Category: Historical Fiction

One Book, Two Book, Three Book, Four… and Five…

Published on by Margaret10 Comments
Today I’m copying Simon and doing his little this-book-that-book-this-book-that-book sort of post.

  1. The book I’m currently reading:


    Cop Hater by Ed McBain – there are 13  87th Precint books – this is the first in his series. There’s a heat-wave and someone is killing cops. McBain was a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and was one of three American writers to be awarded the CWA Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement.

  2. The last book I finished:


    Gently Does It by Alan Hunter – The first of the Inspector Gently books. I read it on my Kindle and enjoyed it very much – post to follow later.

  3. The next book I want to read:


    The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann – this is the next book for my face-to-face book group and I was talking to some of the other members yesterday who’ve already started it and they told me how good it is. It’s the story of Olivia and her love affair with a married man. I don’t often read romantic novels, so this will a change for me. I’m looking forward to reading it.

  4. The last book I bought:

    The last one I bought was The Weather in the Streets. The one before that was:

    Adam and Eve and Pinch Me by Ruth Rendell
    I bought this from the secondhand book box at Eyemouth Hospital. It’s hardback and looks practically brand new. I like buying books from the local hospitals as the money goes to a good cause. And I especially like buying them when they’re by authors I enjoy, such as Ruth Rendell.

  5. The last book I was given:


    Agatha Christie At Home by Hilary Macaskill. My husband gave me this for Christmas and I’m amazed at myself because I haven’t read it yet, although I’ve had a look at the photos. This is not just about Greenway, Agatha Christie’s Devon home but about her other houses and identifies the settings she used in her books.

Weekend Books & A New Challenge

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

This weekend I’ve been reading:

  • The Private Patient by P D James. I finished this yesterday and I’ll be writing about it for the next Crime Fiction Alphabet post this week.
  • The Blood Detective by Dan Waddell. I started this a few days ago.

I see that José Ignacio from The Game’s Afoot has found an interesting challenge and it is indeed a challenge:

2011 Challenge ‘Do not Accumulate, Read!!’

The rules are simple, before you buy another book, make a list of six from your TBR pile and read them. Once done you can go ahead, buy the book and, of course, read it. At the same time make another list of six books before buying the next one, and so on and so forth.

This will be difficult as this last week I’ve acquired nine books (bought and borrowed) and so I should make nine lists (and read 54 books) before I buy/acquire any more. That is some challenge, so I’m going to start the challenge from today and read 6 of my to-be-read books before I buy any more!

The new to me books this week are:

  • Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffennegger. I’ve previously borrowed a copy from the library but took it back unread. It hadn’t appealed at the time, but when I saw it on a secondhand bookstall selling in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust I wondered if the time was right to give it another go.
  • The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann. This is my local book group choice for May. We chose a romance due to the Royal Wedding this month.
  • Small Island by Andrea Levy – borrowed from a friend because I enjoyed The Long Song so much and she said this one is better.

Then two watercolour painting books to help me paint flowers:

I hope these will help me to paint like this. (Click on image to enlarge it.)

I’ve also recently downloaded these onto my Kindle:

  • Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi – because I no longer have a printed version
  • THE COMPLETE FATHER BROWN MYSTERIES COLLECTION by G K Chesterton
  • The Unbearable Bassington by Saki
  • Gently Does It (Inspector George Gently 1) by Alan Hunter

I’m not sure what I’m going to read next, apart from The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann, because that’s the May book group book, but they will all be from my to-be-read books.

Weekend Cooking – from The Long Song

Published on by Margaret14 Comments

One of the books I’m currently reading is The Long Song, a novel about slavery set in 19th century Jamaica, by Andrea Levy. The narrator is July, now an old woman born as a slave, writing her memoirs.

This morning I read about the preparations for the Yuletide dinner of 1831. There were to be twelve people at the plantation owner’s table.  Caroline, the owner’s sister is giving Hannah, the cook, her orders for the food to be provided.

There was to be both turtle and vegetable soups, mutton, pigeon pies and guinea fowl, a boiled ham and a turkey or two, turtle served in the shell (but she would prefer beef), four stewed ducks, cheese, as many hogsheads as they could get and roasted pig.

There was also to be:

… malt liquor, wine, porter, cider, brandy and rum, watermelon, mango, pawpaw, naseberry, soursop, grandilla fruit. ‘And make sure the preserve has come from England. Strawberry or damson. Do not serve guava, ginger or that ghastly sorrel jelly. I’m so tired of Jamaican jams.’

Hannah had stopped listening, for the need to shout ‘And me to fix-up all this? You  a gut-fatty, cha!’ at her misssus was becoming overpowering in her. (pages 74 – 75)

And in case they were still hungry after this obscene amount of food, Hannah was told to make plum pudding. Hannah remembered how to make it –

A little fruit, a little molasses, some cornmeal, eggs, plenty rum. Mash it up a bit. Put this mess in that silly round mould the missus did give her the first Christmas she arrived, and boil it until the water does run dry. And when the thing is hard then it is done. (pages 75 – 76)

So far I think this book is beautifully written, vivid, lively and enthralling.

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

Sunday Salon – Historical Fiction

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Historical fiction has long been a favourite genre and although these days I seem to be reading more crime fiction, it still has an irresistible draw for me. So, I was really pleased when my son gave me The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Penman as a Mother’s Day present today. It’s about the life and times of Richard III. I find Richard a fascinating person, accused of killing his nephews and I’ve read about him from Shakespeare’s play, Richard III to Josephine Tey’s Daughter of Time and Alison Weir’s non-fictional The Princes in the Tower. Now I can become immersed in the period of the Wars of the Roses to Richard’s death at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.

