SCAPEGALLOWS
Carol Birch, Virago, 2007, £14.99, hb,
435pp, 9781844083909
A ‘scapegallows’ is one who deserves and has narrowly escaped
hanging. One such is Margaret Catchpole, born in Suffolk, who lived
a double life as a servant to a wealthy local family by day and
lover of the free trader Will Laud by night. She was a skilled
horsewoman and midwife, by nature both courageous and charming.
Her love for Will eventually led her to steal a horse for
which she was sentenced to hang, but she twice evaded the gallows
and ended up on a transportation ship bound for Australia. There she
gained her freedom and lived an independent life, refusing offers of
marriage, but residing in her own cottage with only a young boy for
company.
Scapegallows is based on the real life of Margaret
Catchpole, and it’s a story on a grand scale. Margaret is neither a
bad woman nor a blameless one, but in spite of fear, deprivation and
loneliness she remains true to her love for Will and true to
herself. This type of novel needs a feisty character to maintain the
reader’s interest throughout, and Margaret has feistiness in bucket
loads. It’s her courageousness that both redeems and dooms her.
This literary novel wears its research and
depth lightly, making it extremely readable. From rural Suffolk,
through the bustle of London and the squalor of Newgate, to the
sweeping panorama of New South Wales, Carol Birch takes us on an
epic journey that never fails to delight.
-- Sara Wilson
PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
Geraldine Brooks, Viking, 2008,
$25.95/C$32.50, hb, 372pp, 9780670018215 / Fourth Estate, 2008,
£16.99, hb, 356pp, 9780007177431
This wonderful gem has convinced me to put Geraldine Brooks’s other
novels on my to-be-read list. Set both in the mid-1990s and during
various other points in history (1940s Sarajevo, 19th-century
Vienna, 17th-century Venice, 15th-century
Tarragona, and 15th-century Seville), it tells the tale
of a Haggadah saved by a Muslim librarian in Sarajevo during the
Bosnian War, and is based on an actual event.
Hanna Heath is the conservation expert sent to Sarajevo to
restore the precious book. During her work she discovers artifacts
caught in its pages and binding, sending her on a mission to
discover its past. Interwoven with her quest are historical
vignettes that illustrate how each of the recovered artifacts came
to be part of the Haggadah.
While Hanna’s story is interesting, the lives from the past
that we glimpse are the heart of this novel. Each one pulls us in,
involves us and adds depth to the Hag
gadah’s
history. From the young Jewish Sarajevan freedom fighter to the
enslaved African painter, the characters and their stories come
alive. As the book’s principal heroine, Hanna grows and changes,
learning about her own past while uncovering the mysteries of the
artifacts.
The historical details are plentiful and specific to each
period, both enlightening and enriching. I learned so much reading
this book, and it is clear Ms. Brooks did a great deal of research.
The one slight quibble I had was that at times the scientific and
technical details pulled me out of the narrative.
Delightful to read, Ms. Brooks’s prose will appeal to all
readers with its easily accessible literary voice, employing period
language that doesn’t overwhelm. She moves from first to third point
of view, depending on the characters, yet the shifts are so
effortless the reader barely notices.
An emotionally absorbing read, very highly recommended for
all.
-- Teresa Basinski Eckford
WHITETHORN
Bryce Courtenay, Penguin, 2007, £7.99, pb,
692pp, 9780143004844
Do not be misled by the blurb on the back cover of Bryce Courtenay’s
new novel. The Second World War does indeed form a backdrop to the
action, but it is a dim and distant one. As the sub-title indicates,
this is a novel of Africa, and what makes its protagonist, Tom
Fitzsaxby, an outsider – as a South African of English rather than
Afrikaans origin – is England’s association with an earlier war. It
is the Boer War that defines relationships in this novel and causes
many Afrikaners to sympathise with the Nazis. Although the novel
begins in 1939, it follows Tom through to the 1960s, to apartheid
and resistance to it.
