★★★★★
The Life and Times of Oswald of Northumbria
Published at the end of August, this book came to my attention as a Kindle recommendation from Amazon. It was a bit of a leap into the dark. I hadn’t come across Max Adams before; I hadn’t heard of the publisher; and I had no idea who Oswald of Northumbria was. No one else on LibraryThing owned the book at the time. But the opening paragraph captivated me and I decided to take the plunge.
★★★★
After discovering Elizabeth von Arnim* through The Enchanted April, I was keen to read some more of her work and the natural next step was to find a copy of this book: her first novel, published in 1898. It has been a complete joy to read. Presented in the form of a diary by the semi-autobiographical Elizabeth, it takes the reader through the span of a year in her beloved garden in Northern Germany, following her trials and errors in planting and her passionate appreciation of the way every season affects her little corner of the earth.
★★★½
A Man of His Time
The last time we saw Sir Robert Merivel, in the closing pages of Rose Tremain’s Restoration, he had achieved everything he had once desired: a comfortable home of his own; his infant daughter Margaret in his arms; and an assurance of King Charles II’s favour. Twenty five years after the publication of that novel, Tremain invites us to once again join forces with her neurotic, gifted but all-too-easily-distracted physician (for whom only sixteen years have passed) and to take a glimpse at what his life has become in the year 1683.
★★
Although I bought this more than a year ago, I’ve only just got round to reading it, mainly because Helen recently reviewed another of Margaret George’s books, Elizabeth I. Remembering that I had this novel on my shelf, I decided it was time to take the plunge (at 747 pages long, it’s quite a commitment). It’s the first of George’s books that I’ve read, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I’m sorry to say that it doesn’t quite match up to Helen’s report on Elizabeth. While I could see that a lot of research had gone into it, it never developed the alluring sparkle and epic grandeur that I’d hoped for from the woman whose face launched a thousand ships.
★★★★
A few weeks ago I met up with a friend for lunch and she enthused to me about a book she’d been reading: The Psychopath Test. I was peripherally aware of it, but hadn’t read it. ‘You should give it a go,’ my friend said. But I still felt unwilling: there was one thing that had been troubling me ever since I’d first heard of the book. ‘I don’t think I want to,’ I said awkwardly. ‘What if it turns out that I am one?’ My friend laughed at me: ‘Don’t worry. The fact you’re anxious about it means you’re not one.’ That’s a relief.
★★★★
How I wish I’d known about this book when I went to Amsterdam! I always enjoy taking appropriate reading material on my travels and this would have been absolutely perfect. Moggach’s novel of love, art and betrayal is set in the Dutch Golden Age, at a time of millwheel ruffs and dark clothing, merry companies in taverns, and maids in linen caps sweeping the steps of canalside houses. In short, it reads like the literary equivalent of the National Gallery’s Vermeer show.
★★
Mika Waltari was recommended to me some months ago, particularly for his novel The Egyptian. As he is both out of print and formidably hard to track down second-hand, I had to let Fate lead my steps instead. Last week I found another of Waltari’s novels, The Etruscan, in a first edition paperback from 1959 at the South Bank book market. I just couldn’t resist the cover and so decided that it was time to give him a go.
★★★½
Riverside III
Following on from Swordspoint and The Privilege of the Sword, this is the third in Ellen Kushner’s series set in her broadly 18th-century city, around the nobles’ district of the Hill, the warren of Riverside and the halls of the University. The latter, which figured only briefly in the two previous novels, becomes the main setting here. I was rather charmed to find a fantasy book in which one of the main plot strands is a dispute over historical methodologies.
★★★★
The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady
When Isabella Robinson began to keep a diary in 1849, at the age of thirty-six, she could have little imagined the scandalous role it would come to play in one of the 19th century’s most salacious divorce cases. In fact, the prospect of scandal or any kind of excitement entering her life must have seemed depressingly small.
★★★½
A 2000-Year Tour through the Filth and Fury of Living History
When Tim Moore and his family move into an unmodernised semi in Chiswick in 1988, he has a glimpse of what it might have been like to live in the past: no hot water; no bathroom; and an outdoor privy in the back garden. Marvelling at the developments in home comforts over the last hundred years – and struck by how much we’ve come to rely on them – he decides to investigate why thousands of people feel drawn to give up such luxuries as central heating, soap and a proper roof over their heads, and take up living history instead.
The Idle Woman 