Tag: historical fiction challenge

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”1594744769″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children[/amazon_image]Ransom Riggs’s novel [amazon_link id=”1594744769″ target=”_blank” ]Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children[/amazon_link] is part bildungsroman, part gothic fairy tale. Its hero, Jacob Portman, is a teenager living in Florida. He is close to his grandfather, Abe Portman, the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. Abe tells crazy stories about an orphanage in Wales where he grew up, and he shows Jacob the most fantastic photos of the children who lived there—a girl who could fly, a boy who had bees living inside him, and an invisible boy. As Jacob grows up, he stops believing his grandfather’s fantastic stories until he witnesses a terrible attack on his grandfather that makes him question everything. Jacob’s family believes he is unable to cope with the stress of losing his grandfather, and Jacob begins therapy with Dr. Golan. Finally, Jacob decides he must travel to Wales and see the orphanage where his grandfather grew up in order to come to terms with his grandfather’s death. When he arrives, he discovers his grandfather’s wild stories just might be true.

This book was a delight from start to finish. It has moments of laugh-out-loud humor and hair-raising terror. I really liked the way Riggs managed to describe the reason for everything from sideshow “freaks” to cannibalistic serial killers to the Tunguska Event. After reading this book, you’ll look at mysteries in a new way. Most reviewers who read this book remark on the way Riggs manages to seamlessly weave bizarre photographs into his narrative, but it’s true. I would not read this one the Kindle. You will not enjoy the full effect of the photographs in that way. Jacob is a likeable hero; in fact, I liked all of the characters in this book. I also enjoyed the time-travel aspect. A word of warning: the book is ripe for a sequel, and if you pick it up, who knows how long you’ll have to wait until the next installment (and I hope there will be one!). This novel is one of the most unusual, fun, and absorbing novels I read this year. Perfect for the R.I.P. Challenge!

Rating: ★★★★★

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The Ballad of Frankie Silver, Sharyn McCrumb

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”0451197399″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]The Ballad of Frankie Silver[/amazon_image]Sharyn McCrumb’s ballad novel, [amazon_link id=”0451197399″ target=”_blank” ]The Ballad of Frankie Silver[/amazon_link], entwines the stories of Frankie Silver, believed to be the first woman executed by the state of North Carolina, and Fate Harkryder, a poor white mountain man about to face death in Tennessee’s electric chair. The two cases become connected in Sheriff Spencer Arrowood’s mind right after Fate Harkryder is found guilty of the murders of Emily Stanton and Mike Wilson, UNC students hiking the Appalachian Trail. When the Stanton/Wilson murders took place, Arrowood was a deputy sheriff working under Nelse Miller, sheriff at the time, but Arrowood was the official who investigated the crime. The evidence seemed rock solid, but Nelse Miller took his deputy to the graves of Charlie Silver—no, graves is not a typo because Silver was buried as the parts of him were discovered—and tells Arrowood that he has only been unsure about two cases in their neck of the woods: the case of Fate Harkryder, and the case of Frankie Silver.

Frankie Silver is the subject of an Appalachian murder ballad. She was accused and convicted of murdering her husband, Charlie Silver, with an ax and dismembering him. At the time, both were teenagers: Frankie was 18 and Charlie was 19. They had been married less than a couple of years, but they had an infant daughter, Nancy. Frankie Silver was born Frances Stewart to Isaiah and Barbara Howell Stewart. She had two brothers, Jackson, who was older than her, and Blackston, who was about 14. At the time of the murder, Isaiah and Jackson were hunting in Kentucky. Barbara and Blackston were arrested with Frankie, but they were ultimately released when no evidence of their involvement in the crime could be found.

