The Historical Novels Review: Editors' Choice Titles for August 2010

Island Beneath The Sea
Isabel Allende, Harper, 2010, $26.99, hb, 464pp, 9780061993626 / Fourth Estate, 2010, £18.99, hb, 400pp, 9780007348640
    Isabel Allende is at the top of her game in Island Beneath the Sea, a seductive, sprawling historical novel set in Haiti and New Orleans in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries.
    Zarité is a young slave bought by a French nobleman, Valmorain, to help care for his mentally unstable Spanish bride on a Saint-Domingue sugar plantation. She soon experiences the fate of many female slaves, and gives birth to a son who Valmorain callously sends away. However, when Zarité proves herself irreplaceable taking care of Valmorain’s white son, Maurice, the master allows her to keep their second child, a daughter by the name of Rosette. These twin ties are enough to keep Zarité from racing to freedom with her young lover, a runaway slave who has a prominent role in the bloody slave revolt, but her price for saving Valmorain's life—and getting them all out of Saint-Domingue—is a paper promising Zarité and her daughter their freedom. After moving to a plantation in New Orleans, Valmorain neglects his promise, and this leads to trouble not only for Zarité and Rosette, but also for Valmorain's only son, Maurice, who grows up determined to be a different sort of man than his father.
    Isabel Allende is a fabulous storyteller who brings to life a world of disparate characters and makes the reader care—even for the very worst of them. The author effortlessly portrays slave life as well as the fine gradations of New Orleans’ white and multi-colored society. Once again, Ms. Allende has written the kind of novel that you swiftly sink into; the kind that you wish would never end. -- Lisa Ann Verge

CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH HITLER
Emma Craigie, Short Books, 2010, £6.99, pb, 204pp, 9781906021894
    On 22nd April 1945, Helga Goebbels entered Hitler’s Bunker in Berlin. She was 12 years old and was accompanied by her five brothers and sisters. Ten days later she was dead, having been given cyanide by her mother.
    Her life, during the days leading up to that final devastating act, is full of speculation about the war, hope for the future and a little fear. All of which are curiously highlighted by the daily ritual of eating chocolate cake with Hitler. Helga and her siblings sing songs to entertain the adults, play with a litter of puppies, moan about the boredom and generally while away the hours together. But the adults are all behaving strangely and no-one seems to know how or when they will be able to get away.
    The details of Helga’s final days can be briefly put together using eyewitness accounts and surviving written records. Emma Craigie has taken these sketches and put them together to produce a fictionalised account of her thoughts and fears during that time. It is a masterful yet intensely harrowing work. The sense of foreboding is as claustrophobic as the bunker itself, and the fact that the reader knows the awful truth of what is to come makes it an almost painful read. Utterly spellbinding and utterly disturbing.
-- Sara Wilson

ALCHEMY AND MEGGY SWANN
Karen Cushman, Clarion, 2010, $16.00, hb, 176pp, 9780547231846
    Karen Cushman’s previous novels, including The Midwife’s Apprentice and Catherine, Called Birdy, have opened doors to distant times for young readers, using vivid, gripping scenes that invite them in, heart and soul. Her prose is spiked with emotion and gritty realism. Her characters are endearing without being saccharin. In her latest novel for children, Alchemy and Meggy Swann, Ms. Cushman proves again her flare for creating an adventure that tugs at the heart even as it entertains.
    Heroine Meggy Swann, raised in a country village, is new to London, having been sent for by her father. But she isn’t what he’d hoped for, as she is lame and forced to “wabble about” painfully from place to place with the aid of homemade walking sticks, and appears incapable of aiding in his experiments in alchemy. Unwanted by her mother, scorned by her father, bitter at her lot in life, Meggy sets out to improve her life.
    Although the challenges of surviving Elizabethan life are considerable—with its rogues, thieves, filth, and neighbors who taunt her as a cripple and therefore the work of the Devil—she rallies her wit and sharp tongue and tackles life with gusto. Entertaining, inspiring, steeped in realism and just plain great adventure—this is a novel young readers will soak up with enthusiasm.
-- Kathryn Johnson

AMANDINE
Marlena De Blasi, Ballantine, 2010, $25.00, hb, 336pp, 9780345507341
    This first novel by bestselling author Marlena de Blasi takes us on a wondrous journey of love and longing and reveals how deeply rooted is our need to belong.
    Sent to a French orphanage as an infant, Amandine grows up knowing nothing of her family. Although she is raised by Solange, a warm and affectionate young woman, she nonetheless longs for her real mother. Unknown to Amandine, her grandmother, the Countess Valeska, has forbidden anyone from disclosing her true origins. She is never to know she was born out of wedlock and that her mother belongs to one of Poland's oldest and noblest aristocratic families. The Countess has convinced herself she is acting out of love. To spare her delicate Andzelika more shame, she tells her the child has died. And yet, she leaves with the child one compelling clue.
    Although Amandine is born in 1931, it is the early 1940s that form the most dramatic backdrop of the story. When Solange and Amandine leave the convent for a two-day journey to Solange's childhood home, they unknowingly begin a perilous and seemingly unending trip across German-occupied France. But this is not a story about the horrors of war, even though they encounter them. Ultimately it is a story of hope, determination, and even the heroic kindness of a few strangers.
    Marlena de Blasi has given us a timeless tale of the power of love. Her deep understanding of Polish society and culture endow her story with unquestionable authenticity. Her storytelling talent is nothing short of brilliant. I will leave it to you to discover for yourself how mother and daughter are finally reunited. I promise you will not be disappointed. -- Veronika Pelka

