Adelaide Hills, 1959. At the end of a scorching hot day, in the grounds of a grand country house, a local man makes a terrible discovery. Police are called, and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most mystifying murder investigations in the history of Australia.
London, 2018. Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for nearly two decades, a phone call summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother, Nora, has suffered a fall and is seriously ill in hospital.
Seeking comfort in her past, Jess discovers a true crime book at Nora’s house chronicling a long-buried police case: the Turner Family Tragedy of 1959. And within its pages she finds a shocking personal connection to this notorious event – a crime that has never truly been solved . . .
I’ve always picked up Kate Morton’s novels and I don’t really know why this one has sat on my shelves for so long. I made it one of the novels to catch up on in December, when I take a break from blog tours and read what I feel like. It’s a chunky novel and it took some time to get to grips with everyone and their timelines but there’s no mistaking the power of the central image as new mum Izzy and her children are found on their picnic blanket by the creek. The man who makes the discovery assumes they’re asleep, until he sees a line of ants crawling over Matilda’s wrist. It’s such a striking image that it inspires the title of journalist Daniel Miller’s book ‘As If They Were Asleep’. The only person missing is baby Thea and it’s assumed she’s been carried away by wild dogs. The conclusion is that Izzy has poisoned herself and her children, in the grip of post-natal depression and unable to leave them behind. Back at their home, Halcyon, Izzy’s heavily pregnant sister-in-law Nora is waiting for her brother’s family to return. Possibly due to the shock and in a powerful storm, Nora gives birth to her own daughter Polly. Once she leaves for her own home, no one will ever return to Halcyon. Nora’s brother stays in the USA seemingly unable to face what happened to the woman he loved and the children whose voices once filled the house he fell in love with as soon as he saw it. Now, with Nora seriously ill in hospital, her granddaughter Jessie will be drawn into the cold case through Nora’s rambling words and Daniel’s book. What follows is a not just a complex murder case but a tale of mothers and daughters and how intergenerational trauma has an impact, even when it’s a closely guarded secret.
We’re given various viewpoints through the book and outside sources such as letters, documents and excerpts from Daniel’s book. We travel back to 1959 and Nora’s time at Halcyon and the accounts of various Turners, to Polly’s years growing up with mother Nora at their home near Sydney and Jess brings everything together in the present day. We dip in and out of these timelines and viewpoints and they are layered perfectly by Morton where they will make the most impact. Through this careful placement we build up a picture of characters and their motivations, only to have that impression change when we see a different viewpoint or Jess makes a discovery. My view of some characters changed radically, especially towards the end of the book when we hear more from Polly who has been an absent mother for most of Jess’s life. Nora and Jess have a solid relationship, perhaps closer than most grandchildren have with their grandmother since Jess grew up in Nora’s house until she left for England. She is distraught to arrive and realise her grandmother is more unwell than she imagined. For Jess, Nora has been the perfect example of a formidable woman. She gets things done and Jess has inherited her organisational talents and business-like manner. She feels she has little in common with Polly who is seen by both women as rather unreliable or flaky, a pregnant teenager who left the job of mothering Jess to Nora. I really liked the Nora I saw through Jess’s eyes and I was intrigued to know whether that would track back to 1959 and the young Nora who is pregnant with Polly and staying with Izzy and the children for Christmas.
I loved how Morton used the landscape, particularly regarding Halcyon – a veritable house of dreams. Michael fell in love with it straight away but it’s interesting how it echoes with his choice of wife and how it sits within the wider Aussie landscape. Described as a Georgian manor complete with its own English country garden strangely situated within the heat of southern Australia. It has a backdrop of boiling heat, ghostly silver gum trees on the horizon and its lush green garden stands out against the parched landscape. There’s something unnatural about it, as if a tornado had picked it up in England and dropped it on the other side of the world. This same description applies to Izzy, her pale and freckled beauty out of place in the brutal heat of that last summer. Michael Turner knew this was the right home for his family because it is the embodiment of his wife. Without tending and daily care, the garden and house would be taken over, becoming yellowed and dry and home to native plats and animals. Does Izzy also need such gentle tending? It is Nora who supplies the most compelling piece of evidence that she was struggling and feeling unable to cope. Jess needs to read the book about the case and have a search round the house before her grandmother comes home. It is only by chance that she gets to read Izzy’s thoughts first hand. Then when Polly arrives there’s a real chance for them to connect and discuss their family history openly and this is where the novel became really gripping. Up to this point we’ve only seen Nora through Jess’s eyes but now we see her through Polly’s eyes and there are so many more layers to this elderly lady, now unconscious in her hospital bed. I started to see her controlling side and her ability to manipulate with her money and status. I began to see Polly in a different light too and felt a huge amount of empathy for her situation and the things she lost.
It was only towards the end of the book when I realised that there aren’t many men in this family. In fact the only person who has no voice in the novel is Michael Turner. Why did he buy Halcyon, the dream family home and then live in a separate country from them? Polly doesn’t have a man in her life and nor does Jess. Morton keeps the twists and turns coming right up to the end of the novel, some expected and others a complete surprise. She never leaves even the tiniest loose end and that isn’t easy when we see just how far the ripples of this tragedy spread in the community. In the midst of that Christmas and all that comes after, Izzy really has an impact with her beauty and vitality. It is unthinkable that only hours later all that sparkle is simply snuffed out. If you love Kate Morton, this has all the aspects that make her novels so popular – the family saga, the big house and the secrets kept behind closed doors. However, this had the added element of an unsolved crime giving it an addictive quality. Added to that is the length of the book, allowing the story and characters to fully develop, showing fascinating and complex psychological dynamics between each mother and daughter. I can’t believe it took me so long to finally read it.
Meet the Author
KATE MORTON is an award-winning, Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author. Her novels – The House at Riverton, The Forgotten Garden, The Distant Hours, The Secret Keeper, The Lake House, The Clockmaker’s Daughter and Homecoming – are published in over 45 countries, in 38 languages, and have all been number one bestsellers around the world.
Kate Morton grew up in the mountains of southeast Queensland and now lives with her family in London and Australia. She has degrees in dramatic art and English literature, and harboured dreams of joining the Royal Shakespeare Company until she realised that it was words she loved more than performing. Kate still feels a pang of longing each time she goes to the theatre and the house lights dim.
“I fell deeply in love with books as a child and believe that reading is freedom; that to read is to live a thousand lives in one; that fiction is a magical conversation between two people – you and me – in which our minds meet across time and space. I love books that conjure a world around me, bringing their characters and settings to life, so that the real world disappears and all that matters, from beginning to end, is turning one more page.”
I love the tagline to this novel because it is just so peculiarly British. The phrase ‘shall I be mother’ meaning ‘shall I pour the tea’ must seem so odd to people whose first language isn’t English. It fits perfectly to this book because it’s about all those tiny tasks of motherhood, not to mention the ‘mental load’. It acknowledges a role, but is it a role that can be avoided as easily as it can be adopted? Underlying all those tiny things a mother does are huge acts of care and love, duty, loyalty and service. I read this book back when I was at university but have never been a mother, until I entered a relationship with a man who had two daughters around eight years ago. So it’s later in life when I’ve started to complain about all the tiny things I do that go unnoticed, usually after Christmas when I have the annual moan of ‘without women there would be no Christmas.” Loved and Missed is about Ruth a schoolteacher and single mother whose daughter Eleanor rebels against her fiercely, before leaving her to bring up her granddaughter Lily when Eleanor can’t. It’s not a plot driven novel, but more of an observance on life as a mum. The title refers to a gravestone that Lily notices with the epitaph ‘Loved and Missed’, which sounds as if love was intended but never quite reached or the target moved at the last moment. This slightly comedic, bittersweet observation sets the tone for a novel that’s about the mundanities of everyday life but also the emotions hidden amongst the endless washing and cleaning. It suggests that motherhood can take many forms and doesn’t always run in linear ways – a truth that rings home for me as the mother to many more people than my two stepdaughters. However, once taken, these bonds can’t be removed. This is a novel about what jt’s like to be in a mother -daughter relationship that may be a rollercoaster at times and at other times just ordinary everyday life.
Postcards From The Edge
‘I don’t think you can even call this a drug. This is just a response to the conditions we live in.’
I really do miss Carrie Fisher, whether it’s the 19year old of Star Wars, the cynical friend of Sally Albright or the grumpy and hilarious mother in Catastrophe. A fictionalised look at her own relationship with her mother Debbie Reynolds, made all the more poignant by the fact that we now know that when Carrie died suddenly and unexpectedly, her mother died the day after. She just wanted to be with Carrie, said Reynolds’s son and it tells us how strong that bond is, even when it’s been stretched and almost broken. Susannah Vale is a former acclaimed actress, but is now in rehab, feeling like ‘something on the bottom of someone’s shoe, and not even someone interesting’. She becomes Immersed in the harrowing, but often hilarious, goings-on of the drug hospital and wondering how she’ll cope – and find work – back on the outside. Then she meets the Heathcliff of addiction, new patient Alex. He’s ambitious, Byronically good looking and is in the depths of addiction. He makes Suzanne realize that, although her life might seem eccentric, there’s always someone who’s even closer to the edge of reason. This is clearly in some ways autobiographical, dealing with that second generation Hollywood problem of following in a parent’s footsteps. There are times when Suzanne would like her mum to be there, but Mum is filming so has to send the maid over instead. It’s quite different from the film, but both are witty and a great read. I often wondered if Debbie Fisher’s role as Grace’s mother in the series Will and Grace had some basis in her relationship with her daughter and it’s possible.
