Tag: Historical Book Reviews

The English Ghost – Peter Ackroyd (2010)

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This is the 14th Peter Ackroyd book I’ve read.  They can vary from being so good they knock all competition aside as in my 2002 Book Of The Year “London- The Biography” (2000).  They can get pretty close to that standard (6 more appearances in my end of year Top 10s) and they can also be so-so, and that can apply to both his fiction and non-fiction works and this is the group that this book fits into,

A lot of it is to do with intention.  Some of his works including “London”; his 6 volume history of England and the original version of his biography of Charles Dickens are ambitious, massive undertakings.  My favourite of his novels “Dan Leno & The Limehouse Golem” (1994) fizzles and enthrals for its duration.  In a publishing career that has spanned over 50 years and has incorporated 18 novels, poetry and close to 50 non-fiction works on a range of subjects not everything needs the same attack and depth.  This is a much slighter affair, as it was no doubt intended to be.

Subtitled “Spectres Through Time” the author collects published eye-witness accounts of experiences with ghosts.  These span the centuries and take in haunted houses, wandering spirits, religious spooks, ghosts of animals, poltergeists and premonitions of death.  There’s a lot to choose from as Ackroyd states in his introduction that the English see more of these visitations than anyone else, with not surprisingly the Victorian period being the most significant.  I found it quite fascinating that removed from any greater context and analysis how much these accounts seem to blend into one another with common threads and patterns and how although obviously very scary for the individuals concerned at the time seem rather detached when recorded as factual events.  Most ghosts seen are not known by the haunted.  There’s lots of knocking and banging sounds, objects thrown hit but do not hurt individuals (but thrown against walls and floors etc. do cause damage) and messages either fail to be conveyed effectively or mean very little.  Obviously there’s exceptions to all of these but that provides a general picture and if it sounds like I’m being disparaging towards these (not always) night-time visitors I’m not because there’s no getting around their mystery.  These stories are all unexplained- often witnessed by upstanding members of the community, whole households or groups of individuals and that makes this mind-bending, compelling and, I must admit, without some kind of explanation a tad disappointing.

I’d been wanting to read this book since publication and I think I thought it was more of an examination of the role of the ghost in English culture, because that feels like something Peter Ackroyd would do whereas it is merely a record of hauntings and I think that this is why I wasn’t blown away by it but for a perspective of ghostly visits over the centuries and the power these had over those who witnessed such events it’s certainly worth seeking out.

The English Ghost was published by Chatto & Windus in 2010.  I read the 2011 Vintage paperback edition.

Radical Love – Neil Blackmore (Hutchinson Heinemann 2023)

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Neil Blackmore’s latest novel is set in Georgian London.  Radicalism is in the air- spread by seeds sown in the French Revolution.  Established ideas are being questioned, slavery has been abolished, it seems like the start of a new age.

Only it’s not, the rot is still there and hatred and prejudice still prevalent.  William Wilberforce, celebrated for his achievements in ending slavery still placed black dinner guests behind a screen to keep them separate from the white diners.  Main character and narrator John Church has set up his own place of worship, the Obelisk, to preach tolerance in well-attended services which attracts free thinkers as well as those unimpressed by his motives.  For many the limits come with any suggestion of acceptance for homosexuality and yet molly-houses thrive.  John Church accepts an invitation to attend rooms above a pub where he will attempt to alleviate some of the gay shame and self-hatred by marrying any men who wish to be coupled with one another.  Is he beginning a path of greater acceptance in London or is this just a step too far?

What I like very much is this reclaiming of history, of developing the true stories behind the established facts, as certainly here the novel is based upon actual events.  Over the last few years this has been done very successfully by Black British writers. Paterson Joseph and his “Secret Diaries Of Charles Ignatius Sancho” (2022) and Sarah Collins’ “The Confessions Of Frannie Langton” (2019) immediately spring to mind. Neil Blackmore does this to an extent with black experience but particularly here with gay men’s stories.  Tom Crewe has done similar so successfully earlier this year with “The New Life” (2023) and Blackmore attains a high standard with this.

If you don’t already know about John Church (and I didn’t) greater pleasure will be had from this book by not finding out too much beforehand, especially as in his main character the author has created a gloriously untrustworthy narrator.  We can tell from the start that this is a man of contradictions and it is with great relish that these contradictions are brought to life.

