“… never forget it, never – that the world’s greatest fool is a Welshman who trusts an English King.”
FALLS THE SHADOW is a fictionalized biography of“… never forget it, never – that the world’s greatest fool is a Welshman who trusts an English King.”
FALLS THE SHADOW is a fictionalized biography of Simon de Montfort, the 13th century champion of representative government who fought to the death for the Oxford Provisions, the natural descendant of Runnymede’s Magna Carta. De Montfort, now known as the hero of the people and a man ahead of his time who crafted the embryonic structure of a people's parliament, was the bitter enemy of Henry III, a man now known as one of England’s weakest and most incompetent monarchs and a fervent believer in the God-given right of kings to rule their feudal kingdom with complete, unquestioned authority.
As expansive as the historical canvas on which Sharon Kay Penman paints her recreation of 13th century England is - its politics, its landscapes, and its evolution, warfare, social customs, law and marriage, even its dietary proclivities – she keeps a firm and disciplined grip on all of the story lines, all of her characters, and all of the meaningful real-life historical developments. The reader of what is a door-stopper by any definition will never find themselves forced to re-read, or to stop to gather one’s thoughts. The lush drama, the thrill, the gripping re-creation of the real-life historical developments and the heart throbbing romance that Penman has chosen to create between Simon and his wife, Nell, is, to say the least, compelling.
On the horrors of medieval siege warfare, for example:
“The mangonels heaved boulders into the inner bailey, and the trebuchets hurled the dreaded Greek fire, which not even water could extinguish. The castle came rapidly to life; men appeared, yawning and cursing, upon the roof battlements, at the narrow arrow slits … he knew how unpleasant conditions must be for those mewed up within the keep, denied light or fresh air, unable to escape the pungent stink of the latrines, having to ration every swallow of water, to count every mouthful of food.”
Some wry humour on the vagaries of bathing and brothels:
“ ‘I’m just going out to take a piss. It’s sweltering in here; mayhap I’ll take another dip in the lake.’ ”
“ ‘Again?’ She was accustomed to humoring the quirks of her customers, but never had she encountered one so bizarre. In truth, the man was besotted with bathing, even insisting that she take a bath herself ere he’d bed her! Were all lords so daft about soap and water?”
Next up, of course, THE RECKONING, the final entry in Penman’s masterful Welsh Princes trilogy, in which Llewelyn, now reluctantly acknowledged by the English crown as the Prince of Wales, butts heads with Edward I, the willful and much more capable son of the mercurial Henry III. Sharon Kay Penman is a master of the historical fiction genre and her Welsh Princes trilogy deserves a strong recommendation and a place on the shelves of any lover of the genre.
“Dr Lefebre’s interest, his business, is insanity. He is an alienist.”
One supposes it was just time. With no undue ceremony, Lizzie Martin and her Aun“Dr Lefebre’s interest, his business, is insanity. He is an alienist.”
One supposes it was just time. With no undue ceremony, Lizzie Martin and her Aunt Parry, with whom Lizzie resides, have reached the clear mutual agreement that their relationship has passed its best-by date and it is time for Lizzie to move on in her life.
Aunt Parry (with Lizzie’s best virginal interests as a proper young lady at heart, of course) has arranged for her to make the trip out of London to a small forested enclave on the coast. She is to assume the position of paid companion to Lucy Craven, the young married niece of the wealthy Roche family. Mrs Craven was “not long since delivered of her first child but sadly the infant died after only two days.” The proverbial fly in the ointment? Suffering from what seems to be a serious case of post-partum depression (up to and including what the family feels may reach into insanity), Mrs Craven refuses to accept that her child is actually deceased. The family has engaged a prominent “alienist” who operates a nearby asylum to assess the situation.
“Please try not to use the word “loss” when you speak to her … She won’t accept the baby’s dead and if you talk as if it is, she gets very agitated … This is a very – very unhealthy house … That’s my feeling about it all.”
A rather gothic foundation for a mystery, if I may say so, that I thought rather reminiscent of Count Fosco and his dastardly manipulation of Anne Catherick, the mentally frail eponymous heroine of Wilkie Collins’ classic THE WOMAN IN WHITE.
What has to this point in the story merely been a well-staged and cleverly established late Victorian atmospheric character drama is now set to move into high gear as a full out murder mystery. A local ne’er-do-well rat-catcher is brutally murdered, Lucy Craven is found delirious beside the body covered with his blood, and Ben Ross, Lizzie Martin’s erstwhile sweetheart back "home" in London and a promising rising star in the ranks of Scotland Yard’s detectives, is brought in to solve the murder. Well, we all know what Sherlock Holmes would have had to say about that!