One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle
When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn’t just Katy’s mum, but her best friend and first phone call. She had all the answers and now, when Katy needs her the most, she is gone. To make matters worse, the mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: two weeks in Positano, the magical town where Carol spent the summer before she met Katy’s father. Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking on the adventure alone. But as soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother’s spirit. Buoyed by the stunning waters, beautiful cliffsides, delightful residents, and – of course – delectable food, Katy feels herself coming back to life. And then Carol appears, healthy and sun-tanned… and thirty years old. Meeting her Mum at this age is going to throw up things Katy didn’t know about. Carol doesn’t recognise her, so her actions are completely unguarded, whereas Katy does know who Carol is and I wondered how long she would be able to keep it to herself. It was interesting to see Katy starting to question whether all aspects of their relationship were positive. Carol has always been so opinionated about how things should be done so Katy and Eric have always gone to her for advice when making decisions. Katy realises she’s never made her own decisions because Carol has always weighed in on everything from what clothes to buy and whether she should have children yet. She always seemed so sure of what to do and Katy has felt inadequate to an extent, unable to weigh up the options and make her own mistakes. There is a bit of anger and resentment here; Why does this Carol seem so go with the flow when her mum always planned everything with military precision? This was another beautiful book from Rebecca Searle, concentrating on the relationships between mothers and daughters and the effect our parents have on our development as people. All set in the magical Italian sun, with a lot of personal reflection and even a little bit of romance thrown in. I loved how the space and the experience gives Katy a chance to re-evaluate her life and the way she’s been living it.
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy
Jennette McCurdy was only six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, whatever it took, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went accepted what her mother called “calorie restriction”, plus weighing herself five times a day and eventually shrinking down to 89 pounds. She endured endless at-home makeovers using knockoff whitening strips, hot curlers, eyelash tint, and gobs of bleach to enhance her “natural beauty.” She was showered by her mother until she was sixteen while sharing her diaries, an email account, and all her earnings. The dream finally comes true when Jennette is cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly and is thrust into fame. But for Jennette, the dream is a nightmare. Overnight, her fake smile and cheesy airbrushed hair-do is plastered on billboards across the country. Of course her mom is ecstatic, ordering her to smile for the paparazzi (with whom she’s on a first-name basis) and sign endless autographs for fans who only know her by her character’s name, Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction and a series of unhealthy relationships.These issues only get worse when Jennette’s mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and coldly examining the relationship with her mother, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants. Told with raw honesty and equal parts gravity and humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is a shocking, devastating, and ultimately inspiring story of resilience.
After the Eclipse by Sarah Perry
When Sarah Perry was twelve, there was a partial eclipse – supposedly a good omen for her and her mother, Crystal who were living in rural Maine. But that moment of darkness was a foreshadowing moment: two days later, Crystal is murdered in their home. It then took twelve years to find the killer. In that time, Sarah had to learn how to rebuild her life despite the obvious abandonment issues and the toll of the police interrogation and effects of trauma. She looked forward to the eventual trial, hoping that afterwards she would feel a sense of closure, but it didn’t come. Finally, she realised that she understanding her mother’s death wasn’t what she needed. She needed to understand her mother’s life. So, drawn back to Maine and the secrets of a small American town she begins to investigate. I was stunned by what Perry does with such a dark subject matter. This could have been a tragedy but Perry manages to create warmth and humanity from her story. I was honestly surprised by how hopeful it felt, despite the grief and a search for understanding. Perry shows how the working poor overcome challenges and how strong mothers make choices we can’t imagine in terrible circumstances. With clarity and kindness Perry explains the motivations of people in poverty and is even understanding towards the men in her mother’s life, while managing to make the link between misogyny and violence against women. Something that’s both a cause of violence and a factor in investigating crimes against women. She presents her hometown with so much warmth and the landscape of Maine provides a stunning backdrop to her childhood. This was a beautiful and authentic read.
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down.
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Mia Warren is an enigmatic artist and single mother, who arrives in this idyllic suburb with her teenage daughter Pearl. She rents a house from the Richardsons and soon Mia and Pearl become more than just tenants. Soon and in different ways all four Richardson children are drawn to this mother-daughter pairing. But Mia carries a mysterious past and a disregard for the unspoken rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. The catalyst for conflict comes when an old family friend of the Richardsons attempts to adopt a Chinese-American baby and a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town. A divide that puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at an unexpected and devastating cost. This is an unputdownable thriller that shows us two very different ways of mothering. One is very ordered and focused on achievements, having goals and knowing the right people. The other is more intuitive and emotionally authentic, but also carries baggage from previous lives. It also shows how individual children can’t be approached or parented in the same way. Finally with the adoption storyline she brings in the economic impact of becoming a mother, meaning it’s a hard or impossible choice for some women. Utterly gripping.
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
This is the story of Jeanette, born to be one of God’s elect: adopted by a fanatical Pentecostal family and ablaze with her own zeal for the scriptures, she seems perfectly suited for the life of a missionary. But then she converts Melanie, and realises she loves this woman almost as much as she loves the Lord. How on Earth could her Church called that passion Unnatural? While this is categorised as a queer coming of age story, it is not Jeanette’s relationship with Melanie that I remember but the relationship between her and her mother. Perhaps because I grew up in an evangelical church environment after being a Roman Catholic until I was ten years old, those scenes at the church and just how intransigent her mother was, stayed with me. This was a book and a tv series I shared with my mother and possibly played a part in her realisations about the church she was in. There’s a horrifying zeal to her mother’s actions. Her religion dominates the life of her household and has effectively placed a barrier between her and her husband. Jeanette’s childhood is a litany of brainwashing that starts the moment she gets up and only stops when she goes to sleep. There is no room to manoeuvre within her rules and expectations, but when Jeanette becomes friends with Melanie it emboldens her to ask the question. If her love for Melanie feels so authentic and natural, how can it be wrong? This thought and the kindness of others in her community is her lifeline. This book showed me what I already suspected was wrong with the teachings of my own mother’s choice of church and how much it had taken over my parent’s lives – thankfully not for too long. I didn’t know at first that this was auto-fiction but I admired Jeanette Winterson so much for writing it, not just because it was a queer love story, but because it questioned evangelical religion and showed how it can devastate the relationship between mothers and daughters.
Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
I always recommend this debut novel of Edwidge Danticat’s. I first read it at university as part of my post-colonial and American literature modules and set off a lifelong interest in Haiti. Sophie has always lived with her aunt in Haiti, but at the age of twelve, she is sent to New York to be reunited with her mother, who she barely remembers. Feeling completely out of place in New York’s Haitian diaspora she longs for the sights and tastes of home, with a mother who only wants to forget. She doesn’t understand why her mother bleaches her skin and doesn’t eat very much, only that she misses her home. There are also her mother’s boyfriends who seem to make the gulf between her and her mum even wider, leaving them no time to get to know each other. After a while she makes friends with a boy in their apartment block and starts to feel heard, but this friendship is a catalyst for terrible actions, family secrets and a legacy of shame that comes from trauma. Sophie knows this can be healed only when she returns to Haiti – to the women who first reared her. What ensues is a passionate journey through a landscape charged with the supernatural and scarred by political violence.
Danticat evokes the wonder, terror, and heartache of her native Haiti through the women of this family. She depicts the enduring strength of Haiti’s women – with vibrant imagery and a narrative that bears witness to their suffering.
Amazing Grace Adam’s by Fran Littlewood
Is this the best worst day of her life?
Grace is stuck in traffic, it’s a boiling hot day and she’s melting. All she wants to do is get to the bakery and pick up the cake for her daughter’s birthday. Lotte moved out and is living with her father. This is one hell of a birthday cake, not only is it a Love Island cake; it has to say that Grace cares, that she’s sorry, that will show Lotte she loves her and hasn’t given up on their relationship. It’s shaping up to be the day from hell and as Grace sits in a tin can on boiling hot tarmac, something snaps. She decides to get out of the car and walk, leaving her vehicle stranded and pissing off everyone now blocked by a car parked in the middle of a busy road. She’s peri-menopausal, wearing trainers her daughter thinks she shouldn’t be wearing at her age and she’s had enough. So, despite the fact her trainers aren’t broken in, she sets off walking towards the bakery and a reunion with Lotte. There are just a few obstacles in the way, but Grace can see the cake and Lotte’s face when she opens the box. As she walks she recounts everything that has happened to bring her to where she is now, including the secret of how they all got here.
The truth when it comes is devastating, but feels weirdly like something you’ve known all along. Those interspersed chapters from happier times are a countdown to this moment, a before and after that runs like a fault line through everything that’s happened since. As Grace closes in on Lotte’s party, sweaty, dirty and brandishing her tiny squashed cake, it doesn’t seem enough to overturn everything that’s happened, but of course it isn’t about the cake. This is about everything Grace has done to be here, including the illegal bits. In a day that’s highlighted to Grace how much she has changed, physically and emotionally, her determination to get to Lotte has shown those who love her best that she is still the same kick-ass woman who threw caution to the wind and waded into the sea to save a man she didn’t know from drowning. That tiny glimpse of how amazing Grace Adams is, might just save everything.
In A Thousand Different Ways by Cecilia Aherne
She knows your secrets. Now discover hers…
You’ve never met anyone like Alice. She sees the best in people. And the worst. She always seems to know exactly what everyone around her is feeling: a thousand different emotions. Every. Single. Day. In amongst all that noise, she’s lost herself.
But there’s one person she can’t read. And that’s the person who could change her life.
Is she ready to let him in? While this is Alice’s story it all hinges on the relationship she and her two brothers had with their mother. Alice has a form of synasthaesia – an ability to see people’s character and emotions in colour. These auras help to inform her of the mood her mum is in, so she knows when to keep her head down or get out of the way. Alice and her older brother are desperately trying to keep their family together despite their mother’s mental health and the alcohol she abuses to self-medicate. Alice can tell the highs, when her mother might go into a frenzy of baking or creating, imagining she could run her own business. Then there are days she can’t even make it out of bed. The children don’t want to be found out and split up, perhaps even taken into care. Until one day Alice comes home and sees a dark blue colour hovering over her mum and knows she must take action. Alice’s childhood affects her ability to trust, to form relationships and even value herself but one thing she does know is what kind of mother she will be. Years later, Alice’s mother re-enters her life with a terminal illness. She wants to meet her grandchildren and make amends. Can Alice trust her and will she finally be able to process the trauma of her childhood? This was a great read from a writer I don’t usually read. It captures the fear of going home for a child whose parent struggles with their mental health an addiction. It also explores the complexities of time away from that parent, how it can be healing but also difficult to draw those boundaries. It also brings up forgiveness and how it can be just as healing.
