Tag: Historical Fiction

Posted in Squad Pod

The King’s Witches by Kate Foster

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Having only just read her debut The Maiden, I was very keen to get started on this second novel from Kate Foster. This novel is based during the reign of Elizabeth I and James VI of Scotland (James I of England). I knew of James VI’s obsession with witches after studying the Malleus Malificarum at university while writing about disability representation in fiction. I looked at witches while discussing how disfigurement and disability in novels is used as a symbol for evil. The Malleus Maleficarum was the bible for witch finders, describing all the behaviour and characteristics of possible witches and signs to look out for. The book features in this novel as a guide for James VI, who had been alarmed by news of witch hunts in Germany. His proposed bride, Princess Anna of Denmark, set sale for Scotland in 1590 and was driven back by catastrophic storms. The storms were blamed on witches in Denmark and when James travelled to meet her in Norway he heard allegations of witchcraft first hand. Around the same time, in North Berwick, a housemaid called Geillis Duncan was accused of sorcery and when tortured she implicated several other witches, allegedly conspiring with the Earl of Bothwell to take the throne from the King. Kate Foster has taken this history and weaves a story from three women’s points of view, giving a feminist slant on the witch trials that killed thousands over the next two centuries, the majority of them women over forty.

There are three narratives in the book, each one from women who hold different positions in society. Princess Anna of Denmark was a young girl of fourteen when he was betrothed to James VI and attempted to reach Scotland. This has been updated to seventeen in the novel, but at either age there’s an enormous pressure on her shoulders. She has been sent on the basis of a Scottish hand-fasting, if she should please James within the next year he will marry her. If not, she will be ruined for any other marriage and her future looks set to be a life within an abbey. Adding to the pressure, there is a witch burning just before they leave and Anna is compelled to watch, because burnings are a warning to all women. Anna is sickened by what she sees and can’t forget it, convinced as they set sail that the witch is stood on the harbour cursing the voyage and her union with the Scottish king. As it is the sailing does feel cursed because the weather is terrible, sea-sickness is rife and when Anna meets her Scottish tutor Henry every thought of the king is driven from her mind. Anna’s companion and lady-in-waiting is Kristen Sorenson, a pious woman who once lived in Scotland. She is charged with keeping Anna focused on her duty, but she also has her own personal reasons for wanting the royal marriage to be a success. Jura is a housemaid working in the house of the local bailie in North Berwick. Her mother was a cunning woman, treating local women’s ailments with natural ingredients and she passed her knowledge on to Jura. She heals the daughter of the house from a rash and redness on her face using an oatmeal poultice and soon other women in their circle are asking for cures of their own. However, she and the daughter clash over a dalliance with a local farmer’s son and when Baillie Kincaid starts to force his attentions on Jura she decides to flee to Edinburgh. All three women are now caught up in the witchcraft rumours and may have to come together in order to save themselves.

Within a few chapters of the book I felt taken right back to the 16th Century. The witch burning scene in Denmark is see through Anna’s eyes and it is sickening and barbaric to imagine people killed in this way. Before she sees Doritte Olsen burned Anna mentions that even though she is to be betrothed, she doesn’t feel like a woman yet. She doesn’t fully know who she is. She can’t eat and can’t sleep, smelling the smoke on her own hair and knowing that on the beach, Doritte Olsen is still burning down to ash. She starts to see that women have no power in this world and the burning is a lesson – this is what happens if women step outside their role. It left me knowing I was in a different world, where women’s roles are wholly defined by men. Jura senses freedom as she flees to the capital city. Her descriptions of Edinburgh are so vivid as she marvels at houses with four storeys that put the whole street in shadow. She is dazzled by Canongate with it’s gleaming shop fronts, tennis courts and cork-fighting pits. She marvels that her mother never told her such variety existed in one place. The use of Scottish dialect in Jura’s narrative really helps ground the reader in that place and her use of bawdy language made me smile and feel warm towards her.

Here and there, Kate uses letters between the chapters and they had the effect of reminding me that a true story lies behind this novel. After their first night together, she strategically places a letter to the king from his friend Douglas Murray, a fictional character who stands in for a series of lovers the king is known to have had. In a letter that is mainly keeping the king up to date with news from court, he signs off with a curious line:

‘Mostly I await your return […] so that we might embrace each other once more in the manner to which we have become so dearly accustomed’.

The consensus among 21st Century historians is that the king was homosexual or bisexual, but in the context of this story it makes us realise that Anna’s task is a difficult one. She truly will be a wife in duty only and she knows this as she tells Kristen it feels unnatural to be intimate with someone she doesn’t care for in the right way. Her role is to stay quiet and bear children, turning a blind eye to the king’s extra curricular activities. Anna’s description of their intimate relations made me feel sick for her, she senses there is no ‘longing’ in him and I realised that should she become Queen this is her life. She won’t be able to have lovers and her only romance in life would be the way she feels for her tutor Henry. In fact James seems more aroused when torturing potential witches. How I wanted her to run away.

The only women in the novel with a small amount of freedom are those able to earn their own money like Jura and her Aunt Mary who is a healer and cunning woman in Edinburgh. Mary lives alone on what she earns, not in any sort of luxury but at least she has autonomy. The ability to consult a cunning woman is vital for women who might want to stop a pregnancy, boost their fertility or need a charm for love or protection. In this way these autonomous women empower the women around them and accusations of witchcraft subdue not just the woman accused, but every woman in that area. When Jura heals Hazel Kincaid’s facial rash and gets the chance to meet with other local women who gather at the house, she glimpses the chance of a better life:

‘I like healing far better than I like polishing and sweeping and mibbie, one day, soothing grumbling guts and easing flaking skin will help me out of horrible Master Kincaid’s house and away from his prick, and able to rent a dwelling of my own.’

The hypocrisy of the men in the book is infuriating at times. The renowned witch finder Dr Hemmingsen from Copenhagen assures the king that he has a unique way to identify witches, using a bodkin to prick them and find the devil’s mark on their body – the only spot where it won’t hurt. In the same package he has sent the king a golden amulet for protection, carved by a man who knows how to ward off evil. It seems signs and charms are only witchcraft when a man says they are. In fact Anna has never heard so much about the practises of witches as she does from the king, regaling her with tales of baby-killing and orgies with man, woman and beast. Kristen tells Anna that James is becoming a danger to ordinary women and his fervour is a kind of madness, or a licence to abuse and degrade women. Anna has a realisation; a woman’s body is never truly her own, no matter what their position in society. Whether you’re a housemaid whose master decides you’re his property, a witch who can be stripped and examined by men who call themselves god-fearing, or a princess whose family hand-fasted her to James Stuart and didn’t ask her if it was what she wanted. Women must work together if they want to survive. These women are strong, but are they intelligent enough to try and outsmart a king? Kate is brilliant with twists and turns, so I wasn’t surprised to find a few revelations towards the end. I was driven to finish to know what happened to all three women and whether any of them would achieve the freedom they craved. This was a compelling and atmospheric read and cements Kate Foster’s position as a writer of historical fiction at it’s best.

Published on 6th June by Mantle Books

Meet the Author

Kate Foster has been a national newspaper journalist for over twenty years. Growing up in Edinburgh, she became fascinated by its history and often uses it as inspiration for her stories. The Maiden won the Bloody Scotland Pitch Perfect 2020 prize for new writers and is long-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She lives in Edinburgh with her two children.