Whitethorn is not an original story – lonely outsider
redeemed by his intellect and love of books – but the voice in which
Courtenay tells it is unique and beautifully crafted. Tom’s plain
language, larded with snatches of Afrikaans and with a strong South
African ‘accent’, works as an effective counterpoint to the many
horrors he recounts. He makes no moral judgements – he is an orphan,
he belongs to The Government and The Government does not expect its
possessions to have opinions – he merely tells his life as it
happens. His casual, unadorned account of the cruelties he
encounters makes them all the more shocking to readers from a more
liberal age.
A fine novel, whose message is embedded in gripping
storytelling, just as it should be. A word of warning –
Whitethorn does require a strong stomach.
-- Sarah Bower
MISTRESS OF THE REVOLUTION
Catherine Delors, Dutton, 2008, $24.95/C$31.00, hb, 464pp,
9780525950547
Though Gabrielle de Montserrat was born into the minor aristocracy
of France’s Auvergne region and convent-educated, she is less
concerned with class distinctions than her cruel mother and
possessive brother. Her budding love for Pierre-André, a young
medical student, rouses her family’s wrath, resulting in a hasty
marriage to a wealthy baron. Matrimony teaches Gabrielle harsh
lessons in endurance but provides her with a daughter, Aimée. In the
aftermath of her husband’s death she hastens to Paris. Her
impoverished state is alleviated by her cousin and social patron, a
duchess with access to the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
The perceptive Gabrielle enters society while still retaining
the outsider status that ensures acute observations and a critical
perspective. Her new life presents many difficult choices, including
whether or not to live under the generous protection of the Count de
Villers, an aristocrat with republican sympathies who eventually
allies himself with the revolutionaries. When love brings danger,
she and her little girl are swept up in the events of the day, and
with their lives at stake she is forced to turn to her first suitor,
Pierre-André—now a judge carrying out the harsh edicts of the
revolutionary tribunals. Cast down from the heights of society, an
intimate of the architects of change, eventually she, like her
friends and foes, is arrested and imprisoned.
From a distance of many years, Gabrielle weaves her tale and
exposes her secrets—eminently pragmatic, admirably unsentimental,
and consistently sympathetic. Delors, a native Frenchwoman, provides
a comprehensive yet intricately detailed portrait of this turbulent
era and its characters, from the proud Queen herself to a rapacious,
money-grubbing landlord. A most impressive literary debut, this
outstanding novel of the French Revolution is well worth reading. --
Margaret Barr
THE
PRINCIPESSA
Chris
tie
Dickason, Harper, 2007, £6.99, pb, 502pp, 9780007230396
We first met
the Firemaster, Francis Quoynt, embroiled in the Gunpowder Plot in
the pages of The Firemaster’s Mistress. As this new adventure
opens, he is still employed by the wily Robert Cecil but now only as
a creator of lavish firework shows to entertain the rich and idle.
Kicking his heels in frustration at the diminution of his talents –
for he comes from a line of soldiers and explosives experts – he is
quick, too quick perhaps, to agree to Cecil’s latest plan: this time
to help him wriggle out of a massive and top secret loan extracted
from the dying and insane Prince of La Spada, an Italian city state,
a hotbed of intrigue and danger where it helps to keep one’s wits
honed as sharp as one’s dagger. As usual, Cecil is not telling
Francis the whole truth. Once arrived, Francis meets Sofia, the
Prince’s daughter, who, although very young, is already well-versed
in keeping secrets and disguising her true intentions. Is Cecil to
be trusted? Is anyone, especially Sofia? And has our honest and
straightforward soldier hero finally bit off more than he can chew?
This is a fabulous read I would recommend to anyone who enjoy
historical adventure, intrigue, twists and turns, but also to
those who revel in a poignant and powerful love story. There’s
something for everyone, and it’s beautifully written as well. What
more could anyone ask? I cannot for the life of me understand why
Christie Dickason’s novels are not better known and appreciated.
