Cornflower Books

The Poison Bed

    It is the early 1600s; James I is on the throne. At court, the king's favourite Robert Carr sees Frances Howard, ambitious wife of the Earl of Essex, and is smitten.

    "Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust."

    Those lines from Webster's The Duchess of Malfi are the epigraph to The Poison Bed by E.C. Fremantle, an intricately plotted, brilliantly realised novel, cleverly imagined but rooted in fact. It's the tale of a trial for murder, and with its dual narrators - Frances and Robert - its shifting focus makes for an intriguingly multi-angled look at a world of ruthless power play, strategic manoeuvring, and shameless manipulation.

    Frances's early betrothal to Essex had been arranged in order to mend an old rift between the two families, but as ''the Essex crowd" lose their influence at court having favoured Prince Henry over the king, the Howards plan to extricate her from the marriage so that she can be of more use to them through a new alliance. The orphaned son of minor Scottish gentry, Robert Carr is on the rise; favoured by the monarch, he is accruing enemies to match his growing status, but his passion for Frances is real, and their match is likely to raise him to even greater things, except that deep-rooted jealousies and spurned loyalties find Robert out of his depth, and when a man dies, the Howards discover they are no longer the unassailable force they believed themselves to be.

    There's an astute brain behind this chess game of a novel which sets a psychological thriller in conventional historical fiction territory. "There has long been speculation," says the author, "about what really happened when an insignificant man died at the tail end of summer, 1613, in a gloomy cell in the Tower of London [...] It was a scandal that rocked the Jacobean court and was one of the initial cracks that would eventually lead to the devastation of the Stuart monarchy [...] My novel has been a way to explore the depths of an intriguing event, blurred by time and made murky by corruption, through the prism of an era in which the truth has become equally elusive."

    Through that prism we are shown guile and charisma, self-possession and the lack of it, the vigorous tendrils of politics, at once supporting and suffocating, and the human puppets always at the mercy of their masters. It's a compelling combination and makes for an excellent read.

Books in brief: The Story Keeper

   

    I gave you a snippet of Anna Mazzola's The Story Keeper recently. It is a very enjoyable, well-researched book; its sense of place - Skye - is strong, its folkloric theme adds a pleasing plangent tone, its gothic/sensation leanings give it suitably muted colour, but I sensed a modern story struggling at times to sit comfortably within the corset of its historical (1857) setting. A good read, but set next to its obvious shelf-companions Sarah Moss's Night Waking and Karin Altenberg's Island of Wings, I'd say those two have the edge.

Quote of the day (2)

   

    "[...] English Passengers is a masterpiece, an achievement of such complexity, ingenuity and sheer narrative power that each time I reread it I am newly surprised: how can a writer have thus conjured up the wildly conflicting attitudes of another time, another place, with such persuasive force?"

    Penelope Lively on Matthew Kneale's superb English Passengers in Slightly Foxed issue 57, Spring 2018.

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction - the longlist

 

    The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction longlist has been announced today:

The Clocks In This House All Tell Different Times by Xan Brooks; a dark social-realist fairytale, spotlighting the shadowy underside of 1920s England.

Birdcage Walk by Helen Dunmore; it is 1792 and Europe is seized by political turmoil and violence.

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan; the long-awaited novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author opens in Brooklyn during the Great Depression.

The Last Man In Europe by Dennis Glover; April, 1947. In a run-down farmhouse on a remote Scottish island, George Orwell begins his last and greatest work: Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Sugar Money by Jane Harris; a tale of slavery and freedom, innocence and experience, love and despair set in the 18^th century Caribbean.

Prussian Blue by Philip Kerr; France, 1956. Bernie Gunther is on the run. The twelfth book in the renowned series.

The Draughtsman by Robert Lautner; 1944, Germany. A novel which shines a light on the complex contradictions of human nature and examines how deeply complicit we can become in the face of fear.

Grace by Paul Lynch; an epic coming-of-age novel and a poetic evocation of the Irish famine as it has never been written.

The Wardrobe Mistress by Patrick McGrath; a portrait of a woman struggling to make sense of her past and imagine a future in the seedy glamour of London’s theatrical world in 1947.

Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves by Rachel Malik; 1940s rural England sets the scene for a multi-layered tale of an unlikely friendship.

The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers; C18th. Yorkshire. A gang of weavers and land workers embark upon a criminal enterprise that will capsize the economy and become the biggest fraud in British history.

The Horseman by Tim Pears; an unexpected friendship between two children, set in Devon in 1911.

The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley; set in the magical forests of South America in 1859.

    If you've read any of these do let us know your thoughts. I can speak only of Tim Pears's The Horseman, one of my top favourite novels of last year.

Looking forward to reading ...

 

    ... Once Upon A River, Diane Setterfield's "enthralling, richly-textured" new novel, coming in July.

    Here's the blurb:

    "A dark midwinter’s night in an ancient inn on the Thames. The regulars are entertaining themselves by telling stories when the door bursts open on an injured stranger. In his arms is the drowned corpse of a little child.

    Hours later the dead girl stirs, takes a breath and returns to life.

    Is it a miracle? Is it magic? Or can it be explained by science?

    Replete with folklore, suspense and romance, as well as with the urgent scientific curiosity of the Darwinian age, Once Upon a River is as richly atmospheric as Setterfield’s bestseller The Thirteenth Tale."

    It's a very long time since I read The Thirteenth Tale, but Bellman & Black, Diane's second novel, was one of my books of the year in 2013 - there's a post on it here.

In passing

    -    Catherine, aka Juxtabook, has opened an Etsy shop (you can find the main CL Hawley Books site here).

    -    I've spotted a couple of bargain Kindle editions of excellent books this morning: An Equal Stillness by Francesca Kay (post on it here) and The End of your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe (post here). Will's was my non-fiction book of the year in 2012; (my novel of the year was John Saturnall's Feast by Lawrence Norfolk).

    -    I am at last reading Dissolution, the first of C. J. Sansom's much praised Matthew Shardlake novels, and I'm finding it excellent -  I can see why Shardlake has been described as 'the Tudor Morse'.

Miscellaneous

     In her comment on yesterday's post, Callmemadam mentions Wolf Hall. I am a fan, and I think Hilary Mantel is one of the few who can get away with the present tense, but I know the book's stylistic quirks irked many readers. For those who weren't keen (and indeed, those who were) may I recommend another novel of hers, the marvellous Fludd.

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     This collection of essays by Francis Spufford looks interesting; (Mr. C. speaks highly of his prize-winning Golden Hill).

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    Another Mr. C. recommendation is Minoo Dinshaw's Outlandish Knight: The Byzantine Life of Steven Runciman which is currently up for the Sunday Times/Peters Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award. The author is the son of Candia McWilliam, and he was with her at an Edinburgh Book Festival Frank Kermode/Shakespeare event I attended some time ago. He must then have been a sixth-former or thereabouts and yet he asked I question (which I no longer remember) indicative of knowledge and understanding well beyond his years. It looks as though that early promise is being fulfilled.

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    Have you read Leon Garfield? I have not, but Philip Pullman (in Daemon Voices again) says Garfield's The Pleasure Garden is "a book that should never be unavailable". He expands, "... open [him] where you like, you won't find a page of sober dullness anywhere. Fantastical gloom, yes; grimness illuminated by shafts of grotesque humour, certainly; a darkness as profound and velvety as the black of an old mezzotint, by all means; but nothing sober, nothing drab, nothing workaday. The exuberance is all of a piece; even a first paragraph that begins like a travel guide twirls upwards into a rococo curlicue of imagery." You can read that paragraph here, and like me may find yourself hooked.

Mid-November reading

    A look back through the reading journal at mid-November books over the past ten years is to be reminded of many good things. The links all lead to posts.

    The Dig, John Preston

    Reflections, Dianna Wynne Jones

    My Life in Houses, Margaret Forster

    C.S Lewis: A Life, Alister McGrath

    The Magic Apple Tree, Susan Hill

    The Secret History, Donna Tartt

    A Game of Hide and Seek, Elizabeth Taylor

    The Ivington Diaries, Monty Don

    Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri

    I, Coriander, Sally Gardner

This and that

    -    Here's news of a lovely literary prize.

