The Crown

Joanna Stafford’s family has been repeatedly touched by scandal. First her uncle is executed for treason, and now her beloved cousin Margaret is condemned to be burned at the stake for her part in an uprising against Henry VIII and his persecution of the old (Catholic) ways. Even absent her family connections, Joanna is a suspicious figure as a novice Dominican nun in a time when the King has broken with the Pope and is shutting down religious houses throughout the country. Between the family treason and the religious leanings, Joanna finds herself in great trouble when she becomes involved in a commotion during Margaret’s execution. Imprisoned in the tower, along with her beloved father, Joanna is offered a single way to save both herself and her father by Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester: she must return to her convent and find the crown worn by the Saxon King Athelstan. As soon as Joanna returns, however, people begin turning up dead, complicating her mission and making her wonder just what this relic really is.

The Crown  would best be classified as a historical thriller, but to my relief, Bilyeau’s writing style is much more closely aligned to the historical fiction genre than to the thriller genre, avoiding the short chapters with cliffhanger endings that are a hallmark of many thrillers. Bilyeau develops her characters well; Joanna is certainly a fully-fledged person and, although the reader does not have access into the minds of the other characters, all of the secondary characters are complex enough to be realistic as well. Even Gardiner manages to avoid being a two-dimensional villain. Each chapter has rich historical detail interwoven with the story, bringing a sense of authenticity, without ever devolving into info-dump territory.

The storyline Bilyeau created for The Crown is fascinating as well. Even while Joanna is in the tower the action continues to move forward and the reader begins to get a sense of the political intrigue occurring throughout the court and the religious orders. The legend of Athelstan and his crown is teased out perfectly, enough information is given to keep the reader from becoming frustrated, but enough is also withheld to keep the level of suspense high.

The Crown may be a debut novel, but it is a fantastic example of the historical thriller drama. If that’s what you’re in the mood for, I highly recommend picking up The Crown.

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The Crown by Nancy Bilyeau – Book Review

The Bungalow

Anne Calloway is newly engaged, but still unready to really settle down. Her fiance is staid and predictable, and Anne needs one last adventure in her life. When her best friend signs up to go to serve as a World War II Army nurse, Anne decides to join her in her South Pacific posting.

The nurses are unsurprisingly popular with the soldiers  on Bora-Bora, and Anne is no exception. Although she has plans to be nothing but faithful to her fiance, the more time she spends with a soldier named Westry, the more their friendship – and eventually a romance – blossom.

Jio excels writing books that carry the reader away with both plot and setting. Anne and Westry are engaging characters, and their relationship is transporting, especially with Jio’s lush descriptions of Bora-Bora.

A lovely book to warm your heart on a cold winter day.

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The Bungalow by Sarah Jio – Book Review

The Winter Rose

This is the second book in the Rose series. I have previously reviewed The Tea Rose. This review may contain spoilers for The Tea Rose.

When I settled in with The Winter Rose, I was expecting to settle back in with Fiona and Joe and the family they were finally able to create. Although that does happen, they – and in particular, Fiona – are almost secondary characters in The Winter Rose.

Instead, Donnelly features Fiona’s older brother Charlie, best known to the citizens of London as Sid Malone, infamous crime boss, and India Selwyn-Jones, a woman of a good family who has defied her mother in order to follow her passion and become a doctor. Worse still than simply becoming a woman doctor, India will not even deign to be part of a fashionable practice in a good neighborhood, but instead is determined to practice in Whitechapel, and eventually set up a clinic there. India’s work in Whitechapel brings her into direct contact – and conflict – with Sid very quickly. As much as they grate on one another, though, Sid is impressed with India’s occasionally misguided but strongly-held desire to help the people of the East End. India, in response, cannot help but see that Sid, too, cares for these people she assumed he was only exploiting. It might seem logical for love to bloom here, but between India and Sid stands India’s fiance and childhood friend, Frankie Lytton. Frank is also an ambitious Member of Parliament who sees the capture of Sid Malone the one thing that could best guarantee his political future.

In some ways, the Rose series is getting formulaic. Donnelly focuses on a new couple here, so she can again wrench them apart, divided by a different partner, in a way that seems utterly insurmountable. That somehow true love will prevail is obvious from the very beginning – as is the fact that India and Frankie for all their bickering will fall in love in the first place. Frankie Lytton is a much more insidious dividing partner than Millie Peterson was, but they serve much the same function.