It’s high time. --
Sally Zigmond
THE MAYTREES
Annie Dillard, HarperCollins, 2007,
$24.95/C$29.95, hb, 216pp, 9780061239534 / Hesperus, 2007, £12.99,
224pp, 9781843917106.
The novel opens in Provincetown, Massachusetts, just after the
Second World War. Toby Maytree, a thirty-year-old poet and part-time
house-mover, meets Lou Bigelow, a recent college graduate who
dabbles in painting. After a short courtship, they fall in love and
settle into Provincetown, which will be the center of the rest of
their lives. They quickly adapt to a bohemian lifestyle, surrounded
by an array of offbeat characters. Like most of their friends, they
are too fond of their free time to settle for steady jobs. Before
long, a son, Petie, arrives. Their free-spirited neighbor, Deary, a
deeply maternal soul, spends a good deal of time caring for Petie.
After fourteen idyllic years togeth
er,
Toby becomes disillusioned and runs away to Maine with Deary. Lou
recovers from the devastating emotional and psychological shock and
stays the course in Provincetown raising Petie. When he reaches
young adulthood, he finds solace working as a fisherman, the one
thing his father dreaded he would do. Finally, after decades, Toby
returns to beg Lou for a special favor that only she can manage.
Dillard’s intimate knowledge of nature shines in the
outstandingly written novel. Through a style that is as consistently
expressive as it is transparent, she details the inner and outer
journey through life of the Maytrees and their satellite of friends.
She wraps it all up with two brilliantly written death scenes that
describe, in context, a lyrical balance of life and death. This is a
truly exceptional novel of people in and out of time. --
Gerald T. Burke
THE BLOODSTONE
PAPERS
Glen Duncan, Ecco, 2007, $25.95, hb,
416pp, 9780061239663 / Pocket, 2007, £7.99, pb, 416pp, 9781416522775
This story about an Anglo-Indian family, and the bloodstone ring
that was stolen from them during the last days of the British Raj,
is a multi-faceted gem that should firmly establish Glen Duncan as
one of the foremost novelists of our time. Ross Monroe - an
Anglo-Indian boxer who comes of age in the 1940s, amidst the
political chaos of pre-partitioned India – dreams of three things:
England, Kate Lyle, and Olympic glory. But Skinner, an Englishman
who treats Ross as if “the haze of color and class had evaporated,”
deceives Ross and, in so doing, changes the course of his life.
Sixty years later, Ross’s British-born son, Owen, frustrated by his
father’s naïveté, is proud that he, himself, has not fallen for the
“the old scams God, purpose, fate, design.” When Owen stumbles
across a novel entitled Raj Rogue, which he believes was
written by Skinner, he sets out to find the thief and force a
confrontation between the two old men. Owen’s quest takes him on a
journey that eventually leads him not only to the truth of his
father’s past but also into the depths of his own soul.
Ross and Owen are both likeable characters who must confront
the political and social realities of their mixed-race heritage.
Despite hardships, tragedy, and abuse, the Monroe family, as a
whole, is endearingly functional (although Owen nearly becomes a
significant exception). The story transitions smoothly between
mid-20th-century India and present-day England. Vivid prose
aside, much of the pleasure of reading The Bloodstone Papers
is contemplating the many allegorical meanings of the stolen jewel.
Certainly, the bloodstone symbolizes the future that was lost to the
Anglo-Indians when the British Raj ended in 1947, but one can find
many other delicious possibilities. This is a book to read and
savor. Highly recommended. --
Nancy J. Attwell
THE ANATOMY OF DECEPTION
Lawrence Goldstone, Delacorte, 2008,
$24.00, hb, 342pp, 9780385341349 / Bantam,
2008, £12.99, hb, 344pp, 9780593058893
Ephraim Carroll is a young physician in late 19th-century
Philadelphia who counts himself lucky to be in the orbit of one of
the greatest teachers of the time. But in the theater where they
perform autopsies to learn anatomy, a mystery begins to unfold. The
mystery involves a labyrinthine network of people, from the most
privileged to the basest denizens of the Philadelphia underworld.
