Tag: fiction

Women’s Prize shortlist book review – “Good Girl” by Aria Aber

It was good to see the Women’s Prize garnering lots of attention again this year – it really is coming into its own as a literary event. The non-fiction winner, Rachel Clarke’s The Story of a Heart was covered in a piece on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the morning after, while the fiction winner, The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, was not even mentioned. There was a bit of press interest however in the author’s acceptance speech comments about being intersex and the challenges she has faced throughout her life as a result of that, mostly the prejudice she has encountered. She also advocated for transgender people in the speech. It is worth watching and you can see it here. I do always feel the Women’s Prize ceremony is a little bit scrappy – surely they can get a bigger venue, or more organised stage appearances!

I am not sure I will read The Story of a Heart – whilst it has been described as uplifting and life-affirming, I think I might find it too emotionally challenging. It tells the true story of a heart transplant from a nine year-old girl, Kiera, who had died in a car accident, to a young boy Max, facing imminent heart failure due to a viral infection, and who needed a new heart to survive. The book is about the journey of both families.

I reviewed The Safekeep when it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize last year. I enjoyed the book very much, but I did not feel it was the finest book on the list. The Women’s Prize on the shortlist was somewhat different in character. I have so far read three of the other five books and whilst it has not been my favourite so far, I can see why it was chosen.

Good Girl by Aria Aber

I am going to start my reviews of the shortlist with Good Girl by Aria Aber. I think I am right in saying that Aria Aber is the youngest of the shortlisted authors and this is her debut novel. Aber is based in the US but was born and raised in Germany to Afghan immigrant parents and therein lies the rub for me – the novel reflects many of the details of her own upbringing. The central character Nila is a young woman, an art student, a talented photographer, but who has gone off the rails somewhat. Her parents were refugees from Afghanistan and have struggled to integrate in Berlin. The family lives in a run-down suburb of the city in a poorly maintained apartment block with hundreds of other immigrants who are not welcomed by the locals. The spectre of Nazism is never far away from their lived experience. Nila’s mother is dead, passing away suddenly as a middle aged woman who never fulfilled her potential; she was medically trained but her status was never accepted by the German authorities. Nila’s father simply does not know how to “be” in this society that is so alien to him, where his status as the male head of the household is neither recognised or valued, and where he is unable to get work fitting his standing. His outlet is to bully his wife and daughter.

Amidst all this ‘othering’, the unhappy home life and prejudice at school, Nila finds relief in Berlin’s underground music scene. In the clubs she is able to forget her Afghan heritage (her parents told her she should be proud, but she just feels shame and wants to hide it) and her problems at school. Instead she can lose herself in techno music, dancing, drugs and sex. On one of these nights she meets Marlowe Woods, an American writer, somewhat older than her, still dining out on past success but whose star is very much descending. His disillusion finds common cause with Nila’s hopelessness and the two strike up an intense but complicated relationship. 

I struggled to find very much to like about any of the characters in the novel. Nila is a vulnerable and troubled young woman and it is clear to see why she behaves the way she does. It is also a difficult read in the sense that the immigrant experience does not seem to have improved and the challenges of integration affect young people the most. I found it difficult to work out with Nila, what was a kind of ‘nihilism of youth’ and what could be attributed to the specifics of her situation. Parts of the novel felt like they were an angry young person who was simply rebelling and for me that was not particularly interesting. I did not like Marlowe at all, I thought he was just a creep, and I also felt the ending was a little weak. 

So, hmm, not my favourite.

I have also read The Persians, which has acquired an additional resonance for me in the light of recent events in Iran, and I felt, as far as the immigrant experience goes, this was far more cleverly and subtly done. I’ll review that next time. 

Book review – “Alias Grace” by Margaret Atwood

I have had a copy of Alias Grace on my bookshelf for years; my copy might even date back to when the paperback version came out in 1996. But, like so many of the books I own, it was some time before I got around to reading it! I watched the mini-series available on Netflix (it was made in 2017) during the Covid lockdown, I think, and thoroughly enjoyed it so I suppose I felt I didn’t need to read the book after that, but I came back to it recently and am so glad I have finally properly honoured this incredible piece of writing. 