FALL OF GIANTS
Ken Follett, Dutton, 2010, $36.00/C$45.00, hb, 1008pp, 9780525951650 / Macmillan, 2010, £17.99, hb, 640pp, 9780230710078
    This ambitious novel, the first of a projected trilogy covering most of the 20^th century, tells the story of five interrelated families—American, German, Russian, English and Welsh—as they negotiate the tremendous events of the First World War and the Russian Revolution. Through the various characters—and there are quite a few—we witness the First World War in the trenches and in the halls of government, from each side of the conflict. Revolutions on the home front, from women’s suffrage to the rise of the workers, keep pace. It is a period of intense change, a time when giants, be they royalty, tradition, or whole nations, are destined to fall.
    Follett’s story builds like the coming of far-off artillery fire. Barely rumbling at first, the tempo quickens until it breaks in a crescendo of world-changing events. With Follett’s considerable talents as a storyteller, one experiences a fast-paced, unforgettable journey with characters rich in emotion and intellect. These are people we care about. We feel the plight of an unwed mother trying to survive in a society that affords her few rights and little help. We’re with the workers of St Petersburg, oppressed by the brutal regime of the Tsar. Although personalized through the lives of these and others, the history is not trivialized. This period is described accurately – even one well versed in history may pick up something new – yet it manages to be superbly entertaining as well. This excellent work is destined to be a classic, and holds great promise for the following two novels.
    A sweeping epic with the pace of a thriller, I could scarcely put it down. My only problem is waiting the two years for the release of the next volume.
-- Ken Kreckel

THE WONDER OF CHARLIE ANNE
Kimberly Newton Fusco, Knopf, 2010, $16.99/C$21.99, hb, 256pp, 9780375861048
    Charlie Anne’s mother has died in childbirth, and the Depression has forced her father to go north to find a job. Charlie Anne and her siblings have to endure cousin Mirabel as a stand-in parent. Mirabel is determined to “civilize” Charlie Anne, forcing her to listen to passages from an etiquette book on how young ladies should behave. There’s no escape via school, because the townspeople can’t afford to pay a teacher. But that’s fine with Charlie Anne, who endured humiliation from the previous teacher for not trying hard enough to learn to read.
    Then a neighbor brings home a new young wife, Rosalyn, along with her adopted African American daughter, Phoebe, who is Charlie Anne’s age. Mirabel forbids Charlie Anne to associate with them, but she becomes friends with Phoebe anyway, and enjoys Rosalyn’s help and encouragement. When Rosalyn offers to open the school and teach with Phoebe’s help, the townspeople refuse to have their children taught by a “colored.” Will Charlie Anne be courageous enough to stand up for her new friends against Mirabel and the whole town?
    I was nearly late for work two days in a row because this book was hard to put down. I loved the multiple rounded characters. For example, Mirabel starts out like a fairy tale stepmother, but she grows towards the end. The author kept me guessing as to how a character might act, or where the plot would take me next. The story has an element of whimsy, when lonely Charlie Anne holds conversations with both the family’s cow and her dead mother’s spirit. While the ending seems almost too good to be true, I still enjoyed the book very much and plan to watch for Fusco’s next book. -- B.J. Sedlock

THE ASTRONOMER
Lawrence Goldstone, Walker and Company, 2010, $24.00, hb, 304pp, 9780802719867
    Do not – I repeat – do not start the last one hundred pages of Lawrence Goldstone’s The Astronomer if anything or anyone will demand your attention before you finish it. Warm the coffee, bolt the door, turn off the phone, and then settle in for takeoff.
    The novel is set primarily in 16th-century France, at a time when the Reformation and new scientific ideas were challenging the Catholic power structure. Through protagonist Amaury Faverges, the reader is brought into a number of communities involved in that struggle, from the dreary and brutally austere college of theology where the opening scenes are set, to the secret meeting rooms of persecuted Lutherans, to the French court of the self-absorbed King François and the open-minded court of his sister Marguerite of Navarre, and finally to the cloistered tower of physician-astronomer Copernicus in Poland. Along the way, freethinking Amaury’s ideas are challenged as frequently as his life is threatened, and simple ideas of right and wrong, heresy and piety, heroism and cowardice give way to a more nuanced, although sadder and more skeptical view of humankind. Horrific scenes of brutality in the streets contrast with cool and almost bloodless depictions of the halls of power.
    The tension rises toward a tumultuous conclusion, as Amaury braves the nearly impenetrable wilderness and brutal weather of Poland to arrive at Copernicus’ solitary hideaway before the scholar can be murdered and twenty years of work proving the heliocentric theory can be destroyed. The last few pages of this vivid and lucidly written novel reveal that nothing in life turns out quite as predicted, but that reinvention of the self in new circumstances is always possible, and that being true to oneself may lead to a happier, fuller life. -- Laurel Corona

A SUMMER WITHOUT DAWN
Agop J. Hacikyan and Jean-Yves Soucy, Interlink, 2010, $20.00, pb, 545pp, 978156656809 / Saqi, 2000, £17.95, 545pp, 9780863565380
This is the compelling story of a family caught up in the deportation and extermination of Armenians during the Great War. In the summer of 1915, Vartan Balian, a former writer for the current government’s opposition, is a target for execution. In prison, with his whereabouts unknown, his family is forced to join the Armenian population of Sivas, a small town in Turkey, on a forced march. With only the belongings that could fit into an oxcart, the Armenians are forced to travel to their new home, where they are told that they will live separate from the Turk population. Many Armenians will die or will be sold into slavery on this march. After escaping from his prison, Vartan travels throughout the country for three years in search of his wife, Maro, and their son, Tomas.
This is a remarkable, unforgettable novel of survival based upon the true story of the ethnic cleansing by the Turkish government during the First World War. The novel is well-written with fascinating and memorable characters, both Turks and Armenians, who are caught up in the government’s extermination of millions of people. Translated into English from French, this novel was first published in 1991. I highly recommend this book to all who wish to learn more about this tragedy, an event in world history that still is not recognized by the present Turkish government as having actually occurred. -- Jeff Westerhoff