Kate and Vic have been married for a few years after meeting when she was studying in Rome. After a normal morning rush at home she travels into London, on the pretext of doing an interview. However, she has a different destination in mind. This is an appointment she’s been keeping for several years like clockwork. Now she’s caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. She should be travelling home later this afternoon – picking up the kids from school and collecting the rabbit from the vets. Instead she’s trapped in room 706, in a luxury hotel that’s under siege by a terrorist group. How can she explain why she’s here? Even if her body is discovered in the aftermath, everyone will wonder what she is doing here? She has always been very careful, leaving no trace. Now she wonders whether her husband Vic will understand why? As she tries to summon the words that convey just how much Vic and her children mean to her, Kate reflects on all the choices that brought her here.
I’d read so many great reports of this book and I couldn’t wait to read it, as soon as it arrived last year. It’s such a great premise and has a woman who doesn’t enjoy the constraints of marriage and motherhood. I can honestly say that even I’ve fantasied about holidaying alone for a fortnight, never mind an afternoon in a hotel. Although I couldn’t be bothered by a lover either. This is one of those books that makes the reader go back and forth on what they think of the characters and I can imagine book clubs having long conversations about Kate particularly. After all, society judges women far more harshly than men, especially those who express dislike or even ambivalence about motherhood. I didn’t just focus on Kate, because I felt if I was to understand I needed to look at the whole of her life and the people who’d had the most influence on her. The author takes us beyond those Instagram selfies with the new baby and the false idea it can give of other people’s perfect lives. Here we look at the reality of family life for Kate and how the way we parent is often based on the example of our parents or grandparents. Our ability to parent is also dependent on our work situation as well as the personality or parenting style of the other parent. The author cleverly tells Kate’s story in her own words and then shows through memories, alerts and messages on her phone, as well as mental conversation with people she’s lost, who Kate is and what happened to bring her here.
We know she loves her husband Vic. While studying in Rome she lived in his Nonna’s apartment, while Nonna had her own place with her grandson Vic who has suffered a nervous breakdown. Despite being ten years older than Kate, Vic is treated as the vulnerable one who needs protection. His brother Tom pleads with her not to hurt his brother and I felt the weight of that placed upon her. Yet Kate has just lost her mother, will she ever get to be the vulnerable one? They are happy and Kate relives so many beautiful memories that show us how much she loves him and their children. Yet there isn’t anyone apart from Vic’s brother to be their support network. Kate and her mum were a duo, no dad around and no siblings either. I loved one moment where Kate asked her mother what it’s like being a single mum. Her mum replies honestly that it’s hard work, but she can choose how they live and the values they have. There’s no one else to negotiate with, no clashing parenting styles or being let down by someone not doing their bit. If you contrast this with the evidence of Kate’s own phone it’s telling. She has an app that divides her ‘to do’ list into things that need to be done now, in the next couple of months, or sometime in the future. She sets reminders to coordinate her life, so ‘to do’ reminders join the reminder to check her breasts, to do her kegel exercises, to do the weekly food order. Meanwhile she places family photos into folders, makes lists of bank passwords, Christmas gift lists and house maintenance jobs. If she dies here, Vic will need to know this stuff. By contrast her male lover simply sleeps. Because he can.
Kate reminisces about a family holiday they took to Italy and reassesses the hours spent on research, price comparing, insurance, bite and sunburn cream, swimwear for the kids and so on. Vic would have simply bought a couple of T-shirts and booked the second or third package deal they saw and it would still have been a good holiday. Vic’s laidback parenting style and his vulnerability mean she’s he person who carries that mental load. Of course some of this is on Kate, as she’s clearly risk averse and overthinks decisions but she also has no significant female support. Since she lost her mum and then best friend Eve, all her relationships outside the home are superficial. Do these things excuse adultery? It will still hurt the ones they love, never mind the psychological reasons for the decision. However, all of that juggling made me understand a little. She has a need for something – rather like an old-fashioned pressure cooker needs to blow off steam. In this time, in an anonymous hotel room what she needs is no strings, no judgement and no backstory. It’s just completely selfish pleasure. Her sex life at home is tender and loving, they consider each other and everything they’ve built together as a couple is part of their sex life. From that unexpected first time with her lover it’s been about taking her pleasure and asking for exactly what she wants. This afternoon, that happens once every few weeks, enables her to be the wife and mum the family need her to be. She’s trying to recapture that carefree young woman who went off to study in Italy, who has clearly been totally changed by everything that’s happened since. It seems ironic that someone who plans everything so carefully, finds herself in a situation that’s absolutely out of her control.
This is an incredible debut! It’s absolutely pitch perfect. The author carefully lets the tension mount so slowly that while reminiscing we can almost forget where Kate is in the here and now. A prisoner in this room, she has to be silent so they can’t put the television on and they can’t flush a toilet. When the lights and electricity go they’re almost totally cut off from the outside world. It’s an eerie muffled silence, but a quiet that is sometimes broken by heavy footsteps or other hotel guests meeting their fate. You will hold your breath at times. The forced intimacy means she asks questions of her lover that she’s never asked before. She knows nothing about his life, only that he’s married and has been sleeping with her in this way for several years. We know the terrorists are stalking the corridors, one floor at a time, but we don’t know whether they have a master key or a bomb. I realised that despite her family unit, Kate is lonely. What she wants is for someone to see and appreciate her as Kate the woman, not the mum, wife or journalist. You will be compelled to read this as I did, long into the night. It has the pitch perfect pacing and tension of a thriller, but so many psychological layers. Women will identify with Kate, at least some part of her. She very simply wants to be seen, desired and receive pleasure. Surely though, at some point, Room 706 will be next. Kate has had an opportunity to assess and understand her life, to possibly make changes and live more. You’ll have to read to the end to find out whether she gets that chance.
Out on Jan 15th 2026 from Headline
Meet the Author
Hi, I’m Ellie Levenson. I’m the author of the novel Room 706 which comes out in January 2026. It’s my debut novel, though you may see other books by me online as I was previously a freelance journalist and during this time wrote some non fiction books including one on feminism and one on how to get ideas for features. I have also written various books for children using the name Eleanor Levenson.
Room 706 tells the story of Kate, a happily married mother who meets her lover, James, in hotels every few months as a form of me-time. It might as well be a facial or a shoe-buying habit, she tells herself. Except this time, while cleaning up and getting dressed, she turns on the television and looks at her phone and realises the hotel has been seized by terrorists. How do you tell your spouse that you won’t be home to pick up the kids because you’re at the centre of the incident on the news?
It comes out in January 2026. In the meantime do give this page a follow if you’d like to be kept up to date with my work, and any special offers. And if you do feel able to pre-order, that is super helpful.
What an absolute privilege it was to read this incredible story a couple of years ago and it was my book of the year. It is truly the best book Maggie O’Farrell has ever written and I’m a huge fan. I’ve loved her previous novels, especially The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. The scary part was trying to do this incredible work justice in my review. Something that director Chloe Zhao must have thought before embarking on the film version, due out on the 9th January. The responsibility of taking something so precious and recreating it for the cinema must have weighed heavy on the cast too. I watched an interview with Jessie Buckley a few days ago where she divulged that at first she didn’t know how to be. Not how to capture Agnes but how to portray something she’d never had in real life – to embody the role of being a mum when she wasn’t one and to capture the enormity of losing a child. I think her reticence and how she searched for those emotions show that Agnes is in safe hands with Buckley. I’ve been a fan since her debut you on the BBC series I’d Do Anything and to see the wonderful Paul Mescal cast opposite her took away any concerns I might have had about the book being ruined. Here though I want to tell you about this beautiful book and encourage people to read Maggie O’Farrell’s masterpiece.
Despite his place in literature as our most famous playwright, not a lot is known about Shakespeare’s life with his wife and children. Until reading this, and despite doing a module in Renaissance Literature at university, my only knowledge was of a wife called Anne Hathaway. Any other knowledge has rather embarrassingly and erroneously come from Upstart Crow, which depicts his eldest daughter Susannah as an intelligent, outspoken and boy crazy teenager. I also remember that many years ago I was shown the outside of a picture perfect cottage that belonged to Anne Hathaway. This was Hewlands where Anne was born, and after her marriage, the home of her brother Bartholomew. There has always been this hole in my knowledge, and when watching the totally inaccurate Shakespeare in Love I do remember wondering whatever happened to his wife. Did he love her and if so, how did he spend so much time away from her and their family? Also, with his success down in London, what did Anne do with her life? I wondered whether she was weighed down with the care of children, as well as her elderly in-laws with whom they lived.
For the author it was a different absence that became her way into the story. She had always wondered why the Black Death or ‘pestilence’ never featured in any of Shakespeare’s works. It’s absence seemed odd, considering that, in this time period, it killed large swathes of people. From 1575 in Venice over 50,000 people died as a result of plague over two years, thought to be caused by troop movements associated with The Thirty Years War. The beautiful cathedral Santa Maria Della Salute was built after a third of the population was wiped out in a return of the plague in 1630. The city still celebrates the Festival of the Redeemer today as a thank you that the city and some of its residents survived these pandemics. In England in 1563 the plague killed 20,000 people in London alone. Historical sources cite the plague as cause of death to extended members of Shakespeare’s family and possibly his sisters. His work was also affected, with all London playhouses closed down in 1593, 1603 and 1608. However, the biggest loss of all was his only son Hamnet, who is thought to have contracted the disease and died, aged 11, in 1596. O’Farrell takes these facts as the bare bones and fleshes out a more human story, weaving the life of a boy and his family with empathy, poetry and a touch of magic.
One of my favourite passages of the book focuses on the transmission of this horrific disease via some fleas and the beautiful millefiore glass beads crafted on the Venetian island of Murano. It takes accident, upon chance, and coincidence to carry the deadly disease all the way back to Stratford. A glassmaker burns his hand, so someone else packs his beads into some soft rags he finds lying around, instead of their usual packaging. A merchant ship bound for England has docked and a cabin boy searches Venice for cats to combat rats on board, when he is diverted by a monkey in a waistcoat. The keeper roughly pulls him away, but left behind are a few fleas, some of which make their way onto the cats an a crew member who tends to sleep with cats in his cabin. He doesn’t report for duty and has a fever plus the telltale ‘buboes’ or swelling of the lymph glands. These swellings turn black and the smell of the dead man is so repugnant that other crew members are relieved to heave him overboard for burial. He isn’t the last. Only five crew members remain as the ship docks in London and one box of beads from Murano makes its way to a Stratford dressmaker, where a customer is determined that only Murano glass beading would do for her new dress. The dressmakers assistant unpacks the beads from their ragged packaging and as she does a flea jumps from the fabric to its new host. The dressmaker’s assistant is Judith Shakespeare, Hamnet’s twin sister. This is typical of the author’s signature style of layering description to create depth and its effect is like an assault on the senses. I can smell the sweat of the glassmaker, feel the fur of the monkey, hear the creak of the boats in the canals and the shouts in the market, and feel the swell of the waves and ruts in the road as the package takes its journey, delivering both beauty and death at the same time.
