We’ve all got favourite authors but sometimes it feels like I don’t have room (in my head, my heart or my bookshelves) for a new favourite. But then I realise that I’m kidding myself – all three areas have always got just enough space for another quality writer. Especially if I can find somewhere to squeeze another bookcase…Natasha Pulley has, quite quickly, become one of those authors I will gravitate to whenever they have a new book out. She has a particular blend of utterly believable alternate history, complex and humane characters and well-developed plots that keep me coming back for more – so The Kingdoms was always going to make my reading pile.
The story partly involves the disappearance of three keepers from a lighthouse and, as such, bears a certain amount of resemblance to The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex. This tale, however, is set at the scene of the most famous lighthouse mystery, Eilean Mor off the coast of the Outer Hebrides. The alternative historical nature of the book, however, is key as the central character, Joe Tournier, finds himself in a London which makes no sense to him. He steps off a train from Scotland to find that he can remember nothing about his journey but somehow feels that everything is wrong – England is a French colony, has been since Nelson lost the Battle of Trafalgar, slavery is endemic and the English language is seen as subversive. Without quite knowing why, apart from a mysterious postcard signed by an M, Joe takes a job with a company involved with lighthouses. He ends up visiting the recently built Eilean Mor light but finds it deserted and, from some angles, an aging ruin. And then the time-slipping fun begins…
Great, but terribly damaged characters, a plot you really need to concentrate for and a love story based on risking your entire past to try and make a better future this is a novel which was hugely emotional and intensely satisfying. Status on my favourite authors list is confirmed.
Jane
Jennifer Saint has given us a novel based on the tales of Theseus and the Minotaur but, instead of focusing on either of these, better-known, characters, she centres the tale around Ariadne, a Princess of Crete, and her younger sister, Phaedra. These are women who have appeared in other books (Phedre, by Racine for example) but now, instead of just being the women who are judged by their relationships to their fathers, brothers or husbands, they are given the chance to tell their own stories. They are still related to the Minotaur and King Minos, and still both fall in love with Theseus, but we see events from their point of view. Although we see that they are aware of the loyalties they owe their country, as daughters of the king, we also see that they are fully aware of the cruelties than King Minos inflicts on his family, his people and his enemies – they are young girls who make mistakes based on emotional responses but they become women who know their own minds. Their lives are not always easy but they do manage to achieve a level of agency. At which point, their only issue is the reaction of the gods themselves….
I eased into the year with the master’s first take on issues of gender equality and it was, as ever, a joy to read. I thoroughly enjoyed reliving my first introduction to Granny Weatherwax and her indomitable spirit – well, she’d call it something like that and the wizards would just call it stubborn – and the fact that other favourite characters (Death and the Librarian) appear too. If you’ve never read it the story revolves around how Eskarina Smith discovers that, while the eighth son of an eighth son who has inherited a magic staff can become a powerful wizard, there are major problems when that son turns out to be a daughter. Plumbing at Unseen University for a start. Pratchett is marvellously feminist in his outlook yet never fails to show us the prejudices from all sides – even Granny has to rethink a few ideas! This set me up nicely to reading…
This is the second book in a series which began with The Crow Folk and continues the story of Faye Bright, a young woman coping with World War II, the loss of her mother, first romances, oh, and training as a witch. (See what reading Equal Rites did for me?) This time she is dealing with a group of German children who have arrived in Woodville via the Kindertransport, the local landed gentry, the threat of Nazi spies and always having to be the one who did the boring jobs at coven meetings. Throw in some terrifying visions and working out how to deal with the fact that Bertie seems to have a huge crush on her and Faye really does have a lot to think about.
Steven Smith was a troubled child and has grown into a rather rootless adult. Recently out of prison, where he discovered the joys of reading late in life, he decides to try and solve the puzzle of what happened to the one teacher he connected with at school. Miss Isles, in charge of a remedial English group, struck a chord with the young Steven when she read to the class from a book he found on a bus. She tells them the book is banned, although, in fact, it is a Blytonesque adventure story whose main sin is snobbishness and a lack of connection with the world Steven and his classmates endure: the class are gripped by the tale nevertheless. Miss Isles takes the group on an unofficial trip to visit the home of the book’s author, Edith Twyford, and, at this point, Steven’s memories falter – Miss Isles vanishes from their lives, a tragedy in Steven’s family leads him to stop attending school and the class lose touch. Now Steven attempts to find his old classmates, find out what happened to Miss Isles and solve the code which many people swear is contained in Twyford’s books.
