★★★½
The Adventures of Captain Alatriste: Book II
In the second book in Pérez-Reverte’s swashbuckling series, we rejoin the eponymous captain and his page Íñigo shortly after the adventure of the two Englishmen recounted in Captain Alatriste. Life has returned to its normal rhythm and the captain is contemplating a return to active service in Flanders; but an encounter with their old friend, the poet don Francisco de Quevedo, raises the prospect of work to be done in Madrid.
★★★
Per Olov Enquist’s novel was a great success in his native Sweden, where it won the 1999 August Prize, and its critical acclaim continued with this English translation by Tiina Nunnally, which won the 2003 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. It was also one of the sources of inspiration for the very good 2012 Danish film A Royal Affair, which I enjoyed immensely. Enquist’s novel shares much of its atmosphere with the film. It is a stark, claustrophobic and disturbing account of the ménage à trois which existed at the Danish court from 1769 until 1772, between the mad King Christian VII, his English wife Caroline Mathilde (younger sister of George III) and the German doctor Johann Friedrich Struensee, whose appointment as Royal Physician offers him all manner of opportunities.
★★★
The Saxon Stories: Book II
This is the second volume in a series about the Northumbrian ealdorman Uhtred, born a Saxon but raised in captivity among the Danes as the adopted son of Earl Ragnar. The first book, The Last Kingdom, closed with a great battle at Cynuit, at which Uhtred led the Saxon forces to victory against the Danes and killed their leader Ubba Lothbrokson. This second book opens with the aftermath of the battle, as the Saxons once again fragment into their petty factions.
★★★
This was my first encounter with Adam Thorpe and I can honestly say it’s one of the oddest books I’ve ever read. As a piece of literature it’s creative, subversive and intelligent. As an evocation of a historical period it’s utterly convincing, conjuring up the mixture of religious fervour and folk superstition that formed the medieval mindset. And yet, while I admired the achievement, I can’t honestly say I enjoyed it.
★★★½
The Saxon Stories: Book I
On a rather fortuitous trip to the library yesterday, I happened to see this book: the first in a series set in 9th-century Britain, at a time when the struggle between the Saxons and the Danes was at its fiercest. I haven’t read much Bernard Cornwell, despite his enormous popularity – in fact, I think Azincourt is the only book of his that I’ve read, and I can’t remember much about that. However, in the wake of King Hereafter, I thought I’d give this a go. It turned out to be a highly enjoyable read: light, full of action and (though very different from Dunnett) an interesting complement to Thorfinn’s story.
★★★★
David Cordingly was a curator at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich for twelve years and was responsible for their 1992 exhibition Pirates: Fact and Fiction, which proved to be so popular that (rather than the planned run of four months) it stayed open for three years. As the public appetite for pirates was evidently so strong, he was invited to write a book on the back of the exhibition. Life Among The Pirates is lively and easy to read, and sets out to explore the gulf between the popular perception of pirates and the harsh reality, stretching from the Elizabethan privateers in the Spanish Main to the nineteenth-century Chinese pirates under the command of the savvy former courtesan Mrs Cheng. It’s a great introduction to the subject and has left me burning to finally read Treasure Island.
★★★★½
For the last week or so, I’ve been lost in another world – in the sea-spray glinting off a longship’s figurehead, and the sheen of sunlight on helms and spears. It is the dawn of the 11th century. Viking culture, with its pillaging, sagas and piratical leaders teeters on the edge: and, falling, begins to assume the Christian values and the lineaments of the world we know today. It is also the moment when one man, by chance or the will of the Fates, finds himself in a position to begin unifying the disparate earldoms of Alba, Caithness and Orkney into a political entity that will assume the more familiar name of Scotia. That man is here most often given his pagan, Norse name: Thorfinn. History knows him by a much more famous name. Macbeth.
★★★★
First things first: just in case you jump to conclusions on seeing Anne Rice’s name, or the design of the current book cover on Amazon, this is not about vampires. This is one of her earlier books, published after Interview with the Vampire but before the rest of the Vampire Chronicles, and it is pure historical fiction. Moreover, it deals with a subject that (as far as I know) has been very rarely covered in fiction, with the one notable exception of de Balzac’s Sarrasine: the tragic and breathtaking phenomenon of the castrati.
★★★★
Many of you will, most likely, already have read this: it’s been one of the hit books of the last twelve months and its cover has caught my eye many a time on bookshops’ bestsellers tables. It’s a wonder that it took me so long to get round to reading it, because Hesperus are one of my favourite independent presses; I went through a phase of compulsively buying a whole variety of books from their Classics series. Now that I’ve finally had the chance to sample The Hundred-Year-Old Man, I can completely understand why it’s been so popular. It reads like the irreverent love-child of Forrest Gump and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, feeding off the contemporary hunger for Scandi-crime novels but transporting its readers into a quirky genre that’s all on its own.
★★★
As you’ll have noticed, I don’t often read fiction set in the present day, but in the wake of my Robin Hobb reread I wanted to move on to something completely different. Charlie of The Worm Hole mentioned this recently in her ‘currently reading’ post, and the concept intrigued me enough that I sought it out. It turned out to be a thoroughly contemporary story about love, identity and the alluring smokescreen offered by the Internet. And it shares some of the qualities of Internet media in that it’s fresh, snappy, delivered in bite-size chunks, and very much of the moment.
The Idle Woman 