Tag: Historical Fiction

Posted in Sunday Spotlight

City Break in a Book: Vienna

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I’ve never been to Vienna but it’s very firmly on my list of places I’d like to visit. Firstly I love Klimt with a passion and have been to any and every exhibition of his work, but never in his homeland. I’m also interested in Freud, for obvious reasons. I’d like to eat a piece of Sachertorte there too. For now I’ll have to keep reading books set in the city.

Set in 1938 in London and Vienna, this is a tense and atmospheric thriller told from within a climate of uncertainty and fear as World War Two threatens. As war looms over Britain and there is talk of gas masks and blackout, people are understandably jumpy and anxious. Stella Fry, has been working in Vienna for a Jewish family and returns home with no job and a broken heart. She answers an advertisement from a famous mystery writer, Hubert Newman, who needs a manuscript typed. She takes on the job and is shocked the next day to learn of the writer’s sudden, unexplained death. She is even more surprised when, twenty-four hours later, she receives Newman’s manuscript and reads the Dedication: To Stella, spotter of mistakes. Harry Fox, formerly of Special Branch and brilliant at surveillance, has been suspended for some undisclosed misdemeanor. He has his own reasons for being interested in Hubert Newman. He approaches Stella Fry to share his belief that the writer’s death was no accident. What’s more, since she was the last person to see Newman, she could be in danger herself.

It is 1966, and Robert Simon has just fulfilled his dream by taking over a café on the corner of a bustling Vienna market. He recruits a barmaid, Mila, and soon the customers flock in. Factory workers, market traders, elderly ladies, a wrestler, a painter, an unemployed seamstress in search of a job, each bring their stories and their plans for the future. As Robert listens and Mila refills their glasses, romances bloom, friendships are made and fortunes change. And change is coming to the city around them, to the little café, and to Robert’s dream. 

A story of the hopes, kindnesses and everyday heroism of one community, The Café with No Name has charmed millions of European readers. It is an unforgettable novel about how we carry each other through good and bad times, and how even the most ordinary life is, in its own way, quite extraordinary.

Hedy Lamarr possessed a stunning beauty. She also possessed a stunning mind. Could the world handle both?

Her beauty almost certainly saved her from the rising Nazi party and led to marriage with an Austrian arms dealer. Underestimated in everything else, she overheard the Third Reich’s plans while at her husband’s side, understanding more than anyone would guess. She devised a plan to flee in disguise from their castle, and the whirlwind escape landed her in Hollywood. She became Hedy Lamarr, screen star.

But she kept a secret more shocking than her heritage or her marriage: she was a scientist. And she knew a few secrets about the enemy. She had an idea that might help the country fight the Nazis…if anyone would listen to her.

A powerful novel based on the incredible true story of the glamour icon and scientist whose groundbreaking invention revolutionised modern communication, The Only Woman in the Room is a masterpiece.

The year is 1853, and the Habsburgs are Europe’s most powerful ruling family. With his empire stretching from Austria to Russia, from Germany to Italy, Emperor Franz Joseph is young, rich, and ready to marry.

Fifteen-year-old Elisabeth, “Sisi,” Duchess of Bavaria, travels to the Habsburg Court with her older sister, who is betrothed to the young emperor. But shortly after her arrival at court, Sisi finds herself in an unexpected dilemma: she has inadvertently fallen for and won the heart of her sister’s groom. Franz Joseph reneges on his earlier proposal and declares his intention to marry Sisi instead.

Thrust onto the throne of Europe’s most treacherous imperial court, Sisi upsets political and familial loyalties in her quest to win, and keep, the love of her emperor, her people, and of the world.

With Pataki’s rich period detail and cast of complex, bewitching characters, The Accidental Empress offers a glimpse into one of history’s most intriguing royal families, shedding new light on the glittering Hapsburg Empire and its most mesmerizing, most beloved “Fairy Queen.”

Erika Kohut teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory by day. By night she trawls the city’s porn shows while her mother, whom she loves and hates in equal measure, waits up for her. Into this emotional pressure-cooker bounds music student and ladies’ man Walter Klemmer.

With Walter as her student, Erika spirals out of control, consumed by the ecstasy of self-destruction. A haunting tale of morbid voyeurism and masochism, The Piano Teacher, first published in 1983, is Elfreide Jelinek’s Masterpiece.

Jelinek was awarded the Nobel Prize For Literature in 2004 for her ‘musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that, with extraordinary linguistic zeal, reveal the absurdity of society’s clichés and their subjugating power.

The Piano Teacher was adapted into an internationally successful film by Michael Haneke, which won three major prizes at Cannes, including the Grand Prize and Best Actress for Isabelle Huppert.

Vienna at the dawn of the 20th century. An opulent, extravagant city teeming with art, music and radical ideas. A place where the social elite attend glamorous balls in the city’s palaces whilst young intellectuals decry the empire across the tables of crowded cafes. It is a city where anything seems possible – if you are a man. 

Edith and Adele are sisters, the daughters of a wealthy bourgeois industrialist. They are expected to follow the rules, to marry well, and produce children. Gertrude is in thrall to her flamboyant older brother. Marked by a traumatic childhood, she envies the freedom he so readily commands. Vally was born into poverty but is making her way in the world as a model for the eminent artist Gustav Klimt. 

None of these women is quite what they seem. Fierce, passionate and determined, they want to defy convention and forge their own path. But their lives are set on a collision course when they become entangled with the controversial young artist Egon Schiele whose work – and private life – are sending shockwaves through Vienna’s elite. All it will take is a single act of betrayal to change everything for them all. Because just as a flame has the power to mesmerize, it can also destroy everything in its path…

It’s Ball Season in Vienna, and Maria Wallner only wants one thing: to restore her family’s hotel, the Hotel Wallner, to its former glory. She’s not going to let anything get in her way – not her parents’ three-decade-long affair; not seemingly-random attacks by masked assassins; and especially not the broad-shouldered American foreign agent who’s saved her life two times already. No matter how luscious his mouth is. Eli Whittaker also only wants one thing: to find out who is selling American secret codes across Europe, arrest them, and go home to his sensible life in Washington, DC. He has one lead – a letter the culprit sent from a Viennese hotel. But when he arrives in Vienna, he is immediately swept up into a chaotic whirlwind of balls, spies, waltzes, and beautiful hotelkeepers who seem to constantly find themselves in danger. He disapproves of all of it! But his disapproval is tested as he slowly falls deeper into the chaos – and as his attraction to said hotelkeeper grows. Diana Biller’s The Hotel of Secrets is chock full of banter-filled shenanigans, must-have-you kisses, and romance certain to light a fire in the hearts of readers everywhere.

Vienna, 1913. It is a fine day in August when Lysander Rief, a young English actor, walks through the city to his first appointment with the eminent psychiatrist Dr Bensimon. Sitting in the waiting room he is anxiously pondering the particularly intimate nature of his neurosis when a young woman enters. She is clearly in distress, but Lysander is immediately drawn to her strange, hazel eyes and her unusual, intense beauty. Her name is Hettie Bull. They begin a passionate love affair and life in Vienna becomes tinged with a powerful frisson of excitement for Lysander. He meets Sigmund Freud in a café, begins to write a journal, enjoys secret trysts with Hettie and appears – miraculously – to have been cured. Back in London, 1914. War is imminent, and events in Vienna have caught up with Lysander in the most damaging way. Unable to live an ordinary life, he is plunged into the dangerous theatre of wartime intelligence – a world of sex, scandal and spies, where lines of truth and deception blur with every waking day. Lysander must now discover the key to a secret code which is threatening Britain’s safety, and use all his skills to keep the murky world of suspicion and betrayal from invading every corner of his life. Moving from Vienna to London’s West End, from the battlefields of France to hotel rooms in Geneva, Waiting for Sunrise is a feverish and mesmerising journey into the human psyche, a beautifully observed portrait of wartime Europe, a plot-twisting thriller and a literary tour de force from the bestselling author of Any Human Heart, Restless and Ordinary Thunderstorms.

The artistic stagnation of Vienna at the end of the nineteenth century was rudely shaken by the artists of the Secession. Their works at first shocked a conservative public, but their successive exhibitions, their magazine Ver Sacrum and their dedication to the applied arts and architecture soon brought them an enthusiastic following and wealthy patronage. With 60 new colour illustrations, this classic book, now in its third edition, brilliantly traces the course of this development, of the Wiener Werkstätte that followed, and the individual works of the artists concerned. The result is a fascinating documentary study of the successes and failures, hopes and fears of the members of an artistic movement that is so much admired today.

This is the true story that inspired the movie “Woman in Gold” starring Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds. Anne-Marie O Connor brilliantly regales us with the galvanizing story of Gustav Klimt’s 1907 masterpiece, the breathtaking portrait of a Viennese Jewish socialite, Adele Bloch-Bauer. The celebrated painting, stolen by Nazis during World War II, subsequently became the subject of a decade-long dispute between her heirs and the Austrian government.When the U.S. Supreme Court became involved in the case, its decision had profound ramifications in the art world. Expertly researched, masterfully told, “The Lady in Gold” is at once a stunning depiction of fin-de siecle Vienna, a riveting tale of Nazi war crimes, and a fascinating glimpse into the high-stakes workings of the contemporary art world.

Seventeen-year-old Franz Huchel journeys to Vienna to apprentice at a tobacco shop. There he meets Sigmund Freud, a regular customer, and over time the two very different men form a singular friendship. When Franz falls desperately in love with the music hall dancer Anezka, he seeks advice from the renowned psychoanalyst, who admits that the female sex is as big a mystery to him as it is to Franz.

As political and social conditions in Austria dramatically worsen with the Nazis’ arrival in Vienna, Franz, Freud, and Anezka are swept into the maelstrom of events. Each has a big decision to make: to stay or to flee?

Posted in Random Things Tours

The Betrayal of Thomas True by A.J. West

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In simple terms, this fascinating book is a love story. Two people meet in unlikely circumstances and fall in love. However, it’s so much more than that, but that’s what happens when something as simple as love is an act of subversion or rebellion. When I last read a novel like this I was on my 18th Century literature module at university and I had the luck to be taught and supervised for my dissertation by Dr. Ian McCormick who was an 18th Century literature specialist and also taught our Gothic, Grotesque and Monstrous module. He wrote a book called Secret Sexualities, a collection of 17th and 18th Century writing that covered cultural constructions of eunuchs, hermaphrodites, cross dressing, mannish women, female husbands, trials for sodomy and other legal injustices. I was absolutely fascinated because it was an utterly different picture from the 18th Century literature I’d read before. To be honest that was mainly Jane Austen and from her writing you might think that a fellow’s main preoccupation was finding a suitable wife and all women were waiting for Mr Darcy to come along – although I’m a Captain Wentworth girl, all day long. What my tutor’s book did for me was the academic equivalent of Sarah Water’s transgressive novelisation of the 19th Century. Variations in sexual preference is nothing new and taking a marginalised group and placing them firmly within their historical context is what is going in with A.J. West’s novel. Thomas True is well-researched, beautifully characterised and fits perfectly into its time period rather like an 18th Century version of Tipping the Velvet. 

The book that came most to mind, because of its bawdy humour and characterisation of a young innocent seduced into licentiousness on their adventures into the big city, was Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe. However, I also had Tom Jones in mind by Henry Fielding, a picaresque novel where our hero embarks on a journey and is lured into bawdy and roguish adventures. A picaresque novel is also critical of the society it represents, using satire to make its point usually in the favour of the lower classes. Here our hero is drawn into the ‘Molly’ culture, practiced at Mother Clap’s house and while considered corrupt by some, it turns out to be less judgemental and violent than both the religious and legal communities, both seemingly riddled with cruelty and corruption. In this case they employ a spy known by the mollies as the ‘Rat’, his purpose is to give up individual mollies to the justices who would have them hung. The hangings are a horribly public spectacle with the crowd baying for blood and the selling of candles or other mementoes by shop keepers. This is where the novel sits for me, yes it’s crime fiction, historical fiction and also a love story, but it’s the picaresque novel’s bawdy, episodic and satirical mix that grounds Thomas firmly in the tradition of 18th Century literature. 

Thomas sets off for London to escape a miserable family life, where he’s clearly not the man his father would like him to be. On his journey he is accidentally parted from his coach and luggage, deciding to trust a huge bear of a man who offers him help. What he doesn’t know is that Gabriel is a Molly, one of a group of men who enjoy dressing in women’s clothes and have names for their alter egos. They also prefer the love of another man, something taboo and unnatural in contemporary society. The law would punish them by death. Thomas can’t possibly know how important this moment will be in his life, but it’s pivotal to his journey, his future and his heart. Far from the genteel worlds of Bridgerton and Jane Austen, the author creates a richly imaginative setting that brought all my senses to life – but not in a good way. London is grim, overcrowded and disgusting. One scene where a body needs to be extracted from a ditch full of sewage is revolting. The two rescuers slipping and sliding into faeces and almost losing the body to the depths. Even Mother Clap’s has a grotesque feel. These are not the preened and powdered men you might expect. Gabriel is huge, hairy and spends all day doing a heavy building job. The atmosphere is also dark and threatening, if the mollies are the light then their nemesis belongs in the shadows as do the curious urchins who are so ignored and forgotten they’ve literally become the darkness they inhabit in the menacing surroundings of Alsatia. The ever present fear of not knowing who the Rat is, make even the lighter scenes hum with tension. While the mollies are dancing, wearing their finery or even sneaking off to be ‘married’ – their euphemism for sex – no one knows if the Rat is among them, watching and biding his time. 