Full disclosure, I am a huge admirer of Margaret Atwood and will probably never dislike anything she has written. She is surely one of the greatest authors alive, with countless awards and prizes to her name, including two Bookers and a PEN lifetime achievement award. I’m not sure why the Pulitzer or Nobel prizes have eluded her – surely The Handmaid’s Tale must be a candidate for both of these. The first book of hers that I read was The Blind Assassin, which won her her first Booker Prize in 2000. It was also the very first audiobook I ever listened to, on tape in my first ever little car! The job I had at the time involved a 90 mile round trip drive three days a week and my husband bought it for me to help pass the time. I felt that book was one of the most brilliant things I had read in years; my first child was a toddler so I did not have a lot of time for reading in my life at that stage – at least not adult reading! 

Alias Grace preceded The Blind Assassin. In my opinion, the later book is better, but you do get the sense of an author rising to the peak of her literary powers and experimenting with moving between time periods (which she also does in The Handmaid’s Tale, of course). Alias Grace is the story of a double murder and a young woman convicted for the crime. Grace Marks was a young Irish immigrant to Canada and after the death of her mother (on board the ship) she leaves her drunken abusive father and, much to her guilt and shame, her younger siblings, to get a job as a servant girl. She finds a position with Thomas Kinnear, an unmarried gentleman who is having an illicit affair with his housekeeper, and Grace’s immediate supervisor, Nancy Montgomery. 

After the couple are murdered in brutal circumstances, Grace is convicted of the crime along with James McDermott, who also worked for Kinnear. McDermott escapes with Grace, but the pair are soon captured, convicted and sentenced to hang. Grace’s sentence is later commuted to life in prison following appeals by a group of well-meaning supporters who believe she was merely an accessory to McDermott’s wicked plan. She is eventually allowed to work as a servant in the home of the prison governor, because she is a docile and obedient inmate. Her supporters eventually arrange for a psychiatrist, Dr Simon Jordan from America, to interview her over a period of time and to produce a report which they hope will help to secure her release. 

Atwood uses these interviews to tell us the story; Grace gives a full account of her life to Dr Jordan, from the beginning, her early childhood in northern Ireland, to her mother’s death, and finally her experiences working for Mr Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery and the murders themselves. For the reader, the question becomes, is Grace a reliable witness? This is a dilemma Dr Jordan finds himself in too. Over the months he spends time with her, he also gets drawn into her world and the patient/doctor boundary becomes blurred. 

The book is based on real events – these murders actually took place and Grace Marks was a real woman convicted of the crime in mid-19th century Canada. At the end of the novel, the author gives an account of the facts she has gleaned from contemporaneous and historical sources. No-one really knows exactly what happened; the reader, like others who have investigated this grisly crime, must make up their own mind. But Atwood does not leave her readers dissatisfied (at least not this one!) – she leaves you with a question. And in her subtle portrayal of Grace, she leaves you with enough space to draw whatever conclusion you want. Or to leave you as perplexed as, it seems, everyone else has been.

I recommend this book highly – it’s a really significant literary achievement. 

Audiobook review – “Doppelganger: A trip into the mirror world” by Naomi Klein

My last post on here was about this year’s Women’s Prize shortlists, both the fiction and non-fiction, so it seems fitting that my next review should be the title that won the non-fiction award last year, Naomi Klein’s memoir Doppelganger: A trip into the mirror world. This book was written largely during the 2020 lockdown when the Covid pandemic swept the globe and charts Klein’s reflections on how she is regularly confused with Naomi Wolf. Like Klein, Wolf is associated with writings on feminist and political topics, has published a number of books, is a white Jewish-American woman and of a similar age. Their trajectories began to diverge, however, when Wolf began to be associated with Covid-19 conspiracy theories and allied herself with the anti-vaccination movement. This book is more than just an exploration of a peculiar social phenomenon, however, and Klein takes a deep dive into the background to this movement, its association with other right-wing culture wars, the MAGA movement and the power of social media generally. She also reflects honestly and powerfully on some of her own assumptions and life choices.

I thought I had a few Naomi Klein books on my bookshelf, but it turns out that I have a few Naomi Wolf books on my bookshelf (The Beauty Myth, 1991, Promiscuities, 1997) including a signed copy of her much-maligned first edition of her 2019 book Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalisation of Love.I saw Wolf speaking at the Hay Festival that year and found her charismatic and engaging. The book was later condemned after it became apparent that poor research meant that the basis of the thesis that underpins it was false. (It is possible to hear a recording on YouTube of an interview she did with a journalist pointing out her error, and it’s excruciating.) The Covid-19 pandemic followed soon after of course, but the career catastrophe of Outrages seems to mark the beginning of Wolf’s descent into the dark recesses of the internet and some dramatic changes to her worldview. 