The novel has a dual narrative. The modern storyline of Spencer Arrowood and Fate Harkryder is told in the third person limited, with a focus on Arrowood’s point of view, while the storyline of Frankie Silver is told by Burgess Gaither, a clerk of the court when she was tried and convicted, in the first person point of view. McCrumb employed this same technique in [amazon_link id=”0451202503″ target=”_blank” ]The Songcatcher[/amazon_link] (review). In her afterword, McCrumb notes that she feels Frankie Silver’s “case was really about poor people as defendants and rich people as officers of the court, about Celt versus English in developing America, about mountain people versus ‘flatlanders’ in any culture” (393). Given all the research I’ve done on the case is limited to reading this novel (so what do I know), it is a premise that seems to make sense. McCrumb carefully weaves in a story about the kind of justice men of means and reputation in society could expect as compared with that of poor mountain men. Everyone who faces a trial for a crime like Frankie Silver or Fate Harkryder have committed is entitled to representation by an attorney. The courts are supposed to be a great leveling field. Justice is supposed to be blind. But everyone knows that’s not so because ultimately, it is carried out by flawed human beings who bring their own prejudices and beliefs to bear on decisions they make. I think I might be a horrible juror because I think I would just question so much and not be able to make a decision, and I know for a fact I could never decide to send someone to death for a crime. My conscience wouldn’t allow it.

I finished this novel this morning, and I decided to walk up to our local Saturday farmer’s market and mull it over before I wrote this. I think it reminded me a bit of some sad stories in my own family. One is the story of my great-great-great-grandfather, John Jennings. He was a blacksmith in Russellville, Alabama. Russellville is a small town in Franklin County in northern Alabama. He apparently said something at a political rally or in a newspaper article (sources differ on which) that raised the ire of one George C. Almon, a candidate for office. I wonder what John Jennings said because it apparently made Almon angry enough to seek Jennings out to “give him a whipping,” according to a cousin of mine, Arthur Jennings. Arthur reports that Almon had to “take one instead,” as Jennings was a strong blacksmith, after all.

Some time later, Almon went into a hotel across the street from Jennings’s blacksmith shop and told the clerk that he needed a gun to shoot a mad dog down the street. The clerk gave it to him, and he walked across the street with it and shot John Jennings. He died a half hour later. Almon surrendered to the sheriff. His trial took place on June 28 and 29, 1875. He was acquitted of murder—it was determined he acted in self-defense.

If Arthur’s version of this story is true (it was likely passed down through the family to him), then I can’t see how what Almon did is self-defense, but he was certainly more influential politically than John Jennings. Almon prospered in Alabama government and politics. Five years after the murder, Almon was a practicing lawyer in Russellville. He was appointed a probate judge, and in 1886, he was elected to the Alabama State Senate in the 12th district.

I joked in a previous post that the Southern defense that “he needed killing” has been used successfully, but it appears to be true in this case. Newspapers covering the trial at the time seemed to think Jennings was at least partly responsible for his own murder because of whatever it was he had said. His honor besmirched, Almon demanded Jennings answer for it. Jennings’s widow Fannie apparently feared her young sons would grow up and seek revenge for their father’s murder, so she moved the family to Texas. The removal may have accomplished Fannie’s immediate goal of making sure her sons did not meet their father’s fate, but the feeling of ill will about the murder and the fact that the man responsible never answered for it still rankles, and you can hear it any time one of the family talks about it. You can read an excerpt from Memorial Record of Alabama by Hannis Taylor (1893) about Almon’s career. No mention of the murder at all, of course. He lived until 1911 and was buried in the Knights of Pythias cemetery in Russellville. Now, I have no evidence that my ancestor was necessarily poor, but it did take my cousin Jan about 30 years of genealogy research to find out this much about John Jennings’s death, whereas a quick Google search for George C. Almon reveals his prominence (but not his crime, unless you count my own blog posts about it on my genealogy blog).

So what does all that have to do with Frankie Silver or even this novel? The two stories bother me in the same way. The sense that only certain people receive justice, or even mercy (a point McCrumb makes) is something we’d like to believe is long past. Unfortunately, as McCrumb shows us in this novel, it still happens, and perhaps more often than I want to think about. William Faulkner astutely said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Rating: ★★★★★

Full disclosure: I received this book via PaperBackSwap.