    -    Minette Walters has a major historical novel coming out in the autumn.

    -    Donna Leon's been on Meet the Writers. (Mr. C. recently read her last but one Brunetti book and speaks very highly of it.)

    -    The Walter Scott Prize is turning the spotlight on its shortlisted authors in a series of interviews beginning with Jo Baker.

    -    In this post, Adèle tells us where she gets (some of) her ideas.

Adding to the already groaning shelves

    We paid another visit to Topping & Company's St. Andrews branch today, and a few minutes' browsing yielded this fine lot. The top three are mine, the others Mr. C's.

    Note the spelling mistake on the spine of Evelyn Waugh's biography of Ronald Knox!

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The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction: the longlist

   

    The longlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2017 was released earlier today, and here it is:

 

A Country Road, A Tree by Jo Baker

The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry

Crane Pond by Richard Francis

The Dark Circle by Linda Grant

The Vanishing Futurist by Charlotte Hobson

The Good People by Hannah Kent

Minds of Winter by Ed O'Loughlin

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith

Golden Hill by Francis Spufford

Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift

The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain

    The shortlist will follow in April and the winner will be announced in June, but in the meantime to broaden the reach of the prize the Walter Scott Prize Academy have published a list of a further 20 novels from this year's entries which they recommend; you can find it here.

Going back in time

   

 

    I've been casting around today for something to read on a forthcoming plane/train journey, and in a house full of books that's harder than it should be. Whatever I take has to be easily portable, so hardbacks are out (the very interesting Tellers of Tales, my current read, will have to go in hold baggage), and nothing on the Kindle seemed to suit, so I've been scanning the shelves and literally weighing likely candidates.

    In the end I have plumped for Green Darkness by Anya Seton as the edition I have is compact enough for my purposes and came to mind the other day when I saw an Instagram post by Eva who was about to embark on the audiobook of Anya Seton's Katherine.

    I remember finding my copy of Green Darkness in a box outside a second-hand books shop in Eton. I was about fifteen at the time and was with my aunt who had read the book, warmly recommended it, and spoke of her visit to Ightham Mote, one of the novel's settings. I read it then and loved it, but will I like it now, I wonder.

    Kate Mosse says it's "seductive, atmospheric, intriguing, one of those classic novels you come back to time and again," so that's promising, as is the following from Books and Bookmen:

    "Perhaps the greatest gifts Anya Seton brings to her historical novels are the zest of her narrative, the life she breathes into the most insignificant characters, and the atmosphere of the era she evokes around them."

    Here's the blurb (albeit one with more than a glimpse of a ripped bodice): "The young Celia de Bohun has fallen helplessly in love with Stephen, the resident priest in the Catholic household of Sir Anthony Browne. Against his will, Stephen returns her love. Gripped by the sweetness of their forbidden passion, the young lovers become the victims of their savage times. Centuries later their tragedy threatens the life and happiness of another Celia. She can only be saved by piercing the green darkness of the past and revealing its mysterious truth."

    Now, about that cover ...

Books in brief: The Dig

   

    The Dig by John Preston is good - very much worth a read if you are interested in archaelogy or enjoy novels such as J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country.

    It's about the excavation at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk in 1939 which resulted in one of the most significant discoveries of Anglo-Saxon artefacts ever made, but told from the viewpoints of several of those involved in the dig, this multi-faceted account is a comprehensive and compelling treatment of its subject.

    Part of its strength is down to what it leaves unsaid or simply suggested, fittingly for a book about 'impressions'; what was found to be inside the barrow on Mrs. Edith Pretty's land was a ship-burial, but the ship itself had perished leaving only its imprint. This restraint in the writing contributes to a beautifully crafted and atmospheric novel about a remarkable event, and it's a book which I warmly recommend whether or not you've been to Sutton Hoo (as I have) or seen the treasure in The British Museum.

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Bargains to be had

    If you're looking to load up your Kindle there are some good books to be had at bargain prices just now. In no particular order:

    Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekbäck; I wrote about this highly accomplished first novel here, and it's just won the 2016 Historical Writers' Association's Goldsboro Debut Crown.

