either becomes bad or is victimized. The language of the book is impressive, but sometimes Hosein uses such obscure words that it seems pretentious. Hosein certainly describes a vivid world, but it’s not a place I wanted to be in.

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