Kudos to author Ann Granger for creating a story in which Lizzie Martin’s brainpower and amateur sleuthing abilities are given room to shine without completely overshadowing and embarrassing her detective “partner” Ben Ross. A MORTAL CURIOSITY has everything one would expect of a first rate mystery – atmosphere; solid character development; clever, convincing dialogue; twists, turns, red herrings and clues to help out us baffled readers; plus plenty of interesting commentary on Victorian married life, romantic pre-nuptial relationships and the stuffiness of Victorian social practices and class divisions.
Definitely enjoyable from first to last and easy to recommend to lovers of the historical mystery genre.
The distilled essence of religious zealotry, “We do not reason – we believe, and so do you.”
NORTH AND SOUTH is many things – a melodrama; a treatise oThe distilled essence of religious zealotry, “We do not reason – we believe, and so do you.”
NORTH AND SOUTH is many things – a melodrama; a treatise on the human condition in the swirl of the smog and smoke of Industrial Revolution England in the mid-19th century; a romantic soap opera; a history of the awakening of the labour movement and the development of left-wing socialist attitudes; a character driven family drama; an exploration of the evolution of social structure and the rigidity of class mores; a tale of feminism in the face of unwelcome male attention; and a commentary on the power of religious belief.
Months of self-examination and critical thought had led Pastor Hale to what those afore-mentioned religious zealots would characterize as apostasy. While he hadn’t lost his belief in the existence of a benevolent deity, he had reached the conclusion that his personal convictions were inconsistent with the doctrine of the Church of England and that to remain in his long-term sinecure as pastor of the local parish would be, at the very least, hypocritical. Accordingly he reaches the decision to abandon his living as a pastor in the south of England, to retreat with his wife and daughter to a heavily industrialized town in the north where he is a complete stranger with no background baggage, and to seek a modest income as a private tutor.
The stage is thus set for Gaskell’s culture-clash period piece and the off-again off-again (no mistake … I wrote it the way I meant it!) story of the romancing of Margaret Hale, Pastor Hale’s daughter and the erstwhile feminist of the piece who obviously can’t make up her mind as to which shackles of society she cares to set aside and which she considers continue to bind and direct her behaviour.
My 4-star rating is qualified, at best, and must be considered as something more properly on the order of 3½ stars rounded up. The story is interesting and informative throughout but the plot fails to reach compelling or gripping at least half of the time. In fact, truth be told, the story sometimes even drifted into the realm of a struggle and I had to force myself to reach the decision to finish. And that ending just didn’t work for me. It seemed like Gaskell simply decided to set her pen down and wrap up the story. (view spoiler)[Whatever happened for example to Henry Lennox’s obvious machinations to use his legal assistance to worm his way into Hale’s heart?? Her decision to give in, at long last, to Thornton’s overtures must have sent him positively ballistic!! (hide spoiler)]
Well it is what it is. Been there, done that, glad I did it and I’ll definitely read some of Gaskell’s other notable works. WIVES AND DAUGHTERS and RUTH sit on my TBR shelves awaiting my attention.
He “always was a bit too clever. Trouble is, he wasn’t clever enough to pretend to be a little less clever.”
If a member of the Victorian gentry, the He “always was a bit too clever. Trouble is, he wasn’t clever enough to pretend to be a little less clever.”
If a member of the Victorian gentry, the upper levels of the moneyed class, were alive today to read Anne Perry’s PARAGON WALK, I wonder if they would appreciate the extent to which they were parodied, satirized, critiqued, and downright vilified. The levels of class snobbery, self-righteousness, self-entitlement, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism were, to put it mildly, off the charts. Oh, to be sure, there actually was a murder (a few actually … in fact there was even a rather vicious rape of a young woman) and a mystery for Charlotte and Thomas Pitt to chew on and solve but I think those minor details took distant second place to Ms Perry’s brilliant characterization of life with hereditary money in Victorian England.
On the tightly controlled norms of behaviour, for example:
“Without the discipline of work, they had invented the discipline of etiquette, and it had become just as ruthless a master.”
The undeniable xenophobia:
“The Frenchman … was there, if indeed he were French? Perhaps he came from one of the African colonies? He was far too smooth, too wry and subtle to be from the great wind-and-snow-driven plains of Canada.”
