Pan Macmillan| 4 December 2025| 445 pages| e-book| Review copy| 3*
Description:
Is the truth a legacy worth inheriting?
Flick Templeton seems to have it all: money, a renowned family name, brains and talent. But her wealth and status seem an obstacle to the real love she longs for. Guided by passion, she seeks her soulmate while finding her own path – but will the legendary family curse of tragedy and loss always thwart her?
Etta, Flick’s daughter, inherits her own share of the family blessings along with its darkness. Growing up, she is pulled between caring for her mother and finding her own identity. As Etta unravels the threads of Flick’s secrets, she starts to learn the truth about who she really is . . .
But can Flick and Etta ever break truly free from the shadows of a painful past, and the curse that seems to hang over every generation of their family?
This is the first book I’ve read by Lulu Taylor, so I wasn’t sure I would enjoy it. But when I had an invitation from Pan Macmillan to read this book I thought I’d read it, based on the blurb.
Once I’d started reading it I found it gripping and compelling, but I also found that it’s full of emotion, from ecstasy to the depths of despair about a dysfunctional family, with some truly awful characters.They believe their family is cursed. It’s a dramatic family saga, verging on melodrama, high on romance, intermingled with mystery and intrigue. It’s also very long encompassing three generations, over different time lines. I did find the structure of the plot rather muddled, so it’s definitely a book you have to read carefully to keep track of the characters over the years from 1952 to 1992.
The main character is ‘little girl lost‘ Flick (Felicity) Templeton, the daughter of the fabulously rich and glamorous, Gloria, who is so unbelievably selfish, self-centred, and controlling, a perfectly horrible person. The novel begins in 1952 with Brinsley and Flick’s eighteenth birthday party to celebrate their coming-of-age, when Brinsley would take possession of Caundle Court. This puzzled me as in 1952 the date when a young person became an adult was 21 and it was not until 1969 that it was lowered to 18. I know this book is fiction, but this is so incorrect that it made me wonder if I wanted to carry on reading. Nevertheless I did because a mystery always intrigues me. However, as I read on it soon became clear what the secret was and it wasn’t too hard to work it out well before it was revealed, over 400 pages later. I had been tempted to jump to the end to see if I was right but because I received this book via NetGalley to review I thought it was only fair to read the whole book.
Despite my misgivings I did find enough that I liked to give A Legacy of Secrets 3 stars. I enjoyed the details of life in the 1950s when Flick went to a finishing school in Oxford and her brother went to Magdalen College to read history. I liked Flick’s daughter a lot, and determination to uncover the family’s secrets. I also liked the descriptions of all the locations and the interaction between the characters showing how misunderstandings arise and the difficulties of mother/daughter relationships. I could feel the heartbreak and sadness as the characters experience all the setbacks that are thrown at them. It’s a complex and emotional book, one that I liked rather than loved.
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog
Today the topic is a Freebie and I’ve chosen books Books Set in the 1950s.
Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd. The first in a sparkling new 1950s seaside mystery series, featuring sharp-eyed former nun Nora Breen.
After thirty years in a convent, Nora Breen has thrown off her habit and set her sights on the seaside town of Gore-on-Sea. Why there? Why now? Instinct tells her it’s better not to reveal her reasons straight away. She takes a room at Gulls Nest guest house and settles in to watch and listen.
I enjoyed this. It’s quirky with some odd characters. At times it feels like a cosy crime mystery, but it’s also rather dark and foreboding, whereas at other times there’s some humour and also a hint of a romance. The setting is good in a fictional 1950s British seaside town.
Fludd by Hilary Mantel. I enjoyed this immensely – partly about religion and superstition, but also a fantasy, a fairy tale, told with wit and humour and with brilliant characterisation. It’s one of her earlier novels, set in Fetherhoughton, a drab, dreary town somewhere in a magical, half-real 1950s north England, a preserve of ignorance and superstition. The story centres on Fludd, a young priest who comes to the Church of St Thomas Aquinas to help Father Angwin, a cynical priest who has lost his faith. The Bishop, a modern man, is concerned about Father Angwin and wants to bring him and the Catholic community up to date – so the statues in the church have to go. This has a most disturbing effect on all concerned – not just the church and Father Angwin, but also the the nuns in the convent, and the school, both under the stern eye of Mother Perpetua.
