The House at Riverton is the story of Grace, once a housemaid at Riverton and later lady’s maid to Hannah Hartford.  Now an elderly lady, she finds herself looking back on her life and the memories of the tragedies that she has tried to forget for so long begin to surface, in part prompted by a visit from a filmmaker who is directing a film about the goings on at Riverton.  But only Grace is left who knows what really happened.

This is a tricky book to review.  I enjoyed it and found the story engaging and the conclusion pleasing.  I raced through it in the time it usually takes to read a books half this size, which is impressive considering the numerous distractions that the book was up against.  Morton conjures up the changing eras well, reflecting the huge shifts in priorities, ideas and societal norms from the pre war years, through the Great War and into the roaring twenties.  Her writing has that sense of nostalgia which always makes me temporarily wish I could live inside the novel, despite that fact that a) I would miss modern technology too much and b) cleraly I would have been a servant, not a fine lady with a country house.  It is an entertaining read and, all in all, a promising debut novel.  However, I had several problems with The House at Riverton which prevented me from finding it a really great book, and it is much easier to put my finger on what these niggles were than on what makes it such a good read, so this is going to come off as a somewhat negative review when I actually really liked the book, I’m looking forward to reading The Forgotten Garden and would reccommend it to people looking for a quick, absorbing read.  It’s a conundrum.

The book starts out with, in my opinion, a huge mistake.  It opens thus:

Last November I had a nightmare.

It was 1924 and I was at Riverton again.  (p. 3)

Naturally, this instantly brings to mind the famous opening line of what is the quintessential English-country-house-with-a-dark-secret novel, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.  The  conscious mimicing of such a well known beginning creates a certain set of expectations which, unfortunately, The House at Riverton never quite lives up to.  Yes, it’s a novel in the same genre and yes, it’s good, but Rebecca it isn’t.  Which is a shame, because I don’t think I’d have been quite as disappointed by the novel not quite being what I had hoped if it hadn’t encouraged me itself to set my hopes so high.

Kate Morton writes a good story, but I didn’t necessarily feel that she had it entirely under control at all times.  I’m all for layers in a novel, but here there are were so many strands of mystery and so many Dark Secrets that sometimes it becomes difficult to feel any specific anxiety about any of them.  A Dark Secret will be hinted at, but then abandoned as Morton focuses on one of the other aspects of the book or a different Dark Secret, and while her writing is sufficiently skilful that this is never confusing, it dissipates much of the tension which might have been created.  Instead of worrying about all of these things I found myself unable to worry over much about any of them most of the time.  I felt a vague sense of impending doom thanks to the numerous explicit statements that doom was indeed impending (I really hope this is something that improves; subtelty is key in conjouring up the sort of atmosphere which makes the best gothic country house novels) but I feel the story might have benefitted from a sharper focus to the doom at times.

I also found Morton’s writing style to be not entirely to my tastes.  She has a fondness for using lots of short sentences (it is quite rare for a sentence to have more than two clauses), many of which are predicate sentences which lack a subject for the verb.  She is particularly keen on the single sentence paragraph, usually used at the end of a section or chapter to emphasise the aformentioned impending doom, such as ‘But by then the seed was sown‘ (p. 318).  All of these have their place and can be incredibly effective when employed judiciously, but having the majority of the writing in this style feels jerky and stilted.  I personally would have preferred it had some of these odd little sentences been joined together to make the writing flow more elegantly.  The book is saved, however, by having lots of dialogue which Morton writes extremely well and believeably, and so I only had to wade through the stop-start short sentences occasionally rather than continuously.

My final niggle was the abandoning of the first person narrator when it became inconvenient for the story.  On the whole, I think that the use of Grace as a mouthpiece was excellent: as a servant she is well placed to observe what goes on and people happily talk in front of her (though admittedly I don’t think it would have been quite as free as in the novel) but she is still removed from most of the direct action and so provides an outside perspective for the reader.  This works well for most of the novel, but later the stroy develops in such a way that Grace cannot always be present watching and listening to important events and so these sections are related in the third person.  Morton partially works around this by having Grace explain that other people later told her what happened, but the descriptions of what happened and how people felt and thought are too detailed for this to be believeable.  While I understand the need to work around the limitations of a first person narrator, I wish it could have been accomplished in a different way which hadn’t made me feel as though the author was taking over Grace’s story for a bit and then giving it back to her when it was convenient.

I think that’s the most negative sounding review I’ve ever written for a book to which I’ve given four stars, but these are small things which just prevent the book from achieving its full potential.  I can’t wait to read more of Kate Morton to see if experience has improved on any of these things, but even if not, I bet I’ll still really enjoy the book.