This probably comes as close as a novel is going to get this year to being five stars without me actually awarding my top rating.  (I don’t believe that was because the review copy I was sent was so badly formatted that it did affect my reading flow and thus some of my enjoyment, luckily the book rattles on at such a pace the effects of this were diminished) but I think with John Church so central we only see the other characters from his (sometimes) off-skew perspective which doesn’t give them as much chance to shine as I would have liked.  The radical aspects come across strongly, are well balanced and the ideas very accessible (more so than Tom Crewe’s novel, actually, which is set in a repressed Victorian London of the late nineteenth century).  I also feel that, Neil Blackmore is here just like a cat that toys with a mouse for just a little bit too long before going for the kill in his development of his plot.  It is full of appalling hypocrisy, there’s hope and despair but above all a vivid bringing to life of a forgotten man whose attempts to find and bring love to Georgian London produce this extraordinary tale.

Radical Love will be published on 1st June 2023 by Hutchinson Heinemann.  Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

The Sleeping Car Porter – Suzette Mayr (Dialogue Books 2023)

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This is award-winning Canadian author Suzette Mayr’s fifth novel and was the 2022 recipient of the Giller Prize for Canadian writing.  Set in 1929 largely on a long train journey from Montreal to Vancouver where the focus is on main character Baxter, a black gay man who has taken a position as a sleeping car porter to help fund his dream to study dentistry.  We see the passengers through Baxter’s eyes as he strives to get tips and avoid complaints which would lead to demerits and being fired.  He is close to his fund-raising goals so this trip is very important for him.

It’s written in the present tense which is never my favourite narrative structure.  I can find it confusing and a little one-note and there is a danger we fall into stream of consciousness territory.  Baxter has to function very much in the moment, responding to demands and crises so it might seem fitting but then this is not actually his narrative, it’s third person.  I can see why it works to a point but I might have liked the author to mix it up a little but admittedly as time goes on and the exhaustion of both staff and passengers brings in surreal elements the layering of event after event does work well.

Baxter is the shining gem of this novel, unable to afford to eat properly and with little rest he is susceptible to hallucinations and his choice of sensational sci-fi reading material in his rare downtimes gives the potential of a nightmarish edge to the proceedings. Attitudes towards race are explored skilfully as the passengers need this man to be both largely invisible and yet answerable to their beck and call- his individuality dismissed by the generic name “George”, which is not his name.  (I didn’t know about this but this was obviously a thing at the time as the author’s bibliography references works such as “Hey Boy! Hey George!: The Pullman Porter”, “They Call Me George” and “10,000 Black Men Named George”).

When Baxter discovers a postcard whilst cleaning we suspect that his route to his dentistry dream will not run smoothly with a creeping inevitability which the author handles very well.  It’s a chilling depiction of the sleeping car porter’s role which was arduous and fraught with a whole range of dangers brought to life in this engaging novel.  Whilst reading this I realised I have read very little Canadian literature and that this particular train journey might just have opened up a whole new reading world for me.

The Sleeping Car Porter will be published in the UK by Dialogue Books on 18th May 2023.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

Sparrow – James Hynes (Picador 2023)

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Picador have high hopes for this novel which has been appearing on 2023 anticipated read lists from before the New Year.  I knew nothing about book nor author before reading it.  I wasn’t surprised on completing it to find out this is the work of a very established American writer and his sixth novel, his first being published some 33 years ago (“The Wild Colonial Boy” which has a Northern Ireland terrorism theme).  Nor was I surprised that he has been making a living teaching creative writing courses at American universities and getting qualifications from the highly influential Iowa Writers Workshop as this is a technical masterclass of a novel which shows a gifted writer demonstrating much experience and talent.  I also discovered, on completion, that a few years ago I’d purchased from The Great Courses a DVD course on “Writing Great Fiction: Storytelling Tips and Techniques” and the tutor is James Hynes.  To be honest, I’ve never actually got round to starting that but am far more motivated to do so now I have read what could be the book to bring this writer considerable international success.

“Sparrow” is the story of a slave in Ancient Rome who as a small child finds himself living amongst a group of prostitutes (“wolves”), who live and work in a tavern.  It took me a little while to get into the story but that’s because the author is busy employing his tips and techniques to draw you in.  Very little background is needed as we are reading a first-person narrative from the boy written as an old man looking back.  He doesn’t know his own background but works from one of his first memories which is a violent altercation between an unknown man and the woman who resentfully feeds him.  He is “Pusus”, which just means “boy” and the woman, another slave, referred to as “Focaria” – cook.  He has no other identity and a virtually non-existent outlook on his world.  Through Focaria and one of the prostitutes, known as “Euterpe” his ignorance is slowly diminished and over time his very small part of the world begins to extend a few hundred yards from the tavern. 