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The Songcatcher, Sharyn McCrumb

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”0451202503″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]The Songcatcher[/amazon_image]Sharyn McCrumb’s novel [amazon_link id=”0451202503″ target=”_blank” ]The Songcatcher[/amazon_link] is part of her series of ballad novels, based on Appalachian ballads (which I still maintain is one of the cleverest ideas I’ve ever heard of). The novel is the story of a family who settles in the mountain border of North Carolina and Tennessee and passes down an old Scottish ballad through the family from the eighteenth century to the modern day. The story begins as Lark McCourry, a country music singer born Linda Walker, tries to recall an old song she heard relatives sing at a gathering when she was young. John Walker, her elderly father, with whom she has a contentious relationship, becomes sick and is expected to die soon, so his housekeeper and surrogate daughter Becky Tilden calls Lark home. The story flashes back through some of Lark and John’s ancestors, starting with Malcolm McCourry, who was kidnapped and conscripted by a sailing ship at the age of nine, never to see his home on the Isle of Islay in Scotland again. Once he nears the age of twenty, he apprentices to a lawyer in Morristown, NJ. Many years later, he abandons his family and heads south with his daughter Jane and her husband to settle in the North Carolina mountains, where he establishes a second family. Before the end of the novel, Malcolm’s great-grandson Pinckney McCourry, a prisoner of war during the Civil War; Pinckney’s nephew Zebulon, an orphaned boy; Ellender McCourry, Zebulon’s daughter; and John Walker, Lark’s father and Ellender’s son, all have the opportunity to tell a part of their story and to explain how they received their family’s ballad, “The Rowan Stave.”

I absolutely adored this book from start to finish. It was so good that I didn’t want it to end. I loved Sharyn Crumb’s characters, most of whom are based on her own ancestors and retain their own names. Zebulon McCourry was her real great-grandfather, and Malcolm McCourry was her real four-times great grandfather. One of the things I loved best about this novel is the way it tackled the issue of northerners and other outsiders coming into Appalachia and making all sorts of erroneous assumptions about the intellect, culture, and beliefs of the people who settled there. McCrumb manages to touch on everything from why the Civil War led to feuds, such as the Hatfield and McCoy feud, all the way to how songcatchers came through Appalachia and took advantage of the people by collecting their folk songs, then copyrighting them for profit. Some of the writing is quite lyrical, and it is clear that McCrumb hails from a long line of born storytellers. I particularly liked Malcolm McCourry, though his decision to abandon his family in New Jersey caused friction and hurt his older children, particularly when he married a second time and supplanted his new family for his first one. I absolutely loved Zebulon’s story of tangling with a couple of condescending women from Boston. Pinckney was an intriguing figure, too. I also liked Baird Christopher, owner of a hostel in the mountains, especially as he explains how to pronounce Appalachia to a New Yorker.

The ballad itself is catchy, and it would be interesting to hear the tune, which McCrumb says in her Afterword was set to music by Shelley Stevens. It looks like you can purchase it from her website. It is the story of the mother of the Brahan seer, and explains how she found a stone that gave her son the Sight—a worthy old Scottish story.

The respect that McCrumb shows for Appalachia is, unfortunately, rare and is perfectly rendered through various encounters her characters have with outsiders. The book could, in many ways, be considered a love letter to that region and to the stories that are passed down through the generations. I am very interested in my own family history (some of which does have roots in Appalachia), so I found that element of the book particularly fascinating. Our ancestors anchor us in the world, I believe. They show us how we fit into this great chain of being and give us a sense of belonging and, in some ways, importance, which is another element McCrumb touches on when one of her characters describes the slim chance that brings any one of us into existence. If you really think about how close you have come to not ever being, your head will spin. I know I can’t help but feel grateful to my ancestors for all the choices they made that ensured I could be born one day.

If you are interested in family history, you will surely find this book as captivating as I did. Even if you aren’t interested in that sort of thing, The Songcatcher is an intriguing read and manages to maintain the feel of a mystery even without being a mystery proper. It’s a truly wonderful read. It may be hard to find, but you can order new or used copies from Amazon through associated sellers. I obtained my copy via PaperBackSwap.