Here’s the thing, though. In the middle of the book, the reader is likely to recognize the pattern that Donnelly is falling into, but is equally unlikely to care. She is such a strong writer, creating such vivid characters and settings that she allows the reader to simply get lost in her romantic historical epics. Perhaps this is best evidenced by the fact that she is successfully able to supplant her beloved main characters with characters who were minor or completely missing from The Tea Rose. Fiona and Joe are, of course, still around to give the story continuity, and we do stay within the Finnegan family, but having Fiona take a minor (and eternally pregnant) role could have easily been disastrous in the hands of a less able author.

With The Winter Rose, Donnelly gives us a strong second book in the Rose series. I can’t wait to read the third book, The Wild Rose. Highly recommended.

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The Winter Rose by Jennifer Donnelly – Book Review

The Buddha in the Attic

In the early 20th century, many immigrant men living and working in the United States desired wives from their native lands. Matchmakers, armed with pictures of the men who were unable to travel home to find a bride and recommendations from family members, paired couples and sent the girls, frequently referred to as “picture brides” to America to meet their mates.

It is a group of these picture brides whose lives form the basis for Julie Otsuka’s anticipated second novel. As with her debut, When the Emperor Was Divine, Otsuka follows the fortunes of persons of Japanese descent living in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. Interestingly, her trademark style is very impersonal. In When the Emperor Was Divine, most of the story is told in third person limited omniscient. The Buddha in the Attic is told in first person plural, attempting to convey the variety of responses of the picture brides to their new life, resulting in passages such as the one below, which describes the women’s first nights with their husbands:

That night our new husbands took us quickly. They took us calmly. They took us gently, but firmly, and without saying a word. They assumed we were the virgins the matchmakers had promised them we were and they took us with exquisite care…. They took us greedily, hungrily, as though they had been waiting to take us for a thousand and one years. They took us even though we were still nauseous from the boat and the ground had not yet stopped rocking beneath our feet.

Coming from most authors, this would be distancing, but from Otsuka it is universalizing. We see a variety of responses from the different women in different situations that shows both their individuality and the commonalities between them. The result is a beautiful and surprisingly emotionally work culminating with World War II and the “Instructions to all Persons of Japanese Ancestry.” Highly recommended.

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The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka – Book Review

The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt

When Frankie Pratt graduates from high school in 1920 she has a scrapbook, a typewriter, and a dream of attending Vassar. Caroline Preston’s The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt follows Frankie through her early adulthood – at Vassar, in New York, and in Paris – in the pursuit of being able to support herself with her writing.

I can only imagine that locating and selecting vintage 1920s ephemera to match her story must have been both excruciating and a great deal of fun. The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt is a visual feast, a tantalizing sketch of the life of an ambitious young girl in the early 20th century. Preston does take some liberties with the form, Frankie’s scrapbook is a good deal more expository and diary-esque than most would be, but not to a point that strains credulity. Certainly a less text-heavy version might have been difficult to engage with and lacking in emotion from the reader’s point of view. Frankie is a wonderful protagonist, alternately naive and pragmatic, and between her personality and the gorgeous pictures, The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt is a joy to experience.

The following are some of my favorite page spreads from The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt to give you an idea of just how beautiful it is.

Page 17 shows some of the things that Frankie does with her friends at home. It also give you an example of the slightly overly expository nature of the scrapbook in its attempt to get more characterization of Frankie:

After graduation, Frankie heads to New York City; here she (pgs 94-95) is trying to get her bearings:

Finally, page 112 might be my favorite page in the entire book, Frankie’s record of her time out on the town with Oliver:

Really, how can you lose with these gorgeous pictures? Highly recommended – and hint, hint, it would make a lovely Christmas gift!

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The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt by Caroline Preston – Book Review

The Marriage Artist

When art critic Daniel Lichtmann’s wife is found dead next to the equally lifeless body of an artist – one with whom Daniel had a somewhat antagonistic relationship, no less – it seems that Daniel’s life, too, is over. Depressed at the thought that Aleksandra, who was actually Daniel’s second wife, had had such an intimate affair with Benjamin Wind that she even died with him in a supposed suicide, Daniel is all but unable to function, and seems on the verge of losing his job. One might think that Daniel would at least be glad that Benjamin, the man who stole his wife, is dead or, if he is upset, that he might be upset at his inability to take his own revenge. Instead, Daniel almost mourns for the man as he does for his wife. It is lucky that he does so, though, because at Benjamin’s funeral Daniel meets a man claiming to be Benjamin’s grandfather. This man, Max, turns on its head everything that Daniel thought he knew about Benjamin and his relationship with Aleksandra by introducing Daniel to the secret past of Benjamin’s family.

