Tag Archives: 20 Books of Summer 2023

The Witch’s Brat by Rosemary Sutcliff – 20 Books of Summer 2023

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The Witch’s Brat by Rosemary Sutcliff was published in 1970. The setting is England in the reign of Henry I. Lovel is a young lad, just eleven years old, and his  grandmother has just died. She had been the local healer and herbalist so she had been tolerated in the village. But Lovel was born with a crooked back and his mother had died when he was born, his father is dead too, so he’s all alone in the world and the villagers hound him out. They think that his crooked back means he must be a witch.

Lovel has no option, he has to keep walking, but eventually a swineherd finds him and takes him to a Benedictine Abbey where they take care of him and he finds a place as a bit of a dogsbody within the community. When Rahere the King’s Jester (jongleur) arrives he sees something in Lovel that nobody else does and he gives some hope of a different kind of life in the future for Lovel, maybe he’ll take Lovel to the king’s court one day. Soon after that Lovel is taught to read when it’s realised that he has a good knowledge of medicinal herbs and his life begins to change for the better.

This book is partially based on reality as a man called Rahere who was the King’s Jongleur founded Saint.Bartholomew’s Hospital in London and you can visit his tomb in the Church of Saint Bartholomew the Great in Smithfield, London.

This was an enjoyable read,  Rosemary Sutcliff books are always good.

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell – 20 Books of Summer 2023

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I’m finding The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell quite a difficult one to write about, but I really enjoyed it, which is the main thing. I always enjoy her books,  despite or maybe because they are all different.

At the beginning of the book we’re told in an historical note that Lucrezia di Cosimo de Medici had died within less than a year of her marriage, but the time slips all over the place so you have to pay attention to the date at the beginning of each chapter. The time wanders from 1544 just before Lucrezia’s birth to 1561.

Lucrezia is the fifth child of a Grand Duke and is regarded as strange, she’s always being compared with her older sister Maria who is the parents’ favourite and has been set up to marry a powerful Duke. When Maria dies suddenly Lucrezia is put forward as the replacement bride, it’s a political alliance so it doesn’t really matter who  Alfonso marries, as long as it’s into that family.

As Lucrezia isn’t even 13 her nurse decides to conspire with Lucrezia to keep her unmarried as long as possible, hiding from everyone that she has hit puberty, as that’s  the time when there can be no more excuses to delay her marriage. An unfortunate leak leads to celebrations and the marriage is quickly planned and in no time Lucrezia has left her family and moved to her husband’s estates. She’s expected to get pregnant fast and  Alfonso  arranges to have her portrait painted, it is after all a time when women often died in childbirth, but ominously Alfonso describes Lucrezia as being his first duchess!

This is a good read, but it isn’t my favourite by Maggie O’Farrell. You can read Jack’s much more detailed review of the book here.

 

 

The Serial Garden by Joan Aiken – 20 Books of Summer 2023

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The Serial Garden by Joan Aiken is The Complete Armitage Family Stories. I must admit that I had never read any of this series, nor even heard of them, but what a delight they are. Joan Aiken had such a wild imagination and a great sense of humour, these stories  although aimed at younger readers, like all well written books are entertaining for all ages. I got the impression that writing these stories was the author’s happy place, and that she must have been very attached to the characters. It turns out that the family was based on her own family, she told the stories to her younger brother and the children  featured in the stories were based on their older brother and sister who were away at school.

They were written and published from 1958 with the last ones being published in 2008, four years after her death. They feature the children of the Armitage family, Mark and Harriet, and they came about because when she was on honeymoon Mrs Armitage found a wishing stone (one with a hole in it) and wished for a big house in the country and two children with cheerful and energetic natures who will never mope or sulk or get bored – and it would be nice if they had a fairy godmother.

As it happens they have  a lot more than that, including a pet unicorn, griffins, a friendly ghost, there’s an enchanted garden and the neighbourhood is populated by elderly fairy ladies – don’t call them witches!

On the back of the book Philip Pullman said ‘She was a literary treasure.’ I think he was correct.