Rating: ★★★★★

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The Winter Sea, Susanna Kearsley

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”B0058M62OS” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]The Winter Sea[/amazon_image]Susanna Kearsley’s novel [amazon_link id=”B0058M62OS” target=”_blank” ]The Winter Sea[/amazon_link] is the story of writer Carolyn McClelland, who relocates to Cruden Bay in Scotland in order to get the feel of the location for the novel she is currently writing about the 1708 Jacobite uprising—one of the lesser known skirmishes of the Jacobite Rebellion. Carrie takes a cottage in the village near Slains Castle and becomes friendly with a local family, Jimmy Keith and his two sons Stuart and Graham.  After her agent suggests she try telling her story from the point of view of a female character, since Carrie can’t seem to find a male character’s voice, Carrie decides on a whim to write one of her ancestors, Sophia Paterson McClelland, into the story. Suddenly she is writing faster than she’s ever written before, and when she discovers that many of the things she’s writing actually happened, even though she hadn’t consulted history books before she wrote, she begins to wonder if she is remembering her ancestor’s life. Meanwhile, both Keith brothers begin to show an interest in more than Carrie’s writing, but Carrie finds herself drawn to the one with eyes like the winter sea and begins modeling her hero, John Moray, after Graham, a history lecturer at the university in Aberdeen.

One of the reasons I liked this book was the genealogy thread that ran through it. Genealogy happens to be one of my own interests, and I can always sympathize with characters who find it interesting, too. Carrie’s discoveries about the lives of her ancestors fascinate her father, who is able to trace the family tree back one more generation due to Carrie’s insights as she writes. I expected to find myself more interested in Carrie’s novel, the part of the book that takes place in the past, because I have an absolute fascination for Scottish history. However, I found myself more drawn to the characters in the present—Jimmy, Graham, Stuart, Carrie’s agent Jane, and even Carrie herself. This book covers a topic that I myself have wondered about: is it even possible that memories can be passed down genetically? It seems far-fetched, but it works well in this novel. It’s a fun idea, anyway, and a nice alternative to some of the other paranormal tropes that have gained traction in recent years.

Kearsley is able to capture the past vividly in the sections of Carrie’s novel intertwined with the present-day story. She has included a historical note, and explained her painstaking attention to historical events as much as possible. I was surprised to discover that few of her characters were invented. It can sometimes be hard to make real historical people do what you want them to do when you’re writing about them, which is why, I think, that some writers of historical fiction prefer to use fictional characters.

The ending of the novel satisfies both the requirements of history and the requirements of historical romance. It’s a solid novel, and I would recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in Scotland or genealogy.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Two other reviews I found:

Although I’ve finished the Historical Fiction Challenge, this book (or the half of it that Carrie writes) counts. For the Take a Chance Challenge, it counts for the Challenge 6: Book Seer Pick, because Book Seer directed me to it after I read [amazon_link id=”055338483X” target=”_blank” ]Garden Spells[/amazon_link] by Sarah Addison Allen. Scottish castles on the coast during winter? So Gothic.

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Reading Challenge Progress

Posted on by Dana

Darts

I just took stock of the reading challenges I’ve taken on this year. I am participating in so many challenges, that I was finding it difficult to keep up with them. Luckily, I found a plugin called ProgPress that allows me to create and customize progress meters. Check them out in the sidebar over to the right (RSS feed readers will have to click over to my site).

I’m not doing badly.

First, I set a goal to read 50 books this year. I read 40 last year. So far, I’ve read 27, which puts me slightly ahead of my pace. That’s a good thing because school starts for me again in a few weeks, and I will need to be a little bit ahead.

I can say I’ve completed the Steampunk Challenge, the GLBT Challenge, and the Once Upon a Time Challenge, as I really only had to read one book to complete these challenges. All of them were low-commitment “just try it and see if you like it” challenges, at least at the level I committed to.

I need to finish one more book to complete the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, but I am not doing well with the YA Historical Fiction Challenge. I guess I don’t read as much YA historical fiction as I thought I did. I don’t think I’ll finish that one, and I’m not going to worry about it if I don’t make much progress there.