The House at Riverton by Kate Morton.  Published by Pan, 2007, pp. 599.  First published in 2006.

As anyone who has seen the recent BBC adaptation of the book will know (I haven’t, for the record), The Crimson Petal and the White tells the story of Sugar, a girl forced into prostitution by her mother the famed brothel keeper Mrs Castaway.  Well-read and highly intelligent, Sugar spends her spare time writing a vicious novel in which her protagonist gleefully tortures and murders the men with whom she has sex.  Her life changes when she attracts the attentions of William Rackham, the heir to the Rackham Perfumeries fortune who refuses to take an interest in the business until the desire to possess Sugar as his own means that he needs to make money in order to set her up as his mistress.  As Sugar becomes totally dependent on William, she also becomes more and more involved in all aspects of his life, from his business to his child-like wife Agnes, to his young daughter Sophie.

The novel opens with this passage, which instantly draws the reader in:

Watch your step.  Keep your wits about you; you will need them.  This city I am bringing you to is vast and intricate, and you have not been here before.  You may imagine, from other stories you’ve read, that you know it well, but those stories flattered you, welcoming you as a friend, treating you as if you belonged.  The truth is that you are an alien from another time and place altogether.

When I first caught your eye and you decided to come with me, you were probably thinking you would simply arrive and make yourself at home.  Now that you’re actually here, the air is bitterly cold, and you find yourself being led along in complete darkness, stumbling on uneven ground, recognising nothing.  Looking left and right, blinking against an icy wind, you realise you have entered an unknown street full of unlit houses and unknown people.  (p. 3)

The voice is powerful, cynical, intelligent and utterly absorbing.  It acknowledges the problems that quite a lot of readers have with present tense narratives then brushes them aside as unimportant, which is perhaps why I was less bothered by it than I usually am.  It is an atmospheric and compelling beginning and the rest of the novel easily lives up to the high expectations that this creates.

Faber is not only brilliant at setting scenes and giving the writing a real period feel, he is also a master of characterisation; although the story may seem a little like the seedy underbelly of a Dickens’ novel, the characters who people if could not be further from Dickens’ enjoyable but often one dimensional charicatures.  Faber makes his characters all so distinct with totally different voices and, frequently, some strange quirk which allows them to transcend the stereotype of their role within the book.  Sugar, for example, has a skin disease, yet she is still desired by the men of London because it is rumoured that she will do anything.  This is not because she is desperate, but because when the reader meets her she genuinely does not seem to care what happens to her outer self as long as she is able to preserve the inner self who writes and plots and schemes.  Mrs Castaway is set apart by her peculiar collection of pictures of Mary Magdalen, which she pastes into scrapbooks.  Sophie has a perfect childhood logic and solemnity which just leap off the page.

The most fascinating character for me was Agnes, William Rackham’s wife.  Never have I read more convincingly written madness.  It has its own internal logic which makes it seem completely understandable, even as the reader knows that Agnes is mad.  Her attempts to seek solace in the Convent of Health and her abiding, if somewhat off-kilter, Catholic faith are touching as they show how deeply unhappy and unsettled she is in her current life.  Her horror and frantic desperation to escape the life she leads, which does not improve after Rackham regains his fortune, are so well drawn that they feel almost tangible.  Her madness is interspersed with periods of complete lucidity, when she is possibly even more unhappy, which make her all the more compelling.  The way that the reader discovers Agnes along with Sugar through reading her hidden diaries is a clever stroke and helps to bind the reader into their complicity which will become so important.

Given the subject matter of The Crimson Petal and the White and other reviews and comments that I’d read about the sex in the book, I was surprised at how restrained I found it.  Although there is a fair amount of sex which is described in detail, it feels clinical and matter of fact rather than graphic and titilating, and it is never gratuitous.  Because Sugar and her fellows see nothing unusual or even particularly exciting about the acts that they perform, they come across as rather mundane and this, conversely and rather brilliantly, makes them even more disturbing than if they were luridly detailed encounters designed to be erotic.  It is all the more sordid because it is presented as being so normal.

All in all, this is a fabulously written book which evokes the Victorian era through a series of unique characters who fascinate and repel in equal measure.  I’m definitely in the market for a copy of The Apple, a collection of stories which fills in some more details of Sugar’s story and follows some of the lesser characters.  I only hope it is anywhere near as good as this book.

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber.  Published by Harcourt, 2002, pp. 838.  Originally published in 2002.

