Fiction – Page 147 – BooksPlease

The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey

Published on March 7, 2018 by Margaret6 Comments

Jonathan Cape, Vintage Digital| 1 March 2018|304 p|Review copy|4.5*

Description

15th century Oakham, in Somerset; a tiny village cut off by a big river with no bridge. When a man is swept away by the river in the early hours of Shrove Saturday, an explanation has to be found: accident, suicide or murder? The village priest, John Reve, is privy to many secrets in his role as confessor. But will he be able to unravel what happened to the victim, Thomas Newman, the wealthiest, most capable and industrious man in the village? And what will happen if he can’t?

Moving back in time towards the moment of Thomas Newman’s death, the story is related by Reve – an extraordinary creation, a patient shepherd to his wayward flock, and a man with secrets of his own to keep. Through his eyes, and his indelible voice, Harvey creates a medieval world entirely tangible in its immediacy.

My thoughts:

The Western Wind really is an extraordinary book. I was drawn into the story right from the start. Samantha Harvey’s writing brings to life the sights, smells and sounds of the daily life of the ordinary people living in Oakham, a small village in Somerset in 1491. So often in historical fiction it’s about the notable historical figures of the period that are the main characters – here there none (although there is a reference to their bishop who is in prison for trying to put a pretender on the throne (Perkin Warbeck had first claimed the English throne in 1490).

A man disappears, presumed drowned – but how and why did he die? Oakham, an impoverished village is isolated, cut off from the surrounding villages and from the monks at the abbey in Bruton by the river with its bends and oxbows, and the long woody ridge to the north-east edge of the village. There are no outsiders.

I thought the way Samantha Harvey reveals how Thomas Newman died telling the story moving back day by day to the day of his death was very effective, although at first I was a bit puzzled. By the end – that is – on the day Thomas Newman disappeared – we know so much about him and his neighbours, mainly through the confessions they made to the narrator, John Reve, the village priest. And the sequence of events, the why and the how are revealed.

The people are superstitious, living in fear of the whims and punishments of God and taking everything as a warning. Reve tries to reassure them that the creatures they fear, such as wolf-men and grotesque sea creatures don’t exist, but that there are ill spirits to test us and strengthen us; that what we call good or bad luck are spirits, that live in the air or in the water and that we can conquer them. Reve prays for a sign that Newman was on his way through purgatory safely to heaven. The wind is blowing from the east, a strong and bitter wind, so he prays for a wind from the west to blow the ill spirits away.

This is in some ways an allegorical tale, with the characters standing for symbolical figures, and events as symbols of change. Hence there is Newman, a relative newcomer to the village the bringer of change as he gradually bought land off Townshend, the lord of the manor, now impoverished. Does this make him a suspect for Newman’s death?

The monks, who it is said are keen to buy the village land, also foreshadow the changes that are to come in the next half century or so. Reve, the priest (my Local Historian’s Encyclopedia tells me a reeve was usually a man of villein status who organised the daily business of the manor) is concerned that people are no longer coming to him for confession but paying a travelling friar, who didn’t know them, for a confession incognito. The people are losing their faith in God.

I loved other details, setting the book in the 1490s – the techniques of bridge building, the traditional games such as ‘campball’ (the precursor of football) played by all the young men of the parish with a pig’s bladder up and down the village road, the cock-fighting, the food and drink – spiced beer and metheglin (a variety of mead), giving out the sweetness of honey, and the music – the tinkling of tambourines, pipes and drumming on goat-hide.

I came to the end of this book and immediately wanted to start it again. What seems at first to be a simple tale is actually a multi-layered and complex book. I really enjoyed reading it.

About the author

Samantha Harvey is the author of four novels, The Wilderness, All Is Song, Dear Thief and The Western Wind.

Her novels have been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Guardian First Book Award and the James Tait Black Prize, and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Baileys Prize and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. She won the AMI Literature Award and the Betty Trask Prize. She lives in Bath, UK, and is a Reader in creative writing at Bath Spa University.

My thanks to Jonathan Cape for a review copy via NetGalley.

Amazon UK link
Amazon US link

First Chapter First Paragraph: Gem Squash Tokoloshe by Rachel Zadok

Published on March 6, 2018 by Margaret8 Comments

Every Tuesday First Chapter, First Paragraph/Intros is hosted by Vicky of I’d Rather Be at the Beach sharing the first paragraph or two of a book she’s reading or plans to read soon.