Faced with the opportunity of a lifetime—to become one of the
founding physicians of the new Johns Hopkins hospital and medical
school in Baltimore—Ephraim discovers the evil and deceit that can
lurk beneath the surface of ambitious men.
This
smart, evocative thriller truly draws the reader into the psyche of
a world where modern medicine was at a turning point. Goldstone has
done his research, not only into the details of medical study and
knowledge and the physiognomy of a 19th-century American
city, but on the moral compass of a right-thinking young man,
earnestly trying to do his best and coming into contact with forces
and influences that take him far from his center. Most courageous
and telling of all is Goldstone’s ability to resist giving his hero
modern sensibilities in the face of dilemmas that truly would have
been thought of very differently at that time.
The Anatomy of Deception is a marvelous, fast-paced,
historically true mystery. Highly recommended. --
Susanne Dunlap
SOMEONE KNOWS MY NAME
Lawrence
Hill, Norton, 2007, $24.95, hb, 512pp, 9780393065787
Aminata Diallo is enslaved as a child in 1745 and lives through six
decades by working in the indigo fields of South Carolina,
Revolutionary War-torn New York City, and free communities in Nova
Scotia and Sierra Leone. She survives the kidnapping that kills her
parents and terrible losses that invade her life with heart-sick
regularity.
Aminata’s hard work and deep intelligence gain her literacy
in English. Her life on the plantation is both unspeakably brutal
and full of hidden joys she finds with an adoptive mother and the
man who will become the love of her life.
After arriving in New York bound to a second master, who uses
the accomplishments of her mind, Aminata escapes to live and work
her midwifery and correspondence skills in New York City. Here, as
the American Revolution is winding down, she participates in setting
down an amazing document, The Book of Negroes, a list of
Loyalist blacks rewarded with safe passage to Canada (where they
faced race riots from their white neighbors).
Later in life, Aminata assists English abolitionist-sponsored
repatriation in Africa, where her desire to see her home village
almost re-enslaves her. But she achieves her childhood dream of
becoming a djeli, an honored storyteller, with the story of
her own life as her material.
Astonishing in scope, humanity and beauty, this is one of
those very rare novels in which the deep joy of reading transcends
its time and place. Like To Kill a Mockingbird, Someone
Knows My Name lets readers experience a life, one footstep at a
time, beside an unforgettable protagonist. Highly recommended.
--
Eileen Charbonneau
THE
BLACK DOVE
Steve Hockensmith, Minotaur, 2008, $23.95,
hb, 412pp, 9780312347826
The long and the short of the Amlingmeyer brothers are back with a
roar for their third adventure, this time on the streets of 1893 San
Francisco. The Chinese doctor they counted as a friend in On the
Wrong Track first greets them with a shot to the scalp and is
then himself murdered. Enter the boys: Sherlock Holmes-inspired
Gustav (Old Red) and his little big brother and chronicler Otto (Big
Red, who sheds his cowboy duds for city-slicker attire which doesn’t
seem to want to stay on his body). They set out to get to the bottom
of it, though they’ve yet to be formally hired as detectives.
They’re soon joined by the mystery woman Diana Corvus, who completes
a mismatched but delightful trio. The three are off and running
through Chinatown, where the outlaws post the bounty. And they
thought Texas was wild.
The key to unlocking the murder seems to revolve around Black
Dove, a valuable prostitute from Madame Fong’s house who has gone
missing soon after being bought by the ill-fated Dr. Chan. The
search for her takes Diana and the brothers through opium dens, over
Chinatown’s rooftops, and earns them the enmity of corrupt police
officers, tong lords and their hatchet men alike.
This series just keeps getting better. The pace is breakneck
and action-packed, but there’s always time for a wisecrack, even as
characterizations deepen. The scene of the brothers applying at the
Pinkerton Agency is both a wonderfully funny and a poignant tour de
force. Mysteries, including a few hidden in the hearts of Big Red,
Old Red and Diana, are revealed along with the sad truths of
Chinatown. A great, rollicking tale, firmly set in its time and
place.