The inspiration behind Far to Go is Alison Pick’s own family history.  Her grandparents were forced to flee from persecution in Czechoslovakia during the Second World War, eventually settling in Canada.  She uses this to create the story of the Bauer family, a priviledged Czech family who are Jewish by birth but don’t really practise their faith.  However, Pavel, Anneliese and their young son Pepik are Jewish enough to become targets as the Nazi occupations spreads across Europe.  The family must try to work out how best to escape and Marta, their non-Jewish nanny, must decide exactly where her loyalties lie.

The Second World War is a subject which is eternally popular (if that’s the right word) in historical fiction and there are a whole host of memoirs and autobiographies from that time, so a book has to try rather hard to stand out amongst so many voices.  Far to Go succeeds because it has a different situation and a different tone to other books that I’ve read in a similar vein.  Where other novels of the Holocaust can be beautifully, elegiacally tragic, bleakly depressing or even ultimately hopeful, Far to Go feels unusually dirty and distasteful in a way which is extremely effective.  This is not a straightforward book but one filled with complex emotions: it is about betrayal which is ultimately understandable, divided loyalties with no possible solution, the physical ache of regret, and bitterness rather than tragedy.  The atmosphere is particularly well created.

The novel also deals with an aspect of the Holocaust which I’ve not really read about before, most of the books I’ve read being set in Germany.  Pick illustrates well how different the situation was in Czechoslovakia, showing the conflict between Germans and Czechs as a more complex level underlying the usual Nazi/Jew dichotomy.  She also chooses to make her characters a family of secular Jews, and in doing so she is able to explore such a variety of different reactions to the persecutions: Pavel becomes more Jewish, driven to explore the faith which makes him an outcast; Anneliese is desperate to throw off the stigma of Jewishness and escape, and Marta the gentile nanny is forced to see her employers in a totally new light.  Marta’s struggle to decide what to do in her situation comes across as very real and human, and I like the fact that she is neither a saint with no thoughts for her own security nor a selfishly motivated traitor.  I’m sure there were many people who felt exactly as Marta did and were just as confused about their sudden change in status, so it feels very believable.

For all its interesting new perspective, this book is not without its flaws.  The four different strands of narrative in quick succession which open the book (a letter from one character, a letter which it’s only later possible to tell is from a different character, a brief first person section with an unidentified ‘I’ and ‘you’, and the main body of the story in third person with different characters again) are initially very confusing.  It’s impossible to tell if these people are all the same, partially the same or all different and there’s no obvious features to link the four sections together.  It is only as the reader progresses through the book that it becomes apparent who is being referred to in each of them, and while this technique can be effective, I found it to be a few too many things at once with which to open a novel.  This mixed structure continues throughout, and while the inclusion of the letters is particularly poignant, I found that it held me at arms’ length from the characters and their actions.  I watched them experience these powerful emotions and although the overall emotional tone of the book was impressively well drawn, as I’ve already stated, I didn’t find myself feeling along with them but observing from a distance.

The other niggle that I had was the use of Czech words and phrases.  The way that they’re sprinkled throughout the text is actually a rather nice touch as it grounds the novel very firmly in one specific place and adds an authentic flavour of Czechoslovakia.  However, the terms used are rarely explained within the context of the story, and having no experience at all of Czech language, Czech food or Czech cutlure I had no idea what all these things being talked about were.  I know that lengthy explanations can sometimes be tedious and laboured to read and if they are words that Pick is used to using because of her Czech heritage then it may just not have come up as an issue, but at least the first time a Czech term occurs it would be nice if there were some sort of explanation of what it means without me having to resort to constant Googling.   The simple expedient of adding a glossary to the end of the book would solve this problem wonderfully.

Far to Go by Alison Pick.  Published by Headline Review, 2011, pp. 314.  Advance review copy.

April Lady tells the story of Nell who is married to the wealthy Lord Cardross.  Nell’s brother is a notorious gambler and, when he finds himself unable to pay his debts, Nell steps in to help him, leaving herself unable to pay the extravagant bills for dresses and hats that she has accumulated out of her quarterly allowance from Cardross.  Unwilling to tell her husband that she has given the money to her brother, Nell leads him to believe that she herself has been gambling, preferring to incur his disapproval at her actions than his anger towards her brother.  He magnanimously pays off all her debts for her, but when Nell discovers another unpaid bill she has forgotten about she finds herself unable to tell him in case he is angry and thinks that she only married him for his money, and so she tries to find ways to raise the money herself with some quite disastrous consequences.  At the same time, Cardross has to deal with his sister Letty who has fallen in love with an unsuitable young man lacking in fortune and status but is determined to marry him, whatever it takes.