One of the ways in which this is achieved is by the author’s multi-sensory approach and description of sights, smells, sounds, taste and the feel of the environment which allows the boy to make sense of his world and has the added bonus for us as readers in creating a very strong fictional depiction.  We all know how valuable a technique this can be and here it is employed superbly.  Books set in Ancient Times can be a little off-putting for some as it feels so alien and often too much information is needed to be taken on board but here as we are working through the child’s narrative we only know what we need to and his questioning of his experiences allows us to access his world.  I’m not saying that this is not superbly researched but it is so seamlessly integrated and never over-complicated which also brings the reader right into the text.

Of course, all these technical skills would be pointless if the story did not involve.  Time is taken with plot, strong characters are established and we see things like the boy coping with the social dynamics of getting water from the public fountain at some length before realising that a rich, gripping plot has developed which builds beautifully.

I was very impressed by this work, there are characters I will remember for a long time.  The characterisation of the narrator feels as potent as “Shuggie Bain” or “Young Mungo”, two of the most vital literary depictions of male youth in recent years.  It never shirks from the horrors facing these people (it’s never totally clear how old the boy is, at one point he says he thinks he is ten, which completely floored me, given the ways he has to survive).  You can take these characters out of their Ancient Times setting and place them anytime in history and, shockingly, their ordeals and issues would still be relevant, a sobering realisation.

Despite the darkness of the subject matter the book does have an uplift and there is an overriding sense of hope.  The boy uses a sparrow as a metaphor for escape and can visualise out-of-body experiences when things get too grim, another technique that lifts any sense of gloom and like this metaphorical sparrow this book really flies.

“Sparrow” is published by Picador on May 4th 2023.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

The Sun Walks Down – Fiona McFarlane (Sceptre 2023)

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In 1883 in the desert environment of the Flinders Ranges in Southern Australia a six year old boy, Denny Wallace, disappears following a storm.  This is Australian author Fiona McFarlane’s second novel (there’s also been a prize-winning collection of short stories) and it is very much a character-led ensemble piece with a sizeable cast of fascinating characters.

This is the search for Danny and those involved include his family, the authorities and native trackers.  For me, the characters who burn brightest include his fifteen year old sister Cissy, who seems more on the ball than the adults, who borrows a horse from her teacher and is determined to locate her brother; Karl Rapp, a Swedish painter, in search of a perfect sunset; the newly-wed Minna Manning, throbbing with passion whilst her groom Robert, a policeman, is out looking for the boy and the mother, Mary, who waits stolidly at home.

The cast also includes an out of his element vicar; an aborigine whose youth was marked by his excelling in cricket, which no longer seems relevant, and a land-owning woman who yearns for the fur coat of a tracker.  We catch up with these throughout the narrative and there are occasional digressions into back stories which often serve to enrich our understanding of these characters.

It is very well-written with the sense of the desert environment strong where long-established livelihoods are threatened by the lack of rain.  Plot-wise, it is a little light in dramatic tension but atmosphere, characterisation and description made this a memorable, immersive read.

The Sun Walks Down is published in the UK by Sceptre on 9th March 2023.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

Hungry Ghosts- Kevin Jared Hosein (Bloomsbury 2023)

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One of the titles I was really looking forward to this year by this Caribbean novelist and poet described by the BBC news website as “one of the most talked about forthcoming books in literary circles”.  It is admittedly impressive.

Set in 1940s Trinidad, yet the date feels largely irrelevant as there is a sense of timelessness which permeates the characters’ lives.  There are two main locations, one a large house lived in by Dalton and Marlee Changoor.  His wealth has come from unknown, suspicious means and the locals doubt the background of his younger wife.  The second setting is the barrack, an impoverished courtyard around which a number of families live, including Hans, his wife Shweta and their son, Krishna.  Hans is within both locations as he works in the Changoor grounds.  His aim is to escape the barrack and find land in the nearby Bell village but there are very few ways to escape the barrack.

The author creates a range of vividly drawn characters from their present existence and back stories.  This is a superb storyteller at work.  They are all very much products of their environment, an environment which is richly depicted with much description.  It’s been a long time since I have had to look up so many words, a number related to descriptions of flora and fauna and the surroundings- many used potentially for their sound as much as meaning, really bringing home that this is the work of a poet.

When Dalton Changoor goes missing the lives of the older characters are transformed.  I found the early sections of the book outstanding.  The younger generation’s lives are linked with a casual violence and as the novel continued the ripeness of the words and the environment soured, becoming over-ripe and I found myself getting queasy.  There was still much that impressed yet I found the subject matter led to passages that were difficult to read.  They will stay my mind but not for reasons I’d like.  There’s a slight over-egging of the horrors of life which dominated in the latter sections where I longed for some balance from the nightmarish world-view.  At one point some of the characters consume hallucinogenic mushrooms and it is as if this psychedelic paranoia pervades the novel from this point on.