In one timeline Judith and then Hamnet succumb to the plague, while unwittingly the family go about their usual day. There is a clever nod to the cross dressing in Shakespeare’s comedies here in the likeness of the twins, but this is anything but funny, it’s a disguise to cheat death. As the family slowly discover what fate has in store, our timeline jumps into the past following Agnes and Hamnet’s father. Although she is more widely known as Anne, she was recorded in official records as Agnes so the author chose to stick with that name. She always refers to him as the tutor, the husband or the father and never by name. The absence of his name creates a sense of two people; the London celebrity playwright and the family man. We start to see what an extraordinary woman Agnes is in her own right. The object of gossip in town, people say the daughter at Hewlands is a very singular character. She has a friend who is a priest, she has her own hawk and can charm bees. In truth she knows a lot of old country ways such as foraging, hawking and bee keeping as well as what plants to grow for household ailments. She often roams barefoot in the forest and her stepmother Joan despaired of her a long time ago and is jealous of the love her husband held for his late wife. When Agnes meets her brother’s Latin tutor, she uses her method of reading people and pinches the flesh between his thumb and forefinger. Here she sees depths and universes within, that his surface youth and inexperience don’t even hint at. It is this promise, these unseen layers, that she falls in love with. For his part, it is her difference he finds intoxicating. He realises that he will never see another woman who walks barefoot, with lose hair and a hawk on her arm. However much they accept each other, will their families accept their choice and will those untapped depths come between them?
I enjoyed the way these two timelines intersected, each informing the other and adding layers of understanding. How both families assimilated and worked together over time was really interesting. In each generation sibling relationships were particularly important, with their rivalries, but also their unspoken trusts and understandings. The idea of ‘doubling’ and disguise around siblings, especially where there are different genders such as Judith and Hamnet, makes us think again about a play like Twelfth Night. Disguise allows women to do things they would normally be excluded from and O’Farrell shows that in the industriousness of women in the novel. This isn’t just based around domestic matters but planning and running businesses. Agnes grows medicinal plants and creates cures, with people often knocking on the door to be seen. As a country girl I also liked the depiction of her relationship with the land. When I stand on the bank of the River Trent, I feel an urge to go barefoot and ground myself. I was born there, so when I moved next to the river recently grounding and feeling the earth felt so powerful. Agnes is the same with the land at Hewlands, particularly the woods, and she chooses to give birth there to Susannah. Agnes feels cradled by the earth, it protects, cures and grounds her. She also has great ‘countrycraft’ such as being able to control bees – something I’ve seen my own father do with a swarm – there’s a practicality but also a mysticism to these abilities.
Underpinning all of this, I am in love with Maggie O’Farrell’s flow. It’s a hard book to put down because it reads like one long poem to love, family, and home. Then there is the tension that comes when a member of this family follows their dream and is taken away from that unit. How does a father balance his roles as lover, son, father and still follow his dreams? Especially when those dreams are so big. When he gets that balance wrong will he be forgiven and will he be able to forgive himself? The book is full of contrasts, from passages so vibrant and full of life, to the devastating silence of Hamnet’s loss. From birth scenes to death scenes. Wild country lanes and the leafy woods compared with the noise and enclosure of town. The routine of daily family life as opposed to a chaotic life in the theatres of London. All of these contrasts exist within one family, and no matter what we know about our most famous and celebrated playwright, this is about family. Finally, the author’s depiction of grief is so moving. Whether quiet and contained, or expressed loudly, we never doubt its devastating power. We never overlook the boy-shaped hole in the life of this family. Whether our response to grief is to run from it, distract ourselves from it or deny it, eventually we do have to go through it. In the life of this couple, will their grief be expressed differently and if so, can they ever make their way back to each other? This is a simply stunning piece of work. Moving, haunting and ultimately unforgettable.
I’ll keep you posted for the film version but I know I’ll be taking lots of tissues.
As autumn deepens into darkness in Lidingö, on the Stockholm archipelago, the island is plunged into chaos: in the space of a week, two teenagers, the son of the island’s mayor and that of a powerful businessman, are brutally murdered. Their bodies are left deep in the forest, dressed in white tunics with crowns of candles atop their heads, like offerings to Saint Lucia. Maïa Rehn has fled Paris for Lidingö, where her husband grew up, trying to come to terms with the death of their only child in a car accident. But when the murders shake the island community, the former police commissioner is drawn into the heart of the investigation, joining Commissioner Aleksander Storm to unravel a mystery as chilling as the Nordic winter. As they dig deeper, it becomes clear that a wind of vengeance is blowing through the archipelago, unearthing secrets that are as scandalous as they are inhuman. But what if the victims weren’t who they seemed? What if those long silenced had finally found a way to strike back? How far would they go to make their tormentors pay? And you – how far would you go?
I loved the timing of this novel from Johanna Gustawsson, her second set on the island of Lidingö in the cold, dark run up to Christmas. Here she bases her murder mystery around the feast of St Lucia and it begins when a body is found in the traditional dress of the festival. The victim is wearing a white tunic that’s been slit up the back, with a red sash and a crown of candles representing the festival of light. It reminded me of the locally held Christingle services, where small children in white hold a symbolic orange with a lighted candle in it and a red ribbon meant to symbolise Christ’s blood and his role as the Light of the World. It was something I’d never encountered before, being Catholic it wasn’t part of our tradition, but it fits into the many festivals that bring light to the winter months such as Hanukkah and Diwali. The festival and the victim’s clothing make the scene of the crime even more dramatic and hard to forget. It also throws up immediate questions about whether the date or the costume is a message from the killer. Visiting French detective Maia Rehn offers her help to local commissioner Aleksander Storm and they begin to investigate together. It soon becomes clear that the killer isn’t finished with the island community and the pair must work very fast, prizing secrets from people who are reluctant to talk and digging up long buried events that will devastate and destroy lives.
One of the things I love most about this series is the atmosphere that the author builds. This is not the average crime novel, it definitely has a more Gothic feel that I would normally associate with folk horror.
“It was hardly an ocean this mere strip of sea. A moat more like – cutting Lidingo off from the life of the Stockholm mainland. A ghost infested moat, surrounding a poisoned island”.
This killing takes the community back several years to the murder and rape of a young woman dressed in her St Lucia costume. The victim is Jennifer, a well known and liked teenager in the community whose white dress and crown gives the impression of a angel in the snow. Jennifer was the daughter of Sophie Ackerman who bonds with Maia at a party, when they realise that both of them have lost a child. The pain and confusion of these unexpected and sudden losses have no descriptive word in the Swedish language, only the Sanskrit word ‘vilomah’ comes close, meaning ‘against the natural order.’ Motherhood and who we become when we lose a child is a theme of the novel and drives home that violent deaths affect a whole community. In fact, following the death of Jennifer Ackerman suspicions fell on her friend Gustav who found her body. The way the community treated Gustav, as well as the grief, caused him to commit suicide. It’s such an important theme that the novel’s opening takes us to a classroom on the island where Gustav’s mother holds everyone at gunpoint, blaming them for the death of her grief stricken son. These events and the darkening winter days hang heavy over the tiny island. Maia describes the loss of her son with such beautiful and haunting words that let us know he is still so present in her thoughts she almost expects him to materialise:
‘He’s everywhere around me, so I’m always waiting for […] a word, a sound, the slightest caress from him. I find myself sniffing the air for the scent of him’.
Sophie talks about her daughter Jennifer in the words of Cyrano de Bergerac, showing that she is still ever present for her too. It’s such a beautiful way of describing grief that comes in waves, some days it seems far away and other days it feels as if the loss was yesterday. I identified with this so much, knowing that even ten or twenty years on there are days when the grief feels painfully fresh. How much worse it must be with violent deaths where there are feelings of anger, guilt, resentment and so many questions left unanswered.
‘Her name is in my heart like a bell. Every time I think of her it’s like I can hear that bell ringing and ringing and the memories and feelings resurface every time’.
As the investigation unfolds it is clear that Maĩan and Aleks work quite differently, but complement each other. He is more of a facts person, whereas she picks up on emotion and her own feelings, heightened by tragedy, seem to have honed this skill. As an outsider she also seems more effective at getting people to talk, something that can be a struggle when a detective lives in the community they’re investigating. Their discoveries are both haunting and horrifying – especially a ‘trophy’ find that absolutely turned my stomach. Some of the themes were very timely, aside from the normal teenage themes of peer pressure, relationship angst and experimentation, there are also more up to date themes of incels, grooming and consent. I found it fascinating that Swedish law reform in 2018 placed the emphasis on positive consent so that rape was no longer defined by saying no, but the absence of actively saying yes. It recognises that when backed into a corner, freezing and becoming unresponsive are normal survival instincts and not consent, so threat and physical force don’t have to be present for an incident to be defined as rape. When we are finally taken to the night Jennifer Ackerman died it is hard to read, but that’s how it should be. This first incident is like a veil of darkness triumphing over light. It’s as if the island loses its innocence. I loved that the answers don’t come easily and the tendrils of the aftermath are everywhere. This is a vivid, symbolic and haunting crime story and the truth is devastating – a gradually revealed horror that has echoed down the generations of this isolated community.
Out now from Orenda Books
Meet the Author
Born in Marseille, France, and with a degree in Political Science, Johana Gustawssonhas worked as a journalist for the French and Spanish press and Her critically acclaimed Roy & Castells series, including Block 46, Keeper and Blood Song, has won the Plume d’Argent, Balai de la découverte, Balai d’Or and Prix Marseillais du Polar awards, and is now published in nineteen countries. A TV adaptation is currently under way in a French, Swedish and UK co-production. The Bleeding was a number-one bestseller in France and is the first in a new series. Johana lives in Sweden with her Swedish husband and their three sons.