I haven’t made much progress on my own challenge—just one book of six. Ditto the Shakespeare Challenge. On the other hand, I’m making steady progress with the Take a Chance Challenge and the Gothic Reading Challenge. I should be able to make good progress on the Gothic Reading Challenge in September and October, when I can combine it with the R.I.P. Challenge.

I haven’t started either the Sense and Sensibility Bicentenary Challenge or the Being a Jane Austen Mystery Challenge, yet. Still plan to complete those.

Did you participate in any challenges? How are you doing?

photo credit: Bogdan Suditu

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The Wild Rose, Jennifer Donnelly

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”1401301045″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]The Wild Rose[/amazon_image]The third and final book in Jennifer Donnelly’s “Rose” trilogy, [amazon_link id=”1401301045″ target=”_blank” ]The Wild Rose[/amazon_link] follows the story of Seamus Finnegan, younger brother of Fiona (focus of [amazon_link id=”0312378025″ target=”_blank” ]The Tea Rose[/amazon_link]) and Charlie/Sid (focus of [amazon_link id=”1401307469″ target=”_blank” ]The Winter Rose[/amazon_link]), and Willa Alden, Seamie’s childhood friend, climbing partner, and soulmate. In The Winter Rose, Willa lost her leg while climbing Kilimanjaro with Seamie, and the accident tore them apart. The Wild Rose begins as Willa has relocated to Tibet, living in the shadow of Everest, taking pictures for a planned book about the mountain, and guiding other mountaineers for money. Seamie, meanwhile, meets a young teacher named Jennie Wilcott and marries her, trying to forget about Willa. Donnelly’s familiar cast of characters all make an appearance: Fiona is now a suffragette and Joe has continued serving as MP. Their fierce daughter Katie has started a newspaper and has set her sights on a career in politics. Charlie/Sid and India have settled in Point Reyes, California, but return to England after the mysterious death of India’s sister, Maud. Meanwhile, Max von Brandt, a German spy in love with Willa and rubbing shoulders with the likes of gangster Billy Madden, makes trouble for everyone. Donnelly’s characters tramp all over the globe—Willa becomes part of T. E. Lawrence’s party in Arabia, while Seamie joins up with the navy when World War I begins.

This novel was much more Indiana Jones than your typical “romance.” Willa is hardly slowed down by having only one leg. She’s a difficult heroine—she can be selfish, and she nurses a drug addiction for most of the novel. At the same time, she’s fearless and dashingly brave. I quite liked Seamie’s wife Jennie, and I felt she certainly had the short end of the stick, as Seamie would never be able to love her as he had loved Willa, and frankly, she deserved much better. The new villain, Max von Brandt is much more layered and complicated (as all Donnelly’s characters are) in this novel.

The whole series is epic in scope and spans over 30 years. I think just about every historical event that occurs during the time period of this book (1913-1919) touches the Finnegan family. They experience World War I, the Spanish flu, and Lawrence of Arabia—and that’s just in this book, so I’m not sure what else Donnelly could have thrown at them. Like its predecessors, this book is eminently readable, but not without its problems. I did catch some continuity errors (Joe’s age near the end of the novel, for instance), but those may be corrected in the final publication, as I read a galley copy. Like its predecessors, The Wild Rose is just a really big book. So much happens, and the story threatens to become unwieldy at times. Donnelly does a better job keeping it all together in this book than in the other two, and even with the outlandish events that take place in this novel, it somehow seems more plausible than the others, perhaps because the characters are much more “gray” than black or white. Willa is a more interesting heroine than India. I can’t say I liked her as much as I liked Fiona, but she’s complex. The series is definitely worth a read. It certainly kept me turning the pages and staying up way too late to find out how the characters would emerge from the latest trap they’d fallen into. I definitely think romantic historical fiction fans would love this series, and I would recommend it for fans of Diana Gabaldon or [amazon_link id=”0061990477″ target=”_blank” ]The Thorn Birds[/amazon_link].

