★★★½
I read this a while ago and, at the time, hadn’t read any of Sarah Waters’s books except The Night Watch and, according to LibraryThing, The Little Stranger, although embarrassingly I can’t remember a thing about that. The Paying Guests was yet another of those books stumbled over in my local Oxfam. Even it didn’t exert quite the power I’d been hoping for, it turned into an unexpectedly engaging thriller whose final pages kept me up past midnight in my impatience to find out what happened.
★★★★½
The Strays has enjoyed great success in its native Australia and it’s easy to see why. It brims with the ribald, feverish glamour of bohemian life, seen through the eyes of a narrator who grows to adulthood on the margins of an exotic world so very different from her own humdrum existence. Romantic and poignant, it manages to feel much larger than its slim size would suggest. There are hints of Brideshead Revisited, of The Secret History and The Lessons, of A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book and, like Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, it focuses on an intensely-rendered, many-layered picture of adolescent female friendship. It’s a stunning debut.
★★★★
The Eagles Trilogy: Book I
In a sacred grove in the depths of a German forest, a seven-year-old boy watches a human sacrifice and takes an oath which will shape his entire life and strike at the very heart of Roman power. The boy’s name is Ermin of the Cherusci. He will grow up to become Arminius, Rome’s ally, Rome’s auxiliary and Rome’s greatest enemy.
★★★½
This was recommended to me on Goodreads or Amazon some time ago, and its elegant cover lodged itself in my mind. It has turned out to be an intriguing historical adventure through desire and identity, a clever interweaving of two tales of losing and finding oneself, all spiced with the salt of the sea air. It’s the author’s first novel, but is already deft and assured, and the narration has an authentic early 18th-century period rhythm.
★★★
Earth’s Children: Book II
It’s time for the second instalment of Ayla’s adventures: a book that significantly broadens out the world which was introduced to us in The Clan of the Cave Bear. Here we finally glimpse cultures beyond those of the Clan, but we also spend much more time with Ayla, watching as circumstances force her to make leaps of intuition ever more daring and more successful. I can’t say this novel was quite as smooth going as the first, but towards the end something clicked and I now find myself eager to head on to the third. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Spoilers will follow, so proceed with caution.
★★★★
After starting my Sutcliff journey with Sword at Sunset, I always intended to read The Eagle of the Ninth next, but things didn’t quite happen as planned. I have a lot of great big thick books lying around at the moment and, while hunting for something short as a kind of palate-cleanser between epics, I unearthed this little novel. It was allegedly written for children but, in the tradition of the best children’s literature, it’s equally rewarding to read as a grown-up. In fewer than two hundred pages, Sutcliff spins a stirring tale of honour, bravery and adventure, the Viking sea road and the golden domes of Byzantium. How could I resist?
★★★★
I thought twice about buying this, mainly because of the title, which implied an historical romance full of heaving bosoms and ripped bodices. Plus, did I really need another take on the overly familiar tale of Henry VIII, Katharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn? But I’ve heard a lot about Norah Lofts over the years and so did buy it, and to my relief it was a very pleasant surprise. Thoughtful and intelligent, it was grounded in the period mindset in such a way that I never felt myself sinking into a quagmire of historical exposition.
★★★½
Kingmaker: Book II
It’s been over two years since I read Winter Pilgrims, the first book in Toby Clements’s Kingmaker series. I always meant to continue with the story, but what with one thing and another I only got round to borrowing the second book from the library the other day. After such a long gap it took a while to catch up with the plot and characters but, once I’d found my bearings, I discovered that Clements’s sequel has the same brutal honesty as his first. Eschewing grand speeches and noble solars, this novel plunges the reader deep into the experiences of ordinary men among the grit and misery of the Wars of the Roses.
★★★★
Earth’s Children: Book I
In our first years at secondary school, one of my classmates was much taken with the Earth’s Children series by Jean M. Auel. I remember being very impressed by the thick novels she was carrying around, and decided that I would have to read the books myself one day. And now, twenty years later, I’ve finally got round to it. In the aftermath of The Inheritors, I decided it was time to make a start on this other famous story about contact between Neanderthal man and the new race of Homo sapiens.
★★★½
I haven’t read a new Georgette Heyer novel since before I started writing this blog, which means it’s long overdue. Her books may be fluffy and predictable; her characters may be much the same from story to story; but I adore her: she never fails to delight and distract from whatever life throws at me. At the moment that’s an irritating cold, so I was much in need of witty Regency escapades to divert myself from snuffling. There are times when a girl simply needs a bit of frivolity. And The Convenient Marriage delivers on all fronts. With balls, card-parties, duels and highwaymen, it’s a gloriously frothy story dressed up with fabulous gowns, extravagant wigs and two very appealing protagonists.
The Idle Woman 