How far would the Rat go to gain information or incriminate the mollies? I was intrigued as to what their motive was? Religion, fear, money or more personal motives? Whatever the Rat, or the justice’s motives they mete out terrible violence. As if the public hangings were not enough, the Rat is handy with a knife too. One molly has his tongue cut out and another is stabbed and left in sewage. Being pilloried turned out to be way more violent than being popped in the stocks for the afternoon and being pelted with rotten vegetables. This is all told in the same detail the author describes the London streets running with urine and smelling so bad it takes a few days to become immune to it. It brings a reality into sharp focus, this isn’t just our current climate of punching down against the poorest and most vulnerable or venting hate on social media. This is wanting someone dead for the perceived crime of who they love. Thomas is naive, clumsy, endearing and ripe for the picking. He guides us through most of this in wide eyed wonder at first, but we also have Gabriel’s take on events and he really is the opposite of Tom. He is older, has known who he is for a long time and battles with regret, grief and shame. Gabriel is haunted, emotionally and literally. His profession means he’s in an intensely masculine environment, working on completing St. Paul’s and the chandlers where Tom is learning a trade. He’s drawn to Tom’s naivety and excitement at the new life he’s found and his molly name – Verity True Tongue. They’re so different but have that chemistry. It’s undeniable, but only Gabriel who fully understands the price they may pay for choosing each other. 

I was bowled over by the incredible detail in the setting but also the characters they meet. Every one of the mollies is different are so different from each other. Some are welcoming and nurturing, while others are cynical and suspicious. I have a hatred for people who want to control other’s behaviour through a moral or religious code. Thomas’s family believe they’re doing the right things to save their souls and to lie with a man is a sin against God. The justices are no better than- using the legal code to outlaw sodomy, but then resorting to punishments of horrific violence without irony. It’s inevitable that with such blood lust and religious fervour, we might have to say goodbye to some of the wonderful characters yet it is still devastating when it happens. This group of men, when in their safe environment, are full of joy, fun and laughter. When they are free to be themselves they create an incredible atmosphere. It’s a party I’d love to go to and I honestly can’t wait for it to become a film. The eventual ending might leave you needing a box of tissues, but the journey Thomas and A.J. West takes us on is glorious. 

Meet the Author


A.J. West’s bestselling debut novel The Spirit Engineer won the Historical Writers’ Association Debut Crown Award, gaining international praise for its telling of a long-forgotten true story. His second novel, The Betrayal of Thomas True, is published July 2024.

An award winning BBC newsreader and reporter, he has written for national newspapers and regularly appears on network television discussing his writing and the historical context of contemporary events.

A passionate historical researcher, he writes at The London Library and museum archives around the world.

Posted in Sunday Spotlight

Sunday Spotlight. City Breaks in a Book: Paris

Posted on by thelotusreaders

A weekend trip to the City of Lights is usually on everyone’s bucket list but if you can’t travel these books will give you a flavour of Paris. Whether it’s an escapist romance or a travelogue each will give you an insight into life in Paris, from the fin de siecle through two World Wars and all the way through to the COVID pandemic and it’s aftermath, these choices take in the Twentieth Century and beyond. Hope you find something you enjoy.

Not the best known of Jojo Moyes’s books, but a series of short stories all with the backdrop of Paris.

In Paris for One, Nell is deserted by her boyfriend minutes before setting off on what was supposed to be a fantastic romantic weekend away to Paris. Can she forget him and find herself? Honeymoon in Paris is a tale of the early days of two marriages in both 1912 and 2012, featuring Liv and Sophie from Jojo Moyes’ bestselling romance The Girl You Left Behind.

Beth is faced with a difficult decision in Bird in the Hand when she bumps into an old flame at a party, with her husband . . . 

This is classic Jojo Moyes fiction – easy to read and within a few lines you’re pulled into the story. The characters are absorbing and soon have you on side, rooting for their romantic dreams to come true.

Historical Fiction

This book is utterly charming from start to finish, while seemingly sprinkled with fairy dust our heroine has some very painful and difficult setbacks. Mrs Harris is a salt-of-the-earth cleaner living in London, struggling financially with her husband never returning from WWII. She cheerfully cleans the houses of the rich and one day, when tidying Lady Dant’s wardrobe, she sees the most beautiful thing she has ever seen in her life – a Dior dress. In her fairly drab and working class existence, she’s never seen anything as magical as this dress. It seems to be alive, like living and wearable work of art. She’s never wanted a material thing so much in her life. Mrs Harris scrimps, saves and slaves away, often finding that the very rich avoid their bills and has to assert herself. Then one day, after three long years, she finally has enough money to go to Paris. However, when she arrives at the House of Dior, she could never have imagined how her life is going to be transformed and how many other lives she will touch in return. Always kind, always cheery, she finds time to charm the ladies who create Dior’s designs in the atelier and organise the love lives of other key staff. Mrs Harris really does takes Paris by storm and learns one of life’s greatest lessons along the way. This treasure is from the 1950s introduces the irrepressible Mrs Harris, part charlady, part fairy-godmother, whose adventures take her from her humble London roots to the heights of glamour in Paris until eventually she has the dress of her dreams. It only highlights those lovely qualities that we know have been there all along. I am absolutely in love with this character.

Rene is the concierge of a grand Parisian apartment building. With the residents she keeps up a professional facade and to them she’s what they expect, a helpful and reliable concierge but not as sophisticated or cultured as they are. Underneath is this the real Rene – a woman who’s incredibly passionate about culture and probably knows more than her rather snobbish residents. Her loves are Japanese Arthouse Cinema and her cat, Leo Tolstoy. Meanwhile, several floors above, is twelve-year-old Paloma Josse, another person keeping their knowledge to themselves. She doesn’t want the empty future her parents have laid out for her and decides she will end her life on her thirteenth birthday. Unknown to both Rene and Paloma, the sudden death of one of their privileged neighbours alter everything for them. The simplicity of the story is what makes this book magical. It shares deep truths about the choices we make in life and the way they change everything. It’s quirky and has an intelligent humour, but is also elegantly written. The charm of it seems quintessentially Parisian.

Doria is in a difficult place. That place is the Paradise Estate, dreadfully misnamed and situated on the outskirts of Paris showing a different side to the city. In Doria’s unforgettable voice, we learn that her father has returned to Morocco. He’s looking for a new wife, who can produce a boy. So her mother is trying to get by a single mother, but she can’t speak French and is illiterate. The only work she can find is cleaning. It could be worse, Samra who lives above them has a father who won’t let her out. Another young resident, Youssef, has been put in prison for stealing cars and supplying drugs. One good thing is her weekly appointment with a psychologist, who listens even if she doesn’t have answers. The author has created a memorable character in Doria who is knowing beyond her years but also heart-breakingly naive. This book gives us a beautifully drawn alternative to the romantic tourist impression of Paris.

A woman called Mado is determined to make her mark and begins a journey that will change everything. Set on a train to Paris in 1895, and based on a real incident when a train crashed into the platform at Montparnasse, a young woman boards the Granville Express with a deadly plan. The author sets us firmly in the fin de siecle, not just with the clothing but with the attitudes. We can see a shift from the Victorian ideals of the previous seventy years. We have Alice who is travelling for work and taking the opportunity to talk her boss into a new investment. Marcelle is a pioneering scientific researcher inspired by Marie Curie. Mado’s androgynous clothing and short hair make her stand out as someone unconventional and modern. She’s definitely a feminist, but is also an anarchist and I could feel the tension in her body as I read, how far is she willing to go to make her political point? The prose speeds up as the train edges closer and closer to Paris and more passengers climb aboard until the reader is almost breathless.
.

Another wonderful historical novel here, this time set in Paris during WWII. It’s 1944 and Jean Luc is working on the railway under the Nazi occupation when a train bound for Auschwitz is passing through. In an act of desperation a mother makes the ultimate sacrifice and gives the thing she loves most to a stranger. Now she can face her own future with the hope that she’s done the right thing.

Ten years later in Santa Cruz and Jean Luc is happy to have left the memories of the occupation behind. The scar on his face is the daily reminder of the horrors of life under the Nazis. His new life has given him the family he’s always wanted and he doesn’t expect the past to come knocking. That one night on the train platform has shaped all of the futures in a way none of them imagined.

This is such an emotional story, beautifully researched and gives us some insight into life in Paris under the occupation and the terrible choices people had to make to save the ones they love.


Could one split second change her life forever?

Hannah and Si are in love and on the same track – that is, until their train divides on the way to a wedding. The next morning, Hannah wakes up in Paris and realises that her boyfriend (and her ticket) are 300 miles away in Amsterdam!

But then Hannah meets Léo on the station platform, and he’s everything Si isn’t. Spending the day with him in Paris forces Hannah to question how well she really knows herself – and whether, sometimes, you need to go in the wrong direction to find everything you’ve been looking for…

PARIS, 1920. On the bohemian Left Bank, Sylvia runs a little bookshop called Shakespeare and Company. Here she welcomes the greatest writers of the day – and from the moment James Joyce finally walks through her door, the two become friends.

When Joyce’s controversial novel Ulysses is banned, Sylvia is determined to publish it herself.

But championing the most scandalous book of the century will come at a cost – and Sylvia finds herself risking ruin, her reputation and her heart, all in the name of the life-changing power of books.

Set in post-war Paris, The Paris Bookseller is a sweeping story of love, courage and betrayal – and a breathtakingly beautiful love letter to books.

Sixteen-year-old Alice is spending the summer in Paris, but she isn’t there for pastries and walks along the Seine. When her grandmother passed away two months ago, she left Alice an apartment in France that no one knew existed. An apartment that has been locked for more than seventy years.

Alice’s grandmother never mentioned the family she left behind when she moved to America after World War II. With the help of Paul, a charming Parisian student, she sets out to uncover the truth. However, the more time she spends digging through the mysteries of the past, the more she realizes there are secrets in the present that her family is still refusing to talk about.

THEN:

Sixteen-year-old Adalyn doesn’t recognize Paris anymore. Everywhere she looks, there are Nazis, and every day brings a new horror of life under the Occupation. When she meets Luc, the dashing and enigmatic leader of a resistance group, Adalyn feels she finally has a chance to fight back.

But keeping up the appearance of being a much-admired socialite while working to undermine the Nazis is more complicated than she could have imagined. As the war goes on, Adalyn finds herself having to make more and more compromises—to her safety, to her reputation, and to her relationships with the people she loves the most.

Because Paris is always a good idea…

Years ago, Juliet left a little piece of her heart in Paris – and now, separated from her husband and with her children flying the nest, it’s time to get it back!

So she puts on her best red lipstick, books a cosy attic apartment near Notre-Dame and takes the next train out of London.

Arriving at the Gare du Nord, the memories come flooding back: bustling street cafés, cheap wine in candlelit bars and a handsome boy with glittering eyes.

But Juliet has also been keeping a secret for over two decades – and she begins to realise it’s impossible to move forwards without first looking back.

Something tells her that the next thirty days might just change everything…

In the depths of the archive, Hannah dances with the ghosts of Vichy France, lost in testimony and a desire to hear the voices of the past. Back in her apartment, Moroccan teenager Tariq crashes on her sofa, consumed by his search for the mother he barely knew. Their excavations will unearth rich histories that will teach them both just how much the future is worth fighting for.

She is there to study the wartime experiences of women living there under German Occupation, while still licking the wounds of a painful, decade-old romance.Paris Echo knocks on big subjects such as the legacy of empire and identity, but mostly it’s a heart-warming masterclass in storytelling that weaves and winds and brims with a deep affection for Paris: its otherworldliness, and the ghosts of history that lurk around every beautiful, tree-lined avenue.  

Paris Echo is a propulsive and haunting novel of empire and identity, told with biting wit and tenderness, which exposes the shadows of the city of lights.

PARIS, 1939
Odile Souchet is obsessed with books, and her new job at the American Library in Paris – with its thriving community of students, writers and book lovers – is a dream come true. When war is declared, the Library is determined to remain open. But then the Nazis invade Paris, and everything changes.
In Occupied Paris, choices as black and white as the words on a page become a murky shade of grey – choices that will put many on the wrong side of history, and the consequences of which will echo for decades to come.

MONTANA, 1983
Lily is a lonely teenager desperate to escape small-town Montana. She grows close to her neighbour Odile, discovering they share the same love of language, the same longings. But as Lily uncovers more about Odile’s mysterious past, she discovers a dark secret, closely guarded and long hidden.

When you’re a woman of a certain age, you are only promised that everything will get worse. But what if everything you’ve been told is a lie?Come to Paris, August 2021, when the City of Lights was still empty of tourists and a thirst for long-overdue pleasure gripped those who wandered its streets.

After New York City emptied out in March 2020, Glynnis MacNicol, spent sixteen months alone in her tiny Manhattan apartment. She was 46, unmarried and the isolation was punishing. A whole year without touch. Women are warned of invisibility as they age, but this was an extreme loneliness, so when the opportunity to sublet a friend’s apartment in Paris arose, MacNicol jumped on it. Leaving felt less like a risk than a necessity.What follows is a decadent, joyful, unexpected journey into one woman’s pursuit of radical enjoyment.