Posted in Squad Pod

The Maiden by Kate Foster

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Kate Foster has taken a real life news report and turned it into an incredible read, full of historical detail and intrigue. It’s the late 17th Century and Lady Christian Nimmo lives with her sister Johanna and her mother at their lavish home in Scotland. Although their home is becoming less lavish by the month because since their father’s death she notices pale spaces where paintings or rugs once lived. Their fortunes are at the mercy of their uncle by marriage. James Forrester is laird of the neighbouring castle where he lives with Christian’s invalid aunt Lillias. James comes for dinner and departs with a little more of their family history packed away for sale. The girls must marry well and it is Johanna with her bubbly personality and pretty face who is proposed to first. For her wedding to Robert Gregory, Christian’s uncle sends her a beautiful brooch to wear and she is pleased at his kindness and the acknowledgement that she might feel left behind that day. Not all of her uncle’s attentions are welcome though and although he keeps pressing her to visit his castle to sketch and paint with her aunt she isn’t sure. However, she does enjoy the attentions of the fabric merchant Andrew Nimmo who brings them new fabric and entertains them with tales of sailing to far off lands and the night sky at sea. Christian daydreams about sailing alongside him and seeing some of these sights. Noticing her enthusiasm he cuts her a piece of silvery fabric that is the colour of a stormy sea. Next time he brings a sample of midnight blue velvet, shot through with an ocean green and she is very charmed. Marriage to him would be interesting and adventurous, all the things that Christian yearns for when she reads novels and poetry. So when he proposes she accepts happily, sharing her sister’s new found marriage advice and looking forward to being mistress of her own house. Yet only months later she is detained for the suspected murder of her Uncle James, killed by his own sword under a sycamore tree in the grounds of his castle. How has it come to this and will Christian have to face the infamous ‘Maiden’, a guillotine where Scotland’s aristocratic condemned meet their fate?

However, this isn’t just Lady Christian’s story. The novel is split into two narrators: Christian and Violet, a prostitute from Mrs Fiddes’s brothel in Edinburgh. For both, there are two timelines; the present after the death of the laird and the events leading up to it. Until finally past and present come together. Violet is a very young girl, and has been resident at the brothel since Mrs Fiddes sold off her virginity. The scenes within the brothel are brilliant; bawdy, coarse and incredibly colourful. Mrs Fiddes knows every customer’s taste and predilection, she’s shrewd and knows that this gives her a certain amount of power. She’s keeping their secrets close until she really needs them. Violet’s friend is fellow resident Ginger, a skinny young girl with red hair who lives on the same corridor. One evening a rather distinctive man comes in to choose a girl, a man who doesn’t wear a wig which is unusual. He looks past Violet and chooses Ginger, but it’s not long before she is also occupied. It’s not long before Violet hears a terrible commotion and she rushes down the corridor, but it’s too late. The man is gone and Ginger is left like a broken doll on the floor. In the aftermath Violet longs for her luck to turn. When she’s out one morning she notices a wedding taking place and lingers to watch because sometimes men who are celebrating and have had a few drinks might look for a girl. She’s in luck when a very wealthy looking man catches her eye. Before long he’s slipped into the parlour and is so pleased with Violet that he makes an offer. He would like to take her back to his castle for the weekend. As he shows her a secret room in one of the castle’s turrets she is amused by the illuminating art work, but amazed by the lavish surroundings she will be staying in and the maid who will bring her meals and make sure she has what she needs.

Like all the servants Oriana knows the laird has his amusements and they are kept quite separate from the lady of the house whose illness usually keeps her tucked away upstairs. Violet could get used to this sort of treatment, but the power lies with the laird. She might have fallen on her feet for now, but what if he loses interest? When he starts to receive visits from a lady of quality, Violet fears it’s the end for their liaison and starts to think up a scheme to get the upper hand. Meanwhile, Lady Christian’s marriage is not what she expected, not only is Andrew often away for long periods leaving her behind, there has been no physical contact between them. She and her sister often read and giggled over the ‘marriage book’ they found in the library at home, especially when Johanna was engaged. However, Andrew has never made an advance to his wife. Christian is still untouched and although she has a wonderful home and wants for nothing, she can’t help but want to be desired. As her uncle invites her to his castle for a visit she can’t help but think about the special attention he has paid her over the years and her pulse quickens. Could she really think about having an affair with her aunt’s husband? I could understand her need to be wanted, why should she be satisfied with simply being the lady of the house. For many the huge house, the money and the security for them and their family would be enough. It’s interesting to see the interplay between the two characters; Violet would probably be happy to settle for the things Christian has, but Christian could be contemplating risking it all for the freedom to express her sexuality. I felt she was chasing just a glimmer of the adoration that her sister Johanna has enjoyed all her life thanks to the luck of being born beautiful.

The author has created two incredible characters in these very different women, both are bravely sexually transgressive but sadly live in a world where men hold all of the power. The settings are wonderfully evocative and range from lavish to squalid, a combination we see clearly in the city of Edinburgh. As Violet observes the wedding, noting the quality of the guest’s clothing she is also aware of watching her footing lest she slip in the contents of a chamber pot flung from a window into the street below. The gap between rich and poor is more of a canyon, best expressed when Violet finds an opportunity to roam the castle and finds a brooch in the shape of a sword. It’s just one of many that the residents have left languishing in a drawer, but Violet sells it she would have enough money to start a new life. The threat of sexual violence is always close by, not just for Violet and Ginger but for Christian too once she has lost the respectability her title and her husband gave her. What the author does that makes this novel sing is combining the time period and story to the structure of a modern crime thriller. Just when we think we know everything, she trips us up with a different perspective or twist we didn’t see coming. Some revelations throw a completely different light on everything that has gone before bringing that excitement and compelling you to keep reading. I genuinely didn’t know how it would be resolved until we arrived there and once we did it was obvious this was the only way for it to end. Utterly brilliant and definitely a debut worthy of it’s accolades.

Out now in paperback. Pictured copy is the Waterstones special signed edition.

Meet the Author

Kate Foster has been a national newspaper journalist for over twenty years. Growing up in Edinburgh, she became fascinated by its history and often uses it as inspiration for her stories. The Maiden won the Bloody Scotland Pitch Perfect 2020 prize for new writers. She lives in Edinburgh with her two children.

Kate’s new novel The King’s Watch is out on 6th June and is a Squad POD Collective book club pick for next month.

Posted in Netgalley, Publisher Proof

The Small Museum by Jody Cooksley

Posted on by thelotusreaders

A shiver thrilled my spine at the thought of what might be contained in collections to be kept away from ordinary eyes…

London, 1873. Madeleine Brewster’s marriage to Dr Lucius Everley was meant to be the solution to her family’s sullied reputation. After all, Lucius is a well-respected collector of natural curiosities. His ‘Small Museum’ of bones and specimens in jars is his pride and joy, although firmly kept under lock and key. His sister Grace’s philanthropic work with fallen women is also highly laudable.

However, Maddie soon finds herself unwelcome in what is meant to be her new home. The more she learns about both Lucius and Grace, the more she suspects that unimaginable horrors lie behind their polished reputations.

Framed for a crime that would take her to the gallows and leave the Everleys free to continue their dark schemes, Maddie’s only hope is her friend Caroline. She will do anything to prove Maddie’s innocence before the trial reaches its fatal conclusion.

When choosing novels I have two favourite genres, historical and crime fiction. Author Jody Cooksley has combined the two in his compelling novel that was the winner of the Caledonia Novel Award. In Victorian London 1873, Madeleine Brewster, the daughter of a doctor, is courted by Dr. Lucius Everly a man seemingly intent on finding the missing link that will prove the evolutionary step between fish and mammals. He collects fossils and curiosities at his London home, hidden away in his ‘Small Museum’. His sister Grace undertakes work with fallen women at a house called The Evergreens which is held in high regard.