Victims of sexual assault and rape were seen as flirts or, worse yet, sluts and women of loose virtue, who were themselves to blame for the attack by virtue of their flagrantly sexualized behaviour. Men? Well, it was clear that men would be men and would behave no differently than was expected of them!
And a most shocking conversation on the Church of England’s Christian version of anti-Semitism:
“Who is he?” … “Why – he’s a Jew!” she said “Yes, so you said.” … “Do you approve of Jews, Mrs. Pitt?” “Wasn’t Christ one?” “Really, Mrs Pitt!” Lady Tamworth shook with outrage. “I accept that the younger generation has different standards from our own … but I cannot tolerate blasphemy. Really, I can’t!” “That is not blasphemy, Lady Tamworth … Christ was a Jew.” “Christ was God, Mrs Pitt,” Lady Tamworth said icily. “And God is most certainly not a Jew!”
Theological considerations aside, I thought that quite a jaw-dropping bit of conversation.
But, but … what about the fact that PARAGON WALK is a historical murder mystery? Well, as I said, the murder was there and it did get solved satisfactorily but that story definitely took second place to the superbly character driven description of Victorian society and morality.
A story in a triangle cornered by puzzling mystery, compelling drama blended with a helping of melodrama, and prize winning Canadian literary fiction!A story in a triangle cornered by puzzling mystery, compelling drama blended with a helping of melodrama, and prize winning Canadian literary fiction!
Solace is a typical northern Ontario town. Home base to millions of mosquitoes in countless lakes; a year comprised of two seasons – winter and July; surrounded by marsh, swamp, rivers, and boreal forest with only one road in and one road out – the opposite sides of the same road that eventually wends its way south to Toronto; fun evenings out and dating restricted to watching the hockey games at the local rink, shopping at the Hudson’s Bay Store or asking the waitress at the local café for the daily special with a plate of pie à la mode to close out the evening festivities!
A reader’s natural inclination might be to yawn and wonder what possible stories might be told about such a dreary location. But Mary Lawson has prepared a novel that weaves and braids three first person narratives into perspectives that overlap each other in real time and unfold into an absolutely brilliant, breathtaking, heartwarming and heartbreaking, humorous, evocative and thoroughly compelling tale of down home Canadian drama that never drifts away from credible realism for even an instant. The first narrator is Clara, the youngest daughter in a family and the younger sibling of a missing rebellious teen. The second is a recently divorced man and the new owner of a house gifted to him by a woman who knew and loved him when he was a child. That woman, Elizabeth, is the third narrator, telling her story and her memories of a thirty year old crime from her death bed in a hospital where she knows she will succumb to terminal heart disease much sooner than later.
Covering themes of love, death, chronic infertility, child abduction, teen rebellion and runaways, grief, and remorse, A TOWN CALLED SOLACE was a pleasure to read and is easy to recommend as a 5-star winner and one of my favourites of the year.
Based on the stunning true story of a mission to liberate Jewish walking dead from a train headed for Auschwitz!
Pam Jenoff’s first novel THE LOST GIRBased on the stunning true story of a mission to liberate Jewish walking dead from a train headed for Auschwitz!
Pam Jenoff’s first novel THE LOST GIRLS OF PARIS was based on the British government’s conception of the idea of a corps of female spies and operatives who, in contrast to the men, could blend in and operate undercover much more easily. Based on true events, THE LOST GIRLS OF PARIS was a gripping fictionalization of the stories of twelve of these women, their recruitment (and the predictable misogynistic opposition to the idea), their training, their friendships, their missions, their valor, their betrayal and ultimately, their failure to return home to their families and loved ones. I was thrilled to offer that novel a rating of 5 stars when I read it earlier this year and rank it as one of my top ten favourites for 2023.
So I doubt it would shock anyone to hear that my expectations for CODE NAME SAPPHIRE were high, perhaps unfairly so … but it was what it was!
Set in Berlin and Nazi-occupied Belgium during World War II, CODE NAME SAPPHIRE is an account (once again fictionalized, of course) of three courageous women and one man involved with the operation of an expansive resistance cell in Belgium and the “underground railroad” charged with the smuggling of downed British airmen through enemy occupied territory to the coast of the English Channel and home to England to fly and fight again!