The weeks in Paris are filled with friendship and food and sex. There is dancing on the Seine; a plethora of gooey cheese; midnight bike rides through empty Paris; handsome men; afternoons wandering through the empty Louvre; nighttime swimming in the ocean off a French island. And yes, plenty of nudity. I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself is an intimate, insightful, powerful, and endlessly pleasurable memoir of an intensely lived experience whose meaning and insight expand far beyond the personal narrative. MacNicol is determined to document the beauty, excess, and triumph of a life that does not require permission.The pursuit of enjoyment is a political act, both a right and a responsibility. Enjoying yourself—as you are—is not something the world tells you is possible, but it is.

When Paris Sizzled vividly portrays the City of Light during the fabulous 1920s, when Parisians emerged from the horrors of WWI to find that a new world greeted them. This world reverberated with the hard metallic clang of the assembly line, the roar of automobiles, and the beat of jazz. Mary McAuliffe traces a decade that saw seismic change on almost every front, from art and architecture to music, literature, fashion, entertainment, transportation, and, most notably, behavior. The epicenter of all this creativity, as well as of the era’s good times, was Montparnasse, where impoverished artists and writers found colleagues and cafés, and tourists discovered the Paris of their dreams. Major figures on the Paris scene―such as Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, Picasso, Stravinsky, Diaghilev, and Proust―continued to hold sway, while others now came to prominence―including Ernest Hemingway, Coco Chanel, Cole Porter, and Josephine Baker, as well as André Citroën, Le Corbusier, Man Ray, Sylvia Beach, James Joyce, and the irrepressible Kiki of Montparnasse. Paris of the 1920s unquestionably sizzled. Yet rather than being a decade of unmitigated bliss, les Années folles also saw an undercurrent of despair as well as the rise of ruthless organizations of the extreme right, aimed at annihilating whatever threatened tradition and order―a struggle that would escalate in the years ahead. There are rich illustrations and an evocative narrative, through which Mary McAuliffe brings this vibrant era to life.

Posted in Sunday Spotlight

Sunday Spotlight: Cornish Holidays in a Book

Posted on by thelotusreaders

The Classics

Rebecca is probably the reason I first visited Cornwall, but it’s also one of those books that I’ve changed my mind about when I reread it. I read the book as a teenager from mum’s bookshelf and I also watched the Hitchcock film at a similar age and both book and film are still favourites. I think I read it as a romance at first, rooting for the rather young and mousy heroine as she falls in love with brooding stranger Maxim de Winter as they meet in Monte Carlo. Now I read it as an altogether different story, probably emphasised by the above new Virago edition that’s billed as one of her ‘dark romance’ books. Maxim is dazzlingly and tragically romantic to our young heroine, mourning the wife who was known as a great beauty and unable to be in their Cornish stately home Manderlay. Perched on the cliffs near Fowey and based on de Maurier’s home Menabilly, this is one of the most beautiful and gothic settings. It’s impossible to see from the road, only from the sea and its private beach only accessible by boat or on treacherous steps from the grounds of the house. The heroine does seem to win it all – the man, the house, the money and love – but does she really? Immediately invisible next to the dark and sexy Rebecca of the title, the new Mrs de Winter doesn’t even warrant her own name. She’s scared of running the house having never done it, she’s not even the same class. She’s also scared of the servants, especially the creepy maid of his first wife, Mrs Danvers. At one point she breaks a statue in the morning room and hides the evidence. Maxim is no help. Instead of appointing a servant to help with decisions in the house, or at least to bring her up to speed, he just goes out first thing and leaves her to the brooding and obsessive Mrs Danvers, now the housekeeper. Max has no idea how privileged he is and can’t comprehend her hesitancy and fear of getting it wrong and when she does he flies into a temper or scolds her like a child. He gaslights, lies and yells at her. She may as well have been poured into a pit of vipers. This has never been a love story, it’s more a gothic retelling of Jane Eyre and origin of the domestic noir genre. This is an absolute Cornish classic from one of their most famous writers.

https://www.foliosociety.com/uk/rebecca

The Poldark Novels by Winston Graham

The Poldark novels had a resurgence and series of new editions thanks to the new BBC series which dominated Sunday nights and starred Aiden Turner as Ross Poldark and Eleanor Tomlinson as his wife Demelza. They begin in the late eighteenth century as Poldark returns from the American Revolutionary War to his home county of Cornwall and the Poldark house and land. Things have changed since he left. His father is dead and the copper mine is failing. His sweetheart Elizabeth has become engaged to Ross’s cousin George and they will be living at Trenwith with Ross’s grandmother. There are differences between the books and the TV series. Demelza is actually a child when Ross first meets her and he takes her to be one of the staff at the smaller farm estate of Nampara. There are ten years in age between them and it’s only when she’s an older teenager that their relationship changes – in the series he brings her as an adult and marries her very quickly, much to the disgust of his parish. I think the books are grittier than the tv series, with the main characters having more complexity and actually doing things we might not like. Ross particularly has more ambiguity, a good man when it comes to his workers and his politics but not such a great husband. The abuse and rape suffered by Morwenna in the marriage forced by Warleggan hits harder. The series really deviates after book three with no exploration of the children as they grow up and the terrible grief they go through as parents. I think the series wanted to paint Ross and Demelza as a love story with a happy ending after a tough period following infidelity, but in the books life goes and Ross’s rivalry with George Warleggan still continues, even when they’re older men. I think the books give more of that historical background, particularly with the backdrop of war and later the Industrial Revolution. It’s almost as if the series is the tourist’s view and the books place the characters more firmly in their time period.

For those of you missing Aiden Turner as Ross.

Mysteries and Thrillers

When I read a more recent Ruth Ware thriller I went back to some of her earlier books and I inhaled this in two sittings. We follow Harriet Westaway as she receives an unexpected letter telling her she’s inherited a substantial bequest from her Cornish grandmother. Could this be the answer to her prayers?

There’s just one problem – Hal’s real grandparents died more than twenty years ago. Hal considers her options, she desperately needs the cash and makes a choice that will change her life for ever. She knows that her skills as a seaside fortune teller could help her con her way to getting the money and once Hal embarks on her deception, there is no going back. This keeps you on tenterhooks from the minute Hal arrives at Trespassen House in Cornwall and there is that hint of Daphne du Maurier in the family estate and the mystery that plays out. Hal is also placing herself in a wholly different family and social class. Her upbringing may have been short on money, but it was never short on love. The tragic death of her mother Maggie was only three years ago and it catapulted Hal into adulthood but the Westaway family don’t hold the same values. They do have secrets though, ready to drop out of every closet. She is the outsider here, totally out of her depth and the wild coastline, storm porch and St Piran’s Church place this firmly in Cornwall. This family may have money and privilege but they don’t have the love or care for each other that Hal is used to, she will have to use her skills of perception and discernment honed by years of tarot reading. The remoteness of Trespassen and lack of internet signal add to the Gothic feel of this novel and there is even a Mrs Danvers mentioned. This is a great thriller with plenty of clues but a lot of red herrings, so you must be prepared for surprises.

Tamsyn is as local as it getsin their Cornish village. Her grandfather worked the tin mines, her father was a lifeboat volunteer alongside his work, but her brother is struggling to find work that’s not seasonal. Tamsyn’s attachment to The Cliff House to a beautiful coastal property just outside her village comes to a head in the summer of 1986. To her, the house represents an escape, a lifestyle that’s completely out of range for her and represents the perfect life. It’s also her last link to her father, who brought her here to swim in the pool when he knew the owners were away. Her father felt rules were made to be broken and they both considered it madness to own such a slice of perfection overlooking the sea yet rarely visit except for a few weeks in the summer. Now he’s gone, Tamsyn watches the Cliff House alone and views it’s owners, the Davenports, as the height of sophistication. Their life is a world away from her cramped cottage, her Granfer’s coughing into red spattered handkerchiefs and their constant struggle for money.

Tamsyn’s family are firmly have nots. Her hero father died rescuing a drowning child and now she has to watch her mother’s burgeoning friendship with the man who owns the chip shop. Her brother is unable to find steady work, but finds odd jobs and shifts where he can, to put his contribution under the kettle in the kitchen. Mum works at the chip shop, but is also the Davenport’s cleaner. She keeps their key in the kitchen drawer, but every so often Tamsyn steals it and let’s herself in to admire Eleanor Davenport’s clothing and face creams and Max’s study with a view of the sea. Yet, the family’s real lives are only a figment of her imagination until she meets Edie. When Tamsyn finally becomes involved with the Davenports she gets to see the reality of a family bathed in privilege. As we try and work out Tamsyn’s motivations, she seems blind to the problems and ticking time bomb at the centre of the family. Or is she more perceptive than we think? This is a great thriller with disturbing family dynamics and an interesting tension between second homers and those who live in Cornwall all year round and struggle to own a home. The rugged cliffs and raging sea are a beautiful, dangerous and fitting backdrop to this tension.

Another book highlighting the dangerous beauty of the Cornish coast is Jane Jesmond’s first thriller On The Edge. I was thoroughly gripped by this tense thriller set in Cornwall concerning Jenifry Shaw – an experienced free climber who is in rehabilitation at the start of the novel. She hasn’t finished her voluntary fortnight stay but is itching for an excuse to get away when her brother Kit calls and asks her to go home. Sure that she has the addiction under control, she drives her Aston down to her home village and since she isn’t expected, chooses to stay at the hotel rather than go straight to the family home. Feeling restless, she decides to try one of her distraction activities and goes for a bracing walk along the cliffs. Much later she wakes to darkness. She’s being lashed by wind and rain, seemingly hanging from somewhere on the cliff by a very fragile rope. Every gust of wind buffets her against the surface causing cuts and grazes. She gets her bearings and realises she’s hanging from the viewing platform of the lighthouse. Normally she could climb herself out of this, most natural surfaces have small imperfections and places to grab onto, but this man made structure is completely smooth. Her only chance is to use the rapidly fraying rope to climb back to the platform and pull herself over. She’s only got one go at this though, one jerk and her weight will probably snap the rope – the only thing keeping her from a certain death dashed on the rocks below. She has no choice. She has to try.

My heart was racing during the opening of this novel and I was so hooked I read it in one sitting. The sense of place was incredible. The author conjured up Cornwall immediately with her descriptions of the tin mine, the crashing sea on the cliffs and fog on the moors. I recognised the sea mist that seems to coat your car and your windows. The weather was hugely important, with storms amping up the tension in the opening chapters and the fog of the final chapters adding to the mystery. Will we find out who is behind the strange and dangerous events Jen has uncovered or will it remain obscured? Cornwall is the perfect place to hide criminal activity, hence the history of smuggling and piracy, so why would it be any different today? Has the cargo changed? I loved that the author wove modern events and concerns into the story, because it helped the story feel current and real. The concerns around development and tourism are all too real for a county, dependent on the money tourism brings, but trying to find a balance where it doesn’t erode the Cornish culture. Local young people are priced out of the property market completely. This is a great combination of setting and edge of your seat thriller, with a character as wild as the coastline.

Family Sagas

This book makes me nostalgic for the times I’ve spent in Cornwall. It also makes me want to go on RightMove and look for a little shop I can turn into a bookshop and writing therapy centre. Enough of my daydreams. I think this is one of those books that modern readers avoid because the covers have been too feminine and floral, marking it out as a romance when really it’s a family drama ( i want to use the word sweeping when I think about). Penelope is elderly and while she is recovering from a heart attack she thinks about the years she spent in Cornwall. What follows is the story of a family—mothers and daughters, husbands and lovers—and the many loves and heartbreaks that have held them together for three generations. It’s a magical novel, giving the kind of reading experience you can get swept away in for hours. Penelope prized possession is The Shell Seekers, painted by her father. It seems to symbolise her unconventional life, from her bohemian childhood to WWII romance. When her grown children learn their grandfather’s work is now worth a fortune, each has an idea as to what Penelope should do. But as she recalls the passions, tragedies, and secrets of her life, she knows there is only one answer…and it lies in her heart.

One of my favourite places in the world is Watergate Bay and I feel energised just by standing on that beach and feeling the sea spray hit my face. This book gave me the same feeling because you can feel Pilcher’s love for Cornwall throughout. It also made me grateful for a family who don’t care about money, just about love. This is a fabulous holiday read so don’t be put off by the cover.

In Kate Morton’s second novel she takes us through a family’s history with Gothic undertones, contrasting the beautiful setting of Cornwall with 19th Century London. It covers three timelines over three generations of women, all caught up in one compelling mystery.

Once, a little girl was found abandoned after a gruelling sea voyage from England to Australia. She carried nothing with her but a small suitcase of clothes, an exquisite volume of fairy tales and the memory of a mysterious woman called the Authoress, who promised to look after her but then vanished. Years later, Nell returns to England to uncover the truth about her identity. Her quest leads her to the strange and beautiful Blackhurst Manor on the Cornish coast, but its long-forgotten gardens hide secrets of their own. Now, upon Nell’s death, her granddaughter, Cassandra, comes into a surprise inheritance: an old book of dark fairy tales and a ramshackle cottage in Cornwall. It is here that she must finally solve the puzzle that has haunted her family for a century, embarking on a journey that blends past and present, myth and mystery, fact and fable. I am lucky enough to have a new edition of this book to read with my Squad POD next month so look out for my review.

Historical Fiction

My mum was a huge fan of D.H.Lawrence’s books so this book jumped out at me in a second hand bookshop. It’s Helen Dunmore’s first novel published in 1993. Set in the coastal village of Zennor, this covers the time that D.H.Lawrence and his German wife, Freida, laid low during the First World War. In the spring of 1917, at a time when ships were being sunk be U-boats, coastal villages were full of superstition. The Lawrence’s were hoping to escape the war fever in London and chose Cornwall. There, they befriend Clare Coyne, a young artist struggling to console her beloved cousin, John William, who is on leave from the trenches and suffering from shell-shock.