Rating: ★★★★½

Full disclosure: I received a free galley copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. The Wild Rose is available in stores on August 2, 2011.

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The Winter Rose, Jennifer Donnelly

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”1401307469″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]The Winter Rose[/amazon_image]Jennifer Donnelly’s novel [amazon_link id=”1401307469″ target=”_blank” ]The Winter Rose[/amazon_link], the second in her “Rose” trilogy, is a sprawling story, but I’ll do my best to summarize it. Most of the story focuses on India Selwyn Jones, sister to Maud Selwyn Jones, a minor character introduced in [amazon_link id=”0312378025″ target=”_blank” ]The Tea Rose[/amazon_link]. Oddly enough, without divulging spoilers, people who ought to have remembered Maud and made some connections, didn’t. India is a doctor with dreams of opening a free clinic for women and children in Whitechapel. She begins working for an established doctor, but it becomes clear to her that she cannot work for him long due to his antiquated methods of practicing medicine that India knows have harmed and even killed his patients. Meanwhile, she becomes entangled with notorious gangster Sid Malone, who unbeknownst to most of the cast, is the brother of tea magnate Fiona Finnegan Bristow. Fiona is desperate to make contact with Sid, whose real name is Charlie Finnegan, and convince him to leave his life of crime. India is engaged to be married to MP Freddie Lytton—a bigger cad probably never drew breath. Freddie is only interested in India’s large inheritance. India and Sid fall in love, but they are kept apart through Freddie’s machinations. A large subplot of the novel involves the Finnegans’ youngest brother, Seamie, and his friend Willa Alden, who travel to Africa, where the book’s long dénoument takes place, to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. Willa suffers a horrible accident, and her budding romance with Seamie is left unresolved (because it is the focus of [amazon_link id=”1401301045″ target=”_blank” ]The Wild Rose[/amazon_link]).

Whew!

There is a lot going on in this book. I did enjoy it, but perhaps not as much as The Tea Rose. I think it was because I didn’t like India as a heroine a whole lot. I couldn’t figure out Sid’s attraction to her. One thing I do need to single out for praise is Donnelly’s description of the Moskowitz family. I have worked at a Jewish high school for seven years, and in that time, I have come to learn much about Jewish culture and tradition. Usually authors who are not Jewish have difficulty capturing it, but Donnelly did a fine job. Ultimately, the book is just too big. Donnelly clearly did her research, and she showed all of it. As a result, the story is unwieldy. Some plotline inconsistencies were bothersome, too, but as they are a bit spoilery, I won’t mention them here. Suffice it to say that even Donnelly seemed to lose the thread of her story at times. One thing Donnelly does well is create villains with whom the reader can also empathize. She did it in [amazon_link id=”B004SYA7PM” target=”_blank” ]Revolution[/amazon_link] with Max R. Peters, and she even managed to explain Jack the Ripper’s behavior (a little bit, anyway) in The Tea Rose. Freddie Lytton is no different, but he is more sympathetic than Donnelly’s other villains. While I couldn’t help but hate him, Donnelly was also careful to show how people like Freddie are made, not born, and how they might still, deep inside, hate themselves for what they do. In all, I still enjoyed the book very much and look forward to seeing if Seamie and Willa can sort things out in The Wild Rose. The Finnegan family are a fun bunch.

Rating: ★★★★☆

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The Tea Rose, Jennifer Donnelly

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”0312378025″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]The Tea Rose: A Novel[/amazon_image]Jennifer Donnelly’s novel [amazon_link id=”0312378025″ target=”_blank” ]The Tea Rose[/amazon_link] is the story of Fiona Finnegan, poor but relatively happy with her fiancé Joe and her boisterous Irish family in Whitechapel. But a murderer is stalking their midst. A man known as Jack the Ripper is murdering prostitutes. Fiona’s world is shattered when her father is killed for attempting to organize a union in the tea company he and Fiona work for. In the wake of his death, Fiona loses almost everyone and everything that matters to her and makes her way to New York where she engineers an incredible rags-to-riches story and climbs to the top of the world tea trade.