It seems that Naomi Klein has been confused with Naomi Wolf for most of her career, an irritation but a mostly benign one, until that is Wolf published Outrages and was publicly humiliated, and then became infamous as a vaccine-sceptic, conspiracy theorist and darling of the alt-right (she has developed a close association with Steve Bannon). It became increasingly unsettling for liberal left-leaning feminist Klein to be confused with such a person, whom she describes as her Doppelganger. 

Klein delves into Wolf’s early life and career to attempt to chart her intellectual evolution and doing so enables her to spot social and political trends that have beset developed nations across the world in recent years. She explores some of the darker recesses of the internet to try and understand how so many people could be influenced and convinced by conspiracy theories that have so little or perhaps no evidential underpinning. In doing so she draws some lessons about the influence of the online world and social media in particular and its power to disseminate dis- and misinformation. 

I listened to this book on audio, read by the author herself, and her sincerity comes across powerfully, as well as her deep sorrow. As well as diving into what she calls the “mirror world” she holds up a mirror to herself, reflecting on her own assumptions and possible prejudices. There were times when I felt quite depressed, despondent and deflated listening to this book. I found myself asking – how on earth did we get like this? Things don’t look like improving any time soon. At the end, however, she writes of her own activism, hope and belief in the necessity of fighting for change, not letting the dark forces that would destroy us win.

I am not sure what I will do with my Naomi Wolf books. The early titles I read so long ago that I recall very little about them. As for Outrages, I will probably keep it for posterity. I remember starting to read it whilst I was at Hay, but did not get very far (the bookshop receipt is still slotted in at page 24!). I must not have been particularly motivated to continue.

I do, however, recommend Naomi Klein’s excellent book Doppelganger which was a worthy winner of the 2024 Women’s Prize for non-fiction and is deeply relevant today. 

Book review – “Night Watch” by Jayne Anne Phillips

Do you ever find yourself seemingly out of step with the general consensus and wondering “is it me?”, thinking you must have missed something? I have had that experience twice recently. Last week my husband and I went to see the newly released film Black Bag, a spy thriller set in London, and starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender as a married couple working for the British secret service. Now, I love both these actors and was excited to see the movie, especially as Fassbender seems to be very selective about what he does these days (his last movie, The Killer, released two years ago was superb). But, honestly, it was quite mediocre. Disappointing. It was short, poorly edited, the characters were two dimensional, the plot opaque and the script weak. I read one lukewarm newspaper review but, apparently, reception by critics has been largely positive – according to Rotten Tomatoes it received an average rating of 8.2/10. I’m baffled. 

I have a similar feeling about Night Watch, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Jayne Anne Phillips. It was my book club choice for last month and I had not completed it by the time we met. I just found it quite slow and never felt motivated to read it. I almost gave up but my friends convinced me it was worth finishing. Set in the 1870s in the United States it follows the fortunes of a twelve year old girl ConaLee and her mother Eliza, a woman who has been deeply traumatised by sexual abuse and has been mute for many months. Eliza has born three children by her abuser, a boy and further boy and girl twins. ‘Papa’ is a former civil war soldier, who fought on the Confederate side, and has been brutalised by his experience. When Eliza is living alone with ConaLee he and a fellow runaway come across their small homestead and he rapes Eliza for the first time. She fights back as best she can and he goes away but he returns and this time makes the homestead, and Eliza, his own.

ConaLee’s father is a man who grew up with Eliza in her family home. He was a servant, an orphan taken under the wing of another servant, mother figure Dearbhla, an Irish immigrant and a strong and resourceful woman who will become vital to Eliza and ConaLee. Eliza and the boy fall in love, for which he will be severely punished, but eventually run away together and Eliza gives birth to their daughter ConaLee. He then goes off to fight for the union side in the civil war and is lost to them.

When we meet ConaLee and her mother, Papa is taking them to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia. Having grown tired of the family he now has and Eliza’s state of mind, he plans to abandon them there. The asylum is a forward thinking institution run by Dr Story, nephew of the founder, who, based on his Methodist religion, had very specific ideas about how to treat the mentally ill – with exercise, routine, fresh air, good food and talking therapy. 