Yet the dark tide of gossip and innuendo is also present in Cornwall, meaning Zennor neither a place of recovery nor of escape. Freida and Lawrence are minor characters, with the main story focused on Clare and suspicions about her relationship with her cousin. Helen is adept at bringing people from history back to life, filling them with emotions and preoccupations that are familiar to us. The Cornish coast is vividly described with its fishing industry, craggy inlets and secret beaches providing a wonderful backdrop to the atmosphere of suspicion especially with the their smuggling history. She captures the claustrophobic feel of a small village where everyone knows each other and incomers are kept at a distance. She also captures how lonely it can be to move into such a close knit community and how lives can be ruined by assumptions.

Caroline Scott’s book is set in the aftermath of WWI in the summer of 1923. Esme Nicholls is drawn into spending the summer in Cornwall, close to Penzance which was the birthplace of her husband. Alec died fighting in the war and she’s hoping to spend some time learning more about the man she fell in love with and lost too soon. She’s been invited to stay in the home of her friend Gilbert, as a potential retreat for the lady she works for, Mrs Pickering. He inherited the rambling seaside house and has turned it into a recovery centre of sorts. All residents are former soldiers, expressing themselves through art or writing. She is nervous to be the only woman, but soon gets to know the men and their stories. They give her insight into what Alec may have experienced and that’s exactly what she needs.

However, this summer retreat is about to change as a new arrival brings with him the ability to turn Esme’s world upside down. She will soon be questioning everything about her life and the people in it. Cornwall is an idyllic backdrop to the story and a huge factor in the recovery and the creative work of these men. Esme’s growing friendships are beautifully drawn and as always I was emotionally invested in her characters. I loved how her relationship with Mrs Pickering softened from being a professional companion to friendship. I also enjoyed her growing closeness to Rory and Hal. They all help with her grief and the shock of this new guest. But as always, holidays come to an end, leaving Esme with huge choices to make.

My Favourite

I first read this wonderful novel when I was a teenager, captured by the romance at the centre of the novel. Then the backdrop really started to sing out to me, especially when I started to regularly visit Cornwall around twenty years ago. Lastly it was the history aspects to the latter parts of the story with our characters caught up in English Civil War and Cornwall’s unique role, both geographically and as staunch Royalists. It’s fair to say that the book wasn’t well received at first, especially after the instant success of Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel. This takes a similar romantic narrative but weaves in the history of a Cornish house that would eventually become her home, Menabilly on the Gribben peninsula near Fowey. At the time of starting her new book it had been owned by the Rashleigh family for over 400 years. Daphne would visit and talk to them about using the house and they told her a story about building work they were having done when builders found a bricked up room housing the skeleton of a Cavalier. She decided to write this real life mystery into the novel wanted to write, when she finally and inevitably overcame their objections.

Her decision to record historical facts truthfully could have been the book’s undoing. The history of the Royalist cause in Cornwall is convoluted and confusing and there’s a large background cast of related Cornish families. I think she wanted to remain faithful to the Cornish cause and be seen to include real Cornish people, but the reader could be forgiven for struggling with them, many names are similar and the intricacies of intermarriage sometimes make the plot hard to follow. Cornwall did declare for the King and our hero Richard Grenvile is the grandson of Sir Richard Grenville who fought the Spaniards in the Azores. He is depicted as flamboyant, with an incredibly fiery temper, but he can be very charming and as time and experience show, he is incredibly loyal. Our heroine Honor Harris is the character I fell in love with possibly because of the fact she’s always reading and is a bit wild. She is absolutely swept off her feet by the man she meets in the family orchard, while sitting in her reading place up in an apple tree. Luckily her hiding place is just big enough for two. Richard is older, a seasoned soldier with wars on the Continent and Ireland under his belt. He is known as ruthless with a terrible reputation. However, he and Honor fall in love. Only a day before their wedding, Honor goes hunting with Richard and his sister. He calls back to warn her about a ravine but his call is lost on the wind and she falls down the precipice. She is then paralysed from the waist down. I think this is possibly why I fell in love with the book, having had my own accident when I was eleven. I had two fractures and a crushed disc, but luckily my spinal cord wasn’t affected. I didn’t finish primary school but returned to start secondary school in the autumn. It has given me problems ever since. It was wonderful to read a character who had a disability but whose fiancé still loved and wanted to marry her, at a time when I was starting to look at boys a little differently.

Despite Richard’s promises, Honor knows she can’t fulfil the role of an army officer’s wife. She decides to let Richard go and gives him her blessing to find someone else. She still follows Richard’s exploits as he moves through Cornwall trying to turn the Royalist sympathisers into an effective fighting force. The Cornish aristocracy have the hereditary right to become fellow commanders, although he finds them incompetent and at times cowardly. Honor has a wheelchair made by her brother, which allows her some movement and at times she manages to support and actually assist Richard. Their love for each other never seems to fade and I enjoyed the romantic aspects of the novel. Their relationship is the spark that lights up this novel, even more so now that I am a wheelchair user at times. I was impressed by how intrepid and determined Honor is and that Daphne wrote a disabled heroine in the 1940s. A couple of years ago, on my honeymoon, I went to Fowey and the Daphne du Maurier bookshop and bought a first edition of the novel for my collection. My old copy was falling apart from re-reading, but I also wanted to own such an important copy of my favourite Cornish novel.

Posted in Personal Purchase

The Year of Zara Holt by Kimberley Freeman 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I discovered Kimberley Freeman’s novels about ten years ago and read all of them in one go. It was the combination of historical fiction, with an emphasis on Australian and women’s history that drew me and the romance element is always rooted in that context. I’ve been waiting a very long time for a new novel and this is particularly interesting as it’s based on a true story. I did drop everything to read it. She takes us through a large part of the early – mid Twentieth century through the life of Zara Holt. We join her as a teenager, living with her parents and dreaming of becoming a fashion designer. She spends hours drawing elaborate evening and wedding dresses with Betty her best friend. On a night out together Zara meets Harry, a handsome and ambitious young man who is aiming to get into law or politics. They have an instant connection and Zara feels it, almost like a jigsaw puzzle clicking into place. Their love will dominate her life as she also builds her own fashion empire and travels the world. As fiery as the couple are, it’s never an easy road and Zara will have to make difficult choices about whether she follows her head or her heart. 

I had to keep reminding myself that this was set in the earlier part of 20th Century. Zara feels like a woman far ahead of her time, so that when she comes up against male attitudes and societal expectations it feels like a surprise. It did take me a little while to realise she was a real woman, born in Kew Victoria in 1909 as Zara Kate Dickens. In 1929 when she was still just 19, she approached her father who was a successful businessman for a loan. She made the case that her sister had an expensive wedding and since she had no plans to get married in the near future, could she use the equivalent money to start her own business. With the money and her friend Betty in tow, she opened a dress shop called Magg. They provided a bespoke service with Zara designing for the client and Betty as the seamstress. When Betty got married and left the business, Zara tried to continue alone but was exhausted by her own success. At this point she was expecting a proposal from Harry, which wasn’t forthcoming. On her mother’s advice she liquidated the business, coming out with $1500 ($125,000 in today’s money). She used her money to travel the world, including an impromptu trip to India with Colonel James Fell who she met on her return voyage. James did propose and became her first husband, but this wasn’t the end of Harry and it wasn’t the end of Magg. 

Zara Holt

I found Zara such a compelling character and admired her boundless energy for business and travel. She is endlessly creative, never losing that urge to sketch a dress  or incorporate a detail she’s seen into a new collection. She was particularly inspired by her time in India and the bold colours and decorative flourishes in women’s clothing. In later years, as Harry becomes more important in government she has to try combining her business affairs with the role of a political wife, using her new contacts and always trawling markets in other countries for fabrics to ship back to India. With more age and experience she manages to keep Magg running, even expanding and hiring new seamstresses and designers. I loved her little rebellions, such as talking to a gathering of women about business rather than her life as ‘first lady’. She also changes an opera fundraiser to a fashion show, both rewarded by the enthusiasm of her audience. 

In her personal life she finds it a lot harder to stick to her guns. Harry is utterly single- minded and only proposes when he’s boxed into a corner. She has suspicions about his womanising early on, but it takes decades for him to be honest with her. He never makes promises he can’t keep, aside from his vows, and while he professes to love only her he will not hear ultimatums. What I found hardest to swallow was his disregard for places and people that were special to him and Zara as a couple, he trashes Zara’s special memories of finding a natural waterfall near Bingle Bay where they stay with close friends, eventually buying their own home there. Harry ruins both by taking a mistress there and my sympathies for him were gone at that moment. I wanted Zara to leave him and use all her energy into her work and children. I felt he did not hear her or deserve her. She is left with the age old compromise, that the little bit of him she does have is better than nothing. 

Zara and Harold Holt

Kimberley has Zara narrate the full story and that’s wise because she really is the main draw of the book. I was full of admiration for the way she bucked the system. When living in India she finds out that their head servant is taking such a huge cut of the other servant’s wages they can’t afford to eat. She’s told it’s best to turn a blind eye and that the British don’t meddle in servant’s affairs, but she has him fired anyway. She also builds a friendship with an Indian doctor and academic that she meets at the stables, often riding out with him in the mornings. Her husband James forbids this and is furiously jealous. She has a sense of fairness and equality in how she approaches life which is appealing and interesting when you read about some of the policies that Harry works hard for as prime minister, when he eventually gets there. She stands up for her interest in fashion and is incredibly proud of knowledge and skills she’s built. She can look at any woman and see what dress style will best suit her body and how to combine current trends with what will suit the client. She knows how confident a woman feels when she is well dressed and aims to give all her clients that feeling of looking their best. She also defends it as an art form. Her designs are her preparatory sketches and the fabrics are her paints, what is created from her imagination and these materials is no less an art than an oil painting in a gallery.

I wanted her to have the same confidence in her personal life and to trust that she will find someone who loves her and gives her the attention and fidelity she deserves. Yet her love for Harry seems to transcend his behaviour. If you know anything about the Holts it’s probably the mystery surrounding Harry’s disappearance while swimming in a bay he knew well. It is assumed he was caught in a rip tide and drowned, but his body was never found. Zara wrote her own book about their life together. Her achievements included winning ‘Gown of the Year’ in 1961 and in 1962 Miss Australia, Tania Verstak, wore a Magg gown in the Miss International contest, which she won. Zara also advised on Australian uniforms for events such as Expo ‘67 in Montreal and the Mexico Olympic Games in 1968. In 1979 she was appointed as chair of the Yves Saint Laurent board in Australia. She had a bubbly personality and could say the wrong thing, occasionally portrayed as a bit scatterbrained by the press she was actually incredibly astute with a business brain. She also claimed that her eye for fashion was inspired by her own figure, being rather short and round in shape – something I share with her. When she died in 1989 she left over $5 million dollars and several properties to her three sons. I think Kimberley Freeman does an incredible job of capturing this fascinating woman, including the odd hilarious public gaffe. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Zara and I’m sure many other readers will too. 

Out now from Hachette Australia

Meet the Author

Kimberley was born in London and her family moved back to Australia when she was three years old. She grew up in Queensland where she currently lives.

Kimberley has written for as long as she can remember and she is proud to write in many genres. She is an award-winning writer in children’s, historical and speculative fiction under her birth name Kim Wilkins. She adopted the pen name Kimberley Freeman for her commercial women’s fiction novels to honour her maternal grandmother and to try and capture the spirit of the page-turning novels she has always loved to read. Kim has an Honours degree, a Masters degree and a PhD from The University of Queensland where she is also a senior lecturer. She lives in Brisbane with her kids and pets and lovely partner.

Posted in Monthly Wrap Up

Best Reads June 2025

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I’ve had a lovely reading month, with the subject of love and relationships being at the centre of most of my best reads in June. Possibly due to it being wedding season, romance seems to have been in the air and all my reads looked at it in a very different way. A couple are set in the present day but others range from the late 18th to the mid- 20th Century. Yet there was a sense of familiarity, with each book showing the difficulties in how women and men relate to each other and negotiate the rules of their relationship. Women seemed to wait an awful lot, trying to balance a career and a relationship not to mention children and home life. Some women were waiting for proposals, for a man to commit, to be faithful, or for life to begin. They bring up the age old question of women having it all and whether that’s ever possible. There’s also a lot of travel involved from the UK, to America, Italy, France, Switzerland, India and Australia. I hope you all have a great tbr lined up for July and I’ll see you on the other side.

Walnut Tree Island sits in a tributary of the Thames and back in the 1960s its part derelict became a sought after music venue, thanks to the work of its owner George. Based on Eel Pie Island, Walnut Tree is a harmonious combination of up and coming musicians, artists and picturesque riverboats and in 1965 is a weekly Mecca for young people. One of them is Mary Star, a young girl with a beautiful voice and a head full of dreams. It’s there one night when musician and up and coming front man Ossie Clark notices Mary in the crowd as she’s hoisted up on someone’s shoulders. Ossie is about to hit the big time, but he’s captivated by Mary and when he meets her he encourages her to sing with him. They are so in love and lay down in the grasses by the Wilderness – the most beautiful part of the island. When reality hits Mary knows she has to make a choice for both of them, although Ossie doesn’t reject the idea of becoming a father. He asks her to go to America with him, but the adults in her life, including George, make her realise how difficult that’s going to be. There will be compromises and although Ossie can’t see it now, what if he resents her and their baby? She’s left with her baby Ruby and a broken heart, but also a place to live on the island gifted by George. 

