Cornflower Books

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

In haste -

    - The marvellous Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh: post on it here, Kindle bargain to be had here.

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction: the longlist

    The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction is one in which many of us take a keen interest; here's this year's longlist:

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

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

A Petrol Scented Spring by Ajay Close

A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale

Dictator by Robert Harris

Devastation Road by Jason Hewitt

Death and Mr Pickwick by Stephen Jarvis

Mrs Engels by Gavin McCrea

End Games in Bordeaux by Allan Massie

Tightrope by Simon Mawer

Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss

Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn

Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar

    The shortlist will be announced at the end of March, and the winner at The Borders Book Festival on 18th. June.

Out now in paperback - Jakob's Colours

    

    Lindsay's Hawdon's debut novel Jakob's Colours is a superb piece of work and a heart-rending one. It's out today in paperback and really does deserve a wide readership, for its quality and its subject matter. It deals with an overlooked aspect of twentieth century history, the persecution of Europe's Roma people which culminated in death camps and genocide, and it follows Jakob, a young half-blood gypsy boy, his Roma father and his English mother, and moves from Jakob's flight from the Nazi net in 1944 back to his parents' earlier lives in the '30s.

    When I reviewed it last year I summed up thus:

    "A novel of great beauty, compassion and sensitivity which yet portrays man’s inhumanity to man at its very worst, the book’s episodic structure - taking the reader back and forth in time and place - adds to its intensity, while Lindsay Hawdon’s gift for language makes for luminous, affecting writing."

Beat to quarters

   

    If you fancy giving Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels a try, the first three in the series are among today's Kindle deals. I've read Master and Commander (which is book 1) and I enjoyed it thoroughly, while Mr. C. has read the lot and loved them all. I refer to them in this post and in a rather different context in this one - they might sway you if you're swithering.

    And to get your toes tapping, here's the final scene from the film:

Here and there, this and that

    Everyone's talking about the Sainsbury's Christmas advert (and the 'making of' video) just now, Mog toys are flying off the shelves and the book is topping the bestseller list - great news for Save the Children to whom the profits go.

    Judith Kerr, still going strong at 92, is surely a role-model for us all; in case you didn't see it, here's my report of her appearance at last year's Edinburgh International Book Festival where she took the stage with her son Matthew Kneale to explore creative heritage.

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    Not book-related but still on the subject of ageing well, this excellent gentleman has become Mr. C's hero, while this video neatly links cats and skiing!

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    Back to books now, and in other news, the Costa Book Awards shortlists have been announced, and I'm pleased to see Melissa Harrison's At Hawthorn Time in the novel category. It's a story of contemporary rural life set over a spring month, but it's an original and unsettling piece, beautifully done, and it deserves its place on the list.

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    A Clerk of Oxford has posted a typically thoughtful and thought-provoking piece, stemming from St. Hilda, abbess of Whitby. I've had the novel Hild by Nicola Griffith on my wish list for some time, and I was wondering if anyone had read it. Here's an interview with the author.

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    Lastly today, as a PLR Twitter advocate I'm reminding UK writers to ensure that ALL your books are registered at www.plr.uk.com. Paperbacks and audiobooks - anything with a different ISBN - should be listed along with hardbacks so that they qualify for payment under the PLR scheme. Illustrators and translators should check, too. If you have writer friends, please nudge them to make sure their registration is up to date.

Out now in paperback - Wolf Winter

   

    I very much enjoyed Cecilia Ekbäck's debut novel Wolf Winter a few months ago, and as it has just come out in paperback I wanted to mention it again.

    It's an accomplished, atmospheric piece set in Swedish Lapland in 1717, and it's multi-faceted, being a murder mystery, an exploration of a remote place and distant time, and a fable-like piece of literary fiction.

    As I said of it on publication:   

    Joining a small group of settlers on forbidding Blackåsen Mountain is a family of Finnish incomers. When young Frederika discovers a neighbour’s mutilated body on the mountainside one day, the death is at first put down to a wolf attack, but Frederika’s mother Maija – an ‘earth-woman’ or healer – is sure it was a man’s hand at work.

            As harsh winter approaches, Maija tries to uncover the truth about the killing, her search for answers to the many questions raised by it revealing the secrets each Blackåsen family has brought with them and tried to hide, and putting the lives of both her daughters at risk as she unwittingly exposes them to dangers both natural and unnatural.

    "Like a silent fall of snow; suddenly, the reader is enveloped ... visually acute, skilfully written; it won't easily erase its tracks in the reader's mind." So says Hilary Mantel, and she's right.

For Remembrance Sunday

   

    I must recommend Glory: A Story of Gallipoli by Rachel Billington which I mentioned in passing when I read it earlier in the year. It's a novel based on the author's own family history, and is a compelling story about that ill-fated campaign.