I adore all the members of the City Watch, cynical Vimes, anything for a quiet life Colon, the impressive and charismatic Carrot and the frankly furtive Nobby. They are the personification of every cop character ever but, more than that, they almost feel like they are the originals (since I am quite happy to believe that, to quote a totally different writer, there are eddys in the space-time continuum which would make this work…) Lord Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh Morpork (who doesn’t so much rule the city as make sure it rules itself), Lady Sybil Ramkin, breeder of swamp dragon and the Librarian also feature in a plot which sees a group of underdogs try to gain the upper hand by employing a, well, blooming huge dragon. The fast-paced humour, larger than life characters and witty footnotes all combine with a strong satirical streak which makes the Discworld, despite its fantasy setting, as real as our own.
Jess and her family move back to Malaysia, the country of her birth, when her father’s illness has destroyed their finances. She thinks the worst she will have to deal with is separation from her girlfriend (and keeping her secret from the family) but then she starts hearing voices. Well, one voice. Who claims to be her recently deceased grandmother Ah Ma. Jess will need to help Ah Ma seek revenge on a gang lord trying to develop a piece of land sacred to a local spirit – although the spirit, the Black Water Sister, seems to be doing a good job of delaying work herself by causing a series of accidents which have the workers very worried. As if this wasn’t enough she will need to sort out her own relationships, decide where her future lies and try to help the poorly treated migrant workers she meets on the development site.
Danso is a talented student – he is training to become a sort of druid/storyteller – but he is not accepted as a full member of the elite because his mother was an outsider, from far beyond the main city of Bassa. His mother is dead so his father and uncles have decided to marry him Esheme – also on the borders of society but the daughter of the city’s most powerful ‘fixer’ – to try and give him (and them) a secure future. Esheme is a student too, her plans are more geared towards the legal professions, but she is interested in her mother’s work too – this girl craves power. Add in a mysterious outsider – Lilong – whose very presence, and the strange power she wields, seems to strike fear into the city’s rulers. Danso must decide whether to side with his city (which he can see has huge flaws) or a potentially lethal stranger and powers he may not be able to control. And, well, we already know that Danso is the sort of person who prefers to look beyond the rules.
Hana’s family runs a small halal restaurant in an area of Toronto known as the Golden Crescent. Like many girls of her generation Hana and her sister have been allowed to follow their dreams by their parents. No arranged marriages or enforced burqas – instead Hana is an intern at a local radio station, working towards her chosen career as a broadcaster, and her sister was a talented footballer who could easily have turned professional. Society, however, is not quite as liberal as the Khan family – the radio station seems to prefer Hana’s fellow (male) intern for the one permanent position and her sister’s career is brought to a sudden end by a government ban on head-coverings in sport (which seems to be based on real-life situations in the first decade or so of the C21st). The story itself centres on the arrival of a rival restaurant, with an owner Hana wants to hate but who she finds very attractive, a visit from Indian cousin Rashid (who Hana starts to believe must be part of the Indian mafia rather than a trainee accountant) and the arrival of a previously unknown aunt who turns out to be a complete rebel.
I first came across Saima Mir when I read her piece in the fabulous 
This is, obviously, a complete change of mood from contemporary crime to a piece of biographical fiction. But there are also a lot of similarities if you look below the surface. Like Jia, Katherine Parr is shown to us to be a young woman with a past full of tragedy and a future full of hard decisions. Both women have to take up a role they didn’t really want, in order to achieve an end which means a huge amount to them. In the case of Katherine Parr we see her life prior to her involvement with Henry VIII – two marriages, two widowhoods and beloved step-children, and a new way of thinking about her relationship with religion – and then the marriage which brought her to the attention of history as the sixth, and final, wife of an aging king.
What I particularly enjoy about Weir’s telling of the lives of Henry VIII’s wives is the fact that we are able to get an idea of what their marriages were like from their perspectives. Henry’s quite understandable obsession with fathering an heir is well known but, certainly after about the second wife, it can be hard to see why (beyond the sheer power of the Royal command) women were eager to wed him. In the case of Katherine Parr (in an echo of her predecessor, the tragic Katheryn Howard) she was poised to finally choose to marry for love when she caches the eye of the king. Through her eyes we see Henry as a sad figure, almost broken by Katheryn’s betrayal, who still has the ability to be kind and charming. His physical disabilities and despotic temperament are there but I also felt hugely sorry for him at time. And Katherine? She marries power in order to promote her religious convictions – a dangerous course to take in the circumstances but one which works for her, leaving her free to marry her true love.
Part of the joy of reading good historical fiction is that you know how the stories will end. The pleasure of reading Alison Weir is that she almost makes you believe that Katherine Parr will have the happy ending she seems to so richly deserve….