Years later her granddaughter Jo experiences first love on the island. Used to running wild between Mary’s cottage Willows and houseboats, she meets George’s grandson Oliver when he visits the island. He’s the island’s heir, but such things don’t matter to young people and they have a magical summer thinking their love is all they need to sustain them. Now Oliver has returned from NYC as the new owner of Walnut Tree Island which has become a thriving community of musicians and artists all supported by Mary who is the mother of the community. The whispers over what might happen to the island start fairly quickly, not least the ownership of Willows that has always been a verbal agreement with George. Jo now teaches art to children in one of the houseboats. Once an incredible artist she seems to lose her confidence in creating and her career never fully got off the ground. How will she cope with Oliver back on the island, as handsome as ever, but with a touch of New York sophistication? More to the point, how will Oliver feel seeing Jo again? It’s not long before the red-headed firebrand is at his door, fighting on behalf of Mary and the rest of the community. But does she really know what his plans are? Changes are coming to the island, but some things are as constant as the river flows. Could their love be one of them? This is a captivating and magical read, thanks to its romantic setting and relatable female characters. An excellent holiday read.

Emily and Freddie have been through the mill of late. After a terrible accident when they were on holiday, Freddie has surprised her with the home of their dreams. Emily fell from a cliff on a group holiday and not only did she break her leg in several places, she then developed sepsis and almost lost her life. Now she’s in recovery, still walking on a stick and has been thrust into a whole new life. Larkin Lodge sits just outside a village on the edge of the moors and could be their dream home, but Emily can’t believe Freddie made this huge decision without her. The house is gothic and in the mists and murk of winter it looks a little isolated and spooky. However, she can see that in spring the views will be incredible. As Freddie continues to work in London, Emily spends a lot of time alone and starts to feel uneasy. Sudden drafts and disgusting smells, then heavy footsteps moving across the second floor are unnerving. Freddie is convinced she’s struggling with post concussion syndrome and calls her ITU consultant for advice – much to Emily’s disgust for doing this behind her back. As she starts to look into the history of the house and questions some of the locals, all the different parts of her life start to fall apart. Secrets start to come to light and Emily wonders if the house is having an influence on her. 

Emily is a sympathetic narrator although she’s not entirely reliable. It must be so disorientating to wake from a coma and know that your body has been present but your mind has been somewhere else. Added to that is the risk of ICU psychosis – a common condition causing auditory hallucinations, nightmares, sleep disturbances and paranoia. The author cleverly creates tension between what we know about Freddie and Emily and what they know about each other. They’re both keeping secrets and Freddie projects all their problems on to her. Even when she’s quite measured and reasonable or accepts his apologies he becomes angrier. Just occasionally he pauses and wonders where these thoughts are coming from? Is it the shock of Emily’s fall still working on him or is something more insidious at work?  Of course it wouldn’t be a Sarah Pinborough novel without a supernatural element and this one is genuinely scary. It begins with the window on the landing, seemingly opening of it’s own accord. When she starts talking to older locals about the house there’s a moment that genuinely made the hair stand up on the back of my neck! The chapters from the raven’s perspective are very touching as well as creepy.  Was this an edge of the seat thriller or a ghost story? We’re never quite sure, but I felt compelled to keep reading and find out. Sarah Pinborough is the Queen of this type of gothic thriller and this was another brilliant read, keeping you guessing till the very end. 

This book is definitely up there for my book of the year so far and it will take something momentous to knock it from that position. It’s the story of Mary Shelley and the origins of her novel Frankenstein which became a staple of the horror genre. I’d always known that it was a novel of monstrous birth, but the author has pulled all the ideas together so we can see the psychological background of the novel. I loved the idea that her story is stitched together by fragments, just like the monster himself. Her own emotions and thoughts feed into the emotions of the abandoned monster. She thinks of medical experiments and stories of medical students digging up bodies and stealing them for dissection. Frankenstein leaves his monster just as Shelley left Mary and their baby in squalor in London at the mercy of bailiffs. Frankenstein can be read as a criticism of men, creating with no thought for the thing they’ve created. Victor Frankenstein goes to sleep expecting his creature to die and feels nothing. The creature feels a combination of Mary’s grief and abandonment, having lost her mother at birth and then the losing of her father, as she runs away with Shelley, a married man. William Godwin brought Mary up to have a rebellious spirit and think for herself, but rejects her when she lives by these principles. Mary is this bewildered and angry creature and she gives her monster the equivalent of philosopher John Locke’s tabula rasa – the blank slate of a small child ready to experience nature, love and all that is beautiful. He embodies the nature/nurture debate in that the creature isn’t born evil, it’s other people’s cruel treatment of him that makes him monstrous. Her writing helps process all these feelings and. working through them makes her feel hopeful for the first time. She might return to London with her son and instead of being beholden to Shelley or her father, she could keep them both with her own writing. 

Typically, blinded by his own arrogance Shelley doesn’t see himself in Victor Frankenstein at all. The book, like the creature at its centre, will be sent out into the wilderness looking for a creator. She’s fairly sure it will find one because she knows it’s special. Caroline’s book is an absolute masterpiece and made me think about Frankenstein from so many different angles. Caroline Lea’s Mary take us through the psychological angles and brings to life her relationship with Shelley, often told in a rather salacious or romantic way without any thought to the inequality between them. It traces the genesis of this incredible novel. It is stitched together from so many different parts, but here we can see them all and understand the circumstances they come from. What she’s written is a Bildungsroman, a novel of Mary growing up from girl to womanhood. Frankenstein is the chronicle of that birth, as messy, terrifying, horrific and momentous it is, it is also the genesis of Mary Shelley the writer.                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

London 1990s – An up and coming French composer called Stan is invited to arrange music for a stage production of Dorian Gray. Although the play is never staged, he does meet Liv and she becomes the love of his life. They live together, joined by a daughter called Lisa. Their happiness fuels his senses with vibrant colours and melodious music. Paris, Present Day – Stan lives in France at the Rabbit Hole, a house left to him by his aunt. He now shares his life with Babette, a lifeguard and mother of a teenage boy of Lisa’s age. They also share their home with Laïvely, a machine built by Stan and given Liv’s voice. As Stan becomes more engrossed in his past Laïvely starts to take on a life of her own. His life is about to implode.

Stan presents his life in two narratives, the present in France and the past where he was at his most creative, happy and in love. His relationship with Liv is almost idyllic. Anything he relates of his present can only suffer in comparison. We learn that he and Babette are compatible, but there is none of the life and vivid colour that comes from his reminiscence. We are all nostalgic about the past, but no relationship can be perfect especially when cramped into the average London apartment with a small baby. While it is touching and romantic, the cynic in me wondered was this a true picture? As for Liv, she is in technicolour in Stan’s flashbacks with her vivid red hair. However, all that life is now reduced to a communication device and no matter how Stan cuddles Laïvely to him, she is inanimate, merely a machine. In what way is this a fitting representation of the love of his life? The author brings the truth to light brilliantly and I feared Stan’s mind was splitting. Stan seems to imagine that he and Liv would have lived in this harmonious way forever, but as the truth emerges Stan’s perception of himself starts to shatter. Babette finds him catatonic and soaking wet, having to place him in a hot bath and slowly bringing him back to himself. It’s the most nurturing, selfless and loving part of the book and it’s all the more sad that he hasn’t before recognised or rewarded her love and loyalty. He also realises that there were times he was too distant and distracted with Liv, that he stopped paying her attention. It was as if he had imagined them always walking towards a common goal but truthfully, he knows they were out of pace with one another. As the ‘tick, tock’ of the clock at the Rabbit Hole reminds us that the end is approaching we fully comprehend this heartbreaking story. This is no ordinary loss and it’s clear that Stan has never faced the truth of their final days until now. This is an emotional end that has one final twist to impart and it is devastating. It seems that Stan has always held on to Liv’s portrait, but is was a ‘painting turned against the wall’, keeping it’s secrets until that final terrible reveal.

It was so lovely to be back in Adriana Trigiani’s world. It always feels like a hug in a book! Jess (short for Guiseppina Capidimonte Baratta) is an artist who designs pieces made with marble, everything from a garden fountain to a baptismal font. She lives with her family in the New Jersey town of Lake Como. Ever since she finished school Jess has worked with her uncle Luis at his marble business, shipping newly quarried Italian marble to the United States. Jess is at a stage in life when she’s longing for something new. After divorcing her childhood sweetheart and local heartthrob Bobby Bilancia she’s been living in her parent’s basement. Their mothers, who have a long held friendship, are openly praying for their reconciliation. Jess could see her whole life mapped out, in fact her namesake Aunt Guiseppina has given her the blueprint – the maiden aunt, chief baby sitter for her sibling’s kids, cook and bottle washer for family dinners, and eventually caring for their elderly parents. When the family experience an unexpected loss, coupled with financial worries, secrets come tumbling out of every closet. Jess decides to take the trip to Italy that had been planned for work. Now she’ll use it as a change of scene rather than just a work trip. Finally, she will see her ancestor’s homeland. Taking us to Lake Como via Milan, Jess falls in love with Italy and all it has to offer. 

This story is a common narrative in the author’s novels. A young, ambitious and talented woman is looking for a lucky break or a foothold in the family business and has an adventure. Jess is slightly different in that she’s older and has already found her Prince Charming once. Stressful situations usually floor Jess, who has suffered from anxiety all her life. The family carry brown paper bags wherever they go. Yet Jess has withstood the questions and judgement about her divorce and sticks with her decision, only confiding in her online counsellor and her journal. She sets out to her Uncle Louis’s hometown to visit the marble quarries that supply their marble but also meet with local stonemasons who use it. It should be useful for her work but also give her the head space she needs after the divorce, her loss and those family home truths that left her very angry with her parents. When she meets Angelo Strazzi, a talented local craftsman, there’s instant chemistry and future possibilities start to open up. As always Italy is a revelation and Trigiani writes about it in a way that only an Italian American can. There’s familiarity and nostalgia that comes from knowing her family are from here, but there’s also the wonder and magic of the tourist view too. It’s the best of both worlds. Mostly I loved that Italy seems to set Jess free, in her own right. She’s away from a community that claims to know her better than she knows herself, but also from the suffocating combination of her own family and that of her ex-husband. Free from a future that she and her family saw for her – that of the maiden aunt. Maybe it’s the mountains but Jess can breathe in Italy.  I came out of the novel feeling like I’d been on holiday. I won’t ruin the book by telling you what Jess’s choices are, but the ending isn’t the only important thing. I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I did. 

I was three quarters of the way through this novel before I found out it was based on a true story. Zara was a fashion designer, founding a dress shop called Magg with her best friend Betty in her twenties. Freeman’s novel follows Zara’s life from her meeting with Harry Holt and their relationship, which would dominate most of her life. The novel takes us on her travels, into her career as a fashion designer and businesswoman and the volatility of her relationship with Holt. Harry comes across as a selfish and ambitious man, who clearly loved Zara but was slow to commit and couldn’t curb his womanising ways. Zara is constantly waiting, whether it’s for him to propose marriage or to be faithful to her. She is torn between wanting a monogamous relationship or accepting both Harry’s love and the fact it comes with many compromises on her part. I’m not sure I could have made those compromises, but despite breaking off their relationship and even marrying an officer from the British Army and living in India, she finds it impossible to leave behind those feelings. Aside from her love life, Zara is a remarkable woman and one of those multi-tasking geniuses I envy. She managed to create an empire that paid for the couple’s holiday homes on different parts of the Australian coast and even when on political trips abroad, particularly as Harry was moving towards becoming prime minister, she used local fashions as inspiration and bought fabric to be shipped back. I had to remind myself I was reading a historical novel when frustrated with societal expectations and attitudes, because Zara was such a modern woman and seemed ahead of her time.

As always I have a loose tbr for July while I’m project managing our kitchen renovation. I’ll be frazzled by the time it’s done as I hate change and noise, but I’ll need to be at home so lots of reading time ❤️📚

Posted in Netgalley

Love, Sex and Frankenstein by Caroline Lea

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, was born in 1797 to politician and writer William Godwin and his wife and fellow writer, Mary Wollstonecraft who wrote The Vindication of the Rights of Women. In her book she made, possibly the first, claim that women were not naturally inferior to men. It was a feminist manifesto centuries ahead of it’s time. Sadly Mary’s mother died only eleven days after she was born from puerperal fever, leaving Godwin to raise Mary as a single father. However, he remarried in 1801 to a widow with two children of her own, Clare being very near in age to her stepsister Mary. In 1841 Mary became connected to the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a well-known writer who was already married with three children. Shelley was 22 and Mary was 16. Facing nothing but criticism and social sanctions in London, the couple decided to escape to the continent along with Mary’s step-sister Clare. They then settled for a time on Lake Geneva, sharing a house with Lord Byron and his doctor Polidori. As the weather changed they become snowed in for a period of time and one of the diversions thought up by Byron was that each of them write a ghost story. Up until this point, Mary has only written in her journal but she can feel something stirring within her and in this strange place, Frankenstein’s monster is born. 