    Bingo Fitzpaine is a Dorset landowner who as Brigadier-General now commands a regiment of yeomanry sent to Egypt. His daughter Sylvia is engaged to Arthur Lamb, a scholar who enlisted to make Sylvia proud. He’s aboard the SS River Clyde, moored off V Beach, about to begin the assault on the Gallipoli peninsula.

     What follows charts the terrible events which took place over nine months from April 1915. Meticulously researched, and written with elegance and sensitivity, the novel describes ‘the suicidal mission’ in which so many fought and died in vain.

    As I wrote elsewhere, "The words ‘Their glory shall not be blotted out’ are inscribed on the headstones in the military cemeteries of Gallipoli. This book makes those words flesh."

What I was reading ...

    I've looked back at my reading journal to early Novembers past, and here are some of the better books from previous years:

    The Quickening Ground by Hayden Gabriel

    Caught in the Web of Words by K.M. Elisabeth Murray

    The Mist In The Mirror by Susan Hill

    The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street: Letters between Nancy Mitford and Heywood Hill 1952-73

    The Return Of The Soldier (there's a post on it here).

    Myself and Michael Innes by J.I.M. Stewart (post here; and a P.S. to that - I still haven't read any of the novels!).

    A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness (once again, post here).

    18 Bookshops by Anne Scott (post here).

    A Possible Life by Sebastian Faulks (short extract here).

    My Life in Houses by Margaret Forster (post here).

Reading rugby

   

    If you've been following the rugby world cup - and congratulations to New Zealand on an impressive win this afternoon - you might be interested in an excellent novel I wrote about a few years ago.

    The Book of Fame by Lloyd Jones tells the story of the All Blacks' tour of the UK in 1905, and "in this melding of true history and imagination, recreates an unforgettable journey from innocence to celebrity."

    Here's some of what I had to say about it at the time:

" ... Jones has taken real events and imagined the story around them, and the result, though short, has great 'presence' and power. In 1905 a group of young men from all walks of life set sail from New Zealand, bound for Britain. They were the All Blacks, then little known, but their expertise on the rugby pitch soon brought them the sort of celebrity we associate with the present day.

    On the voyage, where the backs honed their passing skills with hard young pumpkins bought in Montevideo, they had no idea that their tour would see them virtually undefeated (only the Welsh would beat them). As they played round the country, the New Zealanders' skill and excellence earned them enormous fame, with which, of course, they had to deal - hence the novel's title.

    The book reads sometimes like an extended diary entry, at others a newsreel; its reportage is mixed with list-style facts, impressions, and details which stand out. It is a very vivid book, and one written with immense sympathy and empathy for its subject. I recommend it thoroughly, as does Mr. C. who read it after me, and you don't need to have an interest in rugby to enjoy it."

    I've read a few of Lloyd Jones' novels but this one is by far my favourite.   

 

The jacket is by Petra Börner, by the way.

One to look out for

   

    Kate Mosse's novel The Taxidermist's Daughter came out in paperback last month, and I should have flagged it then, but better late than never.

    It's a gothic thriller set on the Sussex coast in 1912, and it begins in the graveyard of the church of St. Peter and St. Mary in Fishbourne, where at midnight on the Eve of St. Mark, it is believed that the ghosts of those destined to die in the coming year will be seen entering the church at the turning of the hour.

    As the bell tolls, and the eyes of all who have gathered are fixed on the church, a woman is murdered – garrotted by gloved hands – and as over the ensuing days the rising tide and fierce storms threaten the village, the mystery of the dead woman, and of a group of gentlemen - strangers to the village but seen in the graveyard - deepens.

    Kate Mosse describes herself as a storyteller, and this book certainly bears that out. I was impressed by the way the central conceit is developed, and I admire the lengths the author went to for her research (the clue is in the title!) for this "compelling story of justice, and of a punishment to fit a crime".

 

Edited to add: the hardback cover (shown here) is a much stronger design and more appropriate, I think.

Bargain of the day

   

    One of today's bargains for Kindle is Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave, the first part of her Arthurian series. Principally Merlin's story, I read it last year and loved it.

    If you're interested in the topic, this print interview is comprehensive, while this more general television one (to which I've linked several times before) is well worth watching; and this short post is just 'by the way'.

What I was reading ...

    As we enter October I've looked back at my reading journal (kept since 2002) to see what I was reading on this day in previous years. Unsurprisingly, some books remain vivid in the memory while others have faded. I've marked with an asterisk the ones I'd particularly recommend.

2014: *The Taxidermist's Daughter by Kate Mosse - a compelling gothic thriller.

2013: Harpoon at a Venture by Gavin Maxwell.

2012: *Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland by Sarah Moss - an Englishwoman abroad; there's a short extract here.

2011: *The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers - Madeline Miller recommended this, and here's a very good passage on editing.