While I was in the water swimming ‘gainst tides we′re taught to
Take it in our stride, laugh it off, take it on the chin just right
Don’t be too loud or too quiet, but I got all this fight
And now I see it clear with every passing of each year
I deserve to be here
And every time I fall, I crawl back like an animal
My focus is powerful.”
I knew I was going to love Self Esteem when I first caught her set at Glastonbury a few years ago, referencing 1990 Madonna with her black suit and corset. What made me stop and watch was that instead of the iconic John Paul Gaultier conical bra each breast was covered with the dome of Meadowhall Shopping Centre in Sheffield. At that point I didn’t know that Rebecca Lucy Taylor was born there but I could see she had a sense of humour, a sense of where she was from and had something very powerful to say as the above lyrics from her song Focus to Power show. In the intervening years Self Esteem has become a creative force with three solo albums, including A Complicated Woman this year. She had a Mercury Prize nomination for her album Prioritise Pleasure in 2022 and was the BBC Music Introducing act in 2021. She is not just a singer, she’s a multi-instrumentalist and has composed for theatre and became a West End lead in 2023/24 playing Sally Bowles in Cabaret. She’s been awarded an honorary doctorate in music from the University of Sheffield and a portrait of her hangs in the National Gallery. Now she has written a memoir, bringing together notes and lyrics, journal entries and observations on life as a woman in the 21st Century, referencing relationships, abuse, self-worth, creativity and living under the weight of the impossible expectations we impose on young women. The blurb refers to it as a ‘subversive anti-Bible’ and a ‘cathartic scream of a book’ and it is raw, emotional and so incredibly exposing. I will be buying it for my stepdaughters.
The narrative is jagged and feels unfinished, a structure that underlines the theme of being the ‘finished’ article something that applies to both the professional and personal self. Creative work never feels fully done. I always imagined that when writing a book I would know when it was complete and I would feel satisfied that it was finished. A piece of writing is always open to change, but we have to let it go at some point and finishing is a collaborative process with mentors, agents, editors and might end up looking different to what you expected. Similarly as people we are never finished, the self is not one fixed thing and can be influenced by mood, something we watched, whether we slept well or not and interactions with others. I think we imagine as children that there’s a point where we become an adult and our self is a fixed thing, but the self is fluid and open to change until the last day we’re alive. The author writes that she wakes up knowing it’s going to be a day when her brain is against her. So out of all the options open she decides on the middle ground:
‘Ultimately doing nothing garnished by a little of what I as a child imagined being an adult would be. A coffee in a cafe, walk to the cinema, watch an art house film alone, walk home.’
It’s almost a fake it till you make it idea. The self is just a raw block of clay but we still go out there, pretending to do what we think adults should.
Self Esteem at Glastonbury 2022
Toxic relationships are also a huge part of the book and it’s clear there was one in particular that was coercive and damaging. Tiny little snippets of information are dropped about him and I identified strongly with how she feels at these times. She addresses him remembering that: ‘ he made sure to take at least two pieces of jigsaw and hide them so it could finish it himself.’ It made me shiver with recognition. My heart broke for her in this paragraph:
“I’ll never forget the first time it cracked and he became someone else. I spent that night trying to sleep on the floor and reaching back up to him in his single bed, sleeping soundly. Offering my hand over and over through the night. – And forever he held back. Each tendon in his fingers finally gracing me with tension. And in that moment the sickness in my stomach was gone and the addiction to his acceptance began.”
She clearly spent years trying to please this person, to be enough but not too much. Enough in the right way that was acceptable to him. A rollercoaster of arguments followed by apologies to make things nice again, a blissful few weeks when he’s happy because she made herself smaller, then a withdrawal of affection, hurtful comments and arguments. It’s a place I’ve been and it only ended when I accepted I was enough, just as I was. I still feel sick to my stomach when something takes me back there and this really hit home. As she says, ‘tell me anyone who left when they should have.’ She also addresses the inevitable question of children, something women are always asked and I have noticed that I make a lot more sense to some friends now I have stepdaughters. The author wishes she could just have one, now, not because she wants one just because it would be done and people would stop asking. They ask as if you’ve forgotten to do it. There’s a point in the book though where change begins and it’s in a letter, because unsent letters have such power. It’s a letting go leaving the path clear to be whatever.
We get the sense of a person who has a huge and imaginative inner world, but is hampered by her own mind throwing out options, constantly questioning whether this or that is the right thing to do. There’s a very busy internal critic here and while the author may be an over-thinker and struggle with anxiety, I think this second-guessing herself is a habit many women have. It starts with parental pressures of what a girl should be, educational expectations influenced by gender, societal expectations of what an adult woman should want and how successful she should be. It’s as if feminism succeeded in giving women more choice, but also more expectations rather than equality. Yes of course we can have a career, but then you must go home and more than a fair share of housework, cooking, laundry and having the mental load of who eats what, which week a friend is coming to stay and an encyclopaedic knowledge of where every object belonging each family member might be found. On top of that are grooming standards, the endless opinions on whether women should age naturally or have surgery, when they should stop wearing short skirts and how to keep their sex lives spicy. No one asks a man when he’s going to fit in having a child or whether he should sacrifice his career for his family. This pressure is described beautifully here as it runs throughout the narrative alongside the extra pressures of being creative and a famous woman. Everyone talks about America Ferrarra’s speech in the Barbie film about what a woman is but I find the author’s words much more affecting as she writes a poem about herself as the woman she feels society wants her to be. A woman who eats the right things, who makes money but stays generous and humble, who is modern and desirable, but above all things maternal. It reads like a modern fairy tale.
‘I had one thousand friends and each and every one was happy with me, and felt I had given them enough time and attention’.
It feels like slicing yourself into a thousand different pieces to be everything and keep everyone happy and they all think you’re amazing, but you’re still slicing yourself. It takes therapy, age and self-acceptance to throw off these expectations and doubts. In amongst this torrent of emotions there is a down to earth feel and a sense of humour that comes out a lot in lists – ‘things I should have said no to’ being one. There are also blunt truths that she clearly can’t say to the person but records in her diary – ‘I want to be fucked like that but not have to hear about your Edinburgh show.” I loved this directness, tempered with humour. It also shows how hard it can be for some women to say what they want and don’t want without judgement.
She gives us an insight into how those judgements are magnified in the music industry, where you’re trying to get your creative work out there but are being told you’d sell better if you wrote a certain way or were a bit more attractive. If she’d compromised she’d have a record deal by now, she’s told, why is she so difficult? This is a tale we’ve heard again and again in the music industry but it has to keep being said till something changes. We’ve heard it from the incredible Raye who wrote for other people for years because her own stuff didn’t fit in a specific box, or Cat Burns who writes about how difficult it is to know how to be the human everyone expects. Paloma Faith is an incredible inspiration and I watched a clip of her speaking to students at the university graduation. She has delved into music, fashion, writing, broadcasting and art and she passed on an incredible bit of advice – she has always been brimming with ideas and would worry that she couldn’t fix on one way to get these thoughts and ideas out there. She remembered a conversation with one of the tutors who said she didn’t have to fit all of her ideas into one mould. One idea might be a brilliant book, rather than trying to condense it into a song but another might be better suited to fashion or art. She didn’t have to fit into one mould. I think Rebecca is the embodiment of that idea, brim full of ideas and happy to range across music gigs, theatre shows, dance, tv appearances and memoir writing. The point is the creativity, not the medium.
I can think of so many women who can take something from this book and it will sit happily up on my shelf with writing from Caitlin Moran and Paloma Faith, hugely creative and intelligent women with a lot to say. It renewed something I’ve been wrestling with in my own head now I’m hitting menopause and middle age – it’s ok not to ‘grow up’ but take joy in every new incarnation of yourself and the changes it brings. It’s subversive in a world where we’re told we should be striving to stay young and relevant. to be unhappy getting older. I found so much inspiration in this memoir, both personal and creative, as well as a wonderful feeling of being seen.
Winter storms lash the Isles of Scilly, when DI Ben Kitto ferries the islands’ priest to St Helen’s. Father Michael intends to live as a pilgrim in the ruins of an ancient church on the uninhabited island, but an ugly secret is buried among the rocks. Digging frantically in the sand, Ben’s dog, Shadow, unearths the emaciated and ruined remains of a young girl. The discovery chills Ben to the core. The victim is Vietnamese, with no clear link to the community – and her killer made sure that no one found her easily. The storm intensifies as the investigation gathers pace. Soon Scilly is cut off by bad weather, with no help available from the mainland. Ben is certain the killer is hiding in plain sight. He’s worried they are waiting to kill again – and at unimaginable cost.
When this blog tour request came through, I was intrigued by the blurb and the feel of the Scilly Isles as a backdrop for a murder investigation. Then I realised it was the eighth book in the Ben Kitto series, although the first in its new home at Orenda Books and it’s a perfect match. I was worried about whether I would be lost without all that back story. Thankfully I wasn’t lost at all. I was drawn in immediately by the opening chapter as Ben took Father Michael to St Helen’s, an uninhabited island that’s always been seen as the spiritual centre of the Scilly Isles. Father Michael uses one of my favourite phrases for places that feel holy and haunted at the same time:
‘Christians call these places “thin”. The gap between us and the spiritual world is narrower here than any shrine I know, even Lourdes. It was hallowed ground for centuries.’ ‘It still feels haunted.’ The sky overhead is boiling with clouds.’