DAYS OF GRACE
Catherine Hall, Viking, 2010, $24.95/C$31.00, hb, 294pp, 9780670021765 / Portobello, 2009, £10.99, pb, 304pp, 9781846271830
    Nora Lynch is sent to the countryside at the start of World War II. She is selected by Grace Rivers and her family to come live with them in the rectory in Kent. Nora’s desolation at leaving her mother in London soon changes to joy and wonder at the situation in which she finds herself, with soft blankets, what she sees as incredible amounts of food, stimulating lessons given by Grace’s father, and the pleasures of the land. No longer are there only the sharp angles and corners of the city to look at. Nora becomes increasingly aware of the tensions between Grace’s parents and the effect that this is having on Grace. Grace has become the center of her world, and Nora struggles with her feelings, which have moved beyond friendship. But then something happens that allows her to stay with the Rivers family no longer.
    Grace’s story takes place both in the past and the present, in which her existence is attenuated. She spends most of her time just looking out her window. She becomes aware of a young woman sitting at the window of the house across the street. One day, she notices that this woman is missing, and becomes uneasy when the entire day passes with no sight of her. Nora girds herself and ventures across the street to find out what has happened, and thus begins the touching relationship between Nora and Rose.
    Chapters set in the past and in the present are skillfully interspersed, with hints in one making readers long to find out what happened in the other. This is a first novel, yet it is written with the assurance of an experienced writer. I felt privileged to spend time with Nora and Grace. This is a gem of a novel.
-- Trudi E. Jacobson

THE BELLS
Richard Harvell, Shaye Areheart, 2010, $24.00, hb, 384pp, 9780307590527
    When I look at my copy of The Bells sitting in front of me, I cannot believe it lies there immobile and lifeless. The sounds and music within its pages should make the book throb and vibrate across the table. During the time I spent entranced with this story, my body rang like the bells within its pages.
    The Bells is a fictional autobiography, a letter written by a castrati father to his son, explaining how their relationship came to be. Moses Froben is born in a remote Swiss village to a deaf-mute woman who finds her one great pleasure (apart from her love for her son) in the vibrations she feels ringing the massive bells in her village's church. These bells are so loud that the villagers clamp their hands to their ears, but the sound has a different effect on Moses, giving him an almost magical ability to hear and dissect sounds, near and far. When the village priest (his father) discovers that Moses is not deaf like his mother, the man attempts to drown Moses in a river. Moses is rescued by traveling monks, Nicolai and Remus, and taken to the monastery at St. Gall. Here his angelic voice is discovered by the choir master and preserved for all time by a horrible act of castration.
    Surprisingly, The Bells is a love story, for Moses falls in love with a woman who is forbidden to him. The Bells is also a mystery—for how can Moses, a castrati, a musico, be the father of the recipient of this novel-length letter? Finally, The Bells is music. Harvell’s magical prose gives sound to Moses' life: the bells, the arias, and the uneven breath of true love. -- Elizabeth Caulfield Felt

THE QUICKENING
Michelle Hoover, Other Press, 2010, 14.95, pb, 224pp, 9781590513460
    Michelle Hoover’s debut novel is noteworthy. Based loosely on a family history written by her great-grandmother, Hoover gives a moving account of Iowan farm life in the early part of the 20th century. The story centers on Enidina Current and Mary Morrow, who are neighbors thrown together by circumstances rather than commonality. It reveals their story in alternating viewpoints, and there is heartache in the telling.
    They are as different as two women can be. “Eddie” is robust and capable of working hard to make their farm something of value, a woman who loves her husband and longs for children she may never be able to have. Mary is almost too fragile for farm life and feels a need to keep her home and children set apart from the harshness of everyday farm life. Her husband, Jack, feels betrayed on their wedding night, and their marriage is stormy from the start. She seeks solace in the local church with the minister, who takes advantage of her neediness. Her youngest son, different from his brothers, is unloved by his father, who is hard to the point of cruelty; this cruelty eventually spills over to touch the lives of Enidina and her family. When the Depression pits neighbor against neighbor, Jack nearly ruins the Currents with his demands. Mary’s final betrayal of them is a culmination of all the pain and rejection of the past forty years of her own life.
    The author admits to the difficulty of writing about these Iowan farm people who are known for keeping their feelings closed off, but she written a good story. The prose is so beautiful at times you’ll catch yourself reading a sentence twice. I highly recommend this book. -- Susan Zabolotny

DAUGHTER OF FIRE AND ICE
Marie-Louise Jensen, OUP, 2010, £5.99, pb, 336pp, 9780192728814
    This story begins in Viking Norway where Thora, a young girl skilled in healing, is taken from her family by Bjorn Svanson, a local Viking chieftain who has angered the king with his demands and intends fleeing to Iceland. Thora's father owes tribute to Svanson but he takes Thora instead with her box of dried herbs and medicinal plants. Thora provides a strong narrative viewpoint. She is taken, along with a slave, to Svanson's boats at the fjord. The slave kills Svanson and takes his identity along with his boats and the other slaves on board, and they set off to Iceland.
    Thora possesses a useful ability in seeing people's auras which manifest themselves in varying colours. As well as a healer, she is a seer and has visions of what is to come. By these means she knows who to trust and is a useful person to have around.
    Some of the chapters bear the name of seasons, such as Chapter One which is Midsummer or Midsumar, in the Viking fashion. An introductory historical note explains the naming of seasons from the old Icelandic calendar and that the names of the characters are taken from the oral genealogies handed down through the generations. The author spent two months in Iceland researching the book and the convincing topographical and historical detail is evidence of this.
    The use of language is appropriate for the contemporary reader, with appropriate references to the Viking gods and belief in blood sacrifice. The plot is excellently constructed, giving the reader a true sense of strangeness as the travellers encounter earthquakes and volcanoes. I think this book would appeal especially to teenage girls and readers will look forward to the author's next Viking story. -- Julie Parker