2010: *The Wilding by Maria McCann - home truths and family secrets in 17th. century England; post here.

2009: The Good Parents by Joan London.

2008: *Songs of Blue and Gold by Deborah Lawrenson - ignore the cover and read this very good book; post here.

2007: *The People On Privilege Hill and *The Uncommon Reader - Jane Gardam and Alan Bennett; that says it all.

2006: Negotiating With The Dead: A Writer on Writing by Margaret Atwood

2005: *The New House by Lettice Cooper - an excellent Persephone; more here.

2004: *A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth - a love story and much more; vast.

2003: *Joyce Grenfell: A Biography by Janie Hampton - a lovely look at a lovely subject.

2002: *A Childhood in Scotland by Christian Miller - still one of my very favourite books; post here.

Looking backwards

    Taking their places on my 'must read' shelf are three books about times past.

    I wrote here about Hue and Cry, the first in Shirley McKay's Hew Cullan mysteries set in 16th. century Scotland, and though I've failed to keep pace with the series that's certainly not through lack of interest. The fifth book - Queen & Country - has just come out, and it's billed as "thrilling to established fans of the series, and an excellent introduction to new readers. Ideal for those who like C.J. Sansom and Hilary Mantel, the Hew Cullan mysteries are a fantastic addition to the historical crime fiction canon." I enjoyed the first book enormously and I'm looking forward to picking up Hew's story where I left off.

    Gregory Dowling is a British academic and novelist living in Venice and his new book, Ascension, is set in the city in 1749. It is the first in a series, and has the imprimatur of every woman's favourite Venetian Francesco da Mosto who says of it, "A special thriller set in the Venetian past - its colours and intrigues so vividly described." The book begins with a young tour guide, Alvise Marangon, offering to help an English Grand Tourist, but this leads to his becoming embroiled in blackmail and conspiracy. Forcibly recruited into the city's powerful secret service to investigate a baffling murder, Alvise turns out to be a gifted spy, and as Venice prepares for the Feast of the Ascension, the most important celebration of the year, it seems only he holds the key to unlocking the mystery and preventing bloody mayhem on the streets.

    Now to some non-fiction and The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff, which will be out here next month. "It began in 1692, over a raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister's daughter started to scream and convulse. The panic spread quickly: neighbours accused neighbours, husbands accused wives, parents and children one another. It ended less than a year later, but not before nineteen men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death. As psychologically thrilling as it is historically seminal, as maginificently written as it is deeply researched, The Witches provides a startling, fresh account of one of the most mysterious episodes in  history: the Salem witch trials of 1692."

Bargains of the day

    Today's Kindle deals include two historical novels I can thoroughly recommend, Elizabeth Gilbert's exuberant The Signature of All Things (which I wrote about here), and Esther Freud's Mr Mac and Me from which there is a snippet here, and which I reviewed elsewhere and described as "a work of great delicacy ...  Subtle, restrained, and beautifully written, a fine novel of art and nature, and of life’s ebbs and flows."

    Telling of a fictional female botanist in the 19th. century, and real life events concerning Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the early 20th., both books show a fine command of research and a well-tempered handling of their respective subject matter.

Book of the day - Nelly Dean

    Here's a book to look out for, to be published later this week.

     Nelly Dean is the debut novel by Alison Case, professor of English and nineteenth century specialist, and it has acquired a powerful advocate in Tracy Chevalier whose support for it extends much further than simply contributing a jacket quote to appearing alongside the author at literary festivals.

    Tracy (who knows a thing or two about the Brontes and their novels) says, "Alison Case has cracked open Wuthering Heights and inserted into the gaps her own richly imagined story. In doing so she manages to pay homage to Emily Bronte without copying her. I never thought I needed more Wuthering Heights. Now I wonder how I could have been satisfied with only the original telling."

    Nelly Dean is "a gripping and heart-breaking novel that reimagines life at Wuthering Heights through the eyes of the Earnshaws' loyal servant, Nelly Dean.

    Nelly has been Hindley's closest companion for as long as she can remember: as long as she has been victim to the lashing out of her father's hand, and as long as she has lived freely at the great house, Wuthering Heights, at her mother's insistence.

    When the benevolent master, Mr. Earnshaw, brings a wild child into the house, Nelly must give up playing with her beloved Hindley and be called servant, following in her mother's footsteps to give herself to the family.

    Soon Nelly is not the only one in the house who must serve. As Hindley takes his place as heir apparent, Heathcliff is rejected and a reign of violence begins that cannot be stopped, even by the will of Nelly herself. And when the new heir of Wuthering Heights is born, Nelly will be tested like never before, as she finds out what it is to truly 'know thy master', and in doing so, know great sacrifice.

    .... Nelly Dean is at once an enthralling literary tale, and a clever, rich testament to Bronte's work."