Probably every English Graduate who specialised in Gothic Fiction has fantasised about a stormy night, in a house on the edge of a lake near Geneva. That night was supposedly the genesis of the first vampire story – Polidori’s The Vampyre – and Mary Shelley’s classic horror, Frankenstein. It always seemed strange to me, how two iconic horror legends were conjured up in the same place on the same night. Of course it was a longer period of time and everything these writers experienced in their young lives so far was fuel for their creativity. The setting is definitely strange and unsettling. Caroline Lea paints a picture of the lake becoming monstrous, magical but evil too and no longer a place where children paddle and dive underwater. The sky is dark, trees look like ‘funeral lace’ and ash rains down from above. Local people have noticed that at times the lake throws up strange shadows and clouds, some that look like sky cities floating in the air. When they find a man called Karl Vogel drowned in the lake with his eyes turned from brown to blue – they are shocked, but this is a place of transformation. It’s as if nature is creating the perfect circumstances for monsters to be born. 

This incredible book. is a brilliant combination of historical and horror fiction, with a large side order of feminism – all of my favourite things. Every time I put the book down I would look at my husband and say ‘wow’ then try to write down everything that struck me. I ended up with ten pages of notes that I now need to build into coherent sentences and do this novel justice! Firstly the historical settings were incredible. When we first meet Mary and Clare, they are living in lowly lodgings in London. Mary’s baby is born and they are desperately trying to avoid the bailiffs that seem to follow Shelley wherever he goes. The author really captures 18th Century London with the girl’s filthy lodgings a bleak place to look after a baby. They’re also struggling to sleep, worried that any moment their flimsy door will be kicked down. This is the reality of being the mistress and illegitimate child of a well-known poet who does not pay his debts and has retreated back to his family home. I never imagined that Shelley left her in this position. I’d imagined them living on Lake Geneva complete with servants and all the excesses that Byron was famous for, then travelling around Europe, leaving their troubles behind them. Their relationship would probably be considered abusive now, not just because of their age difference but because of the way Shelley manipulates her. Something that only worsens when Byron and his peculiar brand of chaos are on the scene. When Mary tries to stick up for herself, all the qualities he supposedly loved about her – her independence, her spirit, her intelligence – are thrown back at her, in order to control, manipulate and punish her. He calls her a good mother, but also accuses her of fretting and becoming boring. It is her independent spirit that landed her in Shelley’s arms but he’d rather she didn’t have the independence to question him, refuse him or leave him. His threat is very clear:

‘Women who leave their children, will never see them again’. 

Of course Shelley wouldn’t give up his carefree life to look after his child. He would probably hire a string of nursemaids to seduce then discard, until his only option is to dump his son on his long suffering wife who is pregnant again. Mary starts to realise that although he professes to love her, once she has become a mother she is always expendable. My urge to slap Mary’s step-sister Clare started early in the book and flared up very frequently. She has absolutely no girl code. She had left with Mary in the hope of rekindling a brief liason with Byron. However, it’s clear she’s happy to switch affections if he isn’t there, even onto Shelley. She flirts and simpers, touching his arm and holding his hand to guide her outside. Byron’s treatment of Clare is utterly cruel, he manages to ghost her even when they’re finally face to face. He refuses to acknowledge she exists and then only picks her up again when the weather descends and there are no other prospects. Despite this it is hard to like her, especially when she gains snippets of information from Shelley only to drop them on Mary when they’ll hurt the most. The arrogance of both poets is endless! Byron isn’t just a seducer of women, he drinks and takes laudanum at every opportunity too. He abuses his supposed friend and doctor Polidori, considering him dull and mimicking his stutter in front of the women. His own disability is never mentioned by anyone – the limping stride he’s had since childhood is overlooked or even compensated for as Mary notices some people unconsciously falling into step next to him, slowing their stride to match his. His impulsivity is like that of a toddler, moving mid-week from a hotel to the house on the lake, determined not to pay for the weeklong stay he originally booked. It will cost more for the hotelier to clean up after his bizarre animals, including two eagles, a huge dog and a monkey. He sets his sights on Mary and despite his magnetism she can see what he truly is – a boy throwing mud at windows to detract from his own badness and shortcomings. 

The setting is glorious and it’s clear why frozen mountains, cavernous lakes and the arctic weather feature heavily in Frankenstein. It’s where Mary goes to have time to think, away from the chaos and hedonism indoors. The seemingly magical weather conditions are explicable, even though they feel supernatural. Lake Geneva is known for throwing up mirages called ‘Fata Morgana’. They take the form of distorted boats just above the horizon or even ‘castles in the air’, where a whole city seems projected into the clouds. Named after Morgan Le Fay the mirages are created by rays of light pass through air layers of different temperatures. The sheets of ice on a lake keep the surface air cooler than in the layers above. It’s easy to see why people might by unnerved by something that appears so otherworldly. A more psychological phenomenon that’s clearly takes hold within the house is cognitive dissonance, felt strongly by Mary in particular. The villa is starting to feel like a place she doesn’t belong because her emotions and reactions don’t seem to match anyone else’s in the group. 

‘She feels like a stranger in the foreign land of this room, unable to understand their bright chatter and loud laughter […] every moment takes her further away from these awful people who carry on as if she isn’t there at all’. 

Motherhood and the reality of being Shelley’s mistress has changed Mary and it’s so relatable. She wonders whether all women feel pulled in so many different directions at once. She also wonders if she ever had a true understanding with Shelley. A fire that lit up her heart and her mind is now glimpsed very rarely and she wonders if it ever truly existed. Has she fallen in love with her idea of Shelley – the one who creates the grand illusion of romance in his poems. He doesn’t love her, merely the idea of love itself. In disappointment with all men she turns to the wisdom of women, particularly her mother’s work. Mary Wollstonecraft was the first woman to write a feminist manifesto and she truly understood what needed to change for women – the problem of having to depend on a man. She realised that nurturing women’s learning was the first step: 

‘Strengthen then the female mind by enlarging it and there will be an end to blind obedience’. 

Women could only overcome their dependence on men if they were educated and could earn their own living. In Mary’s dark night of the soul she hears her mother’s voice encouraging and coaching her and the minute she does Mary’s able to breathe again and see a clear way to support herself – by selling her writing. Once she can do that, it no longer matters whether Shelley is inconstant or distant – she does not depend upon him for security and stability. She is ashamed that despite her intellect she has allowed this man to reduce her. Yet she has to tread a fine balance and think these things rather than say them outright. She fears that Polidori’s friendship with the two men, means they have convenient access to a doctor. If she fully expresses what she feels might Shelley think her mad and seek to have her committed? However, she is furious that she might be asked, yet again, to grant forgiveness to a man who is not sorry. She feels that both poets have taken and ruined promising young women, not caring that the consequences of their actions will rest solely on the girl’s shoulders. She wonders what it must be like to take up space in the world, to believe it is your birthright to dictate the temperature of every room they’re in. It is Byron’s arrogance that becomes her blueprint for a future self, allowing herself to be angry and consequences to be damned. She wants to be more like him, true to her emotions and principles and saying exactly what she thinks without worrying about the outcome. In fact it’s a dalliance with Byron where Mary seems to find more strength. It’s an uncomplicated exchange of desire, full of passion, but at no paint does he take anything from her. It gives her the strength to confront Shelley about returning to his wife and leaving both women at the mercy of debt collectors, out of sight and out of mind. She finds her voice and addresses Shelley as a man, rather than the great poet, making her feelings about his infidelity very clear, but also pointing out his cowardice and the times he hasn’t been there for her. 

I loved how the story of Frankenstein’s monster is psychological fragments stitched together, just like the monster himself. Through writing Mary processes her own emotions and thoughts which then feed into the emotions of the abandoned monster. She remembers stories of medical students digging up bodies and stealing them for dissection. Then she gives the creature an internal monologue, ripe with the emotions she has felt, but never expressed. Frankenstein leaves his monster just as Shelley left Mary and their baby in squalor. She’s writing a criticism of men who create with no thought for the thing they’ve created. Victor Frankenstein goes to sleep expecting his creature to die and feels nothing. The creature meanwhile feels a combination of Mary’s grief and abandonment, first losing her mother and then the loss of her father, a man who brought her up to have a rebellious spirit and think for herself, but rejected her when she lives by these principles. Mary is this bewildered and angry creature and that’s perhaps why she gives her monster the equivalent of philosopher John Locke’s tabula rasa – the blank slate of a small child ready to experience nature, love and all that is beautiful. Frankenstein’s monster embodies the nature/nurture debate in that the creature isn’t born evil, it’s other people’s cruel treatment of him that makes him monstrous. Her writing has processed all these feelings and working through them makes her feel hopeful for the first time. She might return to London with her son and instead of being beholden to Shelley or her father, she could keep them both with her own writing. 

Typically, blinded by his own arrogance Shelley doesn’t see himself in Victor Frankenstein at all. At first Mary thinks he’s feigning ignorance, but he genuinely can’t see his own reflection. He sees too much ambiguity in the story, thinking either the creature should make Victor look at his own shortcomings or she should make it so monstrous that no reasonable person would expect Victor to care for it. I loved the way she takes his criticism, because it shows us how much Mary has grown up. She realises that at every stage on the way to publication there will be a man who wants to shout his opinion. It doesn’t matter, because she knows they will all be mistaken. The book, like the creature at it’s centre, will be sent out into the wilderness looking for a creator. She’s fairly sure it will find one, because she knows her book is special. As for Caroline’s book, this is an absolute masterpiece and made me think about Frankenstein from so many different angles. Caroline Lea’s Mary take us through the psychological trauma and brings to life her relationship with Shelley, often told in a rather salacious or romantic way without any thought to the inequality between them. Through this experience she guides the reader through the genesis of this incredible novel. It is stitched together from so many different parts, but here we can see them all and understand the circumstances they come from. What Caroline has written is a Bildungsroman, a novel of Mary’s rebirth from girlhood to womanhood. Frankenstein is the chronicle of that birth, as messy, terrifying, horrific and momentous as it is. This birth being the genesis of Mary Shelley as a woman but also as a writer of one of the most important novels in literature.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Meet the Author

Caroline Lea grew up in Jersey and gained a First in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Warwick, where she has also taught on the Creative Writing degree. Her fiction and poetry have been longlisted for the BBC Short Story Prize and Sunday Times Short Story Award, and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, the Fish Short Story Competition and various flash fiction prizes. Her novel, THE GLASS WOMAN, was published to critical acclaim and shortlisted for the HWA Debut Crown. Her next novel, THE METAL HEART, was Scottish Waterstones Book of the Month. Her most recent novel, PRIZE WOMEN was featured and acclaimed on BBC Women’s Hour. Caroline is passionate about helping other writers to grow and succeed: she teaches creative writing both privately and, currently, for Writing West Midlands and is often recruited to give talks at literary festivals and events. She currently lives in Warwick with her partner and children and is working on her next novel about Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein. Her books often feature ordinary women in extraordinary circumstances.

Posted in Sunday Spotlight

Sunday Spotlight: Going Down Under

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I’ve always been unconsciously drawn to books set in Australia and New Zealand, perhaps because I have family in both countries and want to familiarise myself with their lives. My mum lived there as a ten pound Pom in the 1960’s, leaving Liverpool behind and living in hostels meat Sydney. My grandad loved it out there and would tell us about nature, mostly horrific stories of people having spider’s nest in their ears or brains. My brother-in-law went out to New Zealand to work as a tree surgeon on a huge farm. He met the love of his life out there, Jenny, and although Jan died a few years after my husband I’m still in touch with Jenny and my two nephews. I was also hugely influenced by mum who was an enormous fan of The Thorn Birds – although hated Rachel award as Meggie in the TV mini-series. I’ve always thought that people down under are resilient, rather sweary and very straightforward. They say what they think – something I admire even where I don’t agree. I love the diversity of the cities and fascinated by Aboriginal and Māori. Some of my choices were read on my post-colonial literature course at university, a module that I found so inspiring and forced me to read writers I’d never have picked up as a casual reader. Here are just a few of the books and authors that can take you on a trip round both countries.

Classics

When her wealthy family prepares to host a lavish summer party, the young, hitherto sheltered Laura Sheridan suddenly feels a kinship with the staff and the helpers hired to set up the venue for the festivities. As she learns of the death of one of their working-class neighbours, this burgeoning sense of class consciousness is heightened by a realization of her own mortality. Published in 1922, at the height of literary modernism, ‘The Garden Party’ is now considered one of the key texts of that movement. This volume, which also includes all of Katherine Mansfield’s other published short stories, is an invaluable resource for anyone wishing to discover one of the early twentieth century’s finest writers. I first read this collection at university and I still have it today because it stands up against any short story collection from that period.

Integrating both Maori myth and New Zealand reality, The Bone People became the most successful novel in New Zealand publishing history when it appeared in 1984. Set on the South Island beaches of New Zealand, a harsh environment, the novel chronicles the complicated relationships between three emotional outcasts of mixed European and Maori heritage. Kerewin Holmes is a painter and a loner, convinced that “to care for anything is to invite disaster.” Her isolation is disrupted one day when a six-year-old mute boy, Simon, breaks into her house. The sole survivor of a mysterious shipwreck, Simon has been adopted by a widower Maori factory worker, Joe Gillayley, who is both tender and horribly brutal toward the boy. Through shifting points of view, the novel reveals each character’s thoughts and feelings as they struggle with the desire to connect and the fear of attachment.

Compared to the works of James Joyce in its use of indigenous language and portrayal of consciousness, The Bone People captures the soul of New Zealand. After twenty years, it continues to astonish and enrich readers around the world.