I did not get on with this book at all, probably because I find the romantic trope in which hero and heroine are deeply in love but each is convinced of the other’s indifference and neither will confess their love despite no obstacles to said affection incredibly annoying.  It’s a tired plot that needs either strong characters or great writing to make it come alive and seem fresh and sadly I didn’t find either of those features in April Lady.  Instead, what I found was stock characters going through the motions of a formulaic plot, described in lacklustre terms which left me completely unmoved.  There is too little social interaction or introspection which might lead to character development, replaced by too much melodrama and wringing of hands.  There are a few amusing incidents, such as Nell’s brother holding up her coach dressed as a highwayman in one of the more ridiculous schemes to raise money, but the overall impression that I was left with was that this book was just ok, nothing more.  I will say that Heyer has done her research and that the period of the book feels authentic, but I was too irritated at the lack of interesting story to appreciate this properly.

I know that there are a lot of people out there who love Georgette Heyer, and I’m perfectly willing to give her another try if this is considered a particularly poor effort on her part.  If however this is standard Heyer fare then I’m going to have to conclude that this writer just isn’t for me, which is fine.  I also have Powder and Patch and The Talisman Ring waiting on my shelves; am I likely to enjoy either of these any more than I did this one?  Help me out here, Heyer fans.

April Lady by Georgette Heyer.  Published by Pan, 1970, pp. 238.  Originally published in 1957.

When I came up with the idea of using a random number generator to select one book for me every month, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was letting myself in for.  I needn’t have worried about January’s choice though, as it seems to have been remarkably kind to me in my first month.  Lady’s Maid by Margaret Forster is a book which I added to my wishlist after it was recommended in a discussion about good neo-Victorian novels, along with several other titles which are also waiting patiently on the shelves now.  A copy turned up on BookMooch not long afterwards, and so it came to have a home on my shelves.  I probably wouldn’t have read it for quite some time though, had it not been January’s TBR Lucky Dip selection.

Lady’s Maid tells the story of Wilson, a girl from the northeast who becomes lady’s maid to Elizabeth Barrett.  At first she feels alone and awkward in her situation, but slowly she comes to love her mistress and grows in confidence.  Wilson becomes increasingly important in Miss Barrett’s life, facilitating her secret marriage to Robert Browning and flight to a new life in Italy.  Throughout this, Wilson has her own life to contend with: her family, her suitors and her hopes for the future.

I really enjoyed this book.  It struck an excellent balance between being the story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s maid, encompassing her daily life, concerns, struggles and interactions with other people in service, and the story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning as told by her maid, who is the initial draw of this book for most people, I should imagine, myself included.  Margaret Forster has written a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and so, feeling reasonably safe that it was as historically accurate as I was likely to get, I thoroughly enjoyed this glimpse into the lives of two of the great Victorian poets.  I fell in love with her husband’s poetry from the moment that I opened the Best Words anthology that was the bane of many a GCSE student’s existence at that time and read the lines:

That’s my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

In fact, this book has reminded me of how much I enjoy Robert Browning, and I may make one of his books my poetry offering for next month.  His wife, however, is not someone I’ve read very much (the ubiquitous ‘How Do I Love Thee?’ excepted) and after reading Lady’s Maid I’m so cross with her that I don’t feel any inclination to do so any time soon.  Elizabeth Barrett in this book is utterly selfish; she is kind and affectionate towards Wilson only when she needs her or has no better occupation, and as soon as Wilson asks her a favour or goes against her wishes then she is petulant, tetchy and sometimes downright cruel.  I spent most of the book feeling righteous indignation of Wilson’s behalf for her treatment at the hands of her mistress, and this is indicative of Forster’s skillful storytelling.

The style of the novel is unusual but effective.  It alternates between third person narration, although the perspective that this reports is always Wilson’s and the reader never sees the thoughts of any other character except through her own interpretations of what they might be, and letters from Wilson to various other characters.  The writing segues seamlessly between the two forms, often running sentences across the break between the two so that the narrator will begin saying something and Wilson herself will finish it.  I thought that this semi-epistolary style worked very well, as it gives the impression that more of the book comes direct to the reader from Wilson than really does, while simultaneously allowing Forster a freedom of writing which would have been necessarily restricted by a novel comprised purely of letters.  It is a clever technique and results in an engaging, emotionally involving read.