THE REPORT
Jessica Francis Kane, Graywolf, 2010, $15.00, pb, 256pp, 9781555975654 / Portobello, Mar 2011, £12.99, pb, 256pp, 9781846272790
    On March 3, 1943, 173 people died as they entered a tube station serving as an air raid shelter in Bethnal Green, in London’s East End.
    The deaths were not due to a bomb. Despite fears that the Germans would retaliate after the recent heavy British bombing of Berlin, they never attacked that night. What happened to cause those arriving to create such a crush that so many people lost their lives?
    This true event is at the heart of this riveting novel, which alternates between 1943 and 1973, the 30^th anniversary of the event. A young filmmaker, hoping to document what happened three decades earlier, aspires to gain the cooperation of Laurence Dunne, the magistrate who was asked to investigate the tragedy immediately after it occurred. Dunne, and the reader, hear a variety of interpretations of the incident as Dunne interviews survivors and medical experts. We also hear how the event affected those who live in the neighborhood, including the priest of the church just across from the tube station, and Ada Barber, who runs a neighborhood grocery with her husband.
    The author has captured the feel of the war period exquisitely. The constraints, uncertainties, and fears are vivid. Dunne does his utmost to write a report that does not provide a cover-up of the situation, and that acknowledges the strengths of the neighborhood’s inhabitants. The focus is not on finding the person responsible for the mass blockage in the station, but guilt finds its way into the feelings of a number of the characters. I highly recommend this novel, the author’s first. -- Trudi E. Jacobson

Justinian, The Sleepless One
Ross Laidlaw, Polygon, 2010, £12.99, pb, 320pp, 9781846971587
    This is the story of Uprauda Ystock, son of an illiterate peasant who might have been destined to spend his life working the land had it not been for his mother. Appealing to her brother Roderic she managed to secure for her son an education and a foot on the first rung of the ladder to the Senate.
    As Petrus, Uprauda quickly learns how to progress and improve his situation, but not always by the most honest means. When challenged to a fight that he fears he might lose, Petrus injures himself and claims that his opponent cheated. This pseudo-victory gives him no pleasure, and the guilt haunts him for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, Petrus succeeds in repaying his uncle’s patronage by speaking on his behalf, leading to Roderic becoming the emperor Justin, therefore Petrus becomes Justinian and as such succeeds him.
    The love of Justinian’s life appears as Theodora, daughter of a bear-keeper and former actress with a colourful past. As the stronger character she dominates and manipulates affairs and when Justinian succumbs to plague he is totally dependent on her. Understandably, when Theodora dies he is distraught, seeking solace in endless work. He is thereafter known as, ‘The Sleepless One’.
    Justinian was a man beset by self-doubt, a flawed character who tried to do what he believed to be the right thing. Although he never took part in any military campaign his ambition was to expand the Eastern Roman Empire’s territory but he succeeded only in the impoverishment of the Empire, the ruin of Italy and the final parting of the ways between the churches of East and West.
    Spanning the years from 482-565 ad, Ross Laidlaw’s fictionalised history, including copious notes, maps, appendices and afterword, completes a sterling work that breathes life into a character that, for me, was an unknown from the distant past. -- Ann Oughton

A PLAGUE OF SINNERS
Paul Lawrence, Beautiful Books, 2010, £8.99, pb, 438pp, 9781905636914
    A Plague of Sinners is the second chronicle of Harry Lytle, newly-appointed King’s Agent, and follows on from The Sweet Smell of Decay (reviewed in May’s HNR). Now working for the king under the authority of Lord Arlington, Harry, and his valiant companion Dowling the Butcher, is tasked with investigating the grisly murder of the Earl of St Albans. This investigation is hampered at every stage as various antagonists intervene, further murders occur, and the plague ravages the city of London.
    Harry is at his most splendid when up against impossible odds, and his own violent death is threatened at every turn of the page. But still our dogged hero sets himself to catch a serial killer who takes pleasure in the pain and fear he inflicts.
    With all the glory and dissolution of Restoration London as its backdrop, this novel is a fine rollicking romp that serves its humour pitch black and its terror in Technicolor. Harry Lytle is a great character, full of bluster, wit, cunning and morality. The action never lets up, and the reader is kept guessing right to the final pages.
    A strong stomach may be required, and those of a squeamish disposition might spend much time flinching, but this is historical mystery at its very best.
-- Sara Wilson

MATTERHORN
Karl Marlantes, Atlantic Monthly, 2010, $24.95/C$34.50, hb, 599pp, 9780802119285 / Corvus, 2010, £16.99, hb, 592pp, 9781848874947
Historical novels of young men at war play a critical role in popular acceptance of this genre. First-time novelist Karl Marlantes’s lengthy novel on U.S. Marines in Vietnam has earned a place on bookshelves with Red Badge of Courage and All Quiet on the Western Front. A combat Marine in Vietnam himself, Marlantes presents the story through the experiences of Lieutenant Waino Mellas and the Marines of Bravo Company. The young men face the challenge of attacking an enemy hilltop position, the “Matterhorn” of the title, in the forbidding terrain near the border with Laos. Lieutenant Mellas is an introspective officer who learns to conquer his uncertainties and fear while simultaneously leading a diverse group of Marines whose backgrounds, actions, and attitudes accurately outline the real Marines on whom they are undoubtedly based.
The combat action is intense and at times seems nonstop. The author writes with both conviction and passion as the fighting takes the battle-hardened Marines up the deadly hillsides of Matterhorn. This novel has been critically acclaimed by reviewers from The New York Times Book Review down to shoppers I have come upon in bookstores. Campaign with Mellas, Cassidy, Sheller, Hawke and their comrades towards Matterhorn, and you will agree this work is a powerful example of the historical novel at is best.
-- John R. Vallely

