Category: Books

The Girl Who Fought Napoleon (2016): Linda Lafferty

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★★★½

A novel of the Russian Empire

This book is one for those who were taken by the BBC’s recent production of War and Peace. It sweeps from the glittering salons of the upper classes in St Petersburg, where French language and culture reign supreme, to the brutal bleakness of the battlefields on which Russian soldiers fight to hold back the steady creep of French imperial ambition. At the heart of this novel – based, I should emphasise, on a fascinating true story – are two characters whose experiences offer complementary perspectives on the situation.

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Cathar (2016): Christopher Bland

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★★★

I asked to review Cathar with a hint of trepidation. In recent historical fiction the Cathars, like the Knights Templar, have been appropriated by the religious-conspiracy crowd and I wasn’t quite sure what I was letting myself in for. Fortunately I was pleasantly surprised: there were no secret societies (beyond Catharism itself) and no hint of the Grail. This is pure historical fiction. More than, there’s a lot of genuine history here: it reintroduced me to a crowd of real-life figures whom I last encountered during my history degree in Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s magisterial study of Montaillou.

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Mozart Reimagined (2015): Tyson Vick

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Mozart Reimagined: Don Giovanni

★★★★

Some weeks ago I was searching for photos of the Royal Opera House’s classic production of Mitridate designed by Graham Vick, but when I Googled ‘Mitridate‘ and ‘Vick’, I didn’t get quite the results I was expecting. Instead I found the most incredible series of pictures taken by Tyson Vick, an American photographer, who has spent ten years working on an ambitious project to take at least one representative photograph for every Mozart opera. And I mean every. This remarkable book is the result, and it truly is Mozart as you’ve never seen him before.

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Post Captain (1972): Patrick O’Brian

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★★★★

Aubrey & Maturin: Book II

Heloise has been gently encouraging me to continue with Aubrey & Maturin ever since I posted on Master and Commander and I have finally kept my promise that I would do so. To be honest, in the aftermath of The Mammoth Hunters this proved to be the perfect book: full of adventure and incident, populated by wonderfully endearing but flawed characters, and written like a dream. I’m swiftly coming to realise that O’Brian is one of those authors whose books you can turn to with a happy sigh, like easing into a warm bath, because you know that as a reader you don’t have to do any work at all: just sit back and enjoy.

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Lament for the Fallen (2016): Gavin Chait

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© David Fisher

★★★★

Again, it was the cover that did it. The eerie face, with its scored lines and sunburst of golden rays, reminded me of an ancient tribal mask. I was intrigued by the apparent disconnect between that and the sci-fi plot summarised on the back of the book. Gavin Chait’s first novel turned out to be quite different from any such novel I’ve read before, and not just for its African setting. While on the one hand it offers a sobering future, in which the planet’s ecology has been ravaged by greed, it also shows seedlings of hope, as people strive, even in the darkest days, to create a better world.

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The Mammoth Hunters (1985): Jean M. Auel

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★★½

Earth’s Children: Book III

As we embark on the third book in Ayla’s story, we pick up the narrative thread exactly where we left it. At the end of The Valley of Horses we left Ayla and Jondalar at the moment in which they are hailed by a hunting party; here we see the group approach and make their introductions. They are Mamutoi – Mammoth Hunters – and invite the young couple to visit their settlement, the Lion Camp. As she follows them, Ayla is torn between curiosity and fear, as these are the first Others she has seen except for Jondalar; but her anxiety will prove to have no foundation. She will find not only new friends among the Mamutoi but also a persistent and attractive new admirer.

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The Secret Chord (2015): Geraldine Brooks

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★★★½

The men of Yudah still tell stories of how their ancestors followed the prophet Moshe out of captivity in Mitzrayim to found new cities of their own. But their recent history has been less glorious. Troubled by Plishtim raiders from the Levantine coast, the people come to the prophet Shmuel begging him to anoint a king which, unwillingly, he does. The choice falls on Shauel, tall, handsome and charismatic, but Shauel and Shmuel soon diverge in their ambitions.

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The Gracekeepers (2015): Kirsty Logan

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★★★

This was a chance find in the library: I was attracted by the dreamily beautiful cover, which reminded me of The Life of Pi, and by the intriguing summary on the back. Its ethereal strangeness was indicative of the book itself, which turned out to be a pared-back fable set in a fantastical post-apocalyptic future. While it was lovely – and offered me another fictional circus to add to my tally – it also felt somehow truncated, as though it was only just getting underway when the pages came to an end.

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A Little Life (2015): Hanya Yanagihara

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★★★★½

This is going to be hard to write about, and not because I don’t know what to say, but because I don’t know how to say it. I want to use words that I customarily turn to when speaking of things I admire: brilliant, magnificent, splendid, astonishing. But such words neuter the power of this book and render it somehow superficial and glittery, when what I actually want to convey is that this novel one moment twists your stomach and ties knots in your throat, and the next offers you a moment of beauty as perfect and transitory as sunlight reflecting off a lacquered bowl. I’m not sure I can express how good this book is without trivialising it. If I say that, on finishing it, I sat in the shadows and actually wept with rage and the poignant shame of it, that might give you some idea of its impact.

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The Last Concubine (2008): Lesley Downer

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★★★½

Ever since I went to Japan, I’ve been curious to learn more about its ancient feudal culture. While this may not be the kind of serious historical introduction that I should be reading, it does help to give a certain flavor of the atmosphere and, besides, Lesley Downer is a reliable guide. I read her history book Geisha about six months ago and was impressed then by the engaging way she wrote about these mysterious, endlessly fascinating creatures. As one who has studied and lived in Japan, she’s managed to get a feel for the complexities of the country’s social history, and her knowledge of its customs and traditions pervades every corner of this novel.

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