The letters are also a means of reflecting Wilson’s growing confidence and learning, both personally and stylistically.  Initially, her letters are timid and shy, desperate to please the recipient and so hiding a lot of the truth that is revealed to the reader in the narrative sections of the novel.  As Wilson becomes increasingly sure of herself, she begins to be more open and honest.  She express opinions and even makes demands.  At the same time, her letters go from being full of unnecessary capitalisations and awkward phrasing to being written in a smooth, warm, elegant prose.  I thought it was an interesting touch that the writing skills of both Wilson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning develop only as they begin to blossom personally.

Lady’s Maid was a very satisfying book to read.  Margaret Forster’s writing kept me engrossed with her wonderful ability to describe locations and capture characters.  I definitely recommend this one.

Lady’s Maid by Margaret Forster.  Published by Fawcett Columbine, 1990, pp. 549.  Originally published in 1990.

So far, I haven’t had much luck with the books of which I’ve received free copies for review from Goodreads and LibraryThing.  More often than not, I read the descriptions thinking “Oooh, what an interesting concept!” and eagerly click the request button but the books haven’t really lived up to my expectations when they’ve arrived.  So when Flowers for Alys arrived and I saw that, like my previous early reviewer books, it was self-published, I could feel my heart sinking.  Which just goes to show that I shouldn’t be so prejudiced because I couldn’t have been more wrong about Irene M. Redpath’s book.

Flowers for Alysis set in an unspecified time which I presume is the middle ages in an unspecified place which, again, I presume is England.  It centres around Jenet, a young woman who has a disfigured mouth which renders her mostly unable to talk and hence is also presumed deaf.  Jenet adopts a baby whom she finds lying abandoned by the side of a river, and raises her despite the ensuing difficulties.  As the infant, given the name Fleur, grows up, it becomes clear that she is a remarkable child in a great many ways.

This is a quiet, simple, heartfelt book, which refreshingly abandons lengthy descriptions and elaborate prose in favour of a more straightforward writing style which really suits the little tale that Redpath tells.  For all its simplicity, her writing conveys strong emotions, particularly in the first chapter when we learn the origins of the abandoned baby.  The closing lines of this chapter, intriguingly titled ‘The End’, are heart-wrenching and I think that more complicated prose would have spoiled the impact that they have.  The final chapter, which, in corresponding backwards fashion is titled ‘The Beginning’ was also well written.

Although this book is light on characterisation, at a mere 115 pages I wasn’t expecting in-depth analysis and the somewhat sketchy character profiles are all that is necessary to carry the story.  Jenet is innocent, reliable and homely, and the occasional glimpses inside her head provide an interesting perspective.  Fleur is particularly intriguing in her fey ways, and it would have been nice to see a bit more of her.  I liked the scenes of her being inexplicably drawn to the river where she was found and her strange rituals with flower petals which become so important.

Of course, this book isn’t perfect.  The representation of perceptions of disability in the middle ages is woefully inadequate; I felt as though Jenet’s disabilities were used casually as an excuse to justify her not having married and without consideration for the implications of this.  However, although this was an issue it bothered me less than I expected because the book reads more as a parable with a historical setting than as a strictly historical novel.  I also thought that the magical overtones could perhaps have benefited from some expansion to make them sit better in the story as a whole. 

This was a quick, enjoyable read and I’m really glad to have finally received a self-published book about which I am happy to say that!

Flowers for Alys by Irene M. Redpath.  Published by Lulu, 2010, pp. 116.  First edition.

The Poisonwood Bible tells the story of the Price family who travel from Georgia to act as missionaries in the Congo in 1959.  The story is told through the eyes of the mother, Orleanna, and her four daughters, Rachel, Leah, Adah and Ruth May and the reader experiences everything through them, from day to day trials and tribulations to significant tragedies, from personal hardships to national political upheaval which swept the Congo in the 1960s following its independence.  The story does not end with the conclusion of their time in Africa, but extends beyond this to show the impact that the events that took place there have had on all the family members.  Neither religion nor politics are favourite themes of mine, but the novel is about so much more than this; they provide a framework for what is really an exploration of humanity.

Writers who can successfully assume several voices in one novel and actually make them distinct enough that I can tell who is speaking without having to check the chapter headings impress me immensely, and Barbara Kingsolver has this down to a fine art.  All of the Price women are determinedly individual and, through their differing perspectives, they each reveal different aspects of life in the Congo.  Orleanna’s narratives are always written retrospectively and are filled with a barely restrained hysteria from the very beginning, the reasons for which only become clear towards the end of the book.  Rachel is the eldest and the most resistant to life in the Congo, and her sections are a heartbreaking combination of trying to act and sound grown up while desperately needing to be babied and looked after in this strange land.  Leah, the stronger of the twins, is the most vocal of all the women and adapts best to Congolese ways.  Through her, although the reader still sees the village of Kilanga and its inhabitants from the perspective of a white outsider, it is the perspective of a white outsider who understands and does her best to be assimilated and accepted among the Africans.  Adah is Leah’s physically weaker twin, partially crippled from birth and largely silent.  Her sections of the narrative display a fey intelligence and shrewdness and her observations into the people around her are keen.  Ruth May is the baby of the family, and her parts of the story are filled with a bittersweet innocence, as she observes and reports the situations around her without comprehension of their true meanings or implications.  With these five remarkable women, Kingsolver weaves a tapestry of life in the Congo at this difficult time which had me completely emotionally engaged from beginning to end.