-- Eileen Charbonneau
The EXPEDITIONS
Karl Iagnemma, Dial, 2008,
$24.00/C$30.00, hb, 320pp, 9780385335959
Sixteen-year-old Elisha Stone is elated after joining a scientific
expedition that is to explore Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It is the
spring of 1844, and three years have passed since he ran away from
home. Missing his mother, he decides to write her a letter. Back in
Newell, Massachusetts, the Reverend William Edward Stone, Elisha’s
father, reads this letter. Grieving his wife’s death and compelled
by guilt, the minister leaves his congregation and sets out to find
his son.
What comes after is an extraordinary first novel, an
absolutely engaging narrative of passage, populated by intriguing
characters. There are the two competing heads of the Michigan
expedition: Silas Brush, a bigoted scientist and speculator, and
Professor Tiffin, who is determined to find Native image stones that
will prove the unity of mankind. There is Susette Morel, a beautiful
and enigmatic “half-breed,” the team’s guide, and Jonah Crawley, an
itinerant salesman traveling with the girl-woman Adele, who
can talk to the dead. The Expeditions presents a world of
heartless frontier cities and uncharted wilderness. It is a
dangerous landscape that, in the fashion of Joseph Conrad, is cruel,
beautiful, and a metaphor for the parallel voyage Elisha and
Reverend Stone undertake, an inner journey toward one another, an
exploration of their own hearts.
Composed even when violent, evocative, perceptive, and
unfailingly elegant, The Expeditions is unforgettable
reading. The language is breathtaking: “He lingered over the
memories, like fingertips drawn to a bruise,” and the descriptions
memorable: “They paddled through mornings of damp heat and high,
tissuey clouds. Their course skirted the shoreline, which varied
from stony breakwaters to pocked sandstone faces to belts of smooth,
sugar-white sand. Beach grass riffled like whitecaps in the breeze.”
Altogether a stunning work, one of the best novels I have
read in years.
-- Adelaida Lower
NOT YET DROWN’D
Peg Kingman, Norton, 2007, $24.95/C$31.00,
hb, 428pp, 9780393065466
Catherine MacDonald, a young Scottish widow who has temporarily
settled into the Edinburgh home of her older brother, finds her
quiet life suddenly turned around by two events that happen in quick
succession: she receives a parcel from her twin brother in India,
who had been reported drowned in monsoon floods the previous year,
and an American relation of her young stepdaughter tries to take
Grace away from Catherine and home to America. Catherine will not
allow Grace to go with this unloving woman, but has to resort to
subterfuge to keep her safe. When removal to her native Skye becomes
impossible, Catherine and Grace find themselves, accompanied by a
runaway American slave, a mysterious Indian woman, and Catherine’s
older, engineer brother, on a ship bound for India by way of
Antwerp. Catherine, intrigued by a piece of music enigmatically
entitled “Not Yet Drown’d” within the collection of pieces included
in her twin brother’s parcel, decides not to disembark in the
Netherlands.
The year is 1822, when the East India Company is deeply
involved in the opium/tea trade, finding ways to propel ships more
quickly and more surely than with sail is absolutely critical, and
there is unrest in the hills of Assam. All of these absorbing
historical events form the bedrock of a novel that is rich is
characterization and suspense. Grace, Catherine’s stepdaughter, and
Sharada, the Indian woman who appears at critical junctures before
accompanying Catherine on her journey, are both particularly
captivating creations. The British commercial and political
interests are reflected through minor characters we meet along the
journey, but the shock of some of their values is not diminished by
the fleeting glimpses we get.
It is a wonder that this assured and supremely engaging novel
is Peg Kingman’s first. I will wait with bated breath for her
second. Extremely highly recommended. --
Trudi E. Jacobson
SONG YET SUNG
James
McBride, Riverhead, 2008, $25.95/C$31.00/£16.99, hb, 368pp, 1594
489723
Written by the author of the bestselling memoir The Color of
Water, this novel is set in the 1850s. Liz, a runaway slave, is
hunted by slave-catchers. She has been shot and her situation seems
hopeless, but she meets and is aided by a man who loves and wishes
to save her. Also, she has a rare psychic gift. Not only does she
anticipate the kidnapping of two children, one black and one white,
that will shortly plunge the Maryland shore community where she is
hiding into chaos, but she has visions of a time when there are no
masters and no slaves.