Mythology and contemporary Māori life are woven together seamlessly in this spectacular collection by Aotearoa’s foremost short story writer.

The titular story ‘Bird Child’ plunges you deep into Te Kore, an ancient time before time. In another, the formidable goddess Mahuika, Keeper of Fire, becomes a doting mother and friend. Later, Grace’s own childhood vividly shapes the world of the young character Mereana; and a widower’s hilariously human struggle to parent his seven daughters is told with trademark wit and crackling dialogue.

Moving artfully across decades, landscapes, time and space, with tenderness and charm, Bird Child and Other Stories shows an author as adept and stimulating as ever. This isn’t an easy read but fascinating and the comparison between Māori and other creation myths from around the world was fascinating.

Contemporary Fiction

Cassy smiled, blew them a kiss.

‘See you in September,’ she said.

It was a throwaway line. Just words uttered casually by a young woman in a hurry. And then she’d gone. 

It was supposed to be a short trip – a break in New Zealand before her best friend’s wedding. But when Cassy waved goodbye to her parents, they never dreamed that it would be years before they’d see her again. 
Having broken up with her boyfriend, Cassy accepts an invitation to stay in an idyllic farming collective. Overcome by the peace and beauty of the valley and swept up in the charisma of Justin, the community’s leader, Cassy becomes convinced that she has to stay.

As Cassy becomes more and more entrenched in the group’s rituals and beliefs, her frantic parents fight to bring her home – before Justin’s prophesied Last Day can come to pass. I love Charity Norman’s writing because she gets to the heart of family relationships and shows how families can fracture when placed under stress. I’d recommend any of her books but this one is set in New Zealand. I highly recommend Remember Me and Home Truths.

At a suburban barbecue one afternoon, a man slaps an unruly boy. 

The boy is not his son. 

It is a single act of violence, but the slap reverberates through the lives of everyone who witnesses it happen.

Christos Tsiolkas presents the impact of this apparently minor domestic incident through the eyes of eight of those who witness it. It’s honestly hard to find someone to like here, but it is a fascinating look at contemporary Aussie relationships. It’s an unflinching interrogation of the life of the modern family, a deeply thought-provoking novel about boundaries and their limits…

The Lambert sisters have secrets…

When 15-year-old Cathy Lambert runs away from her Dublin home, she is scared and pregnant. Settled in New Zealand with her new son Conor she believes the secret she carries will never be revealed…

Rebecca Lambert was eighteen when her parents died and she took responsibility for her younger sisters. Years later, she is haunted by fears she hoped she’d conquered.

Freed from family duties, mother of three Julie Chambers is determined to recapture the dreams of her youth.

Married to a possessive older man, Lauren Moran embarks on a frantic love affair that threatens to destabilise her fragile world.

Anxious to make peace with her three sisters, Cathy invites them to her wedding.

But as the women journey together through New Zealand towards their reunion, they are forced to confront the past as the secret shared histories of the Lambert sisters are revealed. I couldn’t put this book down as it’s a great mix of emotions, adventure, secrets and a lot of humour.

EVERY ENDING IS A NEW BEGINNING…

Ruth is ignoring the news. Like most people, she has relationship problems, job stress, friends and family who need her. Ruth has a life.

But the news is about to catch up with Ruth, and her problems are going to be swept away…along with the rest of the world. While on a plane to New Zealand, something starts to happen to the world. Arriving, Ruth makes her way to her coastal destination but never expected to be sharing the inside of a dead whale with a stranger as a world ending event happens. It takes this to change Ruth’s outlook completely. Only when the comforts and complications of her old existence are gone, does she finally realise how she might be able to live to the fullest. This was a mesmerising debut from Kate and I still recommend it constantly. It made me think about something drastic like this happening in my lifetime, but also question why we fall in love with the people we do and how commitments to others are nurtured and lad

Romantic Fiction

Love isn’t an exact science – but no one told Don Tillman.

A thirty-nine-year-old geneticist, Don’s never had a second date. So he devises the Wife Project, a scientific test to find the perfect partner. Don has a regimented life of work

Enter Rosie – ‘the world’s most incompatible woman’ – throwing Don’s safe, ordered life into chaos.

But what is this unsettling, alien emotion he’s feeling? . . .

This is a deeply funny, but emotional and fascinating in terms of Don’s neuro-divergence. He eats the same meal on the same night every week as part of his rotation of menus. His life felt like a never-ending to-do lust and I knew that he would drive me up the wall. Rosie is a woman of great patience! However, I also knew that my lack of systems and routine would have an equally detrimental effect on his mental health. Watching how these two people try, fail and try again to communicate their needs and feelings within the relationship is a lesson for every couple. It’s also brilliantly funny. There is a trilogy now so treat yourself to all of them.

In the rugged Australian Outback, three generations of Clearys live through joy and sadness, bitter defeat and magnificent triumph, driven by their dreams, sustained by remarkable strength of character… and torn by dark passions, violence and a scandalous family legacy of forbidden love.

The Thorn Birds is a poignant love story, a powerful epic of struggle and sacrifice, a celebration of individuality and spirit. Most of all, it is the story of the Clearys’ only daughter, Meggie, who can never possess Ralph de Bricassart, the man she so desperately adores. Ralph will rise from parish priest to the inner circles of the Vatican… but his passion for Meggie will follow him all the days of his life.

What a saga this is and I have to say the book is ten times better than the series, mainly because we get more of the family dynamic and get to know Meggie as a little girl. Her story of slowly growing up with such a harsh mother really builds and we understand more her bond to the young priest who befriends her, noticing that in a family of many sons she is largely ignored. He is her knight in shining armour and the only one, after her eldest brother is gone, who will hug and comfort this lonely girl. Catholic readers will recognise how powerful the religion is for Irish families and the schooling that nuns provide. The book is an epic and covers Father Ralph’s lifetime, but it has an incredible sense of place and time and really is worth a read for that alone.

n 1929, Beattie Blaxland had dreams. Big dreams. She dreamed of a life of fashion and fabrics. One thing she never dreamed was that she would find herself pregnant to her married lover, just before her nineteenth birthday. 

In 2009, Emma Blaxland-Hunter was living her dream. A prima ballerina with the London Ballet, she had everything… Until the moment she lost it all. 

Separated by decades, both women must find the strength to rebuild their lives. A legacy from one to the other will lead to Wildflower Hill, a place where a woman can learn to stand alone long enough to realise what she really wants.

I’d never read this author before so it came as a complete surprise when I enjoyed it so much. It is historical fiction too, but I loved that this was a ballsy woman who was determined to succeed at Wildflower Hill and her love story with an aboriginal worker would have been so transgressive at the time. It’s an unashamedly romantic story and if you enjoy love with a side order of feminism, family secrets and a dual-timeline this is for you.

Historical Fiction

A faded photograph. An abandoned house. A wartime mystery. . .

1939: On the eve of war, young English heiress Grace Grey travels from London to the wilderness of Tasmania. Coaxed out of her shell by the attentions of her Irish neighbour, Daniel – Grace finally learns to live. But when Australian forces are called to the frontline, and Daniel with them, he leaves behind a devastating secret which will forever bind them together.

1975: Artist Willow Hawkins, and her new husband, Ben, can’t believe their luck when an anonymous benefactor leaves them a house on the remote Tasmanian coast. Confused and delighted, they set out to unmask Towerhurst’s previous owner – unwittingly altering the course of their lives.

2004: Libby Andrews has always been sheltered from the truth behind her father Ben’s death. When she travels to London and discovers a faded photograph, a long-buried memory is unlocked, and she begins to follow an investigation that Ben could never complete. But will she realise that some secrets are best left buried . . .?

This gorgeous story that spans the twentieth century was one of my books of the year last year. The mystery of how all these timelines added up, the beautiful setting of Tasmania and the historical context around WW2 drew me in. The love story is simply gorgeous and potentially heart-breaking. I know this is a story I’ll want to read again.

1896, Bannin Bay, Australia. When British pearl-boat captain Charles Brightwell goes missing out at sea, rumours of mutiny and murder swell within the bay’s dens and back alleys. Only his headstrong daughter, Eliza, refuses to believe her father is dead, and sets out on a dangerous journey to uncover the truth.

But in a town teeming with corruption, prejudice, and blackmail, Eliza soon learns that the answers she seeks might cost more than pearls. How much is she willing to sacrifice to find them?

This incredible debut is richly atmospheric from the get go, throwing us straight into the strangeness of 19th Century Western Australia as if it is an alien landscape. In fact that’s exactly what it is for the Brightwell family, particularly Eliza whose childhood eyes we see it through for the the first time. The adult Eliza has to negotiate her way through the community’s corruption, violence, blackmail and the criminal elements of the pearling business. All the while reading her father’s diary for clues and guiding us to some fascinating characters, some of which are based on historical figures. You’ll love Eliza’s early feminist stance and sense of adventure. The twists and turns her journey takes are gripping and pull you deep into the story. It’s a fantastic debut, full of life and death, just like it’s setting.

Crime Fiction

A killer targeting pregnant women.

A detective expecting her first baby…

The shocking murder of a heavily pregnant woman throws the New Zealand city of Dunedin into a tailspin, and the devastating crime feels uncomfortably close to home for Detective Sam Shephard as she counts down the days to her own maternity leave.

Confined to a desk job in the department, Sam must find the missing link between this brutal crime and a string of cases involving mothers and children in the past. As the pieces start to come together and the realisation dawns that the killer’s actions are escalating, drastic measures must be taken to prevent more tragedy.

For Sam, the case becomes personal, when it becomes increasingly clear that no one is safe, and the clock is ticking…

There’s something about Aussie and NZ crime fiction. It’s gritty and immediate. This is the fifth in Vanda’s Sam Shepherd series and I can honestly say they’re all brilliant but this one …. I was on the edge of my seat! It feels like Sam has just let her guard down and accepted what’s next in her life, when everything could be ripped away from her. Even though she’s the one who most understood the killer’s motivations, will she still be shocked by their identity? Sam’s vulnerability is terrifying and I was praying that she would be okay, as if she’s a living and breathing human being. That’s the power of Vanda Symon’s writing and how much of that magic she’s poured into this brilliant character.

Lou O’Dowd travels across the world from Australia to Edinburgh for a job with the organisation SASOL. Her new life will be living with her cousin and working shifts at a halfway house for high risk offenders including two killers, a celebrity paedophile, and a paranoid coke dealer. After orientation, Lou will be on shift alone dealing with these offenders with little more than her own instinct to guide her. What could possibly go wrong?

Lou is a controversial character, living off a sugar daddy for a while she’s had no need to work, but when the relationship ends disastrously she has no choice but to leave. On her first day in Edinburgh she meets a man at a play who has a similar attitude to risk, enjoying mainly outdoor sex. He comes from a rich family, so maybe he could be more than a fling? I loved how the mundane domesticity of the job was mixed with genuine fear and horror of what could happen if residents flare up. There’s an evening ritual of cocoa for each resident, but it has to be to perfectly timed in order to interrupt one resident’s suicide ritual. These are the extremes a job like this entails, but it’s only the beginning….

A few more suggestions:

Posted in Throwback Thursday

Throwback Thursday: Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter by Lizzie Pook

Posted on by thelotusreaders

 

Fortune favours the brave . . .

It is 1886 and the Brightwell family has sailed from England to make their new home in Western Australia. Ten-year-old Eliza knows little of what awaits them in Bannin Bay beyond stories of shimmering pearls and shells the size of soup plates – the very things her father has promised will make their fortune. Ten years later, as the pearling ships return after months at sea, Eliza waits impatiently for her father to return with them. When his lugger finally arrives however, Charles Brightwell, master pearler, is declared missing. Whispers from the townsfolk point to mutiny or murder, but Eliza knows her father and, convinced there is more to the story, sets out to uncover the truth. She soon learns that in a town teeming with corruption, prejudice and blackmail, answers can cost more than pearls, and must decide just how much she is willing to pay, and how far she is willing to go, to find them.

Since this week’s Sunday Spotlight takes us on holiday Down Under, I thought I’d re-share my review of Lizzie Pook’s debut novel set in Australia. This incredible debut is richly atmospheric from the get go, throwing us straight into the strangeness of 19th Century Western Australia as if it is an alien landscape. In fact that’s exactly what it is for the Brightwell family, particularly Eliza whose childhood eyes we see it through for the the first time and in a particularly disgusting parody of baptism she is reborn as an Aussie when a bucket of fish guts is launched in their direction. Of course the fisherman apologises for the accident, but we’re left wondering if it’s anything but as he says the words ‘welcome to Bannin Bay’. It foreshadows an immediate imbalance between those who do the work and those who aim to make the money. Eliza’s father has been full of dreams, not just of pearls but the pearl shells to be turned into buttons, hat pins and pistol handles. Yet their unsuitability for this rough and ready environment can be seen as soon as they arrive in their fine clothing they must lift up from the red earth compared to the stevedores dirty vests and cut off trousers. Eliza describes her mother as ‘a dragonfly, once resplendent, marooned in a bucket of old slop water.’ Delicate Victorian ladies are not built for this environment that stinks of sweat, fish guts and the mineral tang of sea kelp. With this totally alien landscape the author creates a vivid backdrop for the incredible historical detail of her story, but also brings a mythic, almost fairy tale quality.