In addition to drawing me in on the levels of character and plot, The Poisonwood Bible is highly technically written as language, both in practice and as a concept, is very important and every single word feels as though it has been carefully chosen for maximum impact.  Rachel, for example, frequently gets words confused in her attempts to sound older than she is and so will often say things that are either not what she means or are just nonsense.  I’m also reasonably sure that she never uses Congolese words or phrases, indicative of her resistance to the culture and her desire to remain separate, whereas the other women all gradually absorb these into their vocabulary.  Adah in particular thrives on these new words and their possible uses as she turns language inside out and upside down in order to extract every possible nuance of meaning from them.  Her use of palindromes and the way that Kingsolver deploys them throughout the book is something that I found particularly interesting.  It is also telling that silent girl is the one who understands language the best, as it draws attention to all the things in this book that go unsaid.  I never thought I’d use these terms outside of university, but Kingsolver makes excellent use of the gap between signifier and signified.

In short, I found this book brilliant on every level, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.  Published by Faber andFaber, 2000, pp. 616.  Originally published in 1998.

Baudolino first came into my possession when I was helping a friend sort through some of his books at university when he moved from a large room into a much smaller one.  When I unearthed this book, he expressed surprise that I hadn’t already read it and then insisted that I rehome it as naturally, being a medievalist, I would love it.  Never one to turn down a free book, I took it off his hands and then, being not only a medievalist but a medievalist in the middle of writing her MA dissertation, it promptly became buried under a stack of less medieval brain candy for essential light relief.  I had completely forgotten about it until a colleague lent me the same book, also insisting that I would love it.  As this chap delights in giving people books to read, all of which so far have been universally loathed by the reluctant recipients, this was hardly an encouragement.  Nonetheless, this meant that I now had two copies of the book staring accusingly at me from my shelves and the cumulative guilt finally proved too much, so I gave in and read the book.

Baudolino is a difficult book to summarise, because the more you read, the more you realise that the plot is merely incidental and the book is really about something else entirely.  In fact, if you were to read this book for the plot you would be very confused very quickly.  The story is a first person account by the eponymous Baudolino of his life, as told to Niketas whom he rescues from the sack of Constantinople.  It chronicles his adventures from 1155 when he was adopted in all but name by Emperor Frederick I up to the fourth Crusade which is the present day of the novel.  In between he falls in love, studies in Paris, negotiates peace agreements, saves cities, and searches for the legendary kingdom of Prester John.  However, what the book is really about (I think; it’s a bit difficult to tell with Eco) is what is true and what is not and how easily one can become the other.

Baudolino himself is established as an unreliable narrator from the very beginning of the novel.  The book begins with him quite literally erasing history and writing his own story over the top of it when he scrapes clean some parchment containing historical records for his own personal use.  He goes on to fabricate love letters which he considers more true than if they had really been sent to him by the object of his affection (who is of course, like Dante’s lady love, called Beatrice).  He creates religious relics from household junk.  He invents a letter from Prester John to Frederick which sends Baudolino and his friends off on an impossible journey to find the kingdom that they themselves have created, bearing a cup which they style as the grail.  These stories not only take in others, but they even fool their creators as Baudolino and his friends seem to come to believe in their own fictions, so the reader stands no chance of working out what is true and what is not.  Why should his first person narrative to Niketas be any more factual than any of this?  And does it matter if it is true or a lie?  Eco seems to be asking whether there is a difference at all, and with the amount of blurring that goes on in this book it is impossible to say.

