Cornflower Books

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

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).