Tag Archives: historical fiction

The Other Side of Stone by Linda Cracknell

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The Other Side of Stone by Linda Cracknell was published in 2021 by Taproot Press. The time switches between 1831, 1913, 1990, 2003, 2006 and 2019, but it’s never confusing. It’s a quick read at just 146 pages, I think it’s really well written. The setting is rural Perthshire. It is a novella although some people have described it as a collection of linked short stories.

It begins with a stonemason cutting the keystone of a Perthshire woollen mill, he chisels the date 1831 into it, but on the inside face that nobody will ever see he carves a secret mark.

Basically this is the history of a building over the years, from its beginning to its end. We often say when we’re in old buildings “if walls could talk” and that’s really what Linda Cracknell has done in this book. The woollen mill has seen strikes and strife particularly in 1913 when they are so disgruntled that immigration to Canada seems like a good move to some. But the wife of one of the mill workers just hopes to get her husband to sign papers to allow her to be able to train as a nurse, she needs his permission and it looks like he’s never going to give it. She becomes a suffragette which gains her husband a lot of sympathy  – from the drunken men anyway.

In the later years the mill’s fortunes decline, as almost all of them did, until the land it was built on is returned to an agricultural use again, and a circle of some sort has been completed.

 

 

 

The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar – 20 Books of Summer

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The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar was first published in 2018 and I think I’ve had it since then, waiting to be read, it’s one of my 20 Books of Summer. I must admit that I did have a few qualms at times about this book but I ended up really enjoying it. The qualms were because I’m one of those people that prefers to have the bedroom action in books staying in the bedroom with the reader staying on the other side of the door.

The book is set in 1785/86 and Jonah Hancock is a merchant and ship owner, he’s waiting for word of one of his ships to reach him, it’s always a fraught time as so many ships are wrecked and never heard of again. This time his ship has not arrived but its captain Tysoe Jones has, telling Jonah that he has sold his ship so that he could buy a ‘mermaid’. Jonah is dumbfounded but Tysoe explains that the oddity will make him a fortune as people will pay good money to see a mermaid. In truth it’s a dried up and ugly impish thing, but Tysoe is correct and people come from far and wide to see it.

Jonah Hancock had led a quiet and blameless  life for almost twenty years since his wife’s death in childbirth along with his baby son, but he is now catapulted into high society, a place of sex, sin and debauchery. Very young women are exploited by older women, who sell their bodies to wealthy men but the girls get nothing except clothes, board and lodging.

So bawds and bawdy houses feature in this book, some quirky but believable characters, and some problems which are still with us nowadays. The exploitation of young women, by other women as well as men. This was a good read though.

 

 

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson – 20 Books of Summer

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Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson  is another of my 20 Books of Summer although it wasn’t on my original list which has had to be amended somewhat. This one was a request from the library.

It begins in 1919 in fictional Hazelbourne-on-Sea in the south of England. It’s a tough time for women as those who have been working during the war are having to give up their jobs so that the returning soldiers can have them. Constance Haverhill finds herself surplus to requirements at her family home as her parents are dead, her brother has inherited the farm and his wife doesn’t want Constance around. The estate where Constance worked during the war have got rid of her which means she is homeless as well as jobless, she’s lucky to have found work as a lady’s companion to an old family friend who is convalescing at a hotel.

The hotel is a popular meeting place for Poppy Wirrall, she’s the daughter of a baronet and during the war she and a group of women had flown aeroplanes from factories to the airfields. Now they can only drive motorbikes, they’ve set up a taxi company for women only, with sidecars for the passengers.

This was a good read. It features lots of the social problems that came with the end of World War 1. The lack of men for women to marry as so many had been killed in the war, the horror of severely damaged men both physically and mentally,  the problem of suddenly having no work for women after they had become used to being wage earners throughout the war years, and then the new laws which favoured the returning soldiers.

That makes it all sound a bit grim but there is some romance and light-heartedness in there too. This is the third book by Simonson that I’ve read, I’ve enjoyed them all, I’ve just had a look at my blogpost of her second book Before the War and I ended it by writing:

Snobbery, racism, prejudice, bitchiness, family strife – all the usual nastiness that goes to make up almost any society of human beings in fact – appear in each of Helen Simonson’s books.

That’s true of this one as well.

 

Where the World Ends by Geraldine McCaughrean – 20 Books of Summer

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Where the World Ends by Geraldine McCaughrean was first published in 2004 and it won the Whitbread Children’s book award that year, also the Carnegie Medal in 2018 for an illustrated edition. This is one of my 20 Books of Summer.

The setting is the St Kilda archipelago in the far north of Scotland, the date is summer 1727. As usual in the summer a boat full of young boys along with three men has sailed to a sea stac so that they can harvest sea birds to help them survive the next winter. They use every part of the birds to help them survive the grim weather to come. It’s a harsh existence, but it’s part of growing up for any young male St Kildan.