It’s hard to review this novel without resorting to
superlatives. The writing is so beautiful and true that it gives you
goose bumps. Liz’s dreams of the future exquisitely convey, through
the eyes of a time traveler, the wonder and tribulations of
contemporary African American life. The characters transcend
stereotypes and come alive. Even Patty, a female-slave catcher who
embodies absolute evil, is unique, individual, and fascinating. The
interactions between the desperate young slave who loves Liz, and
his struggling, widowed female owner, decent people trapped in an
inhuman situation, are full of nuance and complexity. You care about
both of them.
Suspense builds, reaching a terrifying, violent climax that
feels inevitable, in which the characters’ ultimate choices are
expressions of who they are. The theme of slavery, the paranormal
element, and the sheer brilliance of the writing reminded me of Toni
Morrison’s Beloved, but there is nothing derivative here.
James McBride creates a complete world on the edge of the Maryland
swamps, inhabited by slaves and plantation owners, lost souls,
heroes, and dreamers. It is a book to read and reread, a work of
literature to savor.
--
Phyllis T. Smith
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
Colleen McCullough, Simon & Schuster,
2007, $26.95, hb, 567pp, 1416552949 / HarperCollins, 2007, £17.99,
hb, 592pp, 0007225806
In this sprawling seventh novel, the latest in her Masters of Rome
series, author McCullough recounts the gigantic power struggle for
dominance in the Mediterranean after the death of Julius Caesar.
Spanning the years from 41 to 27 BC, the story focuses mainly on the
political maneuverings and relationships of three larger-than-life
figures: the handsome and charismatic Mark Antony, the brilliantly
methodical Octavian, and the seductive and power-seeking Cleopatra
of Egypt.
Rivals to rule over Rome and its ever-expanding empire,
Antony and Octavian, Caesar’s legal heir, quickly realize that their
joint governance of Roman lands will not work, and each becomes
obsessed with gaining control over Caesar’s legacy. After his
unsuccessful campaigns against Parthia in the East, Antony becomes
ensnared by the charms of the wealthy queen Cleopatra, who is
determined to make her son by
Caesar,
Caesarion, king of Rome. No slacker himself, Octavian has been
busily scheming and manipulating others to consolidate his power in
Rome and Italia, as well as to discredit Antony. A collision between
the parties is imminent and unavoidable. With the Mediterranean
their battleground and Rome the prize, the stakes are high, and
defeat will mean dishonor and death.
McCullough moves the story along at a rapid pace: her
descriptions of Antony’s disastrous march to Phraaspa and her
rendering of the Battle of Actium are riveting. She takes pains to
bring to life even her minor characters: the long-suffering Octavia,
the coldly calculating Livia, the youthfully promising Caesarion,
the loyal Marcus Agrippa. A page-turner filled with high drama,
tragedy, and interesting psychological insight, McCullough’s
meticulous research and masterful storytelling combine to provide a
fresh perspective on an old and familiar story. --
Michael I. Shoop
BURY HER DEEP
Catriona McPherson, Hodder & Stoughton, 2008, £6.99, pb, 313pp,
9780340
950968
Captivating and beautifully written, this third book in the Dandy
Gilver mystery series is set in 1920s Scotland. Our heroine, a
respectable matron who keeps her sleuthing secret from her uptight
husband, motors down to Luckenlaw, a village in Fife, to investigate
a series of eldritch events. Every full moon, a dark stranger
attacks women and girls on their way home from the Scottish Woman’s
Rural Institute meetings. Maddeningly, the victims refuse to speak
against their assailant, and somehow these occurrences are related
to a centuries-old female corpse being removed from the ancient
burial mound, which towers over the village and is at the centre of
its enduring folklore. Is the local equivalent to the Women’s
Institute secretly a cover for a witches’ coven? Even the vicar
seems half-pagan. Joined by Bunty, her stalwart Dalmatian, and her
sidekick Alec, who hilariously poses as an effete landscape artiste,
Dandy is determined to get to the heart of the mystery.