Only ten years after the prologue we meet an older Eliza, wiser to the ways of the Bay and she has developed into a interesting character. Women are either categorised as society women -‘white glove wearers’ – or harlots and it’s a source of irritation to the women in the community that she refuses to be either. Eliza is ploughing her own furrow, and whereas her friend Min’s childhood dreams developed from adventure on the high seas to the type of sailor she might marry, Eliza still craves adventure. She can see no use for a husband, although she doesn’t deny an interest in men which is quite a scandalous notion, even if her main interest is the contents of his library. Eliza’s knowledge of sailing and pearl diving is forensic in its detail and through exploring with her father she has developed a keen interest in the areas flora and fauna too. She is quite unlike the respectable women who still look like wedding cakes in the impossible heat. Her father has been on a voyage for the past three months and a lonely Eliza has been looking forward to his return, but as she sits and waits doubt starts to set in about whether the ship is returning. The light is fading as his lugger appears on the horizon, but her stomach fills with dread when she realises something is wrong. The ship’s flag is at half-mast. When her brother Thomas emerges she learns that her father is gone. While Thomas rushes to secure the business Eliza is left to find out the truth and while she’s told he went overboard, there are also tales of mutiny and murder. Eliza has to visit the sergeant to convince him that she suspects their father’s death was not an accident. Sergeant Archibald Parker is an unpleasant racist and his immediate action is to arrest aboriginal man Billy Balaari, but Eliza is told that Billy wasn’t even on the boat. When Billy escapes, the sergeant is completely focused on finding him, leaving Eliza to do the detective work herself. She finds her father’s diary and eventually sets sail on Father McVeigh’s lugger Moonlight with Axel Kramer and an aboriginal boy called Knife, determined to find the truth of what happened.  

I wasn’t surprised to know there was a very seedy underbelly to the trade where Eliza’s father hoped the build the family fortune. Where incomers make large amounts of money, there is always exploitation and in this case the workers have a very tough working life. Of course it’s the naive Australians who are exploited the most and the author doesn’t pull her punches when it comes to portraying the terrible treatment they receive. Families are torn apart as the strong are enslaved for labour on the Pearler’s boats, usually as pearl divers, the most dangerous job on board. The sheer weight of their gear is terrifying as they don lead boots and copper chest plates. It felt so claustrophobic to imagine them sinking slowly to the bottom of the sea, with only a line connecting them to the ship above. The imagined relief of being winched back to the surface was tempered by the danger of the bends, the pressure of resurfacing quickly forcing organs upward in the body leading to suffocation or leaving the diver ‘agonisingly crippled’. It made me feel a little bit anxious as I was reading their potential fates. If this wasn’t enough, aboriginals were treated as worthless, beaten and even killed without consequence. Eliza has to negotiate her way through the community’s corruption, violence, blackmail and the criminal elements of the pearling business. All the while reading her father’s diary for clues and guiding us to some fascinating characters, some of which are based on historical figures. I loved Eliza’s early feminist stance and her sense of adventure, and the twists and turns her journey takes are gripping and pull you deep into the story. This is a fantastic debut, full of life and death, just like it’s setting. The richness and depth in her storytelling marks Lizzie Pook out as a writer I’ll be watching out for in the future. 

Meet the Author

Lizzie is an award-winning writer and journalist. She has written for the  Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, The Evening Standard and Stylist. She is the author of Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter, a STYLIST and WOMAN & HOME ‘Best Books of 2022’ pick.

Lizzie began her career in women’s magazines, covering everything from feminist motorcycle gangs to conspiracy theorists, before moving into travel writing, contributing to publications including Condé Nast Traveller, Lonely Planet and the Sunday Times.

Her assignments have taken her to some of the most remote parts of the world, from the uninhabited east coast of Greenland in search of polar bears, to the trans-Himalayas to track snow leopards. She was inspired to write Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter, her debut, after taking a road trip through Australia with her twin sister after the death of their father. A chance visit to the Maritime Museum in Fremantle led her to an exhibition about a family of British settlers involved in the early pearl diving industry. Thus began an obsession and a research journey that would take Lizzie from the corridors of the British Library to isolated pearl farms in the farthest reaches of northwest Australia.

Posted in Sunday Spotlight

Sunday Spotlight: A City Break in Venice

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Beautiful and mysterious Venice has been the backdrop for many stories. It’s beauty, endless winding streets and romantic canals inspire the creativity in film-makers, musicians, artists and writers. Vivaldi, Byron, John Ruskin all fell in love with it’s charms.

The first book that placed Venice on my travel list was What Katy Did Next by Susan Coolidge. I’d read the earlier books in the series, but read this when I was in hospital. I broke my back when I was eleven and I was laid flat for a long time and devoured all sorts of books. I felt an affinity with Katy who had her own accident at the end of the first book, falling from a broken swing. As an adult she’s employed as a companion and nanny for a woman travelling with her young daughter. Their last stop is Venice and the carnival. I remembered Katy sitting on their hotel balcony watching a procession and having sweets and trinkets thrown up to her by the passing revellers. Of course the darker side of carnival and the eeriness of the city didn’t occur to me until I was much older, but that’s the city’s magic I think, the beauty and the decay. Here are a few of my favourite books that feature Venice:

Venice Classics

This edition contains five stories of suspense, mystery and slow, creeping horror, Daphne Du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now and Other Stories includes an introduction by Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black and her own novella set in Venice The Man in the Picture.

John and Laura have come to Venice to try and escape the pain of their young daughter’s death. But when they encounter two old women who claim to have second sight, they find that instead of laying their ghosts to rest they become caught up in a train of increasingly strange and violent events. It makes the reader the third person in the couple’s marriage, let into their innermost thoughts and intimate moments. The atmosphere she creates leaves the reader uneasy and unsure. Then that totally unexpected ending hits you right in the gut.

I thought of this cover when I took the main picture. Milly Theale, an American heiress in London, is young, hungry for life, and terminally ill. There she meets the dazzling beauty Kate Croy. Unbeknownst to Milly, Kate is madly in love with an old acquaintance of hers, Merton Densher, a young journalist who has everything a woman could want—except money.
 
Intensely aware of her new friend’s fate and coveting her fortune, Kate secretly spurs Merton to seduce and marry Milly. But their scheme to inherit her wealth does not go according to plan, and Kate and Merton learn that deceit alters love, and love, deceit. This is a novel that needs perseverance, but is rewarding for people who enjoy character driven fiction that takes it’s time. There are no action sequences here, just manipulation and a lot of passive aggression as Milly slowly tortures Kate and Merton with her forgiveness.

Historical Fiction

Venice, 1486

Here I have to share two of my favourite novels of last year. The first is Tracy Chevalier’s The Glassmaker. Across the lagoon lies Murano. Time flows differently here – like the glass the island’s maestros spend their lives perfecting.

In secret, Orsola Rosso learns to craft glass. As a woman, she must flout convention to save her family from ruin. We follow her through hundreds of years of war and plague, tragedy and triumph, love and loss. Skipping like a stone across the centuries, The Glassmaker is a virtuoso portrait of a woman, a family and a city that are as everlasting as glass. I absolutely loved this novel that takes us from the 15th Century to the present, which also happens to be Orsola’s life span. I loved the strength and adaptability of this incredible young woman, who makes herself a vital part of her family’s glassmaking business.

I was bowled over by this gorgeous debut from Harriet Constable about Anna Maria Della Pieta. A young woman who was left with the nuns at a Venice orphanage when she was just a baby. Anna Maria may have no name, no fortune, no family. But she has her ambition, and her talent. 

Anna is a sparkling ball of energy and ambition. Her best hope lies in her teacher, Antonio Vivaldi. Soon she is his star pupil. But as Anna Maria’s star rises, not everyone is happy. Because Anna Maria’s shining light threatens to eclipse that of her mentor…

She will leave her mark, whatever it takes. Her story will be heard. This is an incredible novel, woven around a real person that brings 17th Century Venice to vivid life.

Crime Fiction

I started reading the Commissario Brunetti series after I’d been to Venice for the first time and it was great to read about a character who lives in modern Venice. I’d felt that contradiction: the gratitude for being able to visit the city, whilst also acknowledging the damage the sheer amount of visitors are doing to the city. There are less Venetian born residents of the city every year. Something that saddens me, but doesn’t quell that urge to visit again. Here I could read about someone living everyday life in that city. My other reason for reading this was that my hotel was in a piazza behind La Fenice and we decided to cut behind the opera house to find a quicker route. When it is dark, there is nothing creepier than those tiny little streets behind La Fenice!

The twisted maze of Venice’s canals has always been shrouded in mystery. Even the celebrated opera house, La Fenice, has seen its share of death … but none so horrific and violent as that of world-famous conductor, Maestro Helmut Wellauer, who was poisoned during a performance of La Traviata. Even Commissario of Police, Guido Brunetti, used to the labyrinthine corruptions of the city, is shocked at the number of enemies Wellauer has made on his way to the top – but just how many have motive enough for murder? The beauty of Venice is crumbling. But evil is one thing that will never erode with age.

Phillip Gwynne Jones’s Nathan Hunt series is set in Venice, where Hunt is Great Britain’s Honorary Consul and finds himself drawn into the world of crime. This time he’s asked by the British Ambassador to look into the death of a British Art Historian called Dr Jennifer Whiteread. On the night of 12 November 2019, the worst flooding in 50 years hits the city of Venice. 85% of La Serenissima is underwater. Gale force winds roar across the lagoon and along the narrow streets. The body of Dr Jennifer Whiteread is found floating in a flooded antique bookshop on the Street of the Assassins. The local police are trying hard to restore order to a city on its knees, Nathan Sutherland – under pressure from the British Ambassador and distraught relatives – sets out into the dark and rain-swept streets in an attempt to discover the truth behind Whiteread’s death.

The trail leads to the “Markham Foundation”, a recent and welcome addition to the list of charities working to preserve the ancient city. Charming, handsome and very, very rich, Giles Markham is a well-known and popular figure in the highest Venetian social circles, and has the ear of both the Mayor and the Patriarch. But a man with powerful friends may also have powerful enemies. And Nathan is about to learn that, in Venice at least, angels come in many forms – merciful, fallen and vengeful. This thriller is part of a series, but can be read as a stand alone thriller with a fantastic and mysterious backdrop.

Non-Fiction

Who hasn’t dreamed, after a particularly mind-numbing meeting, or in the midst of another punishing five-thirty commute, of chucking it all and packing off to the enchanting canals and mysterious alleyways of Venice? Globetrotting writer Paula Weideger not only dreamed the dream; she and her partner actually took the leap. VENETIAN DREAMING charts the course of Weideger’s passionate love affair with one of the world’s most beautiful cities. Weideger opens her book with the wry, mishap-strewn account of the search to find a place to live which eventually takes her to the world famous Palazzo Dona delle Rose, the only palace in Venice continuously occupied by the family that built it. She weaves the past lives of the family Dona with her own present adventures, creating a tapestry that captures at once the grand heritage and imperilled labyrinth as she gives a lively, riveting and eye opening tour of the city. She explores the centuries old streets, meets locals from noblemen to shopkeepers and artists, makes peace with the ghost of Peggy Guggenheim and explains how Ishmael Merchant and James Ivory almost dislodged her from her home, and more.

“Francesco’s Venice”, now available in paperback, is the extraordinary story of the life of this intriguing city, told by a descendant of an old and distinguished Venetian family. Francesco explores Venice’s remarkable history, from the fifth century when the first settlers retreated to the safety of the lagoon and began to create their homes on its tiny islands, through its glorious years as a successful maritime nation, adept at trade, exploration, diplomacy and protecting its independence, to the fragile city of the twenty-first century. He vividly brings to life the places, events and people, including a colourful array of his own ancestors, that have sculpted this living theatre through the ages. Beautifully illustrated with stunning images by John Parker, “Francesco’s Venice” celebrates the mesmerizing beauty and surpising strength of this unique city.

Romantic Fiction

Caroline Grant is struggling to accept the end of her marriage when she receives an unexpected bequest. Her beloved great-aunt Lettie leaves her a sketchbook, three keys, and a final whisper…Venice. Caroline’s quest: to scatter Juliet “Lettie” Browning’s ashes in the city she loved and to unlock the mysteries stored away for more than sixty years.

It’s 1938 when art teacher Juliet Browning arrives in romantic Venice. For her students, it’s a wealth of history, art, and beauty. For Juliet, it’s poignant memories and a chance to reconnect with Leonardo Da Rossi, the man she loves whose future is already determined by his noble family. However star-crossed, nothing can come between them. Until the threat of war closes in on Venice and they’re forced to fight, survive, and protect a secret that will bind them forever.

Key by key, Lettie’s life of impossible love, loss, and courage unfolds. It’s one that Caroline can now make right again as her own journey of self-discovery begins.

Can a city hold the key to happiness?

”This isn”t a mid-life crisis OK? For a start I”m not old enough yet to have one of those. I”m calling it a happiness project. I”ve stolen an entire summer from my life and by the time it”s over I plan to leave this place with a list in my hand. The ten things that make me happy, that”s all I want to know. How difficult can it be? They may be small things – a perfect cup of coffee, a day without rain – or bigger ones. It”s still the beginning so how can I know?” 

Addolorata Martinelli knows she should be happy. She has everything she thought she wanted – her own business, a husband, a child. So why does she feel as if something is missing? Then when her restaurant, Little Italy, is slated by a reviewer, she realises that she”s lost the one thing she thought she could always count on, her love of food.

So Addolorata heads to Venice for a summer alone, aiming to find the ten things that make her happy. Once she”s found them, she”ll construct a new life around her ten things, but will they include her life in London?