By far my favourite part of this book was Baudolino’s own manuscript which begins the novel, written in a strange, hybrid language which is a mixture of Latin and how he thinks his native tongue ought to sound if it were to be written (and kudos to William Weaver for finding a way to translate this so that it works in English).  This is so very medieval in spirit, right down to his having scraped the parchment clean of another text and written his own story over the top of it (although parts of the original manuscript still show through at points), that I couldn’t help but enjoy it.  This was the first in a long series of in jokes for medievalists which I found enormously entertaining but I’m not sure would have been appreciated as much by someone without this background; even with my education in this area, at times I felt as though I needed to read armed with an encyclopedia of the medieval world to pick up on everything and I’m sure I missed a great deal.  Eco may be writing fiction, but this book is very scholarly, employing and satirising a whole host of medieval tropes and conventions, from Provencal troubadour verse to debate on religious heresies, from courtly love to fantastic travelogues and from philosophy to the inexplicable lists, ubiquitous in medieval literature.  Baudolino is a gold mine of satire on the middle ages, but it is hard work to read.

Baudolino by Umberto Eco.  Translated by William Weaver.  Published by Vintage, 2003, pp. 522.  Originally published in 2000.

Author: Barbara Erskine

Published: Harper Collins, 1994, pp. 1086.  Originally published 1992

Genre: Historical fiction

Blurb: In 1218 an extraordinary princess is born, whose mystical powers and unquenchable spirit will alter the course of history…  Raised by her fiercely Welsh nurse to support the Celtic cause against the predatory English king, Princess Eleyne is taught to worship the old gods, to look into the future and sometimes the past.  However, unable to identify time and place in her terrifying visions, she is powerless to avert forthcoming tragedy…  Remarkable events follow Eleyne all her life as, despite impassioned resistance, her world is shaped by powerful men.  But her tempestuous life and loves tie her to the destinies of England, Scotland and Wales…

When, where and why: Sharon Penman’s Here Be Dragons is one of my favourite historical fiction novels, and so when I saw that this book dealt with Llewellyn’s daughter and would revisit all the characters I loved so much I knew I had to have it.  It caught my eye as I was browsing my shelves and so went into my bag to be read on the train.  It counts as book 32/50 for my Books Off the Shelf Challenge.

What I thought: Caveat emptor!  This may look like an innocuous historical fiction novel (albeit a rather chunky one) but halfway through it mutates horribly into a paranormal romance.  Now, if you happen to like stories of people falling in love with other people who are, in one way or another, dead, then you’d probably love this book.  Were I a publisher I’d probably suggest republishing this book and repackaging it with a greater emphasis on the paranormal element, because goodness knows that’s popular at the moment.  However, I am not a publisher, I am merely a disgruntled reader who feels disappointed in the author for choosing to throw this element in for no apparent reason and cheated out of what would have been a good, slightly trashy historical novel.

Initially, Child of the Phoenix was a fairly solid example of the historical fiction genre.  It’s a bit cliched (can we say beautiful and willful heroine?) and nothing spectacular, but the story races along quite well and I found it an engaging and quick read despite its size.  True, it suffers in comparison to Here Be Dragons, the reason I read it, but I was enjoying it nonetheless.  Even if the writing isn’t as good, I found it interesting to see the different perspectives that the two authors use to present the same events, giving wildly different motives and emotions surrounding them.  Characterisation is patchy and inconsistent: Eleyne is described throughout as an independent, opinionated, fiery woman and yet she submits without question when her first husband beats her to punish her for her actions, then has willing sex with him and snuggles up to him for comfort, which is utterly unbelieveable.  I would have expected, shock, anger and hurt, not the strange meekness which Erskine suddenly gives her.  I could live with that though, as most of the enjoyment of historical novels for me is in the plot rather than the characters.

Halfway through, however, the book runs into major problems.  The story goes round and round in circles as similar events happened repeatedly with seemingly no attempt to differentiate between them.  Then the paranormal romance strikes!  Now, I have nothing against a bit of magic in books, particularly the occasional use of the Sight or references to the old gods which seems to be ubiquitous in any historical novel with an even vaguely celtic setting, but this combination of strange visions and a ghostly love triangle was far too much for my tastes. 

Erskine explains in her afterward that very little is known about her central character.  In fact, she may even be two entirely different people that Erskine has erroneously combined, historical records are that vague and incomplete.  To me, the paranormal subplot which quickly takes over is a lazy way of attempting to inject excitement into the times when very little was happening in Eleyne’s life without having to develop the story and characters in a more difficult way without such instant appeal.  The paranormal occurrences are noticeably absent at times when important and interesting historical events are occurring, and so they really do just seem like a way to fill in the gaps without trying. 

Ultimately, I would have preferred this book if Erskine had avoided the problem of long periods when nothing happened by making the book much shorter.  There are plenty of examples of time being skipped over, just indicated by a dated heading, and so, at over 1,000 pages, I feel that she could have trimmed a lot of fat from this book and made it a much tighter read, without the need for a silly ghostly lover.