Madeleine accepts his proposal, imagining her life as a doctor’s wife will be similar to that of her mother and father. However, when she reaches her new home, life is very different to what she expected. She feels unwelcome in her new home, with housekeeper and gardener Mr and Mrs Barker seemingly in charge, keeping exactly the same routine from when Lucius’s father was alive. There is no space for her to organise or manage her own house and if it isn’t the Barkers, her sister-in-law Grace drops in unannounced and chooses the drapes or orders tea as if she is the mistress of the house, despite having her own. Having dreaded the wedding night, Lucius begs her forgiveness for his tiredness and departs to his own bedroom. Despite their reputations, Madeleine starts to suspect Lucius and Grace of unimaginable horrors. She hears a baby’s cry in the night, her husband arguing with his sister and items seem to appear and disappear from her room with alarming regularity. Despite trying to help her husband in his work and fitting in with the Barker’s schedule, Madeleine finds herself labelled as ‘nervous’ and then framed for the most terrible of crimes. A crime she did not commit. As she faces a trial Madeleine’s only hope is her friend Caroline, but can she prove her friend’s innocence before she is hanged?

This was an absolute cracker of a gothic mystery with a heroine who is in a terrible catch 22; either shut-up and be complicit in something horrific, or keep asking questions and be labelled mad by her in-laws. She is utterly powerless, but tries everything within her limited options to improve her situation. Madeleine is intelligent and no one could say she hasn’t tried in her marriage. When finally Lucius does come to her room it is a perfunctory act where she might as well have been an inanimate object. She tries to get used to these new couplings but there is certainly no love or even tenderness in it. The outcome is further tragedy for Madeleine and a means for Lucius to control her movements even further and an excuse for their nightly encounters to stop. Once physically recovered, she tries to use the only gift she has, her ability to draw in a style that would work for scientific illustrations. She is then let into Lucius’s small museum, a veritable treasure trove of nature’s oddities and anomalies, but also bleached bones of various different creatures that he hopes will prove his theory that fish developed into birds and mammals. He is gratified that Madeleine has a strong stomach, able to converse freely about the best ways of bleaching bone. He has lost many a servant girl who accidentally discovered the museum or his workshop where he prepares the animals whose bones he uses. They embark on a trip to Dorset together where he is showing his latest finds to his peers and Madeleine hopes they will enjoy combing the beach for fossils and she can do some more sketching. However, she has underestimated Lucius’s fanaticism about his theory and the terrible lengths he will go to in order to prove it.

The author brings all of these strands together beautifully, the glimpses into the past finally catching up with the present and Madeleine’s terrifying predicament. Will she be found guilty of infanticide? Caroline is desperately trying to uncover the truth and proves herself to be an incredibly loyal friend. I had so many questions as the book neared it’s end and the tension was riveting. Was Madeleine really seeing her sister Rebecca in the streets around Evergreens? Were items genuinely disappearing and appearing in her room? Was she sane or had she succumbed to mental illness? What were the noises in the house at night and can she really hear a baby crying? In fact the answers involved new maid Tizzy, a down to earth girl who’d had her baby at Evergreens and she provides an incredible light bulb moment! Everything around me disappeared (including the housework and cooking tea) as the first glimmer of truth came to light. I had to finish this book right now! I loved the elements of feminist thinking that were brought into the text including the use of Christina Rosetti’s poem ‘Goblin Market’ which tells of men who will take away and ruin any young maiden who isn’t on her guard:

‘Dear you should not stay so late, Twilight is not good for maidens; Should not loiter in the glen In the haunts of goblin men.

‘Goblin Market’,Christina Rosetti, 1862

Rossetti worked as a volunteer in a religious house helping ‘fallen women’ for eleven years, women like Tizzy and Madeleine’s sister Rebecca. Although Rebecca is seen as the fallen woman by respectable people, Madeleine realises that her own marriage simply gives her a mask of respectability. It does not mean they are happy, in fact it disguises what is truly going on behind closed doors. She knows it would take irrefutable evidence to save her and this is why she is in utter despair during her trial. She can’t imagine anyone breaking through that polite veneer of respectability to help her, because they risk their own reputation. Yet she needs someone respectable to vouch for her because housemaids and fallen women hold no power. Caroline is a liminal person in this respect, she is accepted in society as the daughter and wife of doctors, but her father and Ambrose are psychiatrists, dismissed as ‘mind benders’ by Lucius and this sets them apart. They’re respectable enough to be believed, but not so restricted by their standing in society that they daren’t speak up. Caroline is well aware of how powerless women are and the fates that can befall them. When she first sees marks on Madeleine’s wrists she knows she’s seen them before, on Ambrose’s recovering patients; ‘they were women too’. I loved Madeleine’s relationship with Tizzy too, they clicked immediately and talked with a freedom Madeleine’s never had before. She is her one friend in a house where the wife’s place is to keep quiet and only appear when necessary. All in all, this is a really well written and researched novel with all the ingredients I love in an historical novel: a fantastic sense of time and place; strong female characters that break through the Victorian ‘Angel in the House’ stereotype; those Gothic elements to bring a sense of mystery. Then added to this are the addictive twists and turns of a crime novel. What an incredible debut this is!

Out now from Allison and Busby.

Meet the Author

Jody Cooksley is an author represented by literary agent Charlotte Seymour at Johnson & Alcock.

In 2023 she won the Caledonia Novel Award with The Small Museum, a chilling Victorian thriller that’s due for publication with Allison&Busby in May 2024. Sequel to follow in 2025.

Previous novels include award-nominated The Glass House, a fictional account of Victorian pioneer photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron (Cinnamon Press, 2020), and How to Keep Well in Wartime (Cinnamon Press, 2022)

She is currently working hard on her next novel, another Victorian gothic set by The Thames. She has previously published essays, short stories and flash fiction.

Jody works in communications and lives in Surrey with her husband, two sons, two forest cats and a dangerous mountain of books.

Posted in Netgalley

Bonjour Sophie by Elizabeth Buchan

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Can she escape the darkness of her past in the City of Light?

It’s 1959 and time for eighteen-year-old Sophie’s real life to start. Her existence in the village of Poynsdean, Sussex, with her austere foster-father, the Reverend Osbert Knox, and his frustrated wife Alice, is stultifying. She finds diversion and excitement in a love affair, but soon realizes that if she wants to live life on a bigger canvas she must take matters into her own hands.

She dreams of escape to Paris, the wartime home her French mother fled before her birth. Getting there will take spirit and ingenuity, but it will be her chance to discover more about her family background, and, perhaps, to find a place where she can finally belong.