I’ve been wondering what to read next and looking at my bookshelves Gem Squash Tokoloshe by Rachel Zadok caught my eye.

Gem Squash Tokoloshe

It begins with a section in a different font:

The Soul Seeker

Something wake him, stir a hunger in his guts, call. He lick the breeze, taste a morsel of fear on the icy air. His glands drip, his cheeks, taut drawn, long to stretch, distort with moans and screams. There’s pain out there.

and moves on to Chapter One

My Mother believed in magic. She told me stories of the fairies who lived on our farm as she rocked me to sleep at night. On hot summer nights, Mother left the window open, letting in the cool night breeze which carried the smell of citrus to my nostrils. That smell, mixed with the perfume of Mother’s lilac-scented soap, brings Dead Rex and Tit Tat Tay into my mind, and makes me look over my shoulder to make sure they’re not behind me. I’d lived on the farm from the day I was born, and as long as I could remember, I’d been surrounded by fairies. they lived on the peripheries of my vision, well hidden from my curious eyes, but I knew they were there. Mother was forever warning me about the dangers of bad fairies: ‘Don’t go into the orchard alone, Tit Tat Tay will steal you and turn you into a monkey child.’

Blurb

She just sat there hardly moving, staring at the drive. Black marks formed under her eyes where her lashes bled their waxy coating onto her skin. Her rouged cheeks were smudged. Mother looked like she was melting in the heat.

Faith leads an isolated existence on her family’s drought stricken farm in the Northern Transvaal of South Africa. When the rain stopped, her father took to the road as a travelling salesman, returning only at weekends. Now Faith lives with her mother Bella and dog Boesman anticipating his visits – until one day he stops coming and Bella’s health begins to go into rapid decline.

Fifteen years later Bella has died incarcerated in the Sterkfontein asylum for the criminally insane. Faith has not spoken to her mother for ten years and is on the brink of a breakdown of her own. Now, with her mother’s death, she inherits the farm and must return to confront the dark mysteries of the past . . .

In prose as lithe and imaginative as that of Alexandra Fuller, Rachel Zadok te Riele recreates the voice of a young girl growing up during the height of apartheid unrest in South Africa. As Faith struggles to make sense of the complex world in which she lives and come to terms with the beliefs her society and upbringing have inculcated in her, what emerges is a richly compelling, emotionally resonant tale of courage set against the backdrop of a chaotically divided and deeply beautiful country.

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The Soul Seeker section is creepy and disturbing. I flicked to the end of the book to find a final section entitled The Baby Snatcher, printed in the same font as The Soul Seeker and now I’m intrigued to find out what comes in between.

What do you think – would you read on?

Six Degrees from The Beauty Myth to The Labours of Hercules

Published on March 3, 2018 by Margaret25 Comments

I love doing Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month the chain begins with The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf.

The Beauty Myth

This book is described on Goodreads as the bestselling classic that redefined our view of the relationship between beauty and female identity. I haven’t read it and most probably won’t read it. So the first link in my chain is to a book about a mythical woman known for her beauty and for being the cause of the fall of Troy. It is

Helen of Troy

Helen of Troy by Margaret George, a modern retelling of the ancient myth of Helen, Paris and the Trojan War. Coincidentally we’ve been watching the BBC’s Troy: Fall of a City I’m never sure I really want to watch film or TV adaptations and yet I find myself drawn to them. This leads me on to

Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold by Stephen Fry, although he hasn’t included the details of the Trojan War – he begins at the beginning where the poets captured the stories told by the Greeks of their gods, monsters and heroes – but doesn’t end at the end.

But Fry does include the story of King Tantalus, who was punished for his crimes by being made to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the fruit ever eluding his grasp, and the water always receding before he could take a drink. A modern re-working of the story is in my next chain link:

Tantalus: the sculptor's story by [Westwell, Jane]

Jane Westwell’s novel, Tantalus is the story of two lovers are separated not by barriers of race, class or creed, but by something much more devastating – by time. They can see and can talk to each other but can never touch. Theirs is an impossible love as each is trapped in their own time and space.

Another modern version of one of the Greek myths is that of Penelope and Odysseus in

The Penelopiad

Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus, described by Mary Beard in the Guardian as ‘exploring the very nature of mythic story-telling.’ This is one of the Canongate Myth series of books – retelling Homer’s account in the Odyssey. It also links to Helen of Troy as she is Penelope’s cousin. Atwood’s version explores what Penelope was really up to whilst Odysseus was away for twenty years.

