★★★★
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.
★★★★
I haven’t read that many of Daphne du Maurier’s books, and in fact hadn’t read any at all until I borrowed Rebecca and Jamaica Inn from the library a couple of years ago. Both captivated me (although The House on the Strand, which I borrowed next, left me rather cold) and I decided to track down Frenchman’s Creek to complement them. I could have predicted that I would love it. Featuring pirates, cavaliers, disguise, adventure and a good dose of old-fashioned romance, it was a self-indulgent joy to read and has entered the Idle Woman Swashbuckling Hall of Fame.
★★½
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for the random swashbuckler of the week! I had never heard of this book, which was recommended automatically to me by LibraryThing, but since the Kindle version was free, I couldn’t resist. It turns out that Captain Fracasse was Gautier’s third full-length novel, published in 1863, nine years before his death. It’s a romantic romp through a picturesque vision of 17th-century France, following a troupe of commedia dell’ arte actors travelling from Gascony to Paris, with a poverty-stricken young nobleman in their midst.
★★★★
I’ve wanted to get my hands on this ever since reading Music and Silence several years ago and it has definitely been worth the wait. Tremain has just published a sequel to Restoration, titled Merivel: A Man of His Time, so I thought I’d better catch up before everyone starts telling me how wonderful it is. I don’t know her work that well – Music and Silence and Restoration are her only novels that I’ve read to date – but in both cases I’ve been struck by her shrewdness, her poise and her sheer skill as a writer.
★★★
This sequel to Stella Duffy’s Theodora picks up the story two years after the conclusion of the earlier book, when Justinian and his wife are established as Emperor and Empress. It covers the next twenty years of their reign and shows how, as the most powerful woman in the Western world, Theodora must shift her priorities. Nothing less than the safety of the Roman world is at stake, and there are dangers everywhere: in religious dissention; in the war with Persia; and in the presence of those who believe the purple would become them – whether that’s the ambitious John the Cappadocian, or the unfortunate Hypatius, whose claim is picked up by the mob.
★
Like Per Olov Enquist’s Visit of the Royal Physician, Ildefonso Falcones’s historical novel Cathedral of the Sea has won a veritable bouquet of prizes both in its native Spain, where it enjoyed immense success, and in other European countries. Like The Visit of the Royal Physician, however, it left me cold. In fact, I am willing to go further in this instance and to say that this is a very disappointing book. Had I not felt honour-bound to finish it, I would have put it aside after the first hundred pages. As it was, I forced myself through to the end. I’m going to try to keep this post brief because, while I’m more than happy to write long effusive reviews of books I like, I see no virtue in dwelling on negativity. Suffice it to say I won’t be recommending it to anyone.
★★★
There isn’t enough historical fiction set in Byzantium (I’m open for recommendations!), and so I was very happy to find a copy of this book and its sequel, The Purple Shroud, in my local library. Although I read Antony Bridge’s biography of Theodora last year, I still don’t know as much about her as I’d like and I hoped that Duffy’s novel would throw some further light on the subject.
★★★
First things first: this is a children’s book, and I was never under any illusions about that. The cover caught my eye about four years ago, with its glorious sweep of peacocks’ feathers, and I’ve found myself coming back to admire the design ever since (it is much more beautiful than the covers of other editions I’ve seen on LibraryThing). In the end I bought it because, after all, it is a historical novel, set in the medieval period. I’m completely out of practice in judging the correct reading age for a children’s book, but I would hazard a guess that this would probably be best suited for nine to twelve-year-olds. From an adult perspective it’s charming but painted in rather broad strokes.
★★★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.
The Idle Woman 