Tag: historical fiction

Captain Alatriste (1996): Arturo Pérez-Reverte

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★★★★

For the elite, Spain in the 1620s is a world of stately protocol, fine poetry and all the trappings of a great empire: the sun may be setting on Spanish dominance in the New World, but there’s still enough light to enjoy it while it lasts. Outside the insulated world of the court, however, things are very different. For the man on the street, it’s a world of living hand-to-mouth, gossip on street corners and scurrilous sonnets, where every insult is met with steel and where the appearance of gentility (bearing arms, getting good seats at the theatre) is more important than the reality. Into this roistering world of old soldiers, literary priests and jobbing poets comes young, wide-eyed Íñigo, whose mother has sent him to live with his late father’s comrade-in-arms, Captain Alatriste.

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Slammerkin (2001): Emma Donoghue

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★★★½

From isolated nuns in medieval Norfolk to the harlots of late Georgian London… an interesting progression. This, the first book by Donoghue that I’ve read, is the tale of Mary Saunders, who goes to ruin for want of a red satin ribbon. Living with her mother, her hated stepfather and her infant stepbrother in a basement room on Charing Cross Road, Mary is troubled by ambition. She is bright and curious and romantic, and wants more from her future than to become a seamstress like her mother and fade into obscurity, poverty and bitterness. Her education at the Charity School has only whetted her appetite for knowledge and her dreams are full of fine clothes and balls and all the stuff of 18th-century romance. Fans, fine carriages and gentlemen might be impossibly remote from Mary’s humble life, but bright colours and billowing skirts are there to be had… at a price.

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The Corner That Held Them (1948): Sylvia Townsend Warner

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★★★

There are great pools of ignorance in my knowledge of literature, and one of these pools is in the region of early 20th century novels by female authors – which is why I so much enjoy the Stuck In A Book blog, because it introduces me to books and writers I simply haven’t come across before. It was there that I first heard about Sylvia Townsend Warner, not in the context of her novels but because Simon was reading a memoir about her. When I stumbled across The Corner That Held Them in my local library, I recognised her name and thought I’d give it a go.

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The Volcano Lover (1992): Susan Sontag

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★★★★

The man known as the Cavaliere is the British Ambassador in Naples. Refined and courtly, he is a connoisseur of the beautiful, the antique and the imposing. He collects whatever he can – paintings, statues, vases, antiquities acquired legally and illegally from the newly-discovered sites at Pompeii and Herculaneum – and he interests himself in all that is methodical, scientific and educational. But nothing fascinates him as much as the volcano, Vesuvius, which towers over the colourful city which has become his home.

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Stradella (1909): Francis Marion Crawford

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★★★

There are many good reasons to choose a book, but doing so because the author shares his name with one of my favourite fictional characters is probably not one of them. Nevertheless, in this case it had a happy outcome. I stumbled across Stradella (1909) about a week ago, while looking for historical novels set in Venice to complement my visit to the Carnevale. I knew nothing about Francis Marion Crawford (although he was evidently very distinguished in his day) and so wasn’t expecting much. What I discovered was a charming historical romance which proved to be perfect material for holiday reading: undemanding, easy to dip into, and full of Baroque swashbuckling, love and intrigue.

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Homer’s Daughter (1955): Robert Graves

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★★½

I discovered this on my last trip to the library and, in the thrill of finding a novel by Graves that I’d never even heard of, remembered a poem by Jo Walton which I’d read some months ago. There are few sensations to compare with suddenly finding a previously unknown book by an author you’re fond of. Like many people, I’ve read I, Claudius and Claudius the God, but I hadn’t realised that Graves had written any other fiction about the classical period.

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At Drake’s Command (2012): David Wesley Hill

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★★★

David Wesley Hill’s novel is the first in a planned series, which follows Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the world through the eyes of the young cook and crew-member Peregrine James. We first meet Perry in Plymouth in November 1577, where he is being publicly whipped for a theft he didn’t commit. Determined to make a better life for himself, he talks his way onto the crew of the Pelican, which under the command of Francis Drake is said to be heading off on a trading voyage to Alexandria.

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Pompeii (2003): Robert Harris

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★★★½

Attilius is an aquarius: a specialist engineer who constructs and maintains the great aqueducts that feed the Roman Empire. His first significant posting is to Misenum, the great naval base at the tip of the Bay of Naples and the terminus of the immense aqueduct, the Aqua Augusta, which waters the resorts and towns around the bay. Attilius’ predecessor, the aquarius Exomnius, has vanished in mysterious circumstances; but nobody admits to knowing where he’s gone. And anyway Attilius has more pressing matters on his hands: his gang of recalcitrant workmen don’t take him seriously; his foreman Corax does all he can to undermine his authority; and the waters of the Aqua Augusta have begun to fail.

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Baudolino (2000): Umberto Eco

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★★★½

This was a reread, but it might as well have been a first encounter: I’d read Baudolino back in spring 2004 and remembered virtually nothing of the plot, beyond my delight that Niketas Choniates was one of the main characters. Yes, I probably do need to explain that. By sheer chance, I’d begun to read this novel after a term spent studying medieval European history, during which one of my essays had required me to spend a week getting my head around the mechanics of the Byzantine court. I didn’t really manage it, but it sparked off my fascination with Byzantium and, even better, it introduced me to Niketas. His Annals include what has become one of my favourite historian quotes: ‘There can be no one so mad as to believe there is anything more pleasurable than history.’ Bravo that man.

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