Jane
*Do not fear – the Bradford Literature Festival will be featuring a new book from A.A. Dhand. And, as soon as I finish reading it, I will be posting a review…
This slightly later date means that we are now in the era of the English Civil war and, like so much of the country, the village of Manningtree has lost many of its men in the warring armies. Many of the women who remain are widows, old and poor – the least important people according to male society, but, in reality they were the ones who helped in times of illness, childbirth and death. When a young man called Matthew Hopkins buys one of the village’s inns he seems more interested in the ‘wise women’ of the area than in beer and the whole of the more ‘genteel’ segment of the area begin to turn against those they had previously turned to for assistance. We see the story unfold through the eyes of Rebecca West, whose mother would win any ‘most likely to be a witch’ contest in the area, and her growing feelings for a young clerk who is teaching her to read – so we consider the fate of maidens as well as that of crones and mothers.
This is another tale of a woman struggling against a society she doesn’t quite fit into. Sonya used to be an actress living a life full of passion, glamour and attention. Now she is Tommy’s mother and she is afraid that she can’t do it. She drinks too much, even though she tries not to, never has enough money, and tries to recreate her past life by driving her beaten up old car too fast or swimming too far out from the beach. Other people’s attempts to make her calm down and conform, to send Tommy to school, seem like interference to Sonya – in many ways we can see that she is a terrible mother but she and Tommy, and their rescue dog Herbie, love each other so much we really want her to find a way out of her addictions. After an incident which hovers very near tragedy Sonya agrees to try rehab and also accepts help from a man she meets in a pizza takeaway. The descriptions of her time in the rehabilitation unit, run by nuns, and of her separation from Tommy are quite harrowing and her knight in shining armour also is not as good a man as he first appears: this is certainly no easy path to redemption for Sonya.
Although this novel does look at the lives of three women whose lives are changed by the events at Maiden Rock lighthouse off the Cornish coast it also shows us the experiences of the lighthouse keepers themselves. But at the heart of the story is the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the three keepers in the early 1970s – when the boat arrives to deliver supplies and take one of the keepers for his turn ashore all three have gone, the doors are locked from the inside and there is no sign of any fight or altercation. The investigation can’t discover where the men went but we return to it when a journalist decides to try and uncover the truth twenty years later. His conversations with Helen, Jenny and Michelle give us more details about the lives they lived ashore and before becoming keepers and they are interspersed with episodes on Maiden Rock, which become more and more ominous as the fateful day looms.
Oh, this book was an utter joy to read! Amusing, linked stories with familiar sounding heroines – based on the traditional stories of Rapunzel, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty – but with a couple of fascinating quirks. The characters and settings are South Asian and Muslim and the girls are not passive princesses. These girls work out how to rescue themselves (and an Aladdinesque lad called Suleiman) without the help of adults, heroes or any of the usual suspects AND they support each other throughout. Lots of fabulous, positive messages here for girls and boys from any background. In fact, many of the copies I have sold since our shop reopened have been to young adults, mostly women, who have, perhaps, previously been denied a version of themselves in this kind of story. However, whatever your own heritage (or, indeed, age or gender) this book is an entertaining and exciting read.
Talking of excitement (and empowered Muslim girls) I have also been catching up with the latest adventures of Zaiba, Ali and Poppy as they investigate more mysteries. The girls have befriended the new girl at school, Olivia, and are delighted to be invited to visit her home, Oakwood Manor. But, as well as being an old, rambling building with lots of rooms to explore it seems that the Manor is also haunted! Ali, ever the voice of science and reason, doesn’t believe in ghosts but the children find themselves in a situation where they have a few hours to prove that there are only human forces at work when a housewarming party goes wrong.
Another series I have joined at the end of! This is the ninth, and last, book featuring the adventures of schoolgirl detectives Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong (and their various friends and relations) and, this time, they are sailing down the Nile on a ship bristling with members of a strange cult who firmly believe themselves to be reincarnations of ancient Egyptian deities when a murderer strikes. The girls join forces with their old chums George and Alexander (the Junior Pinkertons) to try to solve the mystery before the police arrive and arrest the wrong person…
At least this time I am only joining the series at book two – and it was pretty easy to catch up with the events I missed in the first book. Billy and his friends, Ling-Fei and Charlotte, have to try and rescue his best friend Dylan from the Dragon of Death. In these efforts they are aided by the dragons they have bonded with, Dylan’s dragon, and, less helpfully, JJ. This is a big, sweeping adventure – full of peril, problems to solve and huge consequences – and, even better, it has dragons! It also lets the children explore the friendships, rivalries and, sometimes, enmities between them; to develop the qualities they need to defeat the forces they face. Strength, intelligence or courage will not be enough…
Archie Albright’s parents obviously both love Archie but, he can see, they don’t get on well with each other. His dad has moved out, although even that hasn’t stopped the arguments, and there is definitely something going on neither his mum or dad will tell him about. When Archie, and his friends Bell and Seb, discover the secret – that his dad is gay – he is unsure what to do: he still loves his dad but it seems that none of the family know how to, well, be with each other. With a child’s innocent approach to life Archie decides that he needs to find answers and, after finding a leaflet his father drops, a Pride festival in London seems to be the best place to find them. The children set off to London (after much pooling of finances, fooling of parents and downright nerves) and, at Pride, meet up with the most amazing and colourful group of people who help them to understand that love can overcome all.