When Sophie eventually arrives in the Paris arising from the ashes of the war, it’s both everything she imagined, and not at all what she expected…

Most readers will know I have a fascination for the period directly after WWI, but recently I’ve been looking at books and films that have explored the aftermath of WW2. Originally I watched a film called The Aftermath starring the brilliant Jason Clarke and Alexander Skaarsgaard that followed a British colonel posted out to Nuremberg after the war ends. His job is to help rebuild and I remember being shocked that people were living in homes where their outer walls were missing, almost like looking into a doll’s house. Since then I’ve read novels set in the occupied countries like Poland and France and gaining other viewpoints makes you remember that the majority of people are caught up in a war they don’t want to fight, are tormented with memories of things they’ve done to survive and are still waiting for the return of those they love. I think we imagine that once the war was over, everything went back to normal, but that was far from the truth. Prisoners of war were kept, by us, for several years after the war ended, rationing only ended in 1954 and we were still rebuilding London till the mid 1970’s. It’s in this aftermath that we meet our heroine Sophie, just finishing boarding school in England with her friend Hettie. Sophie has a complicated past and her school years have been a temporary period of fun and friendship. Now she must return to the home and parish of clergyman Osbert Knox, an English village where her French mother ended up in dire straits during the war. Camille was pregnant and had fled Paris during the occupation, leaving behind Sophie’s father who was fighting in the Resistance. Lucky for the Knoxes, Camille had great housekeeping skills and she repaid their kindness in cooking, cleaning and implementing a household system that enabled them to concentrate on their parishioners. Sadly, Camille died and now the Knoxes are expecting Sophie to return from school and pick up where her mother left off, learning to keep house and support the couple. Sophie needs to earn back her keep and education, only then will Osbert return her mother’s precious savings book. This was money that Camille managed to save from her meagre allowance, knowing that Sophie would need something to restart her life with. Sophie dreams of returning to Paris, the home of her parents, but there’s only problem. She is sure that money is being taken from her mother’s savings. So she makes a decision to bring her escape forward, to find the savings book and flee with whatever is left to France and look for her father.

Sophie is a resilient girl, intelligent and able to read people. She doesn’t trust Osbert, but is still horrified to find that he expects her thanks to extend to much more than cooking and cleaning. Now she must escape and sooner rather than later. Sophie wants to build an independent life for herself, full of new experiences. She isn’t afraid about change, she’s quite matter of fact about those experiences she wants to try. She has a friendship with Johnny from the nearby farm and plans to lose her virginity with him, rationalising that it’s something she wants to get out of the way. This ability to single out what she wants and succeed in getting it will stand her in good stead once she gets to Paris. She has a deep yearning to connect with her history, even if her father hasn’t survived, she wants to know what he did during the war. Was he the hero that her mother painted him to be? Sophie knows that the scars of war run deep, that her father might have done terrible things to survive. The author writes about the moral compromises people make in war without judgement, allowing the reader to make their own decisions, but also reinforcing the point that no one knows what they’re capable of until they’re under duress. Finding her father isn’t easy though. She takes work in an art gallery and uses her wage to hire a private investigator. She finds out about the paintings looted from Jewish families during the occupation, removed by the Germans as the owners were transferred to concentration camps. However there were French collectors and gallery owners who collaborated in these deals, using a terrible atrocity as a business opportunity. She also finds that there are so many people looking for someone: husbands who never returned from the battlefield but are not amongst the dead; resistance fighters executed and thrown in a shallow grave; women killed for their collaboration with German soldiers during the war. There are vendettas and grudges still playing out and Sophie is warned that she might not like what she finds. Some secrets should remain buried. The buildings in Paris echo the the trauma still felt by the people, from a distance they look okay but close up it’s clear that there’s been no maintenance. The paintwork is peeling and the stone is damaged, but there is still beauty.

I really enjoyed the friendship between Sophie and Hettie, who has returned home to constraints of her own. She is trapped in within the expectations of her parents and her class. Hattie is expected to be a ‘deb’ and be presented for the London season. If she shines she might attract the right sort of husband. Her only route is marriage and children, no independence or career path. She has to be engaging but not appear too clever and put suitors off. Neither girl has any type of sex education, is not allowed her own bank account or make decisions about her own fertility. It’s scary to me that a lot of these restrictions lasted into my mother’s lifetime! Thankfully Hettie has a belated rebellion. I loved that the girl’s friendship lasts a lifetime and they give each other support and strength. This feel like a transitional period in time, where the world is trying to recover from war and it was a huge realisation to me that it took this long. I remembered reading that it was Ed Balls who, as chancellor, paid the final debts from WW2 and being so shocked. It takes people a lot longer to heal and return to themselves. My own father in law took many years after WW2 moving from the Siberian forest through the Middle East and North Africa and into Europe. He eventually settled in London, but his wartime experience still haunted him when he lived with us in the 2000s. I think Elizabeth Buchan has a way of writing about how we come to terms with generational trauma like this. Here she has mixed a thoughtful and complex historical period with a coming of age story. Just as Sophie is becoming a woman, the country she escapes to is also in the midst of a change. It is by finding out about WW2 and the terrible stories of living in Paris under occupation that she starts to understand her parent’s story and the courageous choices they made. Despite the pain and loss, Sophie’s experiences have a joy about them as she attempts to build herself a life with resilience and happiness. Buchan’s writing always has a melancholic, bittersweet feel. There’s a sense that life and the greater world are imperfect, even dangerous, but we can still live happily within it.

Out now from Corvus Books

Meet the Author

Elizabeth Buchan was a fiction editor at Random House before leaving to write full time. Her novels include the prize-winning Consider the Lily, international bestseller Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman, The New Mrs Clifton and Two Women in Rome. Buchan’s short stories are broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in magazines. She has reviewed for the Sunday Times, The Times and the Daily Mail, and has chaired the Betty Trask and Desmond Elliot literary prizes. She was a judge for the Whitbread First Novel Award and for the 2014 Costa Novel Award. She is a patron of the Guildford Book Festival and co-founder of the Clapham Book Festival.

Posted in Squad Pod

The Scandalous Life of Ruby Devereaux by MJ Robotham

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Everyone knows Ruby Devereaux’s books. But no one knows her story… until now.

From a teenager in wartime England to a veteran of modern-day London – via 1950’s New York, the Swinging Sixties, Cold War Berlin, Venice and Vietnam – Ruby Devereaux has lived one hell of a life: parties, scandals and conflict zones, meeting men and adventure along the way. In a writing career spanning seven decades and more than twenty books, she’s distilled everything into her work. Or has she?

There were times during this novel where I wished I was the transcriber in the room, just so I could be the first to hear this lifetime of stories. Ruby Devereaux’s editor is under pressure from above. Ruby is almost 90 years old and the publisher is determined to get the one last book she owes them. So her editor suggests that she closes her illustrious writing career with a memoir. Ruby was on the verge of packing up her typewriter, but she does perhaps have one story left in her, or maybe twelve…

The bulk of the book is Ruby’s memoir as told to her transcriptionist Jude, each chapter named after a man in her life and telling the story of their relationship. Although it’s not as simple as that, through these affairs she takes us through the latter half of the 20th Century and right across the world. It takes us through one woman’s history, but also the ever changing landscape of the world around her, taking in those unforgettable moments and some fascinating social history too. I used to be fascinated with my 90 year old grandmother and the changes she’d seen over a lifetime in the countryside: from horse drawn ploughs to huge tractors; from cycling everywhere to her children owning cars; from handwritten letters to online communication. This has similar vibes, but on a bigger scale as Ruby moves from peacetime to war and across three continents with the world constantly changing beneath her. The author weaves together the social history, world events and Ruby’s growing up with romance and scandal. Ruby has spent seventy years telling her character’s stories, but now it’s time for her own. It’s definitely a life well lived as it’s taken her to the 1950’s New York of the Mad Men, Berlin and Budapest during the Cold War, into Vietnam and into relationships with twelve different men. These are the men who’ve inspired her novels. Make no mistake though, this isn’t really about the men in her life, this is about Ruby. Each relationship captures where Ruby is at that point in her life; a chapter in her personal growth. Ruby easily outshines her male counterparts because she has such a zest for life and breaks society’s rules and expectations about women everywhere she goes. As a young girl in post-war England she’s very matter of fact about her first sexual experience, wanting it out of the way before she leaves home. She’s an incredibly resilient character, despite experiencing loss and heartbreak at a very young age. She makes a promise to herself and the person she’s lost to keep going, grabbing opportunities whenever they arise. Never realising that all along she’s writing the most exciting story she’ll ever tell.