To be completely honest, I was a bit concerned starting The Marriage Artist. Suicide, lust, and infidelity in the art world just didn’t seem like an appealing premise at the time I picked it up, but I also couldn’t put it off because the BOOK CLUB discussion was looming. What I found, though, was a haunting story of love, marriage, and the ever-present influence of the past. Daniel’s story is told in parallel with that of Josef Pick, a Viennese Jew whose story begins in the years before World War II, and who is famous for his creation of marriage contracts. Either of the stories might have been overwhelming on their own, for both are filled with longing and heartbreak, but the way they are woven together prevents either one from becoming overly depressing and builds anticipation for both stories.

The Marriage Artist is a masterful example of a dual time period narrative. The stories work together beautifully, each enhancing the other. In addition, Winer takes what could have been a depressing or unappealing story and set of characters, and works them together in such a way that they hold the reader’s interest with ease. Recommended.

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The Marriage Artist by Andrew Winer – Book Review

Lionheart

This is the fourth book in the Devil’s Brood series. This review does not contain spoilers for the previous book, beyond the actual history. I have previously reviewed the third book, The Devil’s Brood.

In her latest work of epic historical fiction, Lionheart, Sharon Kay Penman explores the reign of Richard I, Richard Coeur de Lion. In particular, Penman focuses on Richard as Crusader-King.

Penman is a true master of historical fiction. There is a lot of repetition in the story of the Third Crusade, falling back, advancing, gaining cities and losing them again, Richard riding out with seeming disregard for his personal safety. And yet, Lionheart is a book I didn’t want to stop reading, despite its being 600 pages long. Penman’s strength is in bringing her historical characters vividly to life, without changing their stories or personalities for dramatic effect.

Part of what makes Lionheart so compelling is Penman’s narrator, using the third personal intimate voice, switching not only between Richard and some of his men, but also between his sister Joanna and his wife Berengaria.  The women and their retinue – unconventionally following the men on the Crusade, as did Joanna and Richard’s mother Eleanor when she was married to the French king – lent some relief what might have otherwise been a bleak and seemingly endless campaign, bringing humanity to the proceedings in Richard’s camp.

Lionheart is another extremely strong showing from Sharon Kay Penman, and a fascinating look at Richard the Lionheart, Crusader King. The only real negative to reading something by Penman is that it reminds you that she has so many other fabulous (but long!) books that you haven’t read it, thereby stalling your entire TBR list. Highly recommended.

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Lionheart by Sharon Kay Penman – Book Review

The Maid

Joan of Arc is one of the best known of the Catholic saints, and perhaps the most famous of medieval women. As a young woman, she heard what she believed was the voice of God, calling out to her, telling her to lead an army against the English and restore the Dauphin Charles to his rightful place as the King of France. In The Maid, Kimberly Cutter addresses not only who Joan – here called Jehanne – was, but what it might have been like for her to have been the figurehead of the French army, so convinced that she was the only one who could drive out the English conquerors.

Cutter walks a fine line with The Maid, between attempting to bring Jehanne to life and also attempting to stay as true as possible to the verifiable events of her life. This means that, at times, The Maid reads a bit more like historical nonfiction than historical fiction, but this is by no means a mark against it. Although the reader is not always privy to Jehanne’s deepest emotions, Cutter excels at showing Jehanne’s state of mind, particularly her increasing volatility as her time as a leader of battle dragged on and she knew the end was approaching, such as this scene when her order forbidding prostitutes in camp is disobeyed:

Jehanne smiled, then raised her sword over her head and hit the woman with the flat of it so hard that the sword broke in half. The woman fell to the ground. Everyone around the campfire stood frozen, eyes wide as coins. Jehanne stared back at them. “I said no whores in camp.” -p. 235

Jehanne is a character who continually struggles with her believed calling, and with how she might even begin to complete the tasks set to her. Her emotional distress and quick temper may raise the question for many readers whether she was truly hearing the voice of God or whether she was mentally ill, but Cutter will not easily let us dismiss her as merely schizophrenic, as many have, dwelling as well on her verified fulfilled prophecies, such as her the outcomes of battles she did not witness and her own wounding by an arrow, as well as her miraculous survival of a seventy-some foot fall without so much as a sprained ankle.