During the harvest time they live in a cave and have to bed down on the rough floor which causes them to have sores, if they get infected it’ll be the end of them, oil from the dead sea birds is rubbed into any cuts and grazes to try to avoid infection.

After their harvest season should be over no boat comes to pick them up as arranged. At first they assume that the weather has had something to do with the lack of a boat, but as summer turns to autumn and winter weather arrives they can’t imagine why they have been abandoned. They only have rain water to drink now and their clothes are in rags after having to climb the cliffs daily.

One of the men decides to start to gather any bits of wood which wash up around the sea stac, he hopes to be able to build some sort of raft in the hope that he’ll be able to sail to nearby Boreray to get help.

This book is based on a true story, the author has woven a tale around it, imagining the tensions that would have emerged under the circumstances. It’s a really good read.

 

The Hemlock Cure by Joanne Burn 20 Books of Summer 2024

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The Hemlock Cure by Joanne Burn was first published in 2022 by Sphere. The setting is Eyam in  England’s Peak District  in 1665/66. Apparently I’ve been pronouncing that village name wrongly for decades, it should be ‘Eem’. This is a book which I borrowed from the library, so it wasn’t on my original list of 20 Books of Summer, but I realised that I had inadvertently added three books to that list which I had already read, so I substituted this book for one of them.

Mae is the surviving daughter of Wulfric, a herbalist/apothecary and religious zealot, unhappy about the introduction of the new Book of Common Prayer by the king. Mae is keen to become her father’s apprentice but she’s kept busy with housework.  Her mother had died not long after she had given birth to a dead son. Isabel Frith is the local midwife and herbalist. Wulfric despises Isabel and seems to think that she caused his wife and son’s death, hinting at witchcraft. Unknown to Wulfric Mae is being taught herbalism by Isabel. He has taken on a young man as his apprentice, so Mae’s hopes for her future are dashed.

Obviously The Plague features in the book, but not to any huge extent, as does homosexuality. It was an enjoyable read.

 

Dissolution by C.J. Sansom – 20 Books of Summer 2024

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Dissolution by C.J. Sansom was first published in 2003 and it’s the first book that I’ve read by the author, in fact it was only when I read his Guardian obituary when he died in April that I realised that I had almost certainly missed out on some really good reads. I think I did borrow one of his Shardlake books from the library before, but realised that it was part of a series, but never did get around to getting the first one, until now. I really enjoyed it.

The setting is England in 1537. It’s the year after Anne Boleyn’s execution and Henry VIII is beginning to dismantle the large network of monasteries that have managed to accumulate huge riches over the years. Henry is determined to strip them of their wealth and Thomas Cromwell has sent a young man to St Donatus Monastery to investigate their finances, but he is found dead there, he has been beheaded in the kitchen, and Cromwell sends Matthew Shardlake and his young apprentice to investigate the murder.

When they start to question the monks they soon realise that they are very far from being holy men, or even good men, the place is awash with sin, but which of them is a murderer?

This is an atmospheric read with a long snowstorm adding to the sense of menace as the monastery turns into a prison for Shardlake and his apprentice, trapped with  a murderer on the loose.

This was another of my 20 Books of Summer.

 

The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory – 20 Books of Summer 2024

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The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory is one of my 20 Books of Summer. It was first published in 2008. I had sworn that I wasn’t going to read any more books about Mary, Queen of Scots for quite a long time – if ever – or any more books by Philippa Gregory for that matter as I think she has some unusual theories on historical facts, but heigh-ho. It was the fact that this one features Bess of Hardwick which drew me in, she was surely one of the most fascinating women of the Tudor period.

The date is 1568 and Bess is on her fourth husband, the Earl of Shrewsbury, she has worked her way up from nothing to the aristocracy, with her three previous husbands leaving everything to her, she’s a very wealthy woman, but obviously wanted status too.

Unfortunately Queen Elizabeth I is looking for a place to lodge Mary, Queen of Scots and she decides to use Bess and her husband as suitable jailors. Queen Mary has an enormous retinue which she refuses to whittle down and for her everything must be of the best. Queen Elizabeth is determined not to pay any money over to the Shrewsburys and the whole of the cost of keeping Mary and her many hangers-on and followers in the lap of luxury causes tension within the marriage. Bess sees her fortune diminish by the week and it looks like she’ll even lose her beloved Chatsworth to pay the debts, she has had to put the building of Chatsworth on hold over the years of Mary’s captivity but even worse than that, William Cecil, Elizabeth’s spymaster is trying to link Shrewsbury, and possibly even Bess, with Catholic plots to rescue Mary from captivity. They might end up being executed.

Bess realises that like many men her husband has been the target of one of Mary’s charm offensives, and the fool has completely fallen for Mary.

I enjoyed this one although I was somewhat puzzled when on page 9 Mary describes Elizabeth as ‘that red-haired bastard’.  It’s unlikely that she would ever have done that considering that Mary had red hair too. However, according to Philippa Gregory she had lovely long black hair! That is just plain wrong and I can see no reason why Gregory would do that, particularly as their are numerous paintings of Mary and her red hair, and of course all the contemporary descriptions of Mary and her red or golden red hair.