I love the idea of thin places, that ghosts are not necessarily trying to haunt you, they’re just going about their business. In fact you’re probably as much of a fright for them as they are for you. It’s just that the veil between us and them has worn so thin we’ve become visible to each other. The author keeps this metaphor throughout the story and it soon becomes clear that the actual world also has its veils. We meet Mai, a girl trapped somewhere, unseen by those gardening only a small pane of glass away because they’re not looking down. There’s the gap between what the teenagers and the adults see; the rumour in school that there’s a network of well known adults trafficking children is dismissed as a conspiracy theory early on. But these young people lead a different lifestyle to the adults, they’re around in the dead of night travelling by boat to the uninhabited islands either to party or be where they can’t be seen. There are signs of a camp fire and drinks cans just inches from the body Ben and Father Michael discover, only a small layer of earth between the living and the dead. This mystical feel does extend to the body of the child, wrapped in what looks like a prayer shawl with jade charms left inside. There’s a sense of contradiction here, between the care taken to bury the body and the huge hole where the skull has been smashed. The atmosphere created by the author along with the description of the body make it one of the most horrifying I’ve read, emphasising that this is a human being clearly emaciated and treated with extreme violence. There’s also a loneliness to her final resting place, cut off from those living on the islands but also buried in a soil that isn’t her own.
‘I crouch down to study the victim’s face more closely. There’s nothing inside the eye sockets except blackened hollows, but her exposed jaw catches my attention. Most of her teeth are intact, but several are blackened by decay. It’s unusual these days, when most kids obsess over their teeth, bleaching them to a perfect white.’
These are established characters but I felt that I knew them very quickly. Ben comes across as a gentle giant, huge in stature but easily affected by the cases he investigates. He comments that his wife Nina who works as a counsellor, has a way of detaching from the terrible things she hears at work while he doesn’t. Becoming a father hasn’t helped, especially when cases involve children like this one. When a baby is then left on the steps of the police station Ben is horrified. Their pathologist thinks the dead girl has Vietnamese heritage, if the baby is the same they have a monster on their hands and he has to face the fact that it is one of his neighbours. Until they know he has to make sure that there are no teenage girls who could have been concealing a pregnancy. It’s particularly distressing for Ben’s lifelong friend Zoe who has tried everything to become a mum, but I loved his sensitivity with her and the way he talked to the teenage girls he has to question. I loved how Nina’s violin playing allows him a meditation, sifting through the images of the day in his head and finding enough solace to sleep.
“I can still feel the girl’s cold weight in my hands, when we lifted her from the sand, and see her blue-white skin. I have to find the monster who put her there, or she’ll be in my head forever. When I open my eyes again, Nina is returning her violin to its case, and it’s time we slept, before Noah wakes us again at dawn.”
We know someone is being kept prisoner because there are short narratives between Ben’s chapters told by a young girl called Mai. She lives in one room with constant fear of the door opening and her captor coming in. These are distressing scenes and really add to the urgency of finding this man. My nerves were shredded by one of Mai’s narratives where she’s been trying to break the rotten frame of a tiny window, high up in the room. It doesn’t give her much light because all she can see are the weeds and grasses of an unkempt garden, but one day as she’s working away on loosening the frame she sees the feet of someone cutting a lawn and she desperately wants them to notice her. The knowledge that she’s so close to this stranger but living in an entirely different world really got my heart racing. I was simply begging them to look down. The more we get to know her, the more Ben’s desperate search feels. There are potential suspects, particularly a musician who lives in an isolated position on the coast with a house that looks out to St Mary’s and a telescope trained on the horizon. He definitely has an odd manner but Ben needs much more than that to go on. The author pitched this quiet start to the investigation beautifully, it’s definitely not cozy but there’s a sense of waiting, the calm before the storm. It then kicks up a notch as the forensic examiner, Gannick, finds red carpet fibres and results on the baby’s DNA point to a young Vietnamese girl who’s fostered by a family on Bryher. Suddenly Ben has something to go on and he can’t move quickly enough. He sets the uniformed officers out to check households for red carpet and he sets out to the school to talk to the girl who is related to the abandoned baby. Now he’s sure that his suspect is an island resident, it’s just a race against time to find someone with a red carpet but also a cellar or storage area where someone could be kept and never seen.
One of my favourite characters was Gannick, the grumpy and brusque forensics specialist. Ben is privileged to have her company at home, where Nina seems to melt the icy facade in just a few minutes. There are some lovely moments where Ben just observes and appreciates her careful work and how she does everything to ensure she gets the evidence needed to lock this murderer away for a long time. He tells us she has severe and chronic back pain and he describes her using her crutches to swing across the terrain of St. Mary’s missing nothing. He knows she’s in considerable pain and as a woman with a similar disability I loved having a disabled character who isn’t instantly likeable or some sort of superhero. She’s just quietly getting on with her job the best way she can. There’s no redemptive character arc here and I loved that her disability and her grumpy attitude remain. Yet Ben does confide in her that he’s worried, that the closer they come to the offender the more danger his victim is in. Gannick acknowledges that ‘this one’s a psycho’ but they will definitely get him. As we come closer to the truth, the weather mirrors Ben’s turmoil:
“The outside world is comfortless, though. When I pull back the curtain, breakers are lashing the shore. Seabirds are returning to Bryher in flocks, scattered by the breeze. It feels like we’re at the mercy of some savage force that’s trying to tear these islands apart.”
This is a fantastic crime novel, acknowledging both the savagery of someone who will traffic young women and keep them captive, but also the wildness and daily difficulty of living on these islands in the Atlantic. When a storm blows in people are cut off, there’s no way to travel between the islands and everything has to stop. Nina worries that as he’s older Noah won’t know what it’s like to be able to meet friends in town and to visit a cinema together. On the other hand he’ll have experiences other teenagers won’t like making a fire and cooking on the beach, camping on uninhabited islands and learning to drive a speedboat. I could see what Ben finds so special about this place and while there are many experiences he’ll only have rarely, there are others that some people don’t have in a lifetime. Yet the case does taint his idea that the islands are a safe place, to have had a crime that’s so serious happen right under his nose has left him feeling unsure and more suspicious of his fellow islanders. It’s going to be fascinating to see where things go from here for Ben Kitto. In fact I’m so fascinated that I’ve bought all the previous novels in the series to take on holiday with me and have a binge read. I’ve fallen in love with this unusual and wild backdrop but also with this giant of a man who carries the weight of the crimes he investigates with him.
Meet the Author
Kate Rhodes is an acclaimed crime novelist and an award-winning poet, selected for Val McDermid’s New Blood panel at Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival for her debut, Crossbones Yard. She has been nominated twice for the prestigious CWA Dagger in the Library award, and is one of the founders of the Killer Women writing group. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, the writer and film-maker Dave Pescod, and visited the Scilly Isles every year as a child, which gave her the idea for the critically acclaimed Isles of Scilly Mysteries series.
According to our narrator, a ‘bride stone’ is a precious stone given to the groom’s family as a dowry. Sometimes though, a beautifully made fake stone was used, one they could only have valued when it was too late. It’s an apt title for a book where women are traded in many different ways and in the human sense the most unprepossessing stones may turn out to be priceless. It is set just after the French Revolution where Marie Antoinette, who would have had no choice in marrying Louis VII, was condemned to the guillotine as his Queen. Many aristocrats left France for British shores at this time and were often welcomed in high society. Edmée has somehow made her way to Britain, despite seemingly being an ordinary citizen and she is being offered at a ‘wife sale’, something I had no idea existed until I read Thomas Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge where Michael Trenchard sells both his wife and daughter as chattels he can no longer afford. When I first read it at 14, I felt how degrading it must be and was automatically revolted but now, I’m even more aware of the implications of being sold to the highest bidder. The thought of being owned by a man, a complete stranger, to be treated as he wishes is horrifying. Yet for Edmée this chapter surely can’t be worse than the last? For Duval Harlington it’s something he would never usually countenance, but his circumstances are uniquely desperate. Having been captured by the French while fighting and treating wounded soldiers, he is met by one of the family servants who bears bad news. Duval Harlington so now Lord Harlington because his father has recently died. Although he now has the title, his right to the ancestral home of Muchmore and his father’s wealth is rather more complex. Duval had a tough relationship with his father who didn’t see the point of him training as a doctor. Once he departed for France, Duval’s father installed a distant relative, Mr Carson and his wife, to manage the day to day running of the estate. So his will has an interesting stipulation, in order to claim his inheritance Duval must be married and now he has only two days to achieve this aim. Otherwise the estate becomes Mr Carson’s. When his servant points out the wife sale it seems like a means to an end. Duval notices a young woman being led around the room by a scarf round her neck. Her hair has been shorn away like a boy’s and she has a veil covering her face, but the buyers call out for it to be removed and he’s shocked to see that one side of her face is swollen and covered in bruises. Someone has recently beaten her very badly. On impulse he puts up his hand and bids for her, his intention being to marry her quickly and claim his inheritance. Then he could seek an annulment. However he does find Edmée fascinating and with Mr and Mrs Carson ready for a fight this marriage might not be as easy to shrug off as he thinks.
This is a fascinating period of history and I didn’t know as much about it as I thought. I knew bits about Versailles, the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette and the guillotine but my understanding was very vague. I hadn’t realised how many aristocrats fled here to escape the Reign of Terror and their fate at the guillotine. Edmée is interesting because she is French but claims not to be an aristocrat, so how else did she end up here? Could she be a Jacobin or a spy? The fear that something similar to the overthrow of the ancién regime could spread here was a real one, because it would remove the power held by the Royal Family and other aristocrats, instead creating a republic where all people would share natural rights of liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. Yet a book is always the product of its time and I could definitely see parallels with today’s politics. A dinner guest, Sir Wilfred Fairley MP talks about the influx of French emigrés saying he was asked if he thought ‘we’d been too lenient with the number of emigrés we have allowed into the country and my answer is yes’. However, a Marquis replies very strongly that no one wants to be in that position:
“To be forced to leave their lands, their houses, to start again in a country that doesn’t possess their humour or their language and is frightened of their religion […] to cross La Manche in a small unseaworthy boat to discover they have paid a fortune to be at the mercy of sailors threatening to throw them overboard if they do not pay double.”
It felt like it could have been two people arguing on social media today.