Hannah Martel, a Jewish political caricaturist and cartoonist in Berlin operating under the pseudonym Maxim was forced to flee Germany when the Nazis discovered her real name. Her entry as a refugee to the USA, having been refused,
“The price of saving a ship full of Jews was too much for even the president of the United States to bear.”
Hannah, was forced to return to Belgium and seek dangerous asylum with her cousin Lily Abels and her husband, respected as a local medical man and surgeon. On an early morning walk (under the dubious safety of early morning pre-dawn darkness, of course) Hannah met Matteo, a local man who, with his sister Micheline, was involved with the resistance cell (code name, - you guessed it, of course – Sapphire!)
And, at that point, Jenoff floors it, the pedal goes to the metal, and CODE NAME SAPPHIRE becomes a full bore high speed genre combination of historical fiction, romance, and espionage thriller. Readers who enjoyed THE LOST GIRLS OF PARIS will find plenty to ponder and enjoy – anti-Semitism, Holocaust history, courage, bravery, heroism, friendship, family loyalty, and much, much more.
But, for my money, the breathtaking reality of the historical fiction elements of this story lost out to literary license’s overuse of coincidence, convoluted romance, and decisions being made that probably would not have been made in a war-time environment governed by the simple necessity to fight and to survive.
CODE NAME SAPPHIRE was readable and enjoyable to be sure but it just didn’t have the stunning impact that washed over me when I read THE LOST GIRLS OF PARIS.
”The church had never approved of human interference in disease …”
“Having held for centuries that prayer and holy relics were God’s method of healing ”The church had never approved of human interference in disease …”
“Having held for centuries that prayer and holy relics were God’s method of healing and anything else was satanic.”
Dateline, Cambridge, England, 1171:
Four children have been murdered. The brutal nature of their wounds is suggestive of crucifixion and blame by the Catholic townsfolk falls quickly (and all too readily) onto their Jewish neighbours. The wealthy Cambridge Jewish community (being responsible for a significant contribution to Henry II’s exchequer income) is interned and placed under official royal protection. It is Henry II’s hope that forensic investigation from the best that current medical science has to offer will exonerate the Jews and mitigate the virulent anti-Semitism that the event has unleashed. That best of class is a young doctor from Sicily, an expert anatomist and medical detective who happens (God forbid … literally in the minds of the zealous hidebound papist Catholics of the day!) to be a woman. A woman with skills like that runs the dire risk of being accused of witchcraft and being condemned to a painful execution. Her success in finding the real murderer is far from an assured conclusion!
MISTRESS OF THE ART OF DEATH is an enthralling novel of historical suspense; a totally satisfying (and very much less than cozy) medieval medical mystery; an engrossing, informative, rich history of 12th century medical science, the Crusades, and daily English life of that time; plus a disturbing reminder of the extent to which the papacy and Catholic doctrine dominated that daily life and generated virulent anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and endemic misogyny. A selection of examples will serve to illustrate the power of Ariana’s depiction of the era.
For example:
“Just then the clang of the monastery bells sounding for nones clashed with the call to prayer from the muezzin of mosques and fought with the voice of synagogue cantors, all of the rising up the hill to assault the ears … in an untidy blast of major and minor keys.”
And on the undue influence of the Church in holding back the advances of scientific research and medical treatments:
“The church … allowed treatment to be carried out in the monasteries and, perforce, tolerated lay doctors as long as they did not overstep the mark, but women, being intrinisically sinful, were necessarily banned … and they had to take care not to be accused of witchcraft.”
On Abrahamic religion’s common ground of devout misogyny:
“… the three great religions were at least united when it came to the inferiority of her sex. Indeed, a devout Jew at his prayers thanked God every day that he had not been born a woman.”
And, on the long term effect of the Crusades and the white western European Catholic’s outrageous persecution of the Jews and attempted genocide of the Saracens:
“They’d slaughtered Greeks, Armenians, and Copts of an older Christianity than their own because they thought they were heathens. Jews [and] Arabs, who were versed in Greek and Roman philosophy and advanced in the mathematics and medicine and astronomy that the Semitic races had given to the West, went down before men who could neither read nor write and saw no reason to.” They inspired “such a hatred amonst Arabs who used to hate each other that they’re combining the greatest force against Christianity the world has ever seen … called Islam.”
“Homelessness, persecution, degradation, attempted genocide, all these things had been visited on the Jewish people – who clung even more tenaciously to their Jewishness. During the First Crusade, Christian armies, filled with religious zeal and liquor, seeing it as their evangelic duty to convert such Jews they came across, had presented them with the alternative of baptism or death. The answer had been thousands of dead Jews.”