This is the sort of thing which had put me off from reading more by this author, it seems she just likes to be different for the sake of it.

If you are interested you can click the link to my Hardwick Hall blogposts, it’s quite a few years since we visited, I hope we can go back there sometime in the future though as I loved it. Argh, that post was written in 2012.

Also if you are interested in Bess of Hardwick you might want to read the book by Mary S. Lovell

There are some more photos on that blogpost.

The Redemption of Alexander Seaton by Shona MacLean – 20 Books of Summer

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The Redemption of Alexander Seaton by Shona MacLean  (S.G. MacLean) was first published in 2008. It’s one of my 20 Books of Summer.

The setting is the town of Banff, Scotland in 1626. It’s 10 o’clock at night and two whores are searching the pockets of a man that they have found lying in the street, but they find nothing. When they realise that the man is ill, not just drunk, they drag him to the schoolhouse where the teacher lives, hoping that he will be able to help the man, but they didn’t stay to speak to the teacher, they were worried about getting involved. In the morning the man is found dead, and it seems he must have been poisoned.

The teacher – Alexander Seaton – had trained for the ministry, but he had been denounced as a sinner, unfit for the job, when the dead body was found he was obviously going to be under suspicion.

Seaton sets about investigating the death, it’s a time of witch hunts and extreme religious fervour, a dangerous mixture.  I really enjoyed this one, it is very atmospheric. Maps feature in the storyline, apparently at that time maps were rare and most people had never seen one, so anyone in possession of one is suspect. I must admit that it’s something I hadn’t really thought about

The Bookseller of Inverness by S.G. MacLean

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The Bookseller of Inverness by S.G. MacLean was published in 2022, I found it to be a cracking read, in fact it would make a great film.

Iain MacGillivray had been one of the many Jacobites on Drumossie Moor, Culloden in 1746, and one of the few to get away with his life, although badly wounded, he had feigned death.  It was a terrible time with the Redcoats running amok, pillaging, killing the wounded, and generally causing mayhem and despair within the local communities as they raped and murdered. Six years on and Iain has a bookshop in Inverness where he just wants to put it all behind him, and have nothing to do with the Jacobite cause. But the cause comes to him.

A mystery customer comes to his bookshop, he’s searching for a particular book but refusing to give any information at all, he’s going through all the books one by one. At the end of the day Iain has to practically throw the stranger out so that he can shut the shop, but when he opens it up the next morning he finds the stranger dead, his throat had been cut by a sword with a white cockade on its hilt – a Jacobite symbol.

Iain is surprised to discover that his Jacobite sympathies have resurfaced, and the behaviour of most of the Redcoats in the local barracks only strengthens his feelings.  Someone is settling scores, and it transpires that there’s another Jacobite plot afoot.

This was apparently a Times Audio Book of the Week with the comment that ‘This slice of historical fiction takes you on a wild ride.’

If you do read any books by S.G. (Shona) MacLean you should make sure that you read the Author’s notes at the end of the book. They’re always fascinating, her family background is steeped in the Scottish Highlands, where she still lives, and her uncle was the thriller writer Alistair MacLean. Shona MacLean obviously takes after him.

 

The House of Lamentations by S.G. MacLean

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The House of Lamentations by S.G. MacLean is the fifth book in her Captain Damien Seeker series which ranges over the whole of the Cromwellian era.

It’s widely thought that Captain Damien Seeker had died at the end of the previous Seeker book, but in reality he has moved to Bruges where he has returned to his previous work as a carpenter. It’s a great cover for him as he is able to gain access to places he wouldn’t otherwise have reached.

Bruges has always been a popular place for the Royalist supporters to congregate. King Charles Stuart ( he had been crowned in Scotland after his father’s execution) hasn’t been welcomed elsewhere due to the politics of the time. His Royalist supporters have made themselves very unwelcome in the town as they’ve been spending a lot of their time gambling, drinking and causing trouble. A lot of the exploits centre around the House of Lamentations, a brothel.

Seeker is particularly interested in four of the Royalists, he has been sent information from England that one of them is a traitor to their cause, that puts Seeker himself in danger, but which of them is the turncoat?

Seeker, like many people had been becoming disillusioned with Cromwell’s regime which is as corrupt and nepotistic as the Stuarts’ had been, Cromwell’s cause certainly isn’t worth dying for.

The plot involves nuns and a Jesuit priest who even gives the nuns the creeps. The Jesuits always seem to be the bad guys, even nowadays, especially among old boys who had been taught by them!

I must say that at the beginning of the book there’s a description of a man being hanged drawn and quartered which for me was the most graphic that I had read, but maybe I’ve led a sheltered life.

There’s an author’s note at the back of this book, MacLean explains that she has used a lot of locations in Bruges which can be visited now by tourists, I wish I had known that when we visited the town some years ago, we just did a canal boat trip and walked around admiring the buildings.