The book then sets out the back stories of each of the characters and the plot of the novel becomes clearer. It explores the terrible effects of the war, particularly on the women and is detailed and graphic in some of the scenes. A large part of the novel also explores Dr Story’s philosophy behind the methods used at the asylum. It is a place of peace and tranquility where inmates and staff are treated with respect and kindness, and where Eliza finally might be able to recover from her trauma in a place of safety. 

I did find the book lacked momentum, however. I usually like non-linear time frames, but I found the jumping back and forth between characters and life stages, not so much confusing as frustrating because it meant the pace was constantly shifting. I also found there was very little connection between outside and inside the asylum. I did not really see the point of knowing so much about the methods in the asylum. I’m not sure what that setting added to the story other than that it was a plot device. Yes, it was a place of safety for people who were damaged and previously unsafe, but it also had its vulnerabilities, as will become clear. I liked the character of Dearbhla, but, again, she seemed under-used – I’m not really sure what she was for. And, for me, the story was just not strong enough. And I was really annoyed by the omission of quotation marks to indicate dialogue – why? It made it tricky to read sometimes.

The critics loved this book, mostly, and in addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize, it was shortlisted for a number of other awards, so, as with Black Bag, I am left wondering what I am missing. I note that the New York Times took a less positive view which makes me feel less of an outsider! I’d love to know what others thought of this book. I would struggle to recommend it, if I’m honest.

Books out this spring

It really does feel that at long last there is a bit of a change in the air. I am spring cleaning my bookshelves at the moment – always a very challenging task. Books that I have forgotten I owned, books I might want to re-read (someday!) and books that I am ready to let go of, either because they deserve to find a new home or because I am accepting I will almost certainly never get around to them! And I need to make some space for the new titles coming out this season. A few have caught my eye and I thought I would share them with you.

I have been enjoying a lot of non-fiction in recent months and I find that I feel more excited by this genre’s new books than the fiction, to be honest.

Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green

A few years ago I read a book about tuberculosis by science writer Kathryn Lougheed and found it absolutely fascinating. My paternal grandfather died of the disease in London in 1940 just days before his second child (my dad) was born, and I was drawn to this book as I was trying to find out more about my family history. This book comes at a flexion point I think, as I was reading in the newspaper just this week of fears that cases of this terrible condition are likely to rise in the coming months and years following the withdrawal of US aid to developing countries. In our globalised world, we should not expect to be able to contain the disease within national boundaries (as we found with the Covid 19 pandemic) so it will be no surprise to see cases increase in the global north.

Story of a Murder by Hallie Rubenhold

Hallie Rubenhold caught the attention of the literary world with her bestselling book The Five about the women who were the victims of the infamous Victoria London serial killer Jack the Ripper. Her new book, released at the end of March, gives the same treatment to another famous murder case. In 1910, a London doctor, Hawley Crippen, murdered his wife Belle Elmore, a music hall performer. In this book, Rubenhold applies her research and detective skills to uncovering the story of how a group of Belle’s friends helped bring the killer to justice, and shady associates who may also have had a role. The book has been highly praised and its publication is much anticipated.

Maternity Service by Emma Barnett

I am an avid listener to the BBC Radio 4 morning news programme Today, and Emma Barnett is one of its main presenters. She is a broadcasting tour de force and made her name with some spectacular interviews on Radio 5 Live, and changed the face of another Radio 4 stalwart show Woman’s Hour. She is a campaigner for many feminist causes and is a high profile mother of young children who speaks passionately about the challenges of juggling motherhood and a career. As I work with new mothers I am very interested in what she has to say on the topic.

So, that’s the non-fiction, what of the fiction?

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Published just a week or so ago and immediately longlisted for the Women’s Prize, this is the much anticipated new novel from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, her first in a decade. I love her work – her book Half of a Yellow Sun about the Biafran war is one of my favourite books of all time – and have reviewed her recent non-fiction books on here. This will be top of my TBR list for spring.

Flesh by David Szalay

Szalay’s 2016 novel All That Man Is was one of the first books I reviewed on this blog, after it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize that year. It wasn’t my favourite on the shortlist but I did enjoy it and found it interesting to read men’s perspectives on life’s dilemmas. Flesh follows the life of a young Hungarian boy as he moves from his small town to the ranks of the super-rich in London. With so much toxic masculinity in the world just now I feel this might be an important read.