THE DOCTOR AND THE DIVA
Adrienne McDonnell, Viking, 2010, $26.95/C$33.50, hb, 422pp, 9780670021888 / Sphere, Apr. 2011, £6.99, pb, 432pp, 9780751543605
    This amazing debut novel, based on the lives of McDonnell’s son’s ancestors, begins in Boston in 1903, when the opera singer Erika and her wealthy husband Peter consult Dr. Ravell, an obstetrician who helps couples conceive. After years of marriage, they have not had a child. Dr. Ravell feels an immediate attraction to his beautiful patient and makes a terrible decision which would ruin his career if discovered. Later, after Erika gives birth to a stillborn daughter, Ravell is forced to leave Boston because of a scandal involving another patient and goes to live on a coconut plantation on Trinidad. Erika and Peter, who have not given up their hopes of having a living child, join him there, and, while Peter goes on an expedition to South America, Erika and Ravell have an affair, and she gives birth to a son. But there is one other thing Erika has always longed for: to have a career on the stages of the greatest opera houses in the world. At the time, this meant moving to Italy.
    She makes the agonizing decision to abandon her child and move to Florence, but she feels tremendous guilt, especially when her career fails to take off. And, after several years, she has never forgotten her love for Ravell.
    McDonnell makes the reader care about her complex characters and understand the reasons behind their decisions. Erika and Ravell are both faced with horrible dilemmas, and whether you agree with their choices or not, the author always lets you understand their motivations. The author also makes the settings come to life: the tropical island of Trinidad is described in loving detail, and McDonnell draws the reader into the operatic world of Italy. This is, quite simply, one of the best novels I've read all year. -- Vicki Kondelik

GLORIOUS
Bernice L. McFadden, Akashic, 2010, $15.95, pb, 250pp, 9781936071114
    Easter Vanetta Bartlett, born in Waycross, Georgia, sees her sister raped and violated in 1910, an act that quickly drives her family to insanity and death. In the Jim Crow South, a black person is presumed to either be at fault or misunderstand what occurred. Easter has had her first devastating dose of reality, and so her solution for the time is to leave and create a new life.
    The bevy of characters throughout this story of Easter’s life is so gripping that one can’t wait to get back to learn about Rain, a bisexual drama queen of the highest order; Meredith, a rich white woman friend who marries a Puerto Rican man whom she eventually discards in a flabbergasting manner; a husband, Colin, whose hatred of Marcus Garvey kindles into a consuming flame for reasons that will astonish those who have a pristine picture of this revolutionary character; the writers of the Harlem Renaissance, who are just beginning their ascendancy into literary renown; and many more minor characters who are just as fascinating in their unique, astonishing style. Easter has a very special gift that some will admire beyond words and of which others will dare to deprive her: the gift of crafting words to create sanity in her own inner landscape and clarity to the outer world about the changing world around them.
    The “dream deferred,” as described by Langston Hughes, is portrayed in the language renowned for this literary movement, so exquisitely presented. This reviewer believes that Glorious is bound to become a classic work read in schools and celebrated where great writing is truly appreciated. What a delight! -- Viviane Crystal

THE MISTAKEN WIFE
Rose Melikan, Sphere, 2010, £11.99, pb, 402pp, 9781847442871 / Touchstone, 2010, $15.00, pb, 432pp, 9781416560906
    1797 and in the aftermath of the French Revolution, General Bonaparte’s armies are sweeping across Europe. The British government is deeply concerned about Bonaparte’s territorial ambitions, suspecting that invading Britain is next on his agenda. Their secret contacts have brought the unwelcome news that the newly independent USA may be considering an alliance with Revolutionary France.
    Meanwhile, the independent-minded Mary Finch embarks on another assignment for the reclusive Government agent, Cuthbert Shy. He wants her to go to France and persuade the American delegation that it is in their interests to remain neutral. It all sounds horribly vague and Mary is well aware that it is also exceedingly dangerous. The Terror has ended, but arbitrary imprisonment and executions have not. Moreover, she must deceive her ‘dearest friend’, Captain Robert Holland, as to her mission – especially the fact that she will be travelling as the wife of an American portrait painter hoping for new clients in Paris. Shy has not told her that Captain Holland will also be in France on an equally dangerous mission to find out about a new invention the Americans are trying to interest the French in – a ‘submarine’; it must be either stolen or sabotaged.
    I was gripped by this book from the very first page. Post-Revolutionary Paris comes across as a city teetering on the edge of paranoia; the secret police are everywhere. But there are also new opportunities. The characters are fully three-dimensional (the villain is particularly creepy because he seems so innocuous at first) and the situations Mary and Holland find themselves in are tense, dramatic and always unexpected. I was on the edge of my seat, desperate to know what would happen next. This is a quality book, told by a master storyteller. Highly recommended. -- Elizabeth Hawksley