My next link is to another book in the Canongate series:

Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

Weight: the Myth of Atlas and Heracles by Jeanette Winterson. Atlas, the guardian of the Garden of Hesperides and its golden apples, leads a rebellion against the Olympian gods and incurs divine wrath. For this the gods force him to bear the weight of the earth and the heavens for eternity. When Heracles, for one of his twelve labours, seeks to steal the golden apples he offers to shoulder the world temporarily if Atlas will bring him the fruit.

This brings me to yet another re-working of the Greek myths, about another Heracles – also known as Hercules, and his twelve labours:

The Labours of Hercules by Agatha Christie is a collection of 12 short stories featuring Hercule Poirot, first published in 1947. The stories were all first published in periodicals between 1939 and 1947.

The labours of Hercules were set for the classical Greek hero by King Eurystheus of Tiryns as a penance. On completing them he was rewarded with immortality. Hercule Poirot is a very different figure from the Greek hero, Hercules, but there is one way in which they are alike – Christie writes: ‘Both of them, undoubtedly, had been instrumental in ridding the world of certain pests … Each of them could be described as a benefactor to the Society he lived in … ‘

Poirot has set himself the task of solving twelve cases corresponding to the Twelve Labours of Hercules, including The Apples of the Hesperides, in which Poirot’s apples are emeralds on a tree around which a dragon is coiled, on a missing Italian renaissance goblet. It seems that Poirot may have to go on a world tour to investigate locations in five different parts of the globe in order to retrieve the goblet.

My chain this month has the same link running through the book – that of myths. From the modern obsession with beauty back to ancient myths and their modern versions and ending with a collection of short stories of crime fiction based on the Greek myths.

Next month (April 7, 2018), we’ll begin with Arthur Golden’s bestseller, Memoirs of A Geisha.

My Week in Books: 28 February 2018

Published on February 28, 2018 by Margaret19 Comments

This Week in Books is a weekly round-up hosted by Lypsyy Lost & Found, about what I’ve been reading Now, Then & Next.

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A similar meme, WWW Wednesday is run by Taking on a World of Words.

Now:

51IBFwYPBfL Munich by Robert Harris, set in 1938, beginning in September as Hitler is determined to start a war and Chamberlain is desperate to preserve the peace. I’ve read about half the book and am finding it fascinating.

Blurb

As Chamberlain’s plane judders over the Channel and the Führer’s train steams relentlessly south from Berlin, two young men travel with secrets of their own.

Hugh Legat is one of Chamberlain’s private secretaries; Paul Hartmann a German diplomat and member of the anti-Hitler resistance. Great friends at Oxford before Hitler came to power, they haven’t seen one another since they were last in Munich six years earlier. Now, as the future of Europe hangs in the balance, their paths are destined to cross again.

When the stakes are this high, who are you willing to betray? Your friends, your family, your country or your conscience?

Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading by Lucy Mangan, due to be published tomorrow, 1 March 2018. This is a delightful book taking me back to the books of my childhood as Lucy Mangan describes the books she loved. I’ve nearly finished it, so I’ll post my review soon.

Blurb

The Cat in the Hat? Barbar? The Very Hungry Caterpillar? Whoever it was for you, it’s very hard to forget the vivid intensity of your first encounter with a book.

As a bespectacled young bookworm, Lucy Mangan devoured books: from early picture books, to Swallows and Amazons, Enid Blyton to Little Women, and from trashy teen romances to her first proper ‘grown-up’ novels. In Bookworm, she revisits this early enthusiasm; celebrating the enduring classics, and disinterring some forgotten treasures.

This is a love letter to the joys of childhood reading, full of enthusiasm and wit, telling the colourful story of our best-loved children’s books, the extraordinary people who created them, and the thousand subtle ways they shape our lives. It also comes packed with brilliant recommendations to inspire the next generation of bookworms and set them on their way.

This impassioned book will bring the unforgettable characters of our collective childhoods back to life – prompting endless re-readings, rediscoveries, and, inevitably, fierce debate. It will also act as an invaluable guide to anyone looking to build a children’s library and wondering where to start, or where to go next.