The House of Barbary by Isabelle Schuler

This is said to be a feminist re-telling of the legend of Bluebeard which interests me as this myth has crossed my path a couple of times in recent years, also as a feminist re-telling. First in the non-fiction book Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, and second in Angela Carter’s collection of short stories The Bloody Chamber. The book is a re-imagining of a number of brutal myths and the opening story (which gives the book its title) concerns the Bluebeard tale. I have not heard of Isabelle Schuler so I am interested to read her treatment of this story.

So, that lot should keep me occupied for a little while!

What books are you looking forward to reading this spring?

Audiobook review – “The Women” by Kristin Hannah

This was one of my book club’s favourite reads of 2024. It had not crossed my radar at all (one of my friends suggested it) but was a New York Times bestseller last year. The novel is broad in scope and while the central theme of the novel is the much-overlooked role of women nurses in the Vietnam war, it is essentially a story of a life and draws in other themes and events in its sweeping timescale.

The central character is Frances ‘Frankie’ McGrath, whom we first meet as a young woman from an affluent background, a military family, in southern California. It is the 1960s and the expectation is that young Frances will do her duty and make a good marriage. There is a family party to celebrate the fact that her brother (with whom she is very close) has enlisted and is about to go off to Vietnam to fight for his country, following in the footsteps of his father and many other men in the family. There is a wall of honour in the family home covered with portraits of the various family members who served in the military. At this stage, the war still seems like an honourable endeavour for America, taking a moral stand against communism.

An intelligent woman with little else to do, Frances decides to follow in her brother’s footsteps and enlist, as a nurse. She expects, rather naively, that her parents will be proud of her, but their reaction is furious and ashamed. This is clearly not the sort of thing the women in the family do. Under a cloud of antipathy, Frances undergoes her short period of training before being transferred to a field hospital in Vietnam. Frances’s sheltered life has done nothing to prepare her for what she will face there. Soon after her arrival she experiences her first emergency with casualties being brought in from the field, horrific death and injury, inclement weather, power cuts, scarce resources. It is a very rude awakening and Frances spends her first few days in complete shock. She is supported by the two women friends she makes there, fellow nurses Barb and Ethel. 

Frances undergoes a rapid transformation – not least from Frances to Frankie – she grows up, she learns to drink, smoke, fall in love and adapt to her new role and wholly new environment. The portrayal of the war and the conditions is visceral and the author handles it deftly. Writers and film makers do nig hold back on the horrors of war nowadays, as they might once have done, and the very particular horrors of Vietnam have been thoroughly explored, but it bears repeating. It is far in the past now (so much so that this book is considered historical fiction) but it is good to be reminded of the dangers inherent in hubristic over-confidence and who ultimately pays the price for the failure.

Beyond the war, when Frankie returns to the US, it becomes a more personal story. She battles with romantic betrayal, rejection by her parents, the loss of her beloved brother and denial by the American public of her part in the war. This is Kristin Hannah’s central mission with this book – for years, the role of women was completely overlooked. Most did not know that women had served and what they had been through. When Frankie returns and finds that the US public has turned against the war and that the pacifists partly blame the service personnel, she takes up the cause of veterans. Disillusioned, lost and alone we follow Frankie’s recovery and rehabilitation as she searches for new meaning in her life.

This book has been widely praised although some reviewers have described it as overly-long. I did feel that the second half of the book was a little more laboured and lacked the force of the Vietnam sections. Yes, there is much to say about the way veterans were treated both by American society and by their government when they came home, but this story is separate from the ‘women’s role’ that was the opening rationale for the story. That said, I did enjoy the book, it does stretch credulity a little, but it is a page-turner nonetheless.

Recommended.

Book review – “Sepulchre” by Kate Mosse

I read this book over the New Year holiday and I thought it would be fitting to publish my review today as the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist has just been published. Only a handful of the books on the list have crossed my radar – Elizabeth Strout seems to be a regular on prize shortlists at the moment and her latest book Tell Me Everything has made the longlist. Yael van der Wouden’s book The Safekeep, which I reviewed after it was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize is also there. But perhaps most interestingly, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s long-anticipated new novel Dream Count has made the longlist – the book was only published today – that’s timing!