A LITTLE FOLLY
Jude Morgan, Headline Review, 2010, £19.99, hb, 376pp, 9780755307661
    Louisa and Valentine Carnell have lived a constrained life under the domination of a strict and old-fashioned father. On his death they decide to throw caution to the wind and embark on a lively round of merriment as they head to London. Louisa is finally able to decline her father’s favoured suitor, Pearce Lynley, and search for one of her own, perhaps even Pearce’s brother, Francis. Valentine is less circumspect and indulges a little too heavily in gambling, then falls in love with Lady Harriet Eversholt – a married woman.
    Throughout their London sojourn the siblings are supported by their great friend, James Tresilian, who is always there to offer advice and comfort. The series of little follies that the Carnells commit help both the siblings realise what is really important to them. And, perhaps more significantly, who is really important to them.
    A Little Folly is a delightful concoction, one that manages to emulate all the sharp observation and wit of Austen, with all the dash and romance of Heyer. And it has a plot to rival both those Greats. It is effortlessly entertaining, but has greater depth and soul than a Regency romance might reasonably be expected to have, which makes for a refreshing change. The sense of historical accuracy is impeccable and the characters perfectly drawn. This novel cannot be recommended highly enough. -- Sara Wilson

A TYPE OF BEAUTY
Patricia O’Reilly, Cape Press, 2010, £9.99, pb, 312pp, 9780956363206
    This is the story of Kathleen, or as she was familiarly known, Kate Newton. Her short life was dazzling in both its variety and drama. She is perhaps best known for her love affair with the French artist Jacques Tissot, which caused a huge scandal in the conservative society of Victorian England. Their passionate relationship takes centre stage in A Type of Beauty, but the elements of her life before that are equally interesting.
    The book opens with Kate forced back from London to her childhood home of India to marry a man she has never met. Her life quickly unravels, partly through her own honesty, and soon she is back in London with an unconsummated marriage, pregnant by another man of the worst moral character, and with a divorce pending. But Kate is a courageous woman of independent thought, and she quietly refuses to bow to the societal restrictions of the day. When she travels to Paris with her sister, she finally meets happiness in the person of Jacques Tissot. Theirs is an instant and intense chemistry, and together they manage to overcome a variety of obstacles to end up together in London. Kate becomes his artistic inspiration and domestic companion before tragedy strikes once more.
    Patricia O’Reilly renders the emotional landscape of the Victorian era with a sharp wit and vivid imagination and creates the fascinating character of Kate Newton with the subtlety of an artist’s palette. Highly recommended.
-- Gordon O’Sullivan

THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE
Julie Orringer, Knopf, $26.95, 2010, hb, 624pp, 9781400041169 / Viking, 2010, £12.99, hb, 240pp, 9780670914586
    Paris in 1937 is only a dream place for Hungarian Andras Levi, an aspiring architect, until news of a scholarship from the city’s École Spéciale reaches him. His last evening home is spent at the opera with his devoted brother, Tibor, where a bank manager’s wife asks him to take a box to her son, Josèf. Andras goes to tea to collect the box as well as a secret letter from the family matriarch, insisting he post it safely from Paris.
    During his long train journey across several frontiers, Andras notices the threatening presence of the German Nazis and refuses to buy anything in their country, even though he is starving. Further threats to his future arrive via soon-to-be-canceled scholarships for Hungarian Jews, forcing Andras to find employment to continue his studies. At the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre, he meets other Hungarians but none as devastating as Klara, an older woman of the world who becomes his first lover and his obsession. (And the actual recipient of the “secret letter” he mailed upon arrival in Paris.)
    As Hitler’s influence reaches France and factions are formed to root out the Jews, encroaching danger surrounds Andras and his fellow Jewish classmates. Eventually returning to Hungary, Andras is suddenly drafted into a labor camp and surreptitiously joins a friend in publishing underground newsletters against the Nazi regime. Punishment follows, and, grippingly, the story builds up to the atrocities of Hitler’s Final Solution.
    As ambitious as this first novel appears, it never fails to hold the reader, straight through from the innocent beginnings of being young and in love in Paris to the horrifying effects of genocide and hatred that became known as the Holocaust. Told from the rare point of view of Hungarian Jews, it is a compelling read, beautifully written and highly recommended. -- Tess Heckel

POISON: A Novel of the Renaissance
Sara Poole, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2010, $14.99, pb, 416 pp, 0312609832
    Sara Poole, in her new novel, Poison, captures the color and pace of the best contemporary thrillers. The plot is tight, each character clearly drawn. Fans of historical fiction will also be pleased with Poison’s factual and tonal accuracy.
    The setting is perfect for intrigue: Rome, 1492. This is the era of the Borgias whose machinations and decadence rival those of their imperial forebears. The story revolves around Francesca Giordano, fictional daughter of Rodrigo Borgia’s poisoner. When her father is killed, Francesca takes a bold step and herself poisons his successor. Borgia is duly impressed and gives her the job. She becomes a key component in his scheme to acquire the papacy.
    Borgia’s scheme is multi-layered, and ultimately successful as he will, in time, ascend the papal throne as Alexander VI. Through Francesca, we meet his redoubtable offspring, Cesare and Lucrezia, and are led through Rome’s dangerous streets and labyrinthine Jewish ghetto. Along the way a tender relationship develops with a talented glass blower with secrets to hide. However, with Francesca’s discovery of a poison that leaves no traces, the tough-minded young woman engineers the final means and modus operandi for Borgia’s acquisition of the triple tiara. The plan’s execution turns into a series of harrowing adventures reminiscent of Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, with escapades in the Castel San Angelo, the tombs of St. Peter’s basilica, and the crypt of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.
    Poison is a page-turner. It won’t be remembered as a literary work, and its treatment of the Borgias is perhaps too kind, but as a fun read it can’t be beat. Serpent, the second in the series is forthcoming, as well as a third, tentatively titled Malice. I claim first place on the waiting list for both! -- Lucille Cormier