Indeed, when one looks at the current state of affairs in Israel and the Gaza strip, not to mention Islamic theocratic hotbeds such as Iran, one wonders whether the world has any hope of ridding itself of the violence and ills created by organized religion in all of its incarnations.
MISTRESS OF THE ART OF DEATH is unquestionably a literary masterpiece which I add, without the slightest hesitation, to my Top Ten list for the year. An easy strong recommendation for lovers of the historical fiction genre. I might add that the sequel, A MURDEROUS PROCESSION awaits my attention and I’m eagerly looking forward to it.
“A lie goes halfway round the world while the truth is getting its boots on.”
NEVER is a masterpiece. No doubt about it! A compelling, gripping, breath“A lie goes halfway round the world while the truth is getting its boots on.”
NEVER is a masterpiece. No doubt about it! A compelling, gripping, breathtakingly credible, terrifying, provocative, heart-stopping, and predictably open-ended version of a concatenation of incidents, confrontations, political decisions, scenarios, sabre-rattling, threats and retaliations, and globally dispersed events that lead to the beginning of the use of nuclear weapons in what would certainly escalate to WW III. At the close of the novel, the reader is left with no doubt as to what is coming and will almost certainly ask themselves whether there would actually be any historians or history books who would remain to analyze the events that brought about the horror!
On a side note – for me it was an open question whether Follett was making mock and lampooning politics in the US or portraying the danger that current right-wing neo-fascist and obstructionist knee-jerk Republicans pose to a fragile world peace. It doesn’t take much knowledge of the US political stage to know who a female president with a philandering husband and a demagogue blowhard male opposition candidate for the opposing party actually represent.
But I digress.
The bottom line is that NEVER has definitely been added to my Top 10 of 2023 list and, even more notably, to my short list of lifetime favourite novels. Obviously, recommended wholeheartedly without reservation for your reading enjoyment.
I’m generally not a fan of the horror genre. That and my brother’s firmly stated dislike of Stephen King’s work Yes, Virginia, there IS a multiverse!
I’m generally not a fan of the horror genre. That and my brother’s firmly stated dislike of Stephen King’s work (our tastes seem reasonably closely aligned) kept me from trying anything by King for until I was firmly ensconced in my eighth decade of reading. Other than serendipity and finding a free copy in one of our Local Free Library boxes, I can’t imagine what prompted me to start with an immense chunkster like 11/22/63! But start it I did … and my reaction is hands down “WOW”! 11/22/63 is a page turner for every one of its 1100 pages.
If somebody suggested to me that it was possible to create a novel that dumped historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, dystopia, alternate history, and romance into a genre blender to create a credible and completely compelling novel that would have me holding my breath through the length of a 1000+ page doorstopper, I would in turn have suggested that they get their head read. 11/22/63 fits the bill.
A time portal or an alternate world portal is a well-worn fantasy trope. Indeed a reader of fantasy and science fiction would not raise many eyebrows if they suggested it was over-used. But once Jake Epping, a high school English teacher in small town Maine steps through a time portal and finds himself in a very racist, very misogynist, very McCarthy-esque anti-Communist mid-20th century USA, Stephen King’s awesome story-telling ability will carry you away.
The pathos in King’s description of an essay from one of Epping’s students describing his father’s sledge-hammer slaughter of their entirely family was heartbreaking. The heartwarming evolution of Epping’s love for fellow teacher Sadie Dunhill (in the past, mind you) would put to shame any efforts by any romance author you care to name. There’s a fabulously clever twist. Epping’s presence in the past invokes the well known butterfly effect and changes his subsequent future BUT any return visit to the past resets everything to where it was before his first step through the portal. Now THAT would put a smile on any successful sci-fi or fantasy author’s face. The new past and alternate future history created by Epping’s interference in the events in 1963 Dallas is disturbing and completely terrifying.
Taking a cue from Alfred Hitchcock’s working manuals and his perennial cameo appearances in his movies, King manages to squeeze in any number of sneaky references to Pennywise, the evil clown of IT fame. (I’m betting there were other references to previous novels sprinkled throughout the story but – as I said – I haven’t read any other King novels so, if they were there, they went right over my head).
Did I say that I hadn’t read any other King novels? That’s a situation I plan to change very quickly.
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