Kate Mosse was of course the founder of the Women’s Prize (formerly the Orange Prize) which is now in its 30th year. She is an extraordinary woman. Labyrinth, the first book in the Languedoc trilogy, of which this book, Sepulchre, is also a part, was published twenty years ago and Mosse is currently touring with a one-woman show, sharing her secrets about the book.

So, what of Sepulchre? I was eager to get to this novel having so thoroughly enjoyed Labyrinth. The third instalment, Citadel, is on my TBR list. Labyrinth has been an international bestseller, translated into more than forty languages. Sepulchre is a little less well known, I think, and the novels can be read and enjoyed in isolation, although for me, having read Labyrinth, deepened my understanding of the themes explored in the second novel. 

Sepulchre follows a similar structural premise to Labyrinth – two women whose lives are intertwined in ways that we as readers do not know about but which will emerge as the narrative progresses. The author tells their stories in parallel, using the technique of the contemporary character uncovering details about the life of her distant predecessor. In this novel, the two women are Leonie Vernier, from the late 19th century, and Meredith Martin from the present day.

Leonie is a young woman living in Paris with her mother and brother. There is a sense of threat in the air, both from social and political upheavals of the time (one of the opening scenes is of a violent uprising in a theatre) and because of some mysterious business that Anatole, Leonie’s brother, is involved in. A shady character, Victor Constant, enters their lives and it is clear that he bears some ill will towards the family, particularly Anatole. When it is suggested that the siblings go to Rennes-le-Bains (a town about 50km south of Carcassonne, which is where the connections with Labyrinth begin) to visit their widowed aunt, a young woman who was married to their late uncle, it is in large part to enable Anatole to evade the attention of Victor Constant. 

In Rennes-le-Bains, at the remote mansion the Domaine de la Cade, the siblings enjoy a relaxed time with Isolde their aunt and begin to experience a quieter life away from Paris. Leonie explores the grounds of the Domaine although she experiences a disturbing supernatural event in an abandoned chapel in a densely wooded area in the grounds (further links to Labyrinth). She paints, sews, explores the town and makes friends with some of the local gentry, including Audric Baillard, an intellectual and someone to whom Leonie is curiously drawn. Audric, of course, appeared in both time periods in Labyrinth. 

The modern-day character is Meredith Martin, an American writer, teacher and musician, who arrives in France ostensibly on a research trip for a book she is writing about Claude Debussy (whom we meet earlier in the novel as he is a neighbour of the Vernier family in Paris), but also in search of information about a French musician ancestor, about whom she knows very little. She was adopted after her young and troubled mother died. Whilst in Paris she has a tarot reading which takes her to Rennes-le-Bains. She stays at a country house hotel (the former Domaine de la Cade) and becomes enmeshed in the personal family difficulties of Hal, whose father has recently died in mysterious circumstances, and whose uncle now stands to control the entire business of the hotel where the two brothers were partners. 

The plot of the novel is complex and clever. Mosse manages to draw out the connections between the two womens’ stories whilst making each one uniquely interesting and separately gripping. The scenes of denouement in both stories are powerfully told without melodrama or sentimentality and I found myself gripped by events, eager to read ‘just one more page’ to find out what happens next! Her control of the story is masterful. There is a wide range of characters although I’m afraid I did not think that some of these were as complex or as well-drawn as those in Labyrinth. Victor Constant, for example, felt like a pantomime villain at times. This does not detract from the overall effect, however, which is of a talented writer with a passion and feel for her subject, completely in command of the narrative. 

I am looking forward to picking up the final instalment of the trilogy, Citadel and devouring that one too!

Audiobook review – “The Land in Winter” by Andrew Miller

It is late February and the weather has turned very cold, and very windy. The winter solstice is long past and the meteorological start of spring is only a little over a fortnight away, but in much of the UK right now there is the stark reminder that the winter is not yet done with us. Thus it was in Britain in the winter of 1962/63, a particularly harsh year where snow lay in deep drifts as late as mid-March. This is the setting of Andrew Miller’s tenth novel, a study of two couples, four individuals, trapped by the weather, as well as by social expectations, class and their own caged personalities. 