It’s this resilience and insistence on saying yes to experiences that take her across the globe. Starting in London, she lives and falls in love in the romantic city of Venice, via a terrible experience in New York that spawns her second book. She then explores Saigon and Budapest, before finally ending up in Cornwall. She spends time in a commune, dabbles in the world of spying and has assignments in war zones. Just as in her love life, she’s tough and doesn’t dwell on failures or knock backs, she chalks it up to experience and moves on. There is a danger of some of the men in her life becoming a mere backdrop to Ruby and her escapades, it’s very hard to keep up with her energy. However the later sections in England felt a little more detailed and because they’re not as filled with adventures, the men have more room to develop. Their relationships with Ruby feel deeper and more real. Ruby is always at the centre though and I loved following her character development. We can see which experiences have given her strength and a sense of boundaries. I love a scandal so this was definitely a fun romp in parts, whilst also having a sense of reflection and self-awareness as Ruby becomes an older lady. There’s a bravery in her willingness to share her life, particularly her emotions and those difficult parts of her life – relationships that went wrong, the loss, motherhood and her mental health. However, despite this we’re caught up in Ruby’s humour and ability to heal. I think the author has created a brilliant character and blended actual history with her life very well. Ruby is such an incredibly memorable character and I enjoyed spending time in her company.

Published by Aria 11th April 2024

Meet the Author

M J Robotham had wanted to write from a very young age, inspired by the book ‘Harriet the Spy’. However life got in the way and it was journalism and having a family keeping her occupied. She was a midwife for several years, but started to write seriously after completing an MA in Creative Writing. her first novel was A Woman of War followed by The Secret Messenger set in occupied Venice.

Her next two books were set in pre and post war Berlin, then wartime Norway, both are places she loves to visit. In her spare time she visits the gym, to knit unusual things and enjoys the music of Jack Savoretti,

Posted in Netgalley, Publisher Proof

House of Shades by Lianne Dillsworth

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Hester is a doctoress, using her mother’s skills and recipes to treat the ladies of the night around her Kings Cross home. She’s offered a commission to work in the Fitzrovia home of Gervaise Cherville, a rich factory owner with declining health.

If Hester can diagnose and treat his illness he will pay her ten pounds, a life changing amount of money in 1833. Thinking that the fee will help them move to a better area of London, she leaves behind husband Jos and slightly wild sister, Willa, to work at Tall Trees the Cherville mansion. However there’s a dark energy in this old house, as if there’s a curse on Cherville and his mansion.He asks if Hester will track down two women who worked in the house – Aphrodite and Artemis. However, they weren’t servants but slaves and Cherville’s treatment of them torments him and keeps him awake at night. If Hester can find the women, allowing him to make reparation before he dies, he will raise her fee to twenty pounds. Hester is torn, twenty pounds would allow them to move to the country, removing Willa from the temptations that keep her out at night. Yet, will these women want to found, especially given Cherville’s abuses of power? Also, can Hester as a black woman, put another black women in danger without the consequences being on her conscience forever?

Inheritance is a huge theme in the novel and especially, the way in which characters receive their portion. Of course an inheritance isn’t always financial and the intentions of the giver play a large part in what it can do. Hester’s mother has given her an incredible inheritance, her doctoress’s bag of herbs and potions that can ease sicknesses of the mind and body. This of course helps her earn a living, tending to the prostitutes around their part of town at night. Kings Cross is known as a red light district and Hester tends to their venereal diseases, but also their bruises when men take what they want without paying. However, she also has the keeping of her younger sister Willa which isn’t easy. Willa is wild, easily led and naive when it comes to the intentions of men. Hester’s husband Jos finds it difficult living with Willa, especially when the sisters are at odds with each other. Willa works at the Cherville’s factory and has been noticed by Gervaise Cherville’s son, Rowland. It’s clear to Hester that his intentions aren’t honourable, but can she convince her headstrong sister that he isn’t as in love with her as he claims? When working at the Cherville’s house can she stop Rowland from recognising who she is, while also taking care that he doesn’t put undue influence on his father. Rowland isn’t happy with Gervaise giving away ‘his money’ in reparations, after all their plantation has hundreds of slaves and where will his charity end?

I loved the double meaning of the title House of Shades; the shades or ghosts of the past play their part here, especially in the mahogany furniture Cherville had made from the trees on the plantation. However, it also refers to shades of skin colour. I loved how the author explored the concept of ‘passing’ and colourism, especially in the light skinned character Lady Raine. Hester herself is very dark skinned, a colour that immediately places her in an unusual category. Her position as a doctoress situates her far higher in a house’s hierarchy than we might expect. There would be darker skinned slaves on Cherville’s plantation who are confined to working in the fields and bear the brunt of the ill treatment meted out, whereas those slaves considered lighter skinned might get to work in the household. Traditionally house slaves were thought to be higher in status than field workers, but whereas field workers get to leave the crops and spend time with their families in the village in he evenings, house slaves are at the beck and call of their master or mistress and even sleep in the house away from their families. They’re also closer to the male family members and therefore very vulnerable. There is a moment where Margaret is startled when she bumps into Hester on the landing, lurking in the darkness. She would only expect to meet servants of her own status on the master’s floor, not a black woman with her herbs and potions. I wondered how light skinned Willa was, to make her ‘palatable’ to Rowland Cherville, who appears to think slaves are expendable. He certainly doesn’t want them taking ‘his’ money.

Reparations are a huge theme in the novel and potentially the cause of Gervaise Cherville’s illness, as he admits the concerns and guilt around his treatment of slaves. Could his disturbing symptoms of insomnia, hallucinations and sleepwalking be put down to the end stage syphillis he’s suffering, or are the women he’s wronged in that house haunting him? When Hester first finds a dark, cold room off the kitchen she feels straight away that this isn’t a cold larder. There’s something about the space that she can feel and isn’t remotely surprised that slaves were sleeping in there, deemed unfit to be housed in the attic rooms with the servants. If all he wants to do is make reparations and apologise would it help the women to hear it? Or will the mention of their former master be so terrifying it disturbs their lives and leads to them fleeing once again? I suspected Gervaise hadn’t told Hester all that transpired between him and the women, in fact I doubted he even fully understood the extent of what he’d done. Yet it was Rowland Cherville who made my blood run cold, not only is he entering into exploitative relationships with young women who work in his factory but he doesn’t appear to have any empathy at all. His entire focus is on his own needs. He refers to his father’s money as his own, even though his father is still alive, and seems to have no feeling for his illness or imminent death. In fact he’d rather his father died, before he’s able to give all his money away. He also cares nothing for any of the slaves on whose backs the factory, Tall Trees and his inheritance have been built. They’re simply incidental to his own plans.