An Air That Kills by Andrew Taylor, the first book in his Lydmouth crime series. The setting is Lydmouth, a small market town on the Welsh/English border in the early 1950s, just after the end of the Second World War. It begins as journalist, Jill Francis arrives to stay with her friends, Philip and Charlotte in Lydmouth, to recover from a bad experience. Also new to the town is Inspector Richard Thornhill, who is finding it difficult to adjust to working in the local police force. Workmen digging out a drain discover a wooden box containing baby’s bones, an old brooch and some scraps of yellowed newspaper. When Major Harcutt, the local historian is consulted he found that there could be a connection to an old murder trial.
Vengeance by Benjamin Black (a pseudonym used by John Banville), number five in Black’s Quirke Mysteries series set in Ireland in the 1950s. It begins with a suicide, that of Victor Delahaye, a business man who takes his boat out to sea and shoots himself. He had taken his partner’s son, Davy Clancy out to sea with him. The Delahayes and Clancys are interviewed – Mona Delahaye, the dead man’s young and very beautiful wife; James and Jonas Delahaye, his identical twin sons; Marguerite his sister; Jack Clancy, his ambitious, womanizing partner and Sylvia, Jack’s long-suffering wife. Then there is a second death. Why did Victor kill himself and who is the murderer, wreaking vengeance on the families?
The setting is excellent, both in location and time, with the characters wreathed in cigarette smoke, and having to find public telephones for example.
Death Has Deep Roots: a Second World War Mystery by Michael Gilbert. Set in 1950 it’s a mix of courtroom drama, spy novel and an adventure thriller. Victoria Lamartine, a hotel worker, and an ex-French Resistance fighter is on trial for the murder of Major Eric Thoseby, her supposed lover, and alleged father of her dead child. She is the obvious suspect – she was found standing over Thoseby’s dead body in his room at the Family Hotel in Soho, a room that was only accessed by one staircase – making this a variation on a locked room murder mystery. It was written not long after the end of the Second World War and it conveys a vivid impression of what life was like in both France and England, with memories of the war still fresh on people’s minds.
An Awfully Big Adventure, a semi-autobiographical novel set in 1950, based on Beryl Bainbridge’s own experience as an assistant stage manager in a Liverpool. A Liverpool repertory theatre company are rehearsing its Christmas production of Peter Pan. The story centres around Stella, the assistant stage manager. On the face of it this is a straight forward story of the theatre company but underneath it’s packed with emotion, pathos and drama. And it’s firmly grounded in a grim post-war 1950s England, food rationing still in operation and bombed buildings still in ruins overgrown with weeds.
Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie, a Poirot mystery, first published in 1955. It’s set in a crowded London house, owned by Mrs Nicolstis, a Greek and full of a mixed group of young students from a variety of backgrounds and cultures – from America, West Africa and India as well as an assortment from the British Isles.Items have gone missing and then one of the students commits suicide – or is it murder? And more deaths follow.
Agatha Christie reveals contemporary attitudes (1950s) to race and politics, as the characters’ prejudices come out in their discussions. There are some interesting reflections on crime and the psychology of behaviour.
Fresh from the Country by Miss Read, set in the 1950s, thisis a stand-alone novel telling the story of Anna Lacey, a newly qualified teacher, as she spends her first year teaching in Elm Hill, a new suburb in London. It highlights the differences between life in the country and the suburbs, which transported me back to the 1950s, when children were taught in large classes and the pace of life was slower than today. It was a bit disconcerting to read that Anna enjoyed smoking, but then the dangers of cigarettes were not emphasised in those days and many people did smoke.
The Blood Card by Elly Griffiths, the third book in the DI Stephens and Max Mephisto series. Known as the ‘Magic Men’ they had been part of a top-secret espionage unit during the War. This book captures the atmosphere of 1953 – a time of great change and optimism. Britain is looking forward with eager anticipation to the new Queen’s coronation. The newspapers and newsreels are full of it and more than half the homes in the country have bought a television in order to watch the coronation live- it was the first British coronation to be broadcast on television, a momentous occasion. But there are fears that an anarchist group is plotting to disrupt the coronation.
I enjoyed the insight into the history of television as Max is sceptical about performing magic on TV thinking the ‘smug grey box’ will be the death of the days of music hall, that magic tricks needed to be performed on stage not in close up with a camera over his shoulder. But he is persuaded to take part in a new show after the coronation.