Eric Parry is the local doctor in a village in south-west England. He is married to Irene and they live in an attractive cottage on the outskirts of the village. Across the field from their home is a farm run by Bill Simmons. Bill is from a humble background but is Oxford-educated, and is a man who aspires to expand his farm, currently dairy-based with a single sullen bull, to something more modern and efficient and on a more industrial scale. He is married to Rita, a colourful but troubled woman, who has a past life in the bars and clubs of Bristol which she can never quite escape. The two women strike up an unlikely but easy friendship when they find that they are both pregnant and at around the same stage. In the 1960s in Britain young women were taught little about sex, married life and pregnancy and there is a kind of welcome relief in being able to compare notes. 

There is no such chemistry between Bill and Eric; they meet at a Christmas party that Irene hosts but it is clear that not only do they hail from different worlds, but that they are also prisoners of their background. What they have in common, however, is a profound sense of disappointment, of hopes dashed, a feeling that they will never be able to create the kind of life that they might have hoped for. At the start of the book this is not the case for the two women, Irene and Rita; they have hope, the optimism that comes with the burgeoning of new life inside them, although, as we will later discover, for Rita this brings back memories of past trauma. 

As Christmas passes and the familiar January gloom sets in, the snow lies ever deeper. The characters, having been thrown together initially, find themselves going in different directions, emotionally and geographically: Bill must visit his unrefined but cash-rich father to ask for money and Rita revisits past haunts and acquaintances in Bristol in an attempt to exorcise her demons. Eric and Irene become increasingly estranged and on a journey to visit her parents Irene becomes trapped on a broken down train and must take shelter in a nearby school for the blind where she is overwhelmed by a sense of isolation.

The breakdowns in the relationships and the individuals are slow, as life in the winter slows, almost to a frozen halt. We observe the gradual decline in slow motion. This is a powerful novel about the human condition that hits you almost without you realising it. The coldness of the world the characters inhabit is both the literal cold of the frozen landscape and the spiritual chill of England in the 1960s where status, the necessity of observing strict social rituals and behaviour and emotional illiteracy caused so much human misery. 

This was the perfect book for January and I listened to it on audio, read very well by the author. Recommended.

Book review – “North Woods” by Daniel Mason

This novel crossed my radar last year when I was seeing it everywhere. I am a sucker for a good cover and the first edition cover (a cougar sitting on a hillside) would have passed me by but later editions feature a beautiful apple with leaves and vibrant colours and it definitely caught my eye! So I was delighted when one of my book club companions suggested it. It is a work of historical fiction set in New England, something else that attracted me as it is a part of the world I know quite well, having spent a few months there as a student. The author, Daniel Mason, has published five novels previously and is both a writer and a medical doctor – his scientific background brings an extra dimension to the work. 

I learn lots of new things through reading, but I am delighted to have learned that this is an “epistolary novel” (something that I’m afraid my English Literature degree did not teach me!), told through a series of media – letters, diary entries, newspaper reports, as well as conventional narrative. It makes for great variety for the reader although the structural device was not universally praised by critics. It provides an interesting way of dealing with the different historical periods covered by the novel. 

The novel’s location is a property in Massachusetts (both the house and its land) and the characters are the many people who have occupied it since it was first settled by an English immigrant. Retired English soldier Charles Osgood emigrates to the new world in the 1700s and cultivates an orchard on the property. He sets about creating a special apple variety, named after himself, as a way of making his mark on the world. His wife dies and he must bring up his twin daughters alone, but is determined to pass on his knowledge of apples in order that they continue his work.

The two women inherit the property after their father’s death and so the house falls to a new generation, but history is not in the gift of those who have passed to determine and under their stewardship, the property begins its steady path to decline. The sisters are preternaturally close and when a suitor begins to woo one of them, the other cannot allow this to stand. Their unusual relationship and the events of their lives foreshadow later tragedies that will befall the various occupants: a gentleman conducting a scandalous illicit relationship, the lonely wife of a businessman disturbed by visions, and the schizophrenic loner who seems to have a profound connection to the property’s past history.