This series of books (The Wayfarers) is definitely on my list of all-time favourites – thoughtful science fiction, more concerned with the people involved than with technology or space battles and full of ideas about tolerance and diversity without ramming their ‘wokeness’ down your throat. We have followed various characters through the universe which Chambers has created and seen them on spaceships, on vast artificial ship-based worlds and on small planets and it is on the latter that this book is set. Not much of a planet – Gora has no air or water, plants or creatures – but one very conveniently situated at a sort of intergalactic crossroads of the wormholes used to travel to the more habitable and cosmopolitan worlds. To avoid messy accidents travel through these wormholes has to be controlled so Gora has become a sort of motorway services where ships and their crews await their turn to move on. 
A new author for me but a familiar theme – a Parisian romance with a book-filled setting. The story is partly set during World War II, where Odile gets her dream job in the American Library, and partly in a small Montana town, where a young girl called Lily is learning to cope with major changes in her life. The two stories intertwine, since Odile, having left France after the war, is Lily’s elderly and rather reclusive neighbour.
Like The Paris Library this is a mixture of two of my favourite things – a book about books and a quirky French love story. This is a much lighter story though, replacing a tragedy set in occupied Paris with a library in a small Breton town which contains a collection of manuscripts rejected by publishers. A young woman, making a name for herself at a Parisian publishing house, visits the library while on holiday with her author boyfriend, and discovers a manuscript which she is sure will be a bestseller. This book was written, it appears, by Henri Pick, a local pizza chef who is now dead and becomes a literary sensation. Although there is doubt, even from Pick’s widow and daughter, that he could have written such a book everyone who reads it is touched, and sees something of their own life reflected in its pages.
Madame Burova (Imelda to her friends and family) is a Tarot reader (also palms read and general clairvoyance) and has been since she took over her mother’s Brighton booth in the 1970s. Her job involves knowing a lot of other people’s secrets, and she has always kept them before, but this time she has been charged with revealing information which is going to change a young woman’s life forever. In the early 70s Imelda Burova joined the ranks of ‘entertainment’ at a local holiday camp and the story follows this motley crew – singers, pianists, a wall of death rider, a middle-aged contortionist and a trio of glamorous mermaids – and their romances, spats and jealousies. One of which leads to to the birth of a baby girl, abandoned on Imelda’s doorstep, who returns decades later to try and discover how she came to be. 
The Great Gatsby seems to be a lot of people’s favourite book. I didn’t read it at school and only got round to it a few years ago so maybe I wasn’t the right age to fall in love with it. It was good but was never going to replace the books which transformed my late teens (One Hundred Years of Solitude, maybe, or the Gormenghast trilogy). I was, however, interested to read Nick – a novel giving Nick Carraway the backstory which Fitzgerald never shared with us.
Julius and Jeannie have always lived in their rather dilapidated old cottage, on the edge of a farm. They lived with both parents until their father’s sudden death when they were barely in their teens and then with their mother. When she, too, dies the fifty-one year old twins have to work out how to cope with the world on their own. Jeannie still has her market garden and Julius does various odd jobs (but only within cycling range as he has near terminal travel sickness in any sort of motor vehicle) but neither has any qualifications and they have no money or bank account. They make plans – which all fall apart as they, and Jeannie in particular, discover the harsh realities of the modern world. They lose their home, their possessions and their livelihoods but, again, Jeannie is relentless in her efforts to find a way to carry on and find a way to continue you life they have always known. Julius is more eager to spread his wings, explore new relationships and new opportunities – including exploiting the siblings’ expertise as performers of traditional folk songs – but Jeannie is, after almost a whole lifetime being held back by health fears, the more practical and effective. 
Faye Bright lives with her father, in a pub, in a small village called Woodville during the Second World War. Their position, in Kent, means that bombing is a constant threat and Faye does her bit by helping out as an air raid warden but she is devastated when she finds that her hobby of bell-ringing is to be suspended for the duration of the war. Faye’s mother died when she was a very young girl and neither she or her father have really recovered from her loss – so Faye is angry and upset that the long peal the ringers were due to ring in honour of her mother will not now happen. It is with this sense of anger that she finds an old notebook of her mother’s which seems to suggest that she was a witch. And here is where the adventures begin. Armed only with her mother’s book (including its interesting sounding recipe for jam roly-poly as well as spells and arcane drawings) Faye finds herself pitted against walking scarecrows, a sinister pumpkin-headed man and every busy-body in the village. Luckily, two of latter turn out to be witches too and they begin to work together to save Woodville from something just as dangerous as the Luftwaffe. 
Jane & Bex book blog 