Characterisation and story-telling great, it just became a little too much.  There is no doubt that Kevin Jared Hosein has written a haunting, impactful tale which has the feel of a modern classic whilst rooted in a historic, oral tradition.

Hungry Ghosts will be published in the UK by Bloomsbury on 16th February 2023.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

My Father’s House – Joseph O’Connor (Harvill Secker 2023)

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I am shamefacedly admitting I knew nothing about the inspiration for Irish writer Joseph O’Connor’s new novel – Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, a Priest based at the Vatican at the time of Rome’s takeover by the Nazis who was responsible for the saving of some 6,500 lives through the Escape Line, which ran from the neutral Vatican City, housing and hiding soldiers, escaped Prisoners Of War, Jews and others the Nazi regime took against.

This is a fictional account which leads up to a mission, known as a Rendimento, planned for Christmas Eve 1943.  O’Flaherty was supported by a group who met on the pretext of choral singing and some of these are interviewed in the early 1960s and their accounts of what happened runs alongside a third person narrative.  O’Connor writes beautifully with multi-sensory descriptions being layered to build a picture of events and the tale he tells here is involving and often thrilling.  He seems more at pains to ensure we know we are reading fiction than the average historical novelist.  I might be wrong here but from a quick glance at the true events online I think he has changed the identity of the main threat to the mission, a German officer who viewed O’Flaherty as his nemesis.  If this is so, this fictional creation allows the author greater freedom in portraying the evil within this man.

Monsignor O’Flaherty is the lifeblood of this novel but I think I might have appreciated further fleshing out of some of the supporting characters within the choir.  From their interviews I wasn’t always clear who was talking and this narrative structure removed them slightly from the action although I do acknowledge that anonymity at this time was a prerequisite for survival.

I was impressed by this strong novel but I must admit that it didn’t quite get me the way the author’s evocative recreation of a Victorian theatrical world inhabited by Bram Stoker in 2019’s “Shadowplay” did which made it into my Top 5 Books of that year.

My Father’s House will be published on 26th January by Harvill Secker.  Many thanks  to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

The New Life- Tom Crewe (Chatto & Windus 2023)

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Here’s a book which was my last read of 2022 and which I loved so much that it just had to be in my Books Of The Year Top 10 even though it is not published until January 2023…

This extraordinary debut opens with a sex scene in a public place which instantly brought back the memory for me of watching the 1986 French film “Betty Blue” (although it’s known as a different title in France) at the cinema which also begins with a steamy sexual encounter going on.  It brought back the same sense of unease which filled the cinema as without any preamble and little context the description of the act become more shocking, more distancing and challenges the reader/viewer who begins to feel they are a voyeur.  It’s a device which obviously isn’t used that often (which was why a film I saw decades ago came to mind) and I can see why (surely even porn films have some build up to the act).

It materialises that, in this instance, this encounter is actually a dream experienced by John Addington, in the last years of the nineteenth century.  Addington, a middle-aged married man is obsessed by his sexuality.  His wife knows of homosexual encounters in his past and he struggles to channel these feelings into watching naked men swimming in the Serpentine until a meeting in Hyde Park causes him to confront his desires.

Alongside this narrative strand we meet Henry Ellis on his wedding day.  He is an advocate for change in Victorian society, both he and his wife-to-be believe in a New Life with greater freedoms.

I’m a sucker for Victorian-set novels especially when they highlight the double standard of the era and they trace along the darker sides which this novel certainly does.  The byline for the book on Amazon proclaims it – “A daring  new novel about desire and the search for freedom in Victorian England” and that pretty much fits the bill.

The benchmark I seem to always use for such novels is Michel Faber’s sublime “The Crimson Petal And The White”.  Does it match this book by conveying the feel of the time?  Does this feel authentic?  Is the author able to bring the characters and events to life?  In this case, this book is certainly comparable in terms of quality and also up there with other classics in this field -such as John Fowles’ “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” and Michael Cox’s “The Meaning Of Night”.  Also, like Faber’s work the subject matter and its handling means that it becomes a difficult book to recommend to all.  Looking back at my review of “The Crimson Petal..” I said “Reading groups will be divided because of the graphic elements.  The reader will know within the first pages whether they feel they will be able to accompany Sugar on her momentous journey.”  Substitute the character of Sugar for John Addington and it still feels apt.  This book is not as explicit but there is something about sex in Victorian settings which still shocks.