Where this book goes: I’ve lent this book to my mother, who will probably really enjoy it.  After that, though, it’s going straight to BookMooch to find a new home, not to mention to give me about three inches of clear shelf space.

Tea talk: I was recently given some tea as a belated birthday present from a good friend of mine, so I’ve been trying that out.  First on the list was some Golden Snail Tea!  It’s so named because of its shape, not its provenance, and makes a really delicious, light gold cup of tea.  Plus the name is just great.

Title:

Author: Harry Bingham

Published: Harper, 2006, pp. 442.  Originally published 2006

Blurb: Misha is an aristocratic young officer in the army when the Russian revolution sweeps away all his certainties.  Tonya is a nurse from an impoverished family in St Petersburg.  They should have been bitter enemies; and yet they fall passionately in love.  It cannot last and, as the political situation grows ever worse, Misha is forced to flee the country.

Thirty years later, Misha has survived the war and seeks to rebuild his life in the destroyed city of Berlin.  Then, one snowy winter’s day, he glimpses a woman who resembles Tonya.  Can this be his lost love?  Drawn into a dangerous double game of espionage and betrayal, the two lovers struggle to find each other, as the divide deepens between East and West…

When, where and why: I have no idea when or why I bought this, but I’ve definitely had it for long enough to it to become book 31/50 for my (rather optimistic, given the date) Books Off the Shelf Challenge.  I decided to read it as one of the categories in the challenge in which I’m taking part on Goodreads was to read two books by different authors which shared a common word in the title.  After the success of The French Lieutenant’s Woman I decided that ‘lieutenant’ was my word and so this book came out of hibernation.

What I thought: Initially I found this book quite disappointing.  After reading Anna Karenina earlier this year I was looking forward to a return to Russia in this book, but Harry Bingham doesn’t do the landscape justice and the vocabulary and description never quite got there: it didn’t feellike Russia.  The story also starts off with a string of unbelieveable events, which doesn’t help matters: Misha, a former aristocrat, instantly trusts and takes into his confidence Tonya, a member of the working class, whose cousin is an important figure locally in the revolution and has just been round to seize more of his family’s belongings.  Sounds completely realistic to me.  Naturally, Misha and Tonya fall in love, but this is portrayed without any preamble or sense of development, so I wasn’t invested in their relationship in any way because it came out of the blue.

Fortunately, this section of the story is quite short and the narrative picks up a great deal once it relocates from revolutionary Russia to post-war Berlin.  I’ve read a lot of historical fiction books surrounding the Second World War but I think this is the first one which deals with the aftermath of the conflict rather than the fighting itself, so it was very interesting from that perspective.  This second part of the novel follows the separate lives of Misha and Tonya as they try to cope in the ruins of a city governed by four different armies (although only three, the British, the Americans and the Russians, are of any relevance to the book), never giving up hope of finding one another again.

I enjoyed the fact that, after such a swift romance in the initial stage of the novel, Harry Bingham doesn’t give Misha and Tonya an easy ride after this.  There are continuous near-misses as the two are almost reunited again only to be foiled by circumstance, and this allowed me to develop the interest in seeing their relationship succeed which was absent from the portion set in Russia.  I also liked Bingham’s decision to give both Misha and Tonya lives outside of their love for one another: I find novels where the characters fall in love instantly, are separated after a few months and then spend the rest of their lives waiting for one another deeply unrealistic, so I was happy that the book didn’t go down this route.  Instead, Misha and Tonya both marry and have families and, although these are naturally conveniently out of the way by the time the two lovers try to find one another again, I appreciated this nod to realism.

Sadly, I thought that this novel went full-circle: it had a bad beginning, a good middle and reverted to a bad ending.  I found the way that Bingham provided a brief historical outline of the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of separation between East and West Germany in the complete absence of any plot to be lazy.  It would have been netter if the lapsed time had been implied by a dated chapter heading, as in other places in the novel, or fleshed out so that these events seemed relevant to the characters.  Left as it was I thought it was a bit sloppy really.  It’s a shame this book was so let down by its introduction and conclusion.

Where this book goes: This one is staying put for now, but it’s a marked man now.  I have a collection of books tagged that I wouldn’t mind losing if I need to get rid of some prior to moving house, and The Lieutenant’s Lover is headed there.

Tea talk: In this book, Tonya’s cousin remarks to her: “The greatest empires of the world have always been tea-drinking.  The Chinese.  The Mughals.  The British, of course.  Now it’s our turn.  The rise of the Russian tea-drinking empire”.  What else could I drink in honour of the Russian tea-drinking empire but Russian Caravan?