More historical fiction came to my attention this morning when I read that the Walter Scott Prize Shortlist has been announced. This is the 2nd Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Last year’s prize was won by Hilary Mantel for her novel, Wolf Hall. the winner will be announced on June 18th at the Borders Book Festival at Melrose.

The shortlist for the 2011 award is:

  • The Long Song by Andrea Levy
  • C by Tom McCarthy
  • The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
  • Ghost Light by Joseph O’Connor
  • Heartstone by C J Sansom
  • To Kill A Tsar by Andrew Williams

The only one of these I’ve read is – Heartstone by C J Sansom. This is Sansom’s fifth book in his 16th century England, Matthew Shardlake series. Heartstone is set in 1545 as England goes to war with France. I thought it was good but not as good as his earlier books, but it is very good on the details of life in Tudor times. Sansom’s research is excellent, his characters are well drawn and the atmosphere and sense of place are convincing.

Andrea Levy’s The Long Song is the next book for discussion at my Book Club at the end of this month, so I’ll be reading it soon. I haven’t read any of Andrea Levy’s four earlier books so I don’t know what to expect. It’s set in Jamaica as slavery came to an end. At the back of my copy there is Bonus Material – Andrea Levy writes about how she came to write The Long Song. I think I’ll start by reading that.

I know very little about the other books, but as I wasn’t too keen on Tom McCarthy’s Remainder and I gave up twice with David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, both of which I know other people rated highly, I may pass on those.  That leaves Joseph O’Connor’s Ghost Light which does sound appealing and I’ve downloaded a sample on Kindle to find out more. This article in The Scotsman has more details.

Crime Fiction Alphabet – K is for …

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

… Karen Maitland

Karen Maitland writes medieval mysteries. She has a doctorate in psycholinguistics and has done all kinds of jobs from cleaner to lecturer, egg packing to dance-drama, before she started writing for a living in 1996. She has travelled and worked in many parts of the world, from the Arctic Circle to Africa, and now lives in the medieval city of Lincoln in England. She is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association, the Historical Novel Society, the Society of Authors and of International Thriller Writers. And she is now one of the Medieval Murderers.

The first book of hers that I read is Company of Liars: a Novel of the Plague, set in the 14th century about a group of nine people travelling to escape from the plague and suspected of concealing the killer of a little girl. It’s a memorable book, with a colourful cast of characters. Although it is a long book (over 550 pages) and there are many other characters than the group of nine I had no difficulty keeping track of who was who. It’s full of suspense and drama and I loved it.

Her second medieval mystery is The Owl Killers: a Novel of the Dark Ages. Again this is set in 14th century England, this time in ‘an isolated village where pagan Owl Masters rule through fear superstition and murder’ (from the back cover). I haven’t finished reading this yet but it’s promising to be equally as good as Company of Liars. Karen Maitland is a wonderful storyteller and her descriptions of the place and period draw me in as though I was actually there.

Her latest book is The Gallows’ Curse, set in the reign of King John (1210). The ‘plot involves people-trafficking, murder and, oh yes… a very feisty dwarf and a eunuch with a hunger for revenge’.

For more crime fiction ‘K‘ entries see Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet.

True Grit by Charles Portis: Book Review

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

True Grit is a change of genre for me and I would not have chosen to read it myself – it’s my face-to-face book group book for this month. We met last night – the overall opinion was that it was OK, but rather disappointing, not living up to the quotes on the back of the book, or to the Introduction by Donna Tartt, who explained how much she and her family loved the book.

I used to like watching Westerns, but I don’t think I’ve read any since I was a child. My library had quite a lot of what I thought of as ‘cowboy’ books and after I’d read all the fairy tale books I moved on to those. I’ve watched the John Wayne film True Grit many years ago and remembered very little about it, other than an old and overweight Wayne wearing an eye patch helping a girl to trace her father’s murderer. And that is really the plot in a nutshell.

Mattie Ross, the girl in question, is a determined 14 year-old who in the 1870s leaves her mother and younger brother at home whilst she sets out after Tom Chaney, who had worked for her father and had killed him. Chaney had joined a band of outlaws – the Lucky Ned Pepper gang and gone into hiding in the Indian territory , which was under the jurisdiction of the US marshals. The sheriff tells her that one of the marshals, Rooster Cogburn is the ‘meanest’, a ‘pitiless man, double-tough, and fear don’t enter into his thinking. He loves to pull a cork.’ She hires him to get Tom Chaney.

In the book Cogburn is not quite like the John Wayne portrayal. He’s younger, in his late forties, but he is fat, one-eyed with walrus moustaches, unwashed and drunk most of the time. Most of our group had difficulty accepting that a 14 year old girl would behave as Mattie does or that Cogburn and LaBoeuf (a Texas Ranger who is also looking for Chaney) would take her along with them.

I liked the format of the story told from Mattie’s point of view as an adult remembering what had happened and the straight forward style. She is a very down-to-earth character who sees things as either right or wrong and backs up her opinions with Bible texts. The other characters are a bit like cardboard cutouts though and not too convincing. It’s a quick easy read but not one to stay in my mind for long – I finished it over a week ago and my memory of the detail is fading already. However, it has made me interested in watching John Wayne’s True Grit (it was on TV last week and we recorded it) and in seeing the new film, starring Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon,  Josh Brolin and Hailee Steinfield as Mattie.