Then:

The last book I finished is D ry Bones in the Valley by Tom Bouman. This book has won several awards: Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller (2014), Edgar Award for Best First Novel (2015), Strand Critics Award Nominee for Best First Novel (2014). I really enjoyed it. My review will be up soon.

Blurb

When an elderly recluse discovers a corpse on his land, Officer Henry Farrell follows the investigation to strange places in the countryside, and into the depths of his own frayed soul.

In Wild Thyme, Pennsylvania, secrets and feuds go back generations. The lone policeman in a small township on the sparse northern border, Henry Farrell expected to spend his mornings hunting and fishing, his evenings playing old-time music. Instead, he has watched the dual encroachment of fracking companies and drug dealers bring money and troubles to the area. As a second body turns up, Henry’s search for the killer opens old wounds and dredges up ancient crimes which some people desperately want to keep hidden.

With vivid characters and flawless pacing, Tom Bouman immerses readers in this changing landscape. In these derelict woods, full of whitetail deer and history, the hunt is on…

Next:

The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey, also due to be published tomorrow, 1 March 2018.

Blurb (Amazon):

Have you read any of these books? Do any of them tempt you?

First Chapter First Paragraph: The Ghost of the Mary Celeste by Valerie Martin

Published on February 27, 2018 by Margaret12 Comments

Every Tuesday First Chapter, First Paragraph/Intros is hosted by Vicky of I’d Rather Be at the Beach sharing the first paragraph or two of a book she’s reading or plans to read soon.

My first paragraph this week is from The Ghost of the Mary Celeste by Valerie Martin, which is one of my latest acquisitions.

The Ghost of the Mary Celeste

It begins:

The Brig Early Dawn, Off the Coast of Cape Fear, 1859

The captain and his wife were asleep in each other’s arms. She, new to the watery world, slept lightly; her husband, seasoned and driven to exhaustion the last two days and nights by the perils of a gale that shipped sea after sea over the bow of his heavily loaded vessel, had plunged into a slumber as profound as the now tranquil ocean beneath him. As his wife turned in her sleep, wrapping her arms loosely about his waist and resting her cheek against the warm flesh of his shoulder, in some half-conscious chamber of her dreaming brain she heard the ship’s clock strike six bells. The cook would be stirring, the night watch rubbing their eyes and turning their noses towards the forecastle, testing the air for the first scent of their morning coffee.

Blurb

A mystery unsolved to this day
A mystic who confounds the cynics
A writer looking for the story that will make his name

A ghost ship appears in the mist. To the struggling author Arthur Conan Doyle, it is an inspiration. To Violet Petra, the gifted American psychic, it is a cruel reminder. To the death-obsessed Victorian public, it is a fascinating distraction. And to one family, tied to the sea for generations, it is a tragedy.

In salons and on rough seas, at séances and in the imagination of a genius, these stories converge in unexpected ways as the mystery of the ghost ship deepens. But will the sea yield its secrets, and to whom?

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This is the Mary Celeste, so I know the basics – the ship was discovered adrift off the coast of Spain. Her cargo was intact and there was no sign of struggle, but the crew was gone. They were never found. I’m intrigued … what will this novel reveal?

What do you think – would you read on?

New-to-Me Books from Barter Books

Published on February 23, 2018 by Margaret6 Comments

On Tuesday it was time for another visit to my favourite bookshop Barter Books, one of the largest secondhand bookshops in Britain. We were early getting there just after it had opened for the day, so there was space to park right outside the entrance.

I was quite restrained and only brought three books home, with me. But at least I’ve made some room on my bookshelves as I’d brought in six books. These are the books I brought home:

Killing Floor by Lee Child,the first in his Jack Reacher series. I’m keen to read this because I’ve recently read the 22nd book in the series and want to know more about Reacher, an ex-military cop of no fixed abode.

The Ghost of the Mary Celeste by Valerie Martin. I’ve read some of Valerie Martin’s books before and enjoyed them. This one weaves fact and fiction concerning the mystery surrounding the Mary Celeste, looking at it from different viewpoints including those of a psychic and Arthur Conan Doyle, who was inspired by it to write a short story, J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement

Defying Hitler: a Memoir by Sebastian Haffner, a memoir of life in Germany during the Nazi rise to power. It was written in 1939 during Haffner’s exile in England. I’ve been reading novels about the Second World War period, so I think it would be good to know more about the Wiemar Republic, particularly from a German who lived through those times.

What do you think? Have you read any of these? Do they tempt you too?