It’s evident Edmée has gone through a terrible ordeal at the hands of her previous husband, the Reverend Hughes. At first she must fear a similar fate from this stranger and Duval doesn’t help by abandoning her as soon as they reach Muchmore to go and sleep with a long term mistress. I was fascinated with Edmée because she’s such an unusual character and like me she keeps a journal and writes daily. The author lets us into that diary and we get to know how unsure she feels and that she has secrets. Duval’s aunt notices Edmée’s vulnerability and really takes a shine to her as they dine together and she takes her to buy gowns from the local dressmaker, a fellow French woman called Madame DuPont. Now that she’s Lady Harlington, she must look like a lady. It’s hard to know who she really is because she could just be fitting into each person’s expectations. Maybe this is something she’s used to doing in order to survive. When she falls ill and Duval returns to Muchmore, using his knowledge as a doctor to treat her, he shows great care and tenderness. As he waits for her to recover he reads her journal and learns so much about this woman he’s married to. With Duval she seems to blossom a little. Something unlocks in her and it’s like watching a mistreated animal learning to trust a human. Until now she’s been a blank space for others to write on, but it seems like Duval might be the person who brings out the real her. It is hard not to like this woman, who is described by her previous husband’s natural son as courageous:
“There was hardly anything of her but she had a will of steel. I don’t say that lightly. Some soldiers profess bravery and talk about courage, but that’s a woman who says nothing and has survived a Revolution and a violent bastard of a husband […] she would be a hard candle to blow out.”
This isn’t just a love story though, it’s a thriller. Just as Duval starts to settle in to being home, the unthinkable happens. The couple are talked into holding a ball to introduce the new Lady Harlington to society. Their guests come from the local area, but also from London and some are French emigrés. Mr and Mrs Carson are even invited and unbelievably accept. Edmée is a great success as the host in her new role as mistress of Muchmore, but the next morning she has vanished. Did she leave of her own accord – perhaps spooked by someone she saw the previous night. Or has something more sinister happened? It could be the work of someone closer to home – a disgruntled lover of Duval’s or someone determined that their marriage won’t succeed. I was drawn so deeply into the story of these unlikely partners. Duval and Edmée have both had difficult starts in life. The relationship between Duval and his father is typified by the ridiculous terms of his inheritance. The only thing he has to guide his search is her journal and the book that came with her, seemingly an ordinary history book but beautifully bound.
The theme of domestic violence and sexual assault is distressing and hard to read, but what shocked me most was other people’s ability to ignore what was happening even when they witnessed it with their own eyes. It brought home to me how dependent women were, in fact the only women in control of their own destiny are those who have a skill or their own business such as Madame DuPont the dressmaker or the brothel madam where Duval was a loyal customer in his youth. This is absolutely in line with social history of the 18th and 19th Century, but so much literature adapted for television focuses on the upper and middle classes where marriage is the only means of improving a woman’s status. I love when writers go back and write people back into a history they’ve been erased from due to race, disability or sexuality or when characters are more complicated figures in society. Duval isn’t your average privileged heir and Edmée would never normally be his wife. During dinner discussion on the revolution, Sir Wifred points out that its biggest folly was that all people should be equal, meaning men and women. Duval surprises him by stating that in his view “it was one of the most exciting things to have come out of the revolution.” I love that he is starting to see women as equals. Edmée is surviving the only way she knows how and by the skin of her teeth, so why would she choose to move on again? Duval has no choice but to retrace his steps, go back to where he bought his wife and find the clues. I was hoping for Edmée to have a happy ending, but it was clear this might not be the case making for a tense read in those final chapters. The book has a mix of hardship, adventure and mystery interlaced with the romantic possibility of an unlikely match being perfect. If only Duval can find her again. The author has created a fascinating mystery and an extraordinarily modern hero and heroine that I desperately wanted to find each other again.
Meet the Author
Sally Gardner gained a first class degree at a leading London art college and became a successful theatre costume designer before illustrating and writing books. Her debut novel, I, Coriander won the Nestle Gold Award and she is also a Costa and Carnegie prize-winner. Her books have been translated all over the world and have sold over two million copies. Find Sally online at sallygardner.co.uk, or on Twitter @TheSallyGardner.
It’s been a month of crime/thriller reads and historical fiction, plus a couple of crime and historical combinations which I really enjoy. It’s also been a month where I found it difficult to concentrate because finally, after five years of brown tiles, lime green walls and cupboards with no handles we have been able to afford to renovate the kitchen. So for two weeks we have had no ceiling, no floor and no hob. As of Monday, we will be cooking in the garden until everything is back together again. I am not good with chaos so if you can imagine me wedged into a corner on the sofa with the contents of every kitchen cupboard taking up the study and other end of the living room. Hopefully only two weeks left to go. It can’t come soon enough. The other half is building the seating area under the pergola at the bottom of the garden. It feels like a symphony of drills and hammers at times but it will be lovely to be able to go and sit outside and read with roses growing around me. So much to look forward to in September with some fantastic reads on the list too. ❤️ 📚
Unbelievably this is the third novel from Kate Foster and firmly puts her on my ‘must-buy’ authors list. They’ve all been worthy of a place on my best reads list but I think this is her best yet. Maggie is a young girl from Fisherrow whose father is a fisherman and her mother ons of the fishwives who help bring in the catch, clean it for market and then repair nets ready for the next day’s fishing. She, her parents and sister Joan live in a one bedroom cottage but Maggie dreams of a life so different to this, where there isn’t back breaking work and she’s not at the mercy of her father’s drunken temper. So when ambitious trader Patrick turns up at the door, looking for somewhere to keep goods for making perfume she senses a chance. She knows Joan is prettier but she would make a far better wife to help him in his business. Luckily he sees this in her and after a short courtship they become married and set up home in a cottage in the village. They are happy until suddenly Maggie gets the news that a press gang has been to the hotel and Patrick was one of the men taken for the navy. Somehow Maggie finds herself travelling to London, to build her new life. At a stopover in Kelso she takes a couple of weeks to stay and earn some money. She knows now she is pregnant and conceals it, to keep on working. So how does she come to be in Edinburgh a few months later, being sent to the gallows on charges of concealing a pregnancy and killing her baby. Yet miraculously she survives the hanging, how and what she chooses to do with her second chance at life are the main contents of this brilliant novel. I loved the history, the growing up that Maggie does on her journey and how brilliant an advocate Kate Foster is for these women she finds in historical documents, often in dire situations at that time for ‘crimes’ it’s hard to comprehend today. Most of all I loved the bold, feminist take on Maggie’s life and the links that could be made with modern day politics. Brilliant.
My second historical fiction read of the month was this mesmerising and clever thriller from Laura Shepherd-Robinson that’s jumped straight onto my books of the year list. The Art of A Lie begins in a confectioner’s shop called the Punchbowl and Pineapple, run by the newly widowed Hannah Cole. This is the late 18th Century and Hannah grew up in the shop that was started by her grandfather. Her husband Jonas had been her father’s apprentice and now she must keep their shop running for it to be handed to his cousin. Jonas was found down river, washed up by the Thames with head injuries and missing anything of value including a watch given to him by Hannah that used to belong to her grandfather. Novelist and magistrate Joseph Fielding visits Hannah to say he is investigating Jonah’s murder, for he doesn’t think it’s as cut and dried a case as it might seem. Thank goodness for the lovely William Devereux, a friend of Jonas’s who introduces himself ar the funeral. He calls on Hannah at the shop, hearing of Joseph Fielding’s interference in the case and hoping to be of help. He gives her his grandmother’s recipe for iced cream, thinking it may be a hit with her customers and could tied her over until the case is closed and Jonas’s estate is released. Laura tells this tale so cleverly, drifting between narrators and shocking us with an aspect of their characters or the case. Both are fascinating and not necessarily what they appear to be at first. With each revelation I became more and more intrigued with this cat and mouse game and the psychological make up of those involved. Hannah is an astute businesswoman, good at reading people quickly and usually accurately. It’s hard to tell at times who is scamming who and I was so utterly entranced I was still thinking about it a week later. Simply brilliant in its setting, historical background and the constant simmering tension.
A modern thriller this time from one of the Queens of the genre and this really was an up to the minute tale of secrets, lies and murder. Gwen is an older widow, living in a complex of smart apartments in a nice area. She has decent neighbours, some of whom she might call friends. When her nearest neighbour Alex is looking for a new lodger she meets one of the candidates, Pixie. They start chatting and she is pleased to hear when the Britpop one hit wonder decides to offer her the room. Pixie gets a job at the bakery and cafe that Gwen frequents and they get on very well, so Gwen is disturbed to hear what sound like arguments from across the hall. She also catches a phrase that sounds like ‘you knew the deal when you moved in. When she catches up with Pixie she’s disturbed to hear that the deal involves sex in lieu of rent. She confronts Alex and takes Pixie in, writing a complaint to the building’s governing board. Her neighbour Dee tells her that she talked to her daughter Stella about it and she’s been making a documentary news item about the growing ‘sex for rent’ scandal. Would Pixie like to be interviewed? Soon the story is out of control, Alex is angry and denying everything and Gwen is public enemy number one. I loved how ‘of the moment’ this was with Gwen at a loss when it comes to freelance investigative journalism, sex for rent, trad wives and influencers. As she starts to feel out of her depth, those around her continue to manoeuvre and manipulate until life will never be the same again. This was so tense and the eventual murders most unexpected indeed.
I had the luck to read two Mark Edwards novels in August. a throwback to last year and this, his brand new thriller. The Wasp Trap was the jokey name given to a side project. While trying to form an algorithm for one of the first ever online dating apps, a group of university students have another idea. Each one specifically chosen by their professor, Sebastian, they are the best in their fields and are spending their summer at his mansion in the country. Will tells our flashback story, the creative who is meant to be coming up with a name for their site he is also hopelessly un love with Sophie but too scared to make a move. Together they come up with ‘butterfly.net’ but it’s Lily who comes up with a side project – an algorithm that could identify psychopaths. Statistically one of them could be and since they’re serving as guinea pigs for the dating apps why not for this? Now decades later they are gathered again, this time at Theo and Georgina’s mansion – the couple got together that summer and are married with two daughters. Strangely, they announce that one of their daughters is missing so it seems an odd time to have a dinner party. They also have caterers which is unusual for them, so Will isn’t shocked when it turns out to be a cover. The fake chef is Callum and he gives them an ultimatum- he’s giving them an hour to think and when he returns he wants to know the secret from that summer. If the secret isn’t divulged then someone will die. The tension rises as the hour ticks down, who has a secret? How do they know which is the right one? As Callum comes back into the room they’re left in no doubt that he means business. The rising and falling of tension is pitch perfect and in between the action we get flashbacks to that summer where more than one person is holding a secret and we start to wonder who exactly was the psychopath that Lily was searching for.