Namaskar Books| 2022| 124 pages| e-book| my own copy| 4*
The wild Cévennes region of France forms the backdrop for the pioneering travelogue Travels with a Donkey, written by a young Robert Louis Stevenson. Ever hopeful of encountering the adventure he yearned for and raising much needed finance at the start of his writing career, Stevenson embarked on the 120-mile, 12-day trek and recorded his experiences in this journal. His only companion for the trip was a predictably stubborn donkey called Modestine. Travels with a Donkey gives the reader a rare glimpse of the character of the author, and the journalistic and often comical style of writing is in refreshing contrast to Stevenson’s more famous works. (Goodreads)
This is a short nonfiction book, just right for both Nonfiction November and Novellas in November. It’s a book I’ve had since 2011 and I’m glad to say that it was well worth the wait. I enjoyed it on several levels, as travel writing, history of the Cévennes region, descriptive writing of the French countryside in 1878, observations of the local people and Stevenson’s thoughts on religion.
He began his journey through the Cévennes, a range of mountains in south-central France, at Le Monastier, a highland valley fifteen miles from Le Puy, where he spent a month preparing for his excursion southward to Alais (modern name, Alès) a distance of 120 miles.
I was struck by what he took with him – a sleeping sack, because he didn’t intend to rely on the hospitality of a village inn, and a tent was troublesome to pitch and then strike. Whereas, a sleeping sack was always ready to get into. His was extraordinary, made of green waterproof cart-cloth lined with blue ‘sheep’s fur’, nearly six feet square plus two triangular flaps to make a pillow at night and the top and bottom of the sack by day. It was a huge sort of long roll or sausage, large enough for two at a pinch. And that was why he bought a donkey from an old man. He called her Modestine because she was
a diminutive she-ass, not much bigger than a dog, the colour of a mouse, with a kindly eye and a determined under-jaw. There was something neat and high-bred, a quakerish elegance, about the rogue that hit my fancy on the spot.
But he soon discovered that unless he beat Modestine with a staff, which he didn’t want to do; it sickened him – and me too. He had to let her go at her own pace and patiently follow her and there were times when she just stopped and wouldn’t go any further. This was extremely slow and in the end he resorted to a goad, which was a plain wand with an eighth of an inch of pin which worked wonders on poor Modestine, who carried most of his equipment.
As well as his clothing, he also took his travelling wear of country velveteen, pilot coat and knitted spencer (a short waist-length, double-breasted, man’s jacket, originally named after GeorgeSpencer, 2nd Earl Spencer), some books, a railway rug, food, and a variety of other things including a revolver, a spirit lamp, lantern, candles, a jack-knife and large leather flask, a bottle of Beaujolais, a leg of cold mutton and a considerable quantity of black bread and white for himself and the donkey and of all things an eggbeater, which he later abandoned. He wasn’t travelling light!
The book is full of Stevenson’s descriptions of the countryside, such as this one of the landscape as he approached the Trappist Monastery of Our Lady of Sorrows:
The sun had come out as I left the shelter of a pine-wood, and I beheld suddenly a fine wild landscape to the south. High rocky hills, as blue as sapphires, closed the view, and between these lay ridge upon ridge, heathery, craggy, the sun glittering on veins of rock, the underwood clambering in the hollows, as rude as God made them at first.
Modestine had to stop at St Jean du Gard, as she just couldn’t travel any further and needed to rest. He sold her and continued on to Alais by diligence (a public stagecoach). He missed her after she was gone.
For twelve days we were fast companions; we had travelled upwards of a hundred and twelve miles, crossed several respectable ridges, and jogged along with our six legs by many a rocky and many a boggy road. After the first day, although sometimes I was hurt and distant in manner, I still kept my patience; and as for her, poor soul! she had come to regard me as a god. She loved to eat out of my hand. She was patient, elegant in form, the colour of an ideal mouse, and inimitably small.
And he wept!
I was rather surprised by how much I enjoyed this book, mainly because I didn’t know anything about it other than its title and thought it was perhaps fiction. Of course it isn’t and it’s full of detail of his hike that I haven’t mentioned in this review. I shouldn’t have been surprised as I’ve enjoyed other books by Stevenson – Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Catriona.
I read in Wikipedia that Stevenson’s purpose in making his journey ‘was designed to provide material for publication while allowing him to distance himself from a love affair with an American woman of which his friends and family did not approve and who had returned to her husband in California’, but without giving a source for this information. In his book Stevenson does say when talking to a monk he met at the Trappist Monastery that he was not a pedlar (as the monk thought), but a ‘literary man, who drew landscapes and was going to write a book’.
This book is an intimate, fond and funny memoir of one of the greatest novelists of the last century. This colourful, personal, anecdotal, indiscreet and admiring memoir charts the course of Muriel Spark’s life revealing her as she really was. Once, she commented sitting over a glass of chianti at the kitchen table, that she was upset that the academic whom she had appointed her official biographer did not appear to think that she had ever cracked a joke in her life.