PRIVATE LIFE
Jane Smiley, Knopf, 2010, $26.50, hb, 320pp, 9781400040605 / Faber & Faber, 2010, £12.99, hb, 432pp, 9780571258741
Early on, the heroine of this wonderfully deceptive novel, Margaret, rides a bike along a country road: “covering distance in this solitary manner was marvelously intoxicating…she gripped the handlebars and felt the cold wind lift her hair and, it seemed, her cheeks and eyebrows. The brim of her hat folded back, and the hat itself threatened to fly off her head, but though she gave this a passing thought, she didn’t, could not, stop.” But she does stop, unfortunately, almost at the feet of a man who “looked as if leaning in any direction were impossible for him.”
Margaret marries this man, and her free wild rides are over. Marriage, in the late 19^th century the necessary condition of a respectable woman, has sacrificed her to her crackpot husband and his monomania – that rigid inability to change forecast in her first glimpse of him. The unfolding of this story is heartbreaking and ultimately tragic, and Smiley’s evoking of emotional intensity from the most ordinary events raises her heroine to the status of an Everywoman, crippled by social conventions and shackled to a man who is not worthy of her. This is a hard, angry book, served up in a bland disguise, beautiful and scary and true. -- Cecelia Holland

As a creative writing teacher, I know Jane Smiley from her excellent 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel and had not, until now, read any of her fiction. I shall be remedying this in short order. Private Life is a wonderful novel, sparely written yet full of passion, a simmering pressure cooker of rage and grief on behalf of its heroine, whose lack of self-esteem makes her unable to express these feelings for herself.
The novel follows the life of Margaret Early, from her childhood in post-bellum Missouri, haunted by a hanging she knows she witnessed but cannot remember, through to 1942 in California, by which time she has been married to Andrew, her increasingly eccentric astronomer husband, for almost forty years. This marriage is the novel’s main focus. Like many marriages in fiction, it is a disappointment, but what gives the novel its power and originality is the fact that Margaret sticks it out. She doesn’t abscond with a lover or escape into the supportive network of her women friends, though both possibilities present themselves at different times in her life, because nothing in her upbringing has given her the confidence to do so. Margaret is not a conventional heroine. In many ways she is an everywoman for her generation. The unremarked and unremarkable tragedy of her life is an eloquent and moving testament to the courage and endurance of all respectable women who found themselves trapped in mistaken marriages in the first half of the 20^th century.
Though Margaret’s life is quiet, great historical events do impinge upon it, from the aftermath of the American Civil War, through the San Francisco earthquake of 1905, the Spanish Flu, and both world wars. Andrew’s lifelong obsession with the theories of Einstein is woven with great skill, in ways funny, frightening and utterly heartbreaking, into the fabric of the marriage. Highly recommended. -- Sarah Bower

SWORD AND SONG
Roz Southey, Crème de la Crime, 2010, £7.99, pb, 266pp, 9780956056627
    Charles Patterson, musician by trade and detective by inclination, returns for another 18^th-century murder mystery. This time he is called to the murder of a young prostitute, Nell, who also happened to be loved by his good friend Constable Bedwalters. It becomes apparent that Nell has been murdered because of a tatty old book of church music.
    Whilst trying to track down the killer, Charles is also hired as a resident musician for Edward Alyson’s country house party. There he meets Casper Fischer, an American gentleman searching for an unusual inheritance – a tatty old book of church music.
    Matters are initially complicated when Patterson is attacked at the house party and further by the unexpected appearance of Esther Jerdoun, the older woman who he loves but has foresworn.
    Sword and Song is a rather unusual historical mystery. 18^th-century Newcastle is vividly portrayed, the characters are quirky and charming, and the plot is satisfyingly perplexing. Nothing unusual about that, but here comes the twist. Alongside all the expected elements of the genre, this novel also has a unique selling point. Many of the characters are spirits, tied to the places in which they died but quite able to talk, gossip and lie to the living. Alongside that, there also exists an alternate reality that Charles can step into and out of, a place where time and events differ somewhat to “real” life. This adds a whole new dimension to the novel and lifts it above the ordinary. Well worth looking out for. -- Sara Wilson

FAR ABOVE RUBIES
Anne-Marie Vukelic, Hale, 2010, £18.99, hb, 217pp, 9780709090533
    Catherine Dickens is the subject of Far Above Rubies. She was married not only to one of the most famous novelists of the Victorian era but to a restless, mercurial and often difficult man. As Anne-Marie Vukelic tells us through Catherine’s journal, Catherine was devoted to and in love with a husband who was the constant centre of all things in their lives. For Catherine this was difficult yet often thrilling.
    Catherine’s story does not have a happy ending, but the journey is worth it for the reader, both for the sadness in Catherine’s life as well as the interludes of great happiness. This is a moving portrait of a marriage which ultimately failed and Vukelic tells it well, analysing it with sensitivity, using Catherine’s own viewpoint. Her research is faultless and for those interested in reading more, there are end notes on each chapter. Importantly, Vukelic recreates Catherine’s domestic world convincingly. She shows how Victorian men could legally and emotionally manipulate their wives. Whilst Vukelic portrays Dickens as trying, brilliant and very social, she casts Catherine as patient and tolerant, often anxiously controlling her jealousy of Dickens enthusiasms for his female friends, including her sisters. Moreover, although her Catherine is disappointed, Vukelic is not judgmental of either Catherine or Charles.
    Time and place are authentically portrayed, bringing to life contemporaries such as William Thackeray, Wilkie Collins and the colourful Count D’Orsay. Equally significant are Dickens’ family and Catherine’s relationship with their sons and daughters. Far Above Rubies is beautifully written. I wanted to read more about Catherine’s sisters and Catherine’s visits to America and Italy. My appetite is whetted. This is a fascinating novel about an intriguing Victorian woman. -- Carol McGrath