Reminiscent of a wittier and less savage reworking of The
Wicker Man, this book is alternately funny and chilling and
works on a number of levels. A most original mystery novel. --
Mary
Sharratt
THE HOPE CHEST
Karen
Schwabach, Random House, 2008, $16.99/C$21.99, hb, 288pp,
978037584095
Violet is eleven years old, but she has run away in order to find
her older sister, Chloe. Chloe has been banished from Violet’s life
after she took a nursing degree, and bought a car with the money set
aside for her hope chest. It’s 1920, and Violet’s parents are
resolved that she will not become one of those brazen, independent
women like her sister, who has gone to work in New York. All Violet
knows as she gets on a train is that her sister is in the City. The
address from a long-ago letter isn’t much to go on, but she must try
to find her. When she finds the settlement house where her sister
works, however, she learns Chloe has gone to Nashville, Tennessee,
to work for the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the
Constitution—the one that will give American women the right to
vote.
Violet begins another journey, this time to Nashville.
Dangers and narrow escapes are everywhere along the way.
Fortunately, she finds a street-wise traveling companion, an
orphaned “colored” girl named Myrtle. Their adventures, in both
North and South, involve readers in the pains and shames of the
segregated world, as well as what it was like to be part of the
fight for voting rights. Packed with historical detail and chock
full of plucky and engaging characters of both sexes, The Hope
Chest is highly recommended.
--
Juliet Waldron
RESISTANCE
Owen Sheers, Doubleday, 2008, $23.95,
304pp, hb, 978038552210X / Faber and
Faber,
2007, £14.99, hb, 420pp, 9780571229635
What if… the Germans had bested the Allies in the Normandy
Invasion? What if… the Germans had then crossed the English Channel,
marching into and through England and Wales as conquerors?
Owen Sheers makes this alternate history scenario seem all
too real in his wonderful debut novel. In it, Sarah Lewis and the
other women of the isolated Olchon Valley in Wales awaken one
morning in September of 1944 to find the men gone—their husbands,
their sons, all are missing without a trace except for one
tantalizing clue as to why they left. The women team up to keep
their farms going, to continue their lives as if the men were away
at the market in the next valley.
But
as
winter comes, so do the Germans. A small patrol arrives led by
Albrecht Wolfram, who, beyond securing the valley, is on a secret
mission. The soldiers and the women are understandably wary of each
other, but as the occupiers relax now that they are off the front
lines, and as winter deepens and the women need help with their
livestock that only the men can provide, both sides open up…
slightly, tentatively, and not without missteps as they learn that
everyone has lost much in this war. Albrecht’s sensibilities change
over the winter, and with the hardening of the landscape come
reinvigorating thoughts and emotions. He finds himself drawn towards
Sarah, the youngest wife of the group, who is herself struggling
with her emotions towards her missing husband.
This is a beautifully written, haunting story; the reader can
feel the women’s heartbreak and sorrow and can see the striking
Olchon Valley, which is alternately threatening and heavenly. Sheers
has won awards for his poetry and non-fiction, and more plaudits are
in his future for this astounding novel.
-- Helene Williams
IMMORTAL
Traci L.
Slatton, Delta, 2008, $14.00, pb, 528pp, 9780385339742
Traci L. Slatton’s highly inventive and lush debut novel follows
Luca Bastardo across the 14th and 15th centuries in his search for
his parents and for his own salvation. An orphan lost as a babe on
the streets of Florence, Luca manages a bare-bones existence
until—blessed and cursed by his outstanding beauty—as a very young
boy he is kidnapped by murderous Silvano, who forces Luca to work in
his brothel where children are used as prostitutes. But Luca has a
gift: the ability to transport his mind to other realms, where the
beauty of great works of art soothes him while he is forced to
“work.” Luca has another gift, too. He does not age as others do,
only growing a bit taller and filling out physically as the years
pass. Or is this a curse? Is Luca a sorcerer or a freak and worthy
of burning, as his enemies claim?