I really enjoyed the way this novel took me into the reality of Victorian England for black women. It gave me a new perspective, after Lianne’s first novel which looked at the rise of freak shows and the display of black women’s bodies. The private showings being another insidious and secret experience like rich men using women as domestic slaves and the objects of their desire behind closed doors, while seeming like a respectable businessman to society. Yet, the freak shows seemed to be freer and more in the control of the individual performer. One of the things I hated most when I visited the Slavery Museum in Liverpool, was the taking away of identity, so the way Cherville gave his slaves the names of goddesses made me shiver. It shows his desire for them on one hand, while keeping them in a cupboard, locked away all night like animals. While Hester is searching for them I was wondering whether they’d found their identity again, reclaimed their names and found a space to be relatively free. I feared that they’d had to adopt yet another identity, to disappear, constantly looking over their shoulder. Hester is a heroine that it’s easy to become involved with and I really sympathised with her feeling of being in-between: torn between being a wife and a sister; between her patient and her fellow women; not a servant, but not entirely free either. There’s even a revelation that draws her further into the history of Tall Trees. I wanted a happy ending for Hester, that she might be able to leave London and live that simpler life she and Jos have been craving. This is another triumph for Lianne Dillsworth and neatly places her on the list of authors whose books I would buy without question in future.

Published on 16th May 2024 from Random House

Meet the Author

Lianne Dillsworth lives and works in London. She has always loved anything and everything to do with books and her earliest memories involve reading and being read to. At school Lianne’s favourite subjects were English and History, so when she started writing, historical fiction was a natural choice. In Theatre of Marvels, her debut novel, Lianne indulges her love for the Victorian period evoking London in all its mid-nineteenth century glory. She is currently working on her second book under the watchful eye of her tiny terrier.

Posted in Netgalley, Personal Purchase

The Star and the Strange Moon by Constance Sayers.

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Constance Sayer’s latest book has a lot of her literary trademarks: time slip narratives; a mystery to solve; magic realism and romance. She places her story in the world of Hollywood and film-making, with two main characters – the actress Gemma Turner and young film-maker Chris Kent. In 1968 Gemma is staying in London with her rock star lover Charlie Hicks when she is offered an unexpected film opportunity. Until now Gemma has been making a series of surfing films based in California, but she’s been longing to make something that has more critical acclaim. French director Thierry Valden is part of the nouvelle vague or new wave movement and has offered her the lead role in his next film L’Etrange Lune a vampire film set in 19th Century France. He seems open to changes and often works with improvisation so her long held skills as a writer might be needed too. However, when she gets to Thierry’s chateau the mood seems to have changed. She is greeted by Manon Valden, who warns Gemma off her husband immediately which isn’t very welcoming. Thierry doesn’t seem like the man she met before and when she reads the up to date script it still has the same stilted dialogue, despite the potential changes she had sent him. When she finally speaks to Thierry alone, he makes it clear that something has changed. He had envisioned more of a collaboration both on the script and possibly in the bedroom, but L’Etrange Lune will be his final film and he can’t afford to take risks. Gemma will have other opportunities for scriptwriting but he won’t. The next day as they’re filming in the nearby town of Amboise, Gemma has a scene where she runs down a darkened and cobbled alleyway, seconds after calling action the camera has suddenly lost her. Has she fallen on the cobbles? Are the dark shadows concealing her? Maybe she’s walked off in a huff. Yet it seems Gemma is genuinely gone and as they look back over the scene on film, frame by frame, she’s simply disappeared in front of their eyes.

Christopher Kent has had a strange fascination with the actress Gemma Turner since he was a child. Now at film school in 2007, his attachment to the actress stands out because she was never one of the greats – students aren’t usually hung up on obscure actresses from a handful of surf films. He remembers the day he first saw her, in a hotel where vintage black and white photos of actors were hung next to every door. In a very chaotic and traumatic childhood, this was one of those moments where he and his mum were without a roof over their heads. Chris could sense his mum was edgy and on the verge of a mood change, but as they approached their room and she saw the photo by the door she flew into a rage. She pulled the picture of Gemma Turner off the wall and smashed it, shouting personal insults and expletives. What was her link to the actress? Knowing Chris’s fascination with Gemma, his girlfriend and fellow student Ivy comes to him with a strange proposition. Every ten years Gemma’s final film, L’Etrange Lune, is shown to a select group of 65 guests at a randomly chosen cinema. Ivy’s father is one of the 65, but for this viewing he has offered Ivy his two place. They must wear a mask and cloak, but most importantly of all they must never approach or try to identify other members, nor can they talk about what they’ve seen. Chris doesn’t know what to make of the film. It seems to be a rather formulaic vampire movie, but there’s something odd about Gemma’s performance, almost haunting in fact. While in some places it’s fairly average, in other scenes there’s an incredible intensity to her acting. It’s almost as if she’s genuinely terrified.

I found the book a little slow at first, but once we reached Gemma’s disappearance I was hooked by this strange story. As we reach Gemma’s timeline in France and Chris starts investigating her disappearance several decades later, the pace of both timelines really picks up. There are suddenly enough strange and impossible happenings for the reader to start wondering what’s coming next. To be honest it felt like anything might happen! I loved the sense of evil created by the film – the strange melancholy that falls over those who see it, something that worsens if you keep going back every ten years. The rumours that the film changes in that decade are intriguing and suggest someone is still behind the lens. Could one of the 65 be playing tricks on the rest? Perhaps not letting on they have extra scenes that Thierry discarded, or that they have found an actress who is the double of Gemma Turner. Is something magical at work here? Despite all the warnings, I did understand Chris’s need to investigate, even when those he interviews start to feel the consequences of talking. This is such a clever concept and the author creates a real sense of mystery with wonderful period detail, especially in the 19th Century when there’s much discussion on the restriction and discomfort of women’s fashion especially in the summer. I also enjoyed 1960’s London where Gemma’s lover Charlie is part of a Fleetwood Mac-esque band where partners are swapped as readily as song lyrics. There’s even a very unexpected romance woven within this magical and unexpected series of times and worlds. What I wanted to see more than anything was for Chris to overcome the trauma of his childhood and fulfil his potential, wherever and whenever that might be.

Out in paperback from Piatkus 28th March 2024

Meet the Author

Constance Sayers is the author of A Witch in Time, The Ladies of the Secret Circus, and The Star and the Strange Moon from Hachette Book Group.

A finalist for Alternating Current’s Luminaire Award for Best Prose, her short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

She received her master of arts in English from George Mason University and graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of arts in writing from the University of Pittsburgh. She attended The Bread Loaf Writers Conference where she studied with Charles Baxter and Lauren Groff. A media executive, she’s twice been named one of the “Top 100 Media People in America” by Folio and included in their list of “Top Women in Media.”

She splits her time between Alexandria, Virginia and West Palm Beach, Florida.

Posted in Netgalley

The Women by Kristin Hannah

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I was completely engrossed by this incredible piece of historical fiction, covering a period of history and viewpoint I’d never read about before. All the Vietnam stories I’ve encountered have fallen into two categories and were made for the big screen; combat movies like Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, or the more domestic based aftermath of war at it’s best in the excellent Coming Home with Jane Fonda and Jon Voigt. I’d never considered that there would be women in Vietnam, which seems crazy since I’d avidly watched MASH when it was rerun in the 1980’s. The series set in a field hospital showed women in the operating theatres, as members of the US Army Medical Corps. Yet, I’ve never encountered anything that showed them in Vietnam, so I was fascinated by Frankie’s story; her personal experiences as well as the politics and societal changes around her tours of duty. What struck me most was how this war ripped the generation gap wide open. Most people my age will remember the Paul Hardcastle single ‘19’ and for me the most stark line in it was ‘none of them received a hero’s welcome’. It struck me how different the government and public response was to these veterans, the majority of whom were no less brave or noble than the WW2 veterans their fathers had been. The author deals with all these themes in a story about the women that served in Vietnam, the women that America forgot.