    A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth; this is such an enormous book that in physical form it's unwieldy so the electronic version will be easier on the wrists! Size apart, it's a tremendous piece of work.

    Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier; I haven't read this novel about Mary Anning and fossil hunting in early 19th. century Dorset, but I admire Tracy's work very much.

    Any Human Heart by William Boyd; another one I've yet to read, but I saw the television dramatisation of this, Mr. C. read it and gave it high praise, and Boyd is jolly good!

    Dark Matter by Michelle Paver; perfect for this time of year, there's a review of this excellent ghost story here, and good news for Paver fans, Thin Air - set in the Himalayas in 1935 - has just been published.

    The Travelling Bag by Susan Hill; more ghost stories, and if these are anything to go by, they should be good.

    Toast by Nigel Slater; there's a snippet from this culinary memoir here.

    Hue & Cry by Shirley McKay; there's a post on this, the first of a mystery series set in 16th. century St. Andrews, here.

I'm astonished ...

   

    ... to see that I haven't posted here for almost a month. Life has been busy - in a good way - and I've done little reading, though that's certainly not due to any lack of interest in current books.

    On a trip to Suffolk last week I took Eleanor Farjeon's The Little Bookroom which was a gift from a kind friend. It is quite delightful and has kept me fully absorbed, even on flights*. It's a collection of Miss Farjeon's stories chosen by herself and illustrated by the wonderful Edward Ardizzone, and what I love about it - apart from the typically expressive drawings and the imaginative trajectory of the tales - is the tone and the spirit of the book: it's fun and uplifting, light and brisk and breezy, and the stories have a joy to them which draws me back like a magnet.

    While away we went to Sutton Hoo, the Anglo-Saxon royal burial site. Although the grave goods themselves are now in The British Museum, there's an informative exhibition to see, the burial mounds themselves to view, and you can tour a few of the rooms in the home of Mrs. Edith Pretty, the landowner at whose instigation the dig took place. On the back of this visit I bought The Dig by John Preston, a novel about the excavation which I have long had on my wish list, and which a friend who was with us at the site warmly recommended. Here's the blurb:

    "Summer, 1939. While Britain is busy preparing for war, on farmland around Sutton Hoo House in sleepy Suffolk Mrs. Pretty has asked local archaeologist Basil Brown to excavate the enormous earth mounds on her land. And what Basil finds proves earth-shattering. His discovery brings an invasion of academics and busybodies from London. Each wants to run the dig and no one wants Basil or Mrs. Pretty around. Peggy, newly married to her university teacher, surprises everyone by making the first discovery of fabulous treasure, but away from the dig her world is falling to pieces. Why is her husband behaving so coldly towards her? While the clouds of war thicken and jealousy vies with ambition to muddy everything below, a battle for the right to unearth an invader from another age begins in earnest ..."

    Now that I've been to Sutton Hoo and learned, in situ, more of its story, this sounds even more appealing.

    

    

*The Edinburgh/Norwich run is in small, propeller-driven planes, where on the outward journey at least, Mr. C. and I constituted half the passengers.

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction: the winner

    If you've been following the longlist and shortlist for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction you may like to know that the winner, announced last night, is Simon Mawer for Tightrope.

    Tightrope follows Marian Sutro, who has survived Ravensbruck and is back in dreary London trying to pick up the pieces of her post-War life. It is Simon Mawer’s tenth novel; his seventh, The Glass Room (which many of us read in 2012), was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize in 2010.

The Judges said:
    ‘Tightrope is a spy story in the grand tradition, sweeping the reader irresistibly into the harrowing life of a secret agent in World War Two. Impeccably researched, it perfectly inhabits its time and place. It is a worthy winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.

    Marian Sutro, who made her first appearance in The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, is a commanding character, enigmatic and fascinating. Damaged by her experiences, by the dangers she has faced, by those who have betrayed her and those she has been forced to betray, Sutro walks the tightrope between the people in her life who have sent her into danger, those whom she must fear, and those she seeks to protect.

    Tightrope, however, is more than a very good spy thriller. We are used now, in a century already scarred by wars, to the concept of post traumatic stress disorder. There was no such diagnosis in the aftermath of the twentieth century's terrible wars, but it afflicted millions, nevertheless. Simon Mawer has given us, in the character of Marian Sutro, a study of how the terrifying events she endured in her youth shaped and transformed the rest of her life.'