Alan Taylor here sets the record straight about this and many other things. With sources ranging from notebooks kept from his very first encounter with Muriel and the hundreds of letters they exchanged over the years, this is an invaluable portrait of one of Edinburgh’s premiere novelists. The book was published to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Muriel’s birth in 2018.
My thoughts:
This is a short nonfiction book of 169 pages on Kindle, so it’s just right for both Nonfiction November and Novellas in November. It’s a book I’ve had for a few years after a friend recommended it to me. I didn’t read it straight away because at the time the only book by Muriel Sparks I’d read was The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which I loved. Since then I’ve read Loitering with Intent, (review to follow in due course), so I thought it was time I read Appointment in Arezzo.
Muriel Spark was born on 1 February 1918, in Edinburgh, the daughter of Bertie Camberg, a Jew who was born in Scotland and her mother, Sarah who was English and an Anglican. Alan Taylor touches on her early life and teenage years in Edinburgh in a middle -class enclave , where she attended James Gillespie’s High School for Girls – immortalised as Marcia Blaine School in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
In July 1990 Alan Taylor first met Muriel Spark and her friend Penelope – Penny – Jardine in a hotel in Arezzo for dinner. The two women had shared a rambling house deep in the Val di Chiana 15 kilometres from Arezzo in Tuscany for twenty years. Penny is a sculptor who has exhibited at the Royal Academy in London; she supplied the domestic and business circumstances which allowed Muriel to flourish. Alan Taylor, a former deputy editor of The Scotsman and the founder-editor of the Scottish Review of Books, was there to interview her on the publication of her novel Symposium (1990). Their meeting led to a friendship and since then they met frequently during the last fifteen years of her life. She died at her home in Tuscany in April 2006 and is buried in the cemetery of Sant’Andrea Apostolo in Oliveto.
Following that first meeting, over the next fifteen years they met many times, when Taylor visited her in Tuscany, New York, London, Prague and finally in 2004 in Scotland and Edinburgh as well as exchanging many letters and telephone conversations. Taylor outlined details of her brief marriage in 1937 to Sidney Oswald Spark, which only lasted until 1940 when they separated, and about her son, Robin and their disagreement over her Jewishness. Robin believed that one must be either a Jew or a Gentile, whereas Muriel believed:
It was impossible ‘to separate’ the Jewess within her from the Gentile. In her mind, the two coexisted in harmony’ ‘uncomplainingly amongst one’s own bones’. Was she a Gentile? Or a Jewess? ‘Both and neither. What am I? I am what I am.
But Robin couldn’t cope with such ambiguity; he wanted certainty – in his mind one must be either Jew or Gentile. Their beliefs were irreconcilable. The full details are in Chapter 6, A Question of Jewishness.
Amongst many other topics they talked about her writing:
Fleur in Loitering with Intent spoke for her when she said: ‘I’ve come to learn for myself how little one needs, in the art of writing, to convey the lot, and how a lot of words, on the other hand, can convey so little. (page 17)
She had no idea when writing a book how it might turn out. Its theme built of itself and if it did not develop, it ramified. I wanted to know what she saw as her achievement, her legacy. ‘I have realised myself, ‘ she replied. ‘I have expressed something I brought into the world with me. I have liberated the novel in many ways, shown how anything whatever can be narrated, any experience set down, including sheer damn cheek. I think I have opened doors and windows in mind, and challenged fears – especially the most inhibiting fears about what a novel should be. (pages 98-99)
In a very real sense Muriel’s life is to be found in her work. She always said that if anyone wanted to know about the person behind the prose and poems they had only to read them closely and imaginatively. She is there, in the times and places and characters, in the choice of words and the construction of sentences, in the tone of voice, above all in the philosophy of existence. (pages 141-142)
There is so much more in this book. It is a fascinating insight into her life, and what she thought about writing, as well as reflecting on her books, as well as much more. I’ve really only touched the surface of this very readable book and I finished it knowing a lot more about Muriel Spark and her books – and keen to read more of them. And it’s illustrated with many photographs making it a warm, personal and affectionate account.
Week 5 of Nonfiction November is hosted by Deb Nance at Readerbuzz and we’re looking back at the previous weeks. And in particularly at which ones have made it onto our TBR?
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed taking part in Nonfiction November and there are so many fascinating books I could easily add to my TBR list. But I know my limitations, so these are my choices:
BooksPlease 