OK, this book is really, really, really improbable, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying it a great deal. Sure I rolled my eyes at the over-the-top coincidences and unbelievable turns of events, but it was a great ride. The plotting is fast-paced; it was difficult to put down. Set against the backdrop of Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel and Edith Wharton’s Old New York, the book brings together many areas of personal interest for me: tea, the Whitechapel murderer, and the Gilded Age. Fiona has spunk, as we are constantly being told by the characters, all of whom adore her on sight for her shrewd business acumen and forthright manner. Donnelly brings the era and settings to vivid life. In the bargain, the reader, through Donnelly’s characters, rubs shoulders with everyone from Gilded Age robber barons and Mark Twain to up-and-coming artists Monet and Van Gogh. It’s an epic sweeping story, but doesn’t try to be anything other than good escapist reading. I can’t wait to read the next two books in Donnelly’s generational saga: [amazon_link id=”1401307469″ target=”_blank” ]The Winter Rose[/amazon_link] and [amazon_link id=”1401301045″ target=”_blank” ]The Wild Rose[/amazon_link] (I was able to obtain a galley from NetGalley, even though the book won’t be released until August). I won’t say I loved it as much as I loved [amazon_link id=”B003F3PN0Q” target=”_blank” ]Revolution[/amazon_link], but it was a gripping summer read. I would recommend it to fans of Diana Gabaldon’s [amazon_link id=”0440423201″ target=”_blank” ]Outlander[/amazon_link] series.

Rating: ★★★★★

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The Paris Wife, Paula McLain

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”0345521307″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]The Paris Wife: A Novel[/amazon_image]Hadley Richardson Hemingway is perhaps best known as the first of Ernest Hemingway’s four wives. [amazon_link id=”0345521307″ target=”_blank” ]The Paris Wife[/amazon_link] is the story of how the Hemingways met, married, and lived in Paris as Hemingway’s writing career was beginning. During this time, Hemingway writes [amazon_link id=”0684822768″ target=”_blank” ]In Our Time[/amazon_link], [amazon_link id=”1907590250″ target=”_blank” ]The Sun Also Rises[/amazon_link], and [amazon_link id=”0684839075″ target=”_blank” ]The Torrents of Spring[/amazon_link]. They meet and befriend such Lost Generation writers as Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, and other key figures of the Left Bank artistic renaissance of the 1920’s. The novel chronicles the infamous trip to Pamplona that inspired The Sun Also Rises as well as the couple’s trips to Austria and the disintegration of their marriage when Pauline Pfeiffer, who would become Hemingway’s second wife, enters the picture.

I haven’t read Hemingway’s memoir [amazon_link id=”143918271X” target=”_blank” ]A Moveable Feast[/amazon_link], so I can’t argue with reviewers who say that this novel is basically the same story from Hadley’s point of view, but somehow, I don’t think that’s all it is. I was swept into the story immediately, and whipped through the last 40% of it on my [amazon_link id=”B002Y27P3M” target=”_blank” ]Kindle[/amazon_link] last night. Hemingway and Hadley’s relationship intrigued me. McLain evokes the Hemingways’ Paris skillfully (and definitely made me want to go!). Fans of Hemingway’s work will meet all those who inspired his fiction in the pages of McLain’s novel, too. Hemingway said of Hadley in A Moveable Feast, “I wished I’d died before I ever loved any other woman but her.” Ultimately, the book is about their romance—and even years later, after Hemingway was on his fourth wife, and she was happily married to journalist Paul Mowrer, they still had something of their old feelings for each other. Some critics say Hemingway tended to idealize Hadley, particularly as he grew older. She had some spirit. She followed Hemingway and supported him as he fulfilled his dreams, but when it came time to put up with his infidelity, she drew the line.