It is not only the human occupants who enjoy the author’s attention; we learn of a cougar taking up residence in the wilderness that the property becomes, and the reproduction of insects in the decaying woodland. I enjoyed these bits less, preferring the human characters and their life dilemmas, but I appreciated the depth of the author’s scientific knowledge. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and personally I liked the variation in the ways of telling – I felt these created a good sense of the different time periods being explored. I listened to the book on audio and there were many different voices used for the various characters which helped to create an ensemble feel. It is also a deeply philosophical novel – Charles Osgood thought he was creating a place in history, but within a few generations his beloved orchard is derelict, built over and forgotten and apple varieties have diminished to a fraction of what was available in the past. The businessman envisions a presidential retreat for the house, but this is never realised and the house becomes broken and dangerous. Individual human lives have only minimal significance and nature will take over in some form. 

I’m afraid I did not like the ending. It did not seem true to the rest of the book to me. I liked how the ‘spirits’ of the past were ambiguous throughout the novel, but the ending seemed to take a particular stand on this that I could not subscribe to – I cannot say more than that without giving too much away. I recommend the book for the journey rather than the destination! 

“Labyrinth” by Kate Mosse

You have got to admire Kate Mosse – in addition to being a best-selling author (with thirteen novels, non-fiction and plays to her name) she co-founded the Women’s Prize for Fiction, has been honoured twice (with an OBE and a CBE), has won a clutch of highly respected awards and appears regularly on screen and radio. It makes you wonder how she gets time to write because her books are not short! Despite Kate Mosse being on my radar for a long time (and I would describe myself as a fan of hers) I am ashamed to say I had not read any of her books – I guess I thought that medieval mystery wasn’t for me. But I was prompted to pick up Labyrinth after I was invited to put a question to her on BBC Radio’s World Book Club. I was in the middle of the Booker shortlist at the time and was somewhat daunted to note that it was almost 700 pages long (and about 18 hours on audio)!

It is almost twenty years since Labyrinth was first published and the book has been a sensation, selling almost 900,000 copies – astonishing. And a million readers are not wrong – it is a titanic novel, gripping, accessible, with a remarkable attention to detail and extensively researched. I just cannot believe I am so late to this particular party.

The novel opens on an archaeological site in south-west France, where Dr Alice Tanner, working as a volunteer (because she is a friend with one of the dig’s leaders), inadvertently strays off the permitted boundary of the dig and into a cave where she discovers two skeletons. She is severely reprimanded; the police must be notified, not least because they are trying to solve the suspected murder of two missing persons, and they promptly force work to be halted. When a powerful lawyer, infamous in the judicial community, becomes involved, events take a darker turn. 

This part of the novel is set in the early 2000s, but then switches to the early 1200s in Carcassone (though Mosse uses traditional Occitan references and language throughout. This language was widely spoken in the Languedoc region at the time, but suppressed by northern invaders who conquered territories in the south). The young noblewoman, 16 year-old newlywed Alais, daughter of Bertrand Pelletier, a key advisor to the head of the Cite (Carcassone), Viscount Trencavel, considers her life in the chateau where she lives. She is free-spirited but under the yoke of her scheming older sister, the constraints placed upon women of the time and now as a wife. 

We learn that Bertrand Pelletier (and some of his friends and allies) is the guardian of certain key spiritual books and objects which together contain the secrets of the Holy Grail. When he believes his life is threatened he entrusts these to his younger daughter, not realising the grave danger that this places her in. Meanwhile civil war is erupting, with the brutal warlords of the north seeking to suppress the Cathar movements in the south and taking the land of the southern noblemen under the pretence of protecting the established church. Alais must use all her wits to keep the books safe. 

Alice Tanner has unwittingly stumbled on the Grail secrets and, like Alais, this makes her a target too. The novel tells the parallel stories of both women as they attempt to work out the significance of the treasures they have been trusted to guard and to escape those who want them for themselves and who have no regard for their life, and would, in fact, rather see them dead. 

The book is a genuine page-turner, managing to tell its complex historical narrative in profoundly human terms. It is a book about power, money, greed and religion, and the conflicts that these things give rise to, as ever they will. But it is also about the power of love, between parents and children, between friends and comrades, and about the endurance of faith. The research is quite remarkable and I learnt a lot about the period and about this part of France, which I have visited on a few occasions but had very limited knowledge of. The author’s love of the Languedoc is clear. Indeed, she says that it was the purchase by her and her husband of a property in the area in the 1980s that first sparked her interest. 

Labyrinth is the first in Mosse’s Languedoc trilogy, and after finishing it, I promptly sought out book number two, Sepulchre, which I also enjoyed. I’ll post my review of that one soon!

Highly recommended.