This continual questioning and the lack of easy answers are perhaps  the best thing about The Maid, but even without them this is a compelling story of a girl who takes on a responsibility never dreamed of by the other woman of her age and steadfastly performs what she sees as her duty, despite her own fears and misgivings. Highly recommended.

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The Maid by Kimberly Cutter – Book Review

The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

In P.T. Barnum’s over-sized world, Lavinia “Vinnie” Bump was both the biggest and the smallest thing around. Born a normal size, both Vinnie and her younger sister Minnie simply stopped growing as young children, Vinnie eventually standing only 32 inches high, and Minnie even smaller. Vinnie, however, was determined never to let her height define her or hold her back and set out to make sure that she had access to nearly everything life could offer.

Melanie Benjamin has a special talent for ferreting out fascinating women who most people would never think to wonder about and bringing their stories to life, first with Alice Liddell, the real Alice behind Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and now with Lavinia Bump. Benjamin’s Lavinia was strong and determined, although fallible and occasionally naive. There were times that her voice seemed a bit too reminiscent of Alice’s in Alice I Have Been, but the women did, at least how Benjamin wrote them, have somewhat similar, at times almost imperial, personalities.

The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb provides a much different perspective of the 1850s and 60s than most readers are probably familiar with, but Benjamin makes both her characters and the time period come to life. Recommended.

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The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb by Melanie Benjamin – Book Review

The Lady of the Rivers

This is the third book in Philippa Gregory’s The Cousin’s War series. I have also reviewed the two previous books, The White Queen and The Red Queen. Each book stands alone, and none of the reviews contain spoilers for the other books.

Both a friend and attendant of Lancastrian Henry VI’s queen Margaret of Anjou and the mother of Yorkist Edward IV’s wife Elizabeth Woodville, Jacquetta of Luxembourg was a complex and complicated medieval woman. Unlike so many women she was able to marry for love – at least the second time – and had a large, apparently close-knit family. Perhaps at another time in England’s history Jacquetta might have had a peaceful life at court and with her family, but her family began to come of age at a time when the houses of Lancaster and York were locked in a deadly battle for control of England, battle that caused everyone to reexamine their loyalties and choose sides.

So overall, I really like The Lady of the Rivers. It is classic Gregory, very engaging, if not always particularly historically accurate (although we now know that she isn’t too concerned by that allegation). I was sucked in, very interested about Jacquetta’s story, particularly since she is all but ignored in most historical fiction. But you guys, oh my gosh, the repetition. I don’t know whether this is a case of her being a big enough superstar not to have to accept edits or editing not being done very carefully on her books because she is a superstar who will sell no matter what, but at the beginning of the book in particular, she would describe the same thing in the same way multiple times in a few pages, or even on the same page. On particularly egregious example includes the same phrase being used twice in as many paragraphs.

“It is home, he says simply. “And even at its worst, one acre of England is worth ten square miles of France.”

I look at him blankly. “All you Englishmen are the same,I tell him. You think that you are divinely blessed by God for no better reason than you had the longbow at Agincourt.”

He laughs. “We are,” he says. “We think rightly. We are divinely blessed. And one acre of England is worth ten in France.” (emphasis mine)

I suppose that wasn’t exactly the same thing two paragraphs later, since he assessment changed by the magnitude of a mile to an acre, but you get the drift.

The good news is that either this repetitive ridiculousness stopped after about the first hundred pages or Gregory pulled me deeply enough into Jacquetta’s story that I didn’t notice. I do wish, however, that The Lady of the Rivers had been released as the first book in this series. There were parts in The White Queen where Jacquetta seemed almost cartoonish, her magic overdone. I think Gregory has tempered that picture and made her a much fuller character in The Lady of the Rivers, and I think The White Queen would have been improved with that additional knowledge both on Gregory’ part, and the part of the reader.

Gregory fans, this is no The Other Queen debacle, pick up it. Those of you not already acquainted with Gregory’s work, pick it up if you are in the mood for fun, absorbing historical fiction and aren’t too worried about strict adherence to known historical facts – and if you can bear a little repetition.

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The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory – Book Review