Frances McGrath is your typical All American teenage girl, living with her family on Coronado Beach. She has memories of growing up on that beach, swimming and surfing with her brother Finley. She is from a good family and expectations are that she will have the ‘right’ marriage and become a mother. However, things change when Finley makes a huge decision. He’s enlisted for Vietnam. It’s no surprise that he might go into military service at some point. Frankie’s dad has a wall in his office called the ‘Hero’s Wall’ where every family member’s military service is celebrated with cuttings, photos and medals. All the men, anyway. Yet not many of their friends and family members have sons who’ve voluntarily enlisted for Vietnam. There are ways of avoiding the draft, depending on who you know. Yet Finley enlists of his own accord, possibly believing the American government’s assertions that they must fight communism in Vietnam, lest it become even more widespread. Within weeks there’s a knock at the door; Finley has been killed in action. In a whirlwind of grief Frankie starts looking into her options. She wants to honour her brother and become a hero worthy of her father’s wall. Both the Air Force and Navy need a nurse to complete a long period of training before they’re posted to work in the field. However, if she enlists in the US Army, they’ll post her out to Vietnam after basic nursing training. Much to her parent’s shock Frankie is soon on her way to Vietnam.

The author creates such an incredible sense of place, I was in Vietnam with Frankie. The all pervading humidity and dampness of everything actually made me feel grubby. There’s a red dust blowing everywhere, that sticks to the constant sheen of sweat on Frankie’s skin and gets into every wrinkle. Frankie’s kitbag and everything she owns takes on the smell of mildew and she never feels dry. At first the bursts of gunfire and explosions in the jungle are surprising and Frankie is anxious, but soon they just become the everyday backdrop to her work. The ‘whump- whump’ of the helicopters arriving with MASCALS (mass casualties) control when she eats, sleeps and relaxes. The first experience of a MASCAL is shocking and Frankie does freeze, but the surgeon she’s working with talks her through it, let’s her know that he trusts her and she can do it. Gradually it becomes easier, although their injuries and the emotions of triaging these men can stay with her. If someone is beyond saving they are left to die, while they operate those they can save. It isn’t just the soldiers though, the unit treats Vietnamese soldiers and locals caught in the crossfire. The use of napalm and the injuries it caused really has stayed with me, the jelly like substance sticking to the casualty’s skin and keeps burning. Frankie is soon a first class combat nurse, that’s not to say these experiences become easy, they just become the norm. When we tuck trauma away in a box without processing it, it sits until we’re ready to open the lid or until a new experience forces that lid open. Usually when we least expect it. Her new relationships keep her going, especially those with her friends and fellow nurses Ethel and Barb. They are the glue that hold each other together and while men may come and go, the bond these women build is lifelong and loyal. That’s not to say there aren’t men. Frankie falls in love with Jamie, the surgeon she works with and the war only intensifies those feelings. There’s also the constant fear of losing them. Later on, a face from the past reignites feelings of first love but brings with it so many complications.

Frankie’s return and adjustment to everyday life on her return from war becomes yet another battle. Now she’s completely safe it’s as if all the feelings she had in Vietnam are bubbling to the service, manifesting in physical and mental symptoms. Her parents are relieved she’s home in one piece, but they don’t seem proud of what she achieved and her accolades don’t make the hero’s wall. She doesn’t seem to fit anywhere. Here Barb and Ethel are worth their weight in gold, taking Frankie in when she needs to get out of California and spending time talking through their experiences. No one else will ever get her like these women. Their lives do move forward though and Frankie just seems stuck. I thought this part of the story was beautifully done and represents so much research and care on the author’s part. She is very aware that although Frankie isn’t real, women did live through these experiences and had to find ways to reconcile their memories of war and their hurtful return to an ungrateful homeland they’d put their lives on the line for. It was as if the world had shifted on it’s axis while they were in the jungle. I was longing for Frankie to have a happy ending, because I thought she deserved it and I thought she still had so much to offer. I learned so much about a conflict I’d only experienced through film and usually from a male perspective. I was completely immersed in Frankie’s world and didn’t want to let it go.

Out now from MacMillan

Meet the Author

Kristin Hannah is the award-winning and bestselling author of more than 20 novels. Her newest novel, The Women, about the nurses who served in the Vietnam war, will be released on February 6, 2024.

The Four Winds was published in February of 2021 and immediately hit #1 on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Indie bookstore’s bestseller lists. Additionally, it was selected as a book club pick by the both Today Show and The Book Of the Month club, which named it the best book of 2021.

In 2018, The Great Alone became an instant New York Times #1 bestseller and was named the Best Historical Novel of the Year by Goodreads.

In 2015, The Nightingale became an international blockbuster and was Goodreads Best Historical fiction novel for 2015 and won the coveted People’s Choice award for best fiction in the same year. It was named a Best Book of the Year by Amazon, iTunes, Buzzfeed, the Wall Street Journal, Paste, and The Week.

The Nightingale is currently in pre-production at Tri Star. Firefly Lane, her beloved novel about two best friends, was the #1 Netflix series around the world, in the week it came out. The popular tv show stars Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke.

A former attorney, Kristin lives in the Pacific Northwest.

http://www.kristinhannah.com

Posted in Squad Pod

A Sign of Her Own by Sarah Marsh

Posted on by thelotusreaders

“Peach. Its shape floats on Mr Bell’s mouth. The pinch of the p, followed by a rounded push of the lips, sending the last syllable hard across the tongue. My hand nearly reaches for my pocket, as if the feather from our lessons might still be found there. It’s been a long time since I thought of the feather. I would balance it on my knuckles and make it quiver with the puff of my ps. Puh-puh-puh. I stop myself just in time, folding my hands against my skirts.”

I found the opening scene of this novel incredibly moving and so skilful, placing us so close to our heroine that we understand the barriers she faced being deaf at that point in history. In it, Ellen and her fiancé receive an unexpected visit from Alexander Graham Bell. As the two men converse, Ellen is picking up body language and tone of voice which indicate a serious topic but she notices a repeated word ‘peaches’. Her attention moves to the beautiful jar of peaches preserved by her mother on the dining table. Yet she’s wrong, as she passes Mr Bell the jar and urges him to take it he tells her no, the word he was saying was ‘speeches’.

As Ellen reminisces, so did I. I was propelled back to the early years of my nephew Charlie, who was born visually impaired. Before we knew the full implications of his sight loss, we’d noticed he was behind in his development. He wasn’t moving round much, had put on weight and wasn’t speaking. It then occurred to us. In order to learn something for the first time, we tend to copy it. If you can’t see, you can’t imitate others and just as Ellen is struggling to get the full meaning of Mr Bell’s conversation, Charlie couldn’t form the words if he didn’t know how to use his mouth to make the noises. So Mum used the same technique she’d used with us when we were small. When a specific noise was needed like the ‘puh’ sound in the book, Mum would raise his hand to her mouth and make the sound against his fingers. He would then put his fingers to his own mouth a copy her. It was lovely to relive that memory and feel perhaps a tiny bit of what Ellen is feeling too.

A Sign of Her Own is narrated by Ellen Lark across two timelines and it’s an incredible feeling to be in her world, because it’s so different from the world we know. It felt similar to when actress Rose Ayling-Ellis did Strictly in 2021 and performed a ‘Couple’s Choice’ dance with Giovanni Pernice, choreographed to bring the audience into Rose’s world. At a certain point, the music stopped but the couple continued to dance and we realised that this was Rose’s world. For us the music would return, but she carried on dancing into the silence. She somehow used her trust in Giovanni and read his body to perfect her dance routines. It was moving, disorienting and a complete revelation so it was no surprise to me that they were winners of that year’s BAFTA for a memorable TV moment.