I enjoyed meeting all of the characters, particularly Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Lady Duff Twysden (the inspiration for Lady Brett Ashley), and Hadley herself. I have been intrigued by Hadley ever since I was in college when I met a girl in my dorm who had been named after her—her parents were, I believe, English professors. What kind of woman, I wondered, would inspire Hemingway to marry her when she was eight years his senior and he was a young, good looking, up-and-coming writer? This book is a fantastic read with some gorgeous language in its own right and a fascinating glimpse into the Hemingways’ romance. I highly recommend it, especially to Hemingway or Modernist literature fans. A few favorite quotes:

No one seemed to have any hold on anyone, in fact. That was a sign of the times. We were all on the verge now, bursting with youth and promise and little trills of jazz. The year before, Olive Thomas had starred in The Flapper, and the word suddenly meant jazz and moved like it, too. Girls everywhere stepped out of their corsets and shortened their dresses and darkened their lips and eyes. We said “cat’s pajamas” and “I’ll say” and “that’s so jake.” Youth, in 1921, was everything, but that was just the thing that could worry me sick. I was twenty-nine, feeling almost obsolete, but Ernest was twenty-one and white hot with life. What was I thinking? (location 789)

And for the rest of the lunch our table was like an intricate game of emotional chess, with Duff looking at Ernest, who kept one eye on Pat, who was glaring at Harold, who was glancing furtively at Duff. Everyone was drinking too much and wrung out and working hard to pretend they were jollier and less affected than everyone else. (location 4092)

“Sometimes, I wish we could rub out all our mistakes and start fresh, from the beginning,” I said. “And sometimes I think there isn’t anything to us but our mistakes.” (location 4100)

“I’m always on your side,” I said, and wondered if I was the only one who felt the complicated truth of that hovering over us in the dark room. (location 4579)

McLain’s prose reminded just a bit of Hemingway’s—you can see the polysyndeton, for example, in the second passage, which is a scene that would be familiar to those who have read The Sun Also Rises. One thing the book made me want to do is run right out and read A Moveable Feast. The Paris Wife is a beautiful book.

Rating: ★★★★★

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The Secret Diary of a Princess, Melanie Clegg

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”B004R1Q9PI” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]The Secret Diary of a Princess[/amazon_image]Melanie Clegg’s (Madame Guillotine) novel [amazon_link id=”B004R1Q9PI” target=”_blank” ]The Secret Diary of a Princess[/amazon_link] is the story of Maria Antonia, daughter of Hapsburg Empress Maria Theresa of Austria and her husband Emperor Francis I. Marie Antoinette is perhaps best known for being executed during the French Revolution, but this story begins around the same time as negotiations for her marriage to the future Louis XVI began and ends as the wedding itself begins. As such, it offers a rare glimpse into a lesser chronicled period of the life of Marie Antoinette. She emerges a sympathetic character—dutiful and kind, but also hopeful and optimistic. One cannot help but feel sorry for her as we know where the road she is marching down will ultimately lead her.

Clegg’s decision to write the novel as a secret diary and focus on the years leading up to Marie Antoinette’s marriage is an interesting one, and ultimately, I think, a smart one. It is hard to feel pity for a girl brought up in the Hapsburg Court with every luxury, but Clegg manages to create a likeable Marie Antoinette, so happy with her family and so frightened to leave, most likely never to see them again. Clegg’s research into the time period results in an authentic read, and the vivid descriptions of everything from clothing and furnishings to food make the period come alive. The groundwork for some of the dislike the French later felt for Marie Antoinette as an Austrian outsider is also laid, and the novel begs for a sequel chronicling Marie Antoinette’s years in Versailles. The book was published directly to [amazon_link id=”B002FQJT3Q” target=”_blank” ]Kindle[/amazon_link]. It is a quick, compelling read and especially enjoyable for readers who might want to learn more about France’s much maligned queen.

Rating: ★★★★½

While this book definitely qualifies for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, I am making a sort of educated leap including it in the YA Historical Fiction Challenge. The author does not necessarily classify it as YA, but given Marie Antoinette’s age for much of the book (she is 14 as the book ends), and some of her concerns, I would say it fits squarely in the YA genre, although adults who don’t necessarily read YA would also feel completely comfortable reading the book.

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