THE BLIND CONTESSA'S NEW MACHINE
Carey Wallace, Pamela Dorman/Viking, 2010, $23.95/C$$30.00, hb, 224pp, 9780670021895
Eighteen-year-old Contessa Carolina Fantoni lives a charmed life. She has a wealthy family, a beautiful estate, and is about to marry the most eligible bachelor in the region. But just as her future seems to be falling into place, Carolina’s sight begins to falter. Day by day, darkness closes in over her beloved lake house, her books, even the dresses she must don each morning. The only person who truly understands her predicament is Turri – the eccentric inventor who has been her friend from childhood. As Carolina is cut off from communication with her friends and family, Turri builds her a machine, a wondrous device that types letters onto paper and reconnects Carolina to the outside world. The gift sparks an illicit love affair that leads both Turri and Carolina into danger – and proves that love is, and always will be, blind.
Debut author Carey Wallace has crafted a lyrical novel in which each scene is sketched with brushstrokes as spare and beautiful as those of an Impressionist painting. While Wallace’s characters inhabit a near-fantasy world, bounded only loosely by the historical context of early 19th-century Italy, each lives and breathes as a real person with real joys and conflictions. Wallace’s dialogue is witty, her descriptions superb; every sentence holds a surprise. Wise, melancholy, and achingly beautiful, this little book is a gem.
-- Ann Pedtke

BEAUTIFUL ASSASSIN
Michael White, Morrow, 2010, $24.95, hb, 448pp, 9780061691218 / Quercus, 2010, hb, 448 pp, £19.99, 9781847246608 (hb), 978184724615 (pb)
    In 1942, Tat’yana Levchenko, codename “Assassin”, was one of the Red Army’s ace snipers, a Hero of the Soviet Union, who was invited to America by Eleanor Roosevelt herself in order to promote the war effort and then disappeared amidst rumours of espionage.
    In 1996, a journalist finally tracks the elderly Tat’yana down and persuades her to tell her story. And what a story it is, taking us from the horrors of the Eastern Front and the siege of Sevastopol, her childhood in the Ukraine, marriage and motherhood and the devastating events that drove her to enlist, and then the visit to America, where, at first, she is all too ready to condemn the Americans for living up to her image of “pampered capitalists” in spite of the temptations of cream cakes, cocktails and Captain Jack Taylor.
    Tat’yana discovers that a secret and deadly battle is being fought by countries that speak of being allies. Ordered to spy on the First Lady, she has to decide where her loyalties truly lie, but nothing is simple and no-one is who they seem.
    Michael White has written an epic tale of the Second World War and the nascent Cold War. He does not shy away from the brutal, nor the brutalising effects of war, as Tat’yana calmly notches up her kills. She is a thoroughly believable, complex woman, marked by tragedy and torn by conflicting loyalties, between following orders and following her heart. It is through her eyes that we see the vast supporting cast of soldiers, refugees, secret-service men, diplomats and spies, and a diverse range of historical figures who cross her path.
    This book certainly fell into the category of “couldn’t put it down.” Thoroughly recommended. -- Mary Seeley

THE FINAL ACT OF MR SHAKESPEARE
Robert Winder, Little Brown, 2010, £16.99, hb, 446pp, 9781408702062
London 1613, and William Shakespeare returns from Stratford to the oppressive reign of King James. On visiting Sir Walter Raleigh in the Tower, he is “persuaded” to write a play about the reign of Henry VIII. Instead, Shakespeare decides that he will draft a true history of Henry VII, and after receiving some encrypted claims about the first Tudor king’s reign from one Stanyhurst, he is determined to include some incendiary and very dangerous passages about his demise and Henry VIII’s role in this. Shakespeare thus brings together for one final time the King’s Men, and they extemporise the outline of the play until it is ready for Shakespeare to finesse and write a final version. Most of the book is thus focused on the process of creating and developing the Henry VII play. This is a dangerous pursuit for all those involved, and indeed, there is much intrigue, deception suspected treachery and clandestine behaviour.
The basic historical context is sound with the main characters true, although the author freely admits to creating events and massaging others to develop the tale. And indeed, he does this spectacularly well. He digs into the very soul of Shakespeare to examine the man and his dramatic genius, as well as the setting of early 17^th-century London. Winder also makes an impressive attempt at writing this new Henry VII play, most of it in capable and near authentic faux Shakespearean iambic pentameter lines, i.e. five feet beats.
-- Doug Kemp

THE FIFTH SERVANT
Kenneth Wishnia, Morrow, 2010, $25.99, hb, 387pp, 9780061725371
    Sara Paretsky’s cover blurb gets it exactly right: Kenneth Wishnia’s The Fifth Servant is indeed “an extraordinary novel.” Set in 16th-century Prague, it revolves around the murder of a young Christian girl whose mutilated body is found inside a Jewish merchant’s shop. How different individuals and communities within Prague react to the murder illustrates the tensions within and between Jewish and Christian communities, each struggling with religious “freethinking,” and other challenges to the orthodoxy of the past, as well as with their own foibles and idiosyncrasies and those of their neighbors.
    In another’s hands, the resulting novel might end up grim and pedantic, but Wishnia manages to turn the story into something Dickensian in its comic turns, richly drawn cast of characters, and plot twists. Wisecracking newcomer and protagonist Benyamin ben-Akiva struggles to find the evidence that the Jewish merchant is being framed as a means of fanning the ever-present hatred of Jews into open riots. At the same time he is trying to win back his frivolous, estranged wife and break through the suspicions the entrenched Jewish community has about an outsider serving as the new shammes (adminstrator) of one of the synagogues.
    His sleuthing takes him from yeshiva to brothel, from palace to graveyard, where he encounters some of the most engaging secondary characters in recent historical fiction—a Christian butcher’s daughter with the soul of a Talmudic scholar, an herbalist fighting charges of witchcraft, bickering yeshiva students, tough guys, tender hearts, complete idiots and fearless heroes. This book is highly recommended not just for those who like a good read, but for serious students of the craft of fiction writing. -- Laurel Corona

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