Ellen’s inner world is also a revelation and the author communicates it so beautifully. She lost her hearing as a child during a bout of scarlet fever and communicated with her mother using a language of signs they made up as they went along. It broke my heart to read how the sound of her speech was viewed by local children. Restricted to vowel sounds, because she couldn’t hear the precision of the consonants, Ellen feels shame about how she sounds. Her personal sign language seems to suit her, but it’s her grandmother who comes up with the idea of using Alexander Graham Bell’s ‘Visible Speech’. Students of his method were banned from using any sort of sign language, but were allowed to use a notebook. Family politics played their part in the decision, because the family were in debt to their grandmother. Luckily Ellen enjoyed studying and proved to be incredibly clever, even if she was unsure about Bell’s method and his motives. She has to be perceptive and learns to read people very quickly, including Bell. As we move into the present day, Ellen and her fiancé are visited by Bell who is embroiled in a fight to be recognised as the sole inventor of the telephone. He wants Ellen’s support as a character witness, but Ellen doesn’t have good memories of her time under his tutelage. She feels like he betrayed her and other deaf students for his own fame and recognition. How can she support him when she feels so conflicted?

During the later timeline Bell’s fight becomes all consuming. He is full of determination and I felt torn about his character because on one hand he appears to be paying attention to a group of people rather alienated by the rest of society so his work could be seen as altruistic. On the other hand it’s as if the people he’s helping don’t really matter to him. There’s a narcissism or selfishness in his character that means he only sees his students in terms of how they can help him potentially find fame. I felt like he didn’t appreciate their characters or individuality. I found myself disliking him intensely. By contrast, Ellen is instantly likeable and intelligent. Through her we are invited into the deaf community and the debate over sign language and visible speech is fascinating. As someone who has studied disability theory, I was very aware that some people don’t consider their deafness a disability. If they sign, they simply see themselves as speakers of a different language. I was interested in the politics and ethics of a speaking world imposing a method of communication on the deaf community, rather than the community coming to society with their own choice of language or speech method. I think there are many readers who might never have considered these issues and wondered how the book is being received in the deaf and/or disabled community. I was impressed that the author wanted to bring these issues to the fore and loved the enthusiasm she clearly has about her subject and her heroine. This is a well researched debut clearly inspired and informed by her own experiences of deafness as a child. It puts us into the centre of that experience and I came away feeling like I had a renewed awareness of sensory disability.

Thank you so much to the Squad Pod Collective and Tinder Press for my copy of A Sign of Her Own, published on Feb 1st 2024

Meet the Author


Sarah Marshwas short-listed for the Lucy Cavendish Prize in 2019 and selected for the London Library Emerging Writers Programme in 2020.A Sign of Her Ownis her first novel, inspired by her experiences of growing up deaf and her family’s history of deafness

Posted in Publisher Proof

The London Bookshop Affair by Louise Fein

Posted on by thelotusreaders
Books and Bramble, the perfect combination.

Historical fiction is one of the genres I enjoy most and I’m drawn to Louise Fein’s novels because she always finds an interesting time period then looks at it from an unexpected viewpoint. It makes you rethink events you thought you knew all about. Here she has chosen post-WW2 London and the dawning of the early 1960’s when Kennedy is president and the Cuban missile crisis is looming. Her heroine is Celia, an ordinary young woman with older parents who are stricter than most and perhaps don’t understand her modern preoccupations and ambitions. I always imagine the ‘swinging sixties’ when I think of London at that time, but progress like that hasn’t quite reached Southwark yet. Celia is working at a second hand bookshop, that specialises in antique and collectible books. Yet her heart yearns for adventure. The world is on the cusp of space travel, women’s liberation and the Beatles. It’s also rather closer to nuclear war than most realised as the USSR and USA start a terrifying game of brinkmanship. Celia wants to protest against the testing and gathering of weapons far more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. She also chasing her dream career – she’s signed up for classes at Pitmans to gain the secretarial skills that might get her a job at the BBC. The little life her mum leads is not for her and she’s definitely not going to settle for Sam, the boy next door.

The catalyst for change is the bookshop’s new owner Mrs Denton, a dainty well dressed lady who is living alone in the flat above the shop. She seems more interested in shopping than books and offers Celia a raise to manage the shop as she sees fit. Mrs Denton has two regular male visitors: an older man called Mr Humphries who has wandering eyes and a scar down his face and a younger, handsome American called Septimus who Celia is drawn to. Could he be another pathway to a different life. The changes in Celia’s life are interspersed with a different timeline following a young woman called Anya Moreau who is dropped behind enemy lines in 1943. She’s been trained to help the French Resistance disrupt the Germans by sending messages back home via a wireless transmitter. She is betrayed by a double agent and faces torture to divulge her secrets, but she never betrays her cause. Meanwhile Celia finds a connection to this woman and in her desperation to know more she comes across the mysterious Miss Clarke who opens Celia’s eyes to the murky world of espionage running under the surface of everyday life. Possibly even in her own family. I felt for Celia’s parents who have always been protective of their girl, so much so that she sometimes feels suffocated. However their determination to keep Celia away from the past is understandable when we find out the truth.

I throughly enjoyed both timelines and Louise always has a wealth of research underpinning her story making it feel so real. I believed entirely in these two brave young women and their conviction to support their country. I loved seeing Celia’s political awakening as she talks to friend Daphne about the secret nuclear bunkers being dug out in the English countryside and the drastic measures to move works of art out of London – her shock at the immorality of a government that chooses to save art, but keeps it’s ordinary citizens in the dark is a real moment of growth. Her friendship with one of Mrs Denton’s visitors, Septimus, is also a place where she can freely discuss and share ideas about the world. This freedom to debate is new to Celia and you can see her growing all the time. At home her mum turns the tv off when the depressing news is on and Dad never talks about the war. In fact there seems to be a silence between them. I was excited and scared for Celia as her world opens up. The secrets she starts to discover will change her life forever, but will they leave her with the confidence to choose her own path and who will walk it with her? The emotional scenes between mum and daughter are really heart rending as finally everything is brought into the light. The pace of the novel really picked up towards the end as both stories come to their conclusions and different options start to open up before her. I really hoped Celia would choose wisely and not throw away everything about her home while still gaining some of the adventures she’s set her heart on. This was a great read and would make a fantastic film or TV series one day.

Published by William Morrow on Feb 29th 2024

Meet the Author

Louise writes historical fiction, focusing on unheard voices or from unusual perspectives. Her debut novel, Daughter of the Reich (entitled People Like Us in the UK edition) was published in 2020 into 13 territories and is set in 1930’s Leipzig. The book was shortlisted for the RSL Christopher Bland Prize 2021 and the RNA Historical Novel of the Year Award, 2021. Louise’s second novel, The Hidden Child, was published in 2021 and is centered around the eugenics movement in 1920’s England and America. It was a Globe & Mail bestseller in Canada. Her third novel, The London Bookshop Affair, about one woman’s journey to uncover secrets of her past, set against a backdrop of espionage and looming nuclear war in 1962 London, will be published in January 2024. 

Louise, previously a lawyer and banker, holds an MA in Creative Writing from St Mary’s University and now writes full time. Equally passionate about historical research and writing, she loves to look for themes which have resonance with today’s world. Louise lives in the Surrey countryside, UK, with her family, and is a slave to the daily demands of her pets.

For more information, go to https://www.louisefein.com and sign up to Louise’s newsletter. She also posts regularly to her blog at

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