I didn’t know this until after reading the novel but it is very loosely based on John Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis who collaborated on a book called “Sexual Inversion” as do the main characters here.  Written just as the Oscar Wilde scandal is kicking off there will be serious repercussions for our Addington and Ellis.

I loved the characterisation.  Addington tries the patience despite being a soul in  torment.  Ellis’ passivity will frustrate whilst their wives and lovers are richly drawn and add much to the depth of the novel and the issues raised here.  In one or two places the theories of the time clog the flow a little but I think that this is a very important addition to the genre of modern Victorian-set literature.  This is an outstanding literary debut from the former editor of the London Review Of Books.

The New Life will be published by Chatto and Windus on the 12th January.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

The Secret Diaries Of Charles Ignatius Sancho – Paterson Joseph (Dialogue 2022)

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Paterson Joseph is a noted British actor of stage and screen.  I saw him most recently in the Suranne Jones starring BBC TV Drama “Vigil” playing the Commanding Officer of the beleaguered submarine.  He has now joined the sphere of actors turning to fiction writing with very worthy intentions to fill some of the gaps of pre-Windrush Black British history by giving us a fictional account of the life of this notable 18th Century character, who became the first African man to vote in a British election.  The author has been researching this life for twenty years, and has written and performed a one-man play. He has now rightly decided (if not only because of the gaps in what is actually known) to recreate the man known as Sancho as Historical Fiction.

What is done really well here is in the feel of the piece. Paterson Joseph has obviously submerged himself in the fiction of the time and without doubt in “Tristram Shandy”, the author of which, Laurence Sterne makes a brief appearance here. With a combination of a memoir intended for the main character’s son, diary entries and letters to and from his betrothed we get a real sense of Sancho and the world he inhabits.

Initially, as a child, a dress up doll/valet for three spinsters Sancho finds an entrée into society under the eye of the Duke of Montagu.  It is a precarious arrangement and there are many turns of fortune for this black man in 18th Century London.  Deemed at various times a novelty, a creative talent, a threat and a runaway slave Sancho has to wrestle with his own inconsistencies and this makes for fascinating reading.  In the eyes of some he is seen as deserving of a place in high society for others he is the lowest of the low.  How does a man come to terms with his own self-worth in such circumstances?

The early sections of this book are just splendid, as Sancho ages it grows more reflective, the tale shifts significantly to his wife-to-be Anne’s experiences in an epistolary section of the book which serves to contrast experiences outside of Britain but doesn’t work as well as the London-based writings.  Throughout there is a feel of authenticity, even when the structure (as in all actual eighteenth-century novels I have read) feels jerky.  There were areas of the life of Charles Ignatius Sancho which I felt could have been fleshed out more but I welcome the opportunity of getting to know this man through this novel.  I am thinking this could be the best actor-turned-writer novel I’ve read since 1960’s icon and model Marsha Hunt’s “Joy” from 1990.

The Secret Diaries Of Charles Ignatius Sancho is published by Dialogue Books on 6th October 2022.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

The Young Pretender- Michael Arditti (2022)

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I read about the subject of this historical novel in an article in the May 2022 edition of “The Oldie” magazine.  It was written by the author and entitled “The First Child Star”.  I knew of Michael Arditti but have never read him (I do have a copy of his “The Celibate” on my shelves) and was totally fascinated by his account of his latest hero.

William Betty (1791-1874) became a hugely celebrated actor in his early teens, playing to huge acclaim and intimidating other very popular performers into semi-retirement and playing roles he was far too young to act.  This fame ended suddenly as it would do for myriads of child stars to the present day.  This novel begins when at the age of 20 he attempts to make a comeback.

In Arditti’s novel we see William going it alone.  The tutor who had so inspired and believed in him was dismissed by his manager father who has subsequently died. His first-person narrative feels authentic.  He does seem to have only sketchy memories of the time of his fame, even though it was just a few years before and is trying to piece together what caused him to fall out of favour.  This lack of memory is an effective device within the narrative but is quite a big ask for the reader to take on board and I admit to getting confused at times between the switches from Master Betty to the now Mr Betty’s attempts to emulate his success.

It is a slim novel and didn’t really get going in the way I was expecting it to.  Technically, it is impressive but perhaps the author had over-whetted my appetite in “The Oldie” article and I would have liked this fascinating, now pretty much forgotten subject to have been opened up more.  I do have a fascination for the fleeting nature of celebrity and this very early historical example is certainly worth a read.  It was always enjoyable even if it did not quite make the impression on me that I was anticipating.

The Young Pretender was published by Arcadia Books in 2022.