Space limits all the good things that might be said about
this remarkable book; suffice it to say Luca escapes his captor—only
to face Silvano’s progeny across the ages. Along the way, in vibrant
conversations with luminaries of the Italian Renaissance (Giotto,
Petrarca, Cosimo de’ Medici), Luca questions the wisdom of honoring
a God whom he can only see as cruel. In his experience, beauty and
art are the brothers of light and lead to salvation.
Driving Luca Bastardo through this compelling story is his
root longing for a wife and a family of his own. Though Immortal
at times seems relentlessly cruel, it is beautifully conceived and
written and asks such questions as: What is history, the great
swatches of events or the sum of individual lives? Which is more
important?
The very highest recommendation. --
Alana White
VIENNA BLOOD
Frank Tallis, Random House, 2008,
$15.00/C$24.95, pb, 485pp, 9780812977639
In this, the second installment of the Liebermann Papers, Tallis, a
practicing clinical psychologist, beautifully evokes the upheaval in
the highest echelons of Viennese society at the turn of the 20th
century.
Max Liebermann is a clinical psychologist, a protégé of
sorts of Freud, and the closest friend and confidant of Detective
Oscar Rheinhardt. When Rheinhardt is asked to investigate a grisly
quadruple homicide reminiscent of Jack the Ripper, he calls upon Max
to assist in the investigation and to develop a psychological
profile of the killer. What kind of mind is driven to such
unspeakable acts of horror, Rheinhardt wants to know, and can he be
stopped before committing additional atrocities?
Before the pair is able to figure out the pattern,
other murders are committed – but what is the underlying cohesive
connector here? Max and Oscar, both also trying to live their own
lives and sort out their priorities, are thrust into the world of
secret societies that threatens the very underpinnings of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire and their own lives and principles.
This is not one of those breezy mysteries, but a
disturbing, dark voyage into the Vienna of 100 years ago, a world on
the brink of dramatic change. Tallis is impressive in his ability to
develop what sometimes becomes a complex plotline, and the subtexts
and super-texts add to the drama. Max and Oscar are a terrific pair,
playing off one another with dexterity. Vienna becomes a virtual
character in this book – a place with a soul, peopled by angels and
demons.
I enjoyed this book immensely and highly recommend it. --
Ilysa Magnus
OF MERCHANTS AND HEROES
Paul Waters, Macmillan, 2008, £14.99, hb,
471pp, 9780230530317
Set around 200 BC in Rome and Greece, Paul Waters’ first novel is a
well-written and intelligent tale. Marcus, aged just fourteen,
witnesses the murder of his father by pirates and makes a vow with
Mars to exact vengeance on the leader of the group. Despite his
relative youth, this inner determination and direction spurs Marcus
to forge a career as a military leader and diplomat. He plays a
prominent and heroic role in Rome’s struggle against Philip of
Macedon (the II, not the more famous V), who indirectly threatened
Rome through his occupation of various Greek city-states. But this
book is much more than a narrative of political-military events.
Marcus’s love for the beautiful Greek athlete and soldier, Menexenos
– together with loyalty, bravery and conviction to do that which is
right, and the myopia, jealousies and brutal violence of the human
experience – helps forge him into a decent but still vulnerable
human being.
I am not an expert in this period of classical history and so
cannot comment on the historical accuracy, or otherwise, of the
novel. Yet Paul Waters has achieved that which is very difficult:
creating a feeling of authenticity in that Marcus and his fellow
characters are not just 21st century figures transported
back in time, but live in a culture, milieu and essence that is
genuine and fundamentally different from ours. This is an admirable
read. -- Doug Kemp
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