Looking good ...

 

    ... The Countenance Divine by Michael Hughes, out in August:

    "In 1999 a programmer is trying to fix the Millennium Bug, but can't shake the sense he's been chosen for something.

     In 1888, five women are brutally murdered in the East End by a troubled young man in thrall to a mysterious master.

     In 1777 an apprentice engraver called William Blake has a defining spiritual experience; thirteen years later this vision returns.

     In 1666, poet and revolutionary John Milton completes the epic for which he will be remembered centuries later.

     But from where comes the feeling that the world is about to end?"

 

    Toby Litt says this is "one of the most exciting novels I've read in recent years. Michael Hughes writes like a brilliant cross between David Mitchell and Hilary Mantel," while the acquiring editor at publisher John Murray says, "It’s very rare that a debut both has this much ambition and also delivers on that ambition; it’s dizzying, genre-blending, polyphonic and one hell of a ride."

Bargain of the day - Bodies of Light

   

    Lots of us are admirers of the work of Sarah Moss, and as her 2014 novel Bodies of Light is one of today's Kindle bargains, I thought I'd repost my thoughts:

    This is a very fine work indeed: tightly controlled and restrained, and all the more powerful for it; elegant, eloquent; founded on careful research, every fact used with skill and precision to make a point - and there are many to be made in this novel which is concise and self-contained but universal in its themes.

    It is the story of Alethea Moberley, sister of May from the historical strand of Night Waking, but it is also an account of the position of women in society in the second half of the 19th. century, of their rights and educational opportunities (or lack of same), of their gradual incursion into the world of medicine*, and of family life and maternal feeling and failings.

    I could go into greater detail regarding the measured plot, the characters who are all seen in relation to Alethea, the clever use of her father's paintings as allegory/commentary, the chilling epigraph which sets the tone ... but suffice to say there is a sequel in the offing, and that is good news on many counts, but chiefly - and simply - because this book is first class.

*See also this post and the book to which it refers.

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction: the shortlist

    Last month, the longlist for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction was announced, and that's now been whittled down to reveal the shortlist:

Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay by William Boyd

A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale

Mrs Engels by Gavin McCrea

End Games in Bordeaux* by Allan Massie

Tightrope by Simon Mawer

Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar

 

    The shortlisted authors have been invited to take part in a panel discussion on historical fiction at The Borders Book Festival in Melrose on Saturday, 18th, June, and the winner will be announced that day.

 

*See this post.

History at the sharp end

    Mr. C. writes:

    Over thirty years ago, I had what was one of the greatest experiences of my university life, when I attended a series of lectures* by Professor Richard Cobb on life in France under German occupation. During those years millions of men and women had to make horrible choices about how to live their lives, do their jobs, feed themselves and their families; Cobb's message was that those of us who had never had to confront those choices needed to be very wary before handing out either praise or blame.

    This deeply humane and civilised attitude is evident on every page of Allan Massie's excellent quartet of crime novels** set in Bordeaux during the occupation. His hero, Inspector Lannes, meets political and personal depravity from both collaborationists and their enemies in the Resistance; his family is split, with one son supporting Vichy and the other escaping to London to join the Free French, and both are young men of integrity; his daughter falls in love with a quixotic patriot who goes off to fight for Hitler on the Eastern Front; and his wife turns away from him both physically and emotionally. He always tries to do what he thinks is right, but so often the choice is between the bad and the worse. The ethical complexity of such a world is a gift to the crime novelist, and Massie takes full advantage of the setting. The novels are also a loving Francophile's evocation of the France of grumpy concierges and long lunches, of Charles Trenet songs and barges on the foggy Gironde, of scruffy bistros and grand hotels. I read them avidly, all four in less than a week, and warmly recommend them.

 

*Published as French and Germans, Germans and French: A Personal Interpretation of France Under Two Occupations, 1914-18/1940-44

 

**Death in Bordeaux

    Dark Summer in Bordeaux

    Cold Winter in Bordeaux

    End Games in Bordeaux