My final recommendation for last month is this last novel in the historical fiction quartet about the agony aunt of the Women’s Friend, a magazine running during WW2. It was lovely to be back with the gang and particularly Emmy Lake as they enter the final and arguably most difficult stretch of WW2. After five years of war both the team and their readers are tired. As a way of boosting morale at the magazine Emmy suggests they all decamp to Bunty and Harold’s in the countryside. As Hitler’s V1 and V2 bombs start to hit, it will certainly be safer. Emmy strongly feels they all need a boost in order to keep supporting and inspiring the women who read their magazine. If they’re tired and the magazine suffers, how will their readership keep the fight going? Emmy throws herself into rural life and is soon organising games nights, competitive knitting and planning the very important wedding of their officer administrator Hester and her fiance Clarence. She also has a phone call from the ministry to travel abroad and report from the French field hospitals and even manages to mastermind a break into husband Charles’s barracks before they’re both deployed. Emmy has no idea how much she’s going to need those around her in the coming months as her hardest test is yet to come. On their return to London she receives a telegram to say that Charles is missing, presumed captured in enemy territory and she has the agonising wait for the confirmation letter. Then Hester receives a blow when Clarence calls to say he’s being deployed in three days, two days before their planned wedding. Hester is inconsolable and after catching Emmy in a moment of frustration, she disappears. However, Emmy isn’t one to dwell on her misfortunes for long and I wondered what schemes and plans she would hatch next.
The author doesn’t let us forget the sacrifice and loss in people’s lives, but still manages to bring in humour and a defiantly upbeat, make do and mend attitude. This is the closest I’ve seen Emmy come to breaking point and it’s hard to when you’re the one whose role it is to buoy everybody else up. As she finds out though, those who she’s helped and supported are so happy to be able to return the favour and support her. This is a set of books I always recommend, to women of all ages, because it’s so easy to relate to one of the characters and absolutely root for them. The main impression I take away from them is that sense of female solidarity. The instinct we have to come together, share the load and make each other’s lives a little easier from taking on someone’s children all the way down to being there with a meal or a shoulder to cry on. Emmy uses her writing to do the same and triumphs in being exactly what the magazine promises – the Woman’s Friend.
Here’s a hint of what I’ll be reading in September:
I loved this book. It drew me in immediately and two days after I finished it I can’t let go of it. I can’t start another book. It’s left me bereft. Our setting is 18th Century London and George II is on the throne. On St James’s Street is a confectioner’s shop called the Punchbowl and Pineapple and running it is the newly widowed Hannah Cole. This was her grandfather’s shop and has been handed down the family. Her father realised he needed an apprentice to pass on his skills and to work with Hannah, so he employed a young lad called Jonas Cole. Jonas and Hannah grew close and fell in love, with Hannah losing her father only a few days after they were married. So until a couple of days ago Hannah and Jonas ran the shop, with Hannah becoming quite an accomplished businesswoman. Jonas could be hard and ruthless in his business dealings and of recent years they had grown apart, with Jonas often spending evenings away from home. Then two nights ago he did not return and was found further down the Thames minus his money, his watch and several teeth. Hannah has had to borrow, especially to re-open after his death, something that caused a minor scandal so soon. She can’t afford to be closed and is waiting on their savings being released from the bank so she may pay her suppliers. Then Henry Fielding pays a call. In his role as magistrate rather than novelist, he explains that all money will remain frozen while he investigates Jonas’s death. He isn’t sure this is a simple robbery and wonders whether he should be looking into his business or personal dealings. He informs Hannah that Jonas had money in the bank, more than the £200 she knew about. Fielding explains he wants to be sure that the money was obtained legally and above board. Luckily, at Jonas’s funeral Hannah meets William Devereux. An acquaintance of Jonas, he has never met Hannah before but is very sympathetic to her plight. He promises to visit her shop and discuss how he may help her with Fielding and Jonas’s life outside the home – was he gambling, womanising or getting into shady business dealings? He also mentions a delicacy his Italian grandmother used to make called iced cream. It has all the ingredients of a custard, but flavoured with fruit or chocolate and is then frozen and eaten as a desert. Hannah resolves to let William help her and to master the art of ice cream, but are either of them being fully honest with each other about who they are and what their purpose is?
As with all Laura’s books we become fully immersed in the setting straight away and it’s the little details that stand out and make us believe in this world. I loved the descriptions of Hannah’s various confections and the way she can tell what people will choose, not to mention what it says about them.
“He paused to take a bite of his Piccadilly Puff, washing it down with a generous gulp of green walnut wine. It is a favourite choice of the sybarite: the silken sweetness of the custard, the crunching layers of puff paste, the dusky depths of the spices mingling with the sourness of lemon. I might have guessed that Mr Fielding was a man who struggled to keep his appetites in check.”
I believed in Hannah as a businesswoman and confectioner very quickly thanks to these details and as she narrates she tells us her hopes and dreams, including a joint dream of her and Jonas, to buy the empty premises next door and extend the shop so they could have more tables and chairs, especially when her iced cream starts to become popular. I think we always imagine that people from the 18th and 19th Century are very genteel and well behaved, this comes of too many Austen adaptations and strange hybrid historical settings like Bridgerton. While lovely to watch they give us little idea of what these centuries were like for those of the lower classes in society and women who worked. Real life 18th Century London was rather more colourful than Pride and Prejudice, as depicted in some of Fielding’s novels like Tom Jones and Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders. The author gives us the dirt and the bawdy side of London life when Hannah takes a trip to the theatre.
“The playhouse crowd gave a wide berth to the nest of alleys around the back of the Theatre Royal, home to brothels and bath houses, gin shops and squalid taverns. The residents started drinking over breakfast and then kept going. Groups of ragged men stood about on corners. One lot were fighting, skidding in vomit. Half-naked women leaned from the upper windows shouting encouragement.”
The King openly has a mistress and there are brothels and gaming rooms everywhere, operating just on the edge of the law. This is a book with every vice on display, even when if it is just cake. As Hannah points out when she’s evaluating Fielding, every man has his personal struggle. She is incredibly astute when it comes to assessing character and has Fielding’s own psychological make-up worked out through reading his novels. William Devereux appears to be equally astute, visiting Fielding’s rooms he notes the perfectly bound volumes of his own books and the wine glasses etched with the crest of Eton College, it’s students described beautifully as the “school of the most selfsatisfied fucksters in the kingdom.” I thought there were some brilliant choices in terms of the book’s structure and the way the story passed from Hannah to William was brilliant. Often when reading from NetGalley there are little mistakes or quirks to the format that can ruin the reading of the book, but here reading from NetGalley was a benefit because with no gaps or idea how far I was into the book, when the shocks came they were huge. The author has cleverly used aspects of modern thriller writing and applied them to her story, so there are twists and turns aplenty. She uses sudden unexpected confessions or statements that mean we know something no one else does. Other times a character suddenly changed their demeanour or had a different inner compared to their outer voice that made me go back a few pages in confusion. Then just as I become comfortable with my narrator, they switched back again.
This is definitely a cat and mouse game between three characters, a battle of wits where you’re never quite sure who is on the right side. Fielding appears to be pursuing this case to make his point to parliament that a national police force is needed to deal with crimes like murder. He also has a good point, Jonas’s watch had belonged to Hannah’s father and had a Russian Imperial Eagle on the case. If that had been stolen, every pawn shop and jewellers in London would have remembered someone trying to sell it. So where is it? Has the thief taken it to be sold elsewhere or is it still with a murderer rather closer to home? Devereaux seems like a gentleman, he introduces Hannah to friends who seem wealthy and of good status and they all vouch for his honesty and charity. He even seems to be thinking of making a young boy belonging to a distant relative his ward, in order to give him a better life. Hannah had a hard life at Jonas’s hands, especially when she found she was unable to have children something they both wanted. I loved the author’s detail of them both saving some urine to pour on a seedling and if the seedling grew they were believed to be fertile. Hannah’s didn’t grow and she felt her husband hardened his heart to her at that point and perhaps looked elsewhere. She has her head turned by the handsome gentleman who wants to find out where Jonas was going at night and intervening with Fielding on her behalf. He wants to help her keep her shop too and his iced cream idea is proving a huge hit, with even an impromptu visit from the King’s mistress who reassures Hannah that a hint of scandal is not necessarily a bad thing: “virtue matters rather less once you are rich.” Devereaux has some ideas in that area, that maybe rather than leave her money in the bank she might like to meet some of the people who’ve invested in a company of his called Arcadia, based in a place called Bentoo. Is he genuine or not? Does he have feelings for her, because Hannah’s starting to have stirring feelings she hasn’t had for years. Surely though Devereaux’s interest wouldn’t lie in the direction of an older widow?
I was utterly entranced in this novel from the first page to the last, especially as the tensions mounted in the final third when Fielding makes his move. However, just when you think you’ve worked everything out another twist will come along and surprise you. I was rooting for Hannah to come out on top, but was very scared for her in parts. For both her heart and her liberty! I wanted her to live out her days as the grand proprietress of the Punchbowl and Pineapple. I very much feared that Fielding had the desire to see her face the hangman’s noose. While I didn’t trust Devereaux at first I did wonder if he had feelings for Hannah or whether he was some sort of confidence trickster. There is certainly sexual chemistry by the bucketload. I was working out in my head who might play Hannah in a film or TV adaptation because it would be a brilliant period thriller with lots of raunchy scenes perfect for Netflix. I was honestly hypnotised by this story and Laura’s talent. Bravo on such a fantastic story that I’m still thinking about four days after finishing it. Go beg, steal or borrow a copy of this one, it’s a cracker.
Out now from Mantle Books
Meet the Author
Laura Shepherd-Robinson is the award-winning, Sunday Times and USA Today bestselling author of three historical novels. Her books have been featured on BBC 2’s Between the Covers and Radio 4’s Front Row and Open Book. Her fourth novel, The Art of a Lie, will be published in Summer 2025. She lives in London with her husband, Adrian.
The Lotus Readers 