 

 

 

 

 

The Stronghold by Mollie Hunter – 20 Books of Summer 2023

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The Stronghold by Mollie Hunter was first published in 1974 and it is a Carnegie Medal Winner.

The setting is the Orkneys at a time when the islands were often being raided by Romans (around the middle of the first century BC) who were searching for people they could drag off to enslave. This meant that the islands were being deprived of the strongest and fittest members of their society. Somthing had to be done. When Coll was a child he had witnessed a violent Roman raid which had culminated in his mother being dragged away and enslaved, Coll was thrown on the rocks by a Roman, breaking his hip badly, and now as an 18 year old cripple he’s left behind as a look-out while other males of his age are taking a more active role in the defence of their island.

Coll has spent a lot of time thinking about how things can be improved and eventually in desperation the leader agrees to allow Coll to organise and direct the building of a huge defensive structure, called a broch. It will be big enough to house the whole community and they can safely fight against the Roman Navy from the top of the tower.

In reality nobody knows how brochs came about, there are the remains of over 500 of them in the north of Scotland and the islands to the north of the mainland. It’s thought they originated on Orkney and they have all been built to the same design. They are drystone roundhouses with outer and inner walls with a stone staircase between the two walls.

Mollie Hunter took this information and developed a plausible and entertaining tale around it, featuring some great characters, both good and evil. The Stronghold won the Carnegie Medal in 1974.

You can read a bit more about brochs here.

 

 

 

Cue for Treason by Geoffrey Trease – 20 Books of Summer 2023

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Cue for Treason by Geoffrey Trease was first published in 1940 but my copy is a Puffin reprint which was published in 1965.

This book begins in Cumberland where there are a lot of skirmishes around the Scotland/England border, but it’s the local landowner Sir Philip who is causing the villagers big problems as he’s enclosing the land which had been used by the villagers for grazing their cattle on. The land grab has huge consequences for the locals who are already living a hand to mouth existence. They decide to break down Sir Philip’s wall  but Sir Philip and his men are about and Peter Brownrigg can’t resist the temptation to throw a stone at him, unfortunately he’s spotted doing it and a gun is fired at him, narrowly missing Peter’s head. The next day Sir Philip’s men come looking for Peter and he has to run away, if he’s caught he could be hanged!

London is the place to aim for and he falls in with another runaway lad on the way. They decide to stick together and look for work. They get taken on as apprentice actors in a travelling theatre group.  Of course it turns out to be William Shakespeare’s  company and the youngsters get involved in a dangerous intrigue involving the politics of  Elizabeth’s court.

This is the second book I’ve read recently which involves William Shakespeare and his company of players, even so this was a really good read.

A Use of Riches by J.I.M. Stewart – 20 Books of Summer 2023

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A Use of Riches by J.I.M. Stewart was first published in 1957.  He also wrote under the name of Michael Innes, those books quite often feature the world of art, as does this one.

Rupert Craine is arranging his will. He’s a very wealthy banker, his hobby is collecting expensive art and he’s married to a much younger woman who had been a young widow. She has two sons by her first husband, aged 10 and 12. Their father had been a very successful artist and his work is much sought after, he had been killed in WW2. Rupert and Jill have two much younger children together.

Life is good, until a telegram arrives from Italy, it seems that the first husband is still alive. Rupert and Jill go to Italy to deal with it, thinking there must have been a mistake.

This was quite a good read, but it was slightly spoiled by the personality of Rupert which is stiff upper lipish. He seems like a bit of a cold fish (as was said about Soames Forsyte)  although a distinct improvement on the first husband! He just seems like an unlikely character to me.

This was one of my 20 Books of Summer 2023.

The Return of the Railway Children by Lou Kuenzler – 20 Books of Summer 2023

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The Return of the Railway Children by Lou Kuenzler was published in 2018 and is of course a sort of sequel to E. Nesbit’s The Railway Children which was first published in 1906. I’m often quite wary of sequels like this but as this one has a World War 2 setting I thought it was worth giving it a go. I’m glad I did.

Edith lived in London with her mother as the bombs rained down on the city.  They had sheltered down in the underground stations during the night, but when Edie’s school shuts down her mother decides that it’s time that she sent her daughter to live in the countryside where it should be safer. Edie isn’t happy about it but with her mother planning to do her bit by flying newly built aircraft to their RAF bases she realises that she’ll just have to go, at least she’ll be staying with her Aunt Roberta, but due to a mysterious family schism Edie doesn’t know her aunt at all, but we do – she’s Bobbie from the original book! Aunt Roberta ends up taking in two more evacuees and along with Edie they are the new railway children who have a similar adventure – minus the red petticoat, and featuring some wartime adventures.

This book is well written and different enough from the original book so it doesn’t feel like a rip-off. My one compaint is that in a letter written to Edie from her mother she ends it with   xoxo.  The author should have stuck to using just x for kisses because that xoxo thing is very modern and I think originally American.  I remember seeing it first about 12 years ago and I was a bit mystified at the time.

This is one of my 20 Books of Summer 2023.

Friend and Foe by Shirley McKay – 20 Books of Summer 2023

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Friend and Foe by Shirley McKay is the fourth book in the author’s Hew Cullan mystery series. The setting is St Andrews in 1583. At the back of this book there is a glossary of Scots words used by the author which I imagine will be useful to some readers, I must admit there were a few that even I didn’t know, but I think they’re always easy to take a guess at from the context.

It’s over three weeks since I read this book and so much has happened in the time since I finished it that some of the details of the mystery are a bit of a blur to me, but I did really enjoy it.

Hew’s sister Meg isn’t really happy in her new home in St Andrews, but her physician husband Giles works at the university and must live within the town. Meg misses her old home which is just a few miles outside the town, but she had a garden there where she grew the herbs she needed to make her lotions and potions. Giles is worried about her and has begun to extend their home so that Meg will have a place of her own where she can continue with her own herbalism.  But they find themselves in trouble when it looks to others that their renovations have an ulterior motive.

Hew has made more enemies and things are just too hot for him in Scotland, it looks like he’ll be leaving home for his own safety, but will he be jumping from the frying pan into the fire?  It looks like the next book in this series will find Hew in England again.

 

20 Books of Summer 2023

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I’ve decided to participate in 20 Books of Summer again this year,  it’s hosted by Cathy@746 Books . I’ve completed it in the past, but it was Judith @ Reader in the Wilderness who nudged me to do it this year. It almost went past me, mainly because I can hardly believe that we’re almost at June again. So, beginning on the 1st of June  I’ll be working my way through:

1. Family Money by Nina Bawden

2. Eva Trout by Elizabeth Bowen

3. The Loved and Envied by Enid Bagnold

4. My Career Goes Bung by Miles Franklin

5. A Use of Riches by J.I.M. Stewart

6. The Humbler Creation by Pamela Hansford Johnson

7. Amerika by Franz Kafka

8. Gentian Hill by Elizabeth Goudge

9. The Small Army by Michael Marshall

10. The Return of the Railway Children by Lou Kuenzler

11. Midnight is a Place by Joan Aiken

12. Cue for Treason by Geoffrey Trease

13. The Stronghold by Molly Hunter

14. Comes the Blind Fury by Douglas Rutherford

15. Three Loves by A.J. Cronin

16. Friend and Foe by Shirley McKay

17. In Place of Fear by Catriona McPherson

18. Cymbeline by William Shakespeare

19. The Witch’s Brat by Rosemary Sutcliff

20. Rival Queens by Kate Williams

A lot of these books are very new to me as I bought quite a few of them at a secondhand booksale just last week in Edinburgh. Three of them have been borrowed from the library. Only one is non-fiction,  Rival Queens by Kate Williams. Five of them were written for older children or YA as they might be categorised nowadays. There is always a chance that I’ll substitute some of the books on this list with a ‘must read now’ books, but I’ll try to stick to it.

Have you read any of them?