The Rose of Sebastopol

The Rose of Sebastopol by Katharine McMahon

I bought this one for 10p from a community centre book sale, and what a bargain it turned out to be! I'm immersing myself in novels writtten during or about the Victorian period at the moment, and this one was a cracker.

Set during the Crimean war. Repressed Mariella is engaged to doctor Henry Thewell. He, and Mariella's cousin captivating and headstrong Rosa go separately to the Crimea, to lend their services in the hospitals there. News arrives that Henry is sick, and has come back as far as Italy. Rosa's letters cease. Mariella and a maid, Nora, go first to Italy and then find themselves drawn to the war in search of Rosa. Mariella has to face uncomfortable truths as she realises Henry has fallen in love with Rosa. She uses her impressive sewing skills to make herself useful in the Crimean hospitals, and continues the hunt for Rosa. During this time she changes from being a shallow, ineffectual young girl to a strong, determined woman. She finds love, she finds Rosa, but the real story is that she finds herself.

I very much enjoyed this novel, and will certainly search out more by this author.

Historic Worthing - the Untold Story

By Chris Hare

Read this to add to my family history research. As with the other book of Chris's I read, it's entertaining and well-written. I learned so much - who would have thought that staid old Worthing, home to thousands of retirees, was once a hotbed of rioting every Bonfire Night? And I never, ever imagined that the following three words would be used together in a section heading: Salvation Army Riots.

To find out more, track down a copy of the book! I bought mine second hand at a Family History Fair. In Worthing, of course.

Pins

Pins by Christine Todd


One of my support-a-small-press purchases, which I heard about first on Sally Zigmond's blog (again). Molly finds concrete evidence her husband's been playing away, and buys voodoo dolls of him and his lover to stick pins in. Next morning her husband wakes up dead of an aneurysm.

Molly's guilt-ridden, and worried when the handsome detective seems to take quite an interest in her. As the months pass she finds hubby had a string of lovers, and had been undermining her ad agency business. She rebuilds her business as she rebuilds her life, and eventually realises the detective's interest in her is personal rather than professional. A year on, there's hope for her future.

It's a novel about finding yourself, being who you need to be rather than who someone else expects you to be. Why did her husband keep hurting her like that? Well, says the wise funeral-director character, probably because he wanted to.

I enjoyed this novel - it's written in first person present tense and has a snappy style. It's quite American in places (set in Chicago; the author is English but lived for years in the US) and there's plenty of humour. Couple of small points didn't work for me - Molly had a secondary career as a non-fiction writer and had this career to get back on track as well which seemed unnecessary. (Why do writers so often make their characters writers as well?) Related to this, she was writing gardening articles but preferred to sell her marital home with a big garden and look for a high rise condo which she felt was more 'her'. I'd have had the properties the other way round.

Overall a good read and definitely recommended.

Talking to the Dead

Talking to the Dead by Helen Dunmore

I bought this for 10p from the community centre book stall. Beautifully, poetically written. The setting is an old country house, during a very hot summer. You feel the oppressive heat, and almost long for the inevitable storm to clear the air.

Nina is helping her sister Isabel after a difficult birth. She becomes attracted to Isabel's husband and they begin an affair. Nina and Isabel have always been close, and you start to think, maybe too close. The presence of the baby, who Nina doesn't seem to relate to as you'd expect her to, brings back memories of the girls' brother who died from cot death. Or so the story goes. Nina begins to have different recollections of her childhood days.

Isabel's a delicate character - she has an eating disorder and is agarophobic. But we begin to learn what might have caused her problems as she struggles to regain her health after the birth.

The storm, when it comes, is shocking and upsetting. This is not a cheery read, but it's a beautifully written book and I'd recommend it to fans of Dunmore.

English Passengers

English Passengers by Matthew Kneale

Wow, this was a good book. I mean, a really good book. Up there with Cloud Atlas as one of the best books I have ever read. In some ways it reminded me of Cloud Atlas - all the different voices in each section of the book, and there're some similarities between this book and one of the Cloud Atlas novellas.

In the 1850s, a mad English vicar, a doctor with unsettling theories about the relative merits of different human 'types', and a lazy youth whose parents want to make a man of him, inadvertently charter a Manx smuggling vessel, not knowing that stowed in the hold are barrels of brandy and other contraband. They are destined for Tasmania, which the vicar believes is the true site of the Garden of Eden. The smuggling vessel is on the run from English customs officials.

There's drama on the oceans, and when the expedition reaches Tasmania and treks through the bush they meet with life and death situations. I can't explain the whole plot, there is way too much of it, but there's humour, farce and drama throughout. Threaded through the tale of the three hapless Englishmen is the history of Tasmania's aboriginal population. This is one of those books where you learn some history as you read on - white settlers exterminated the entire population within about 30 years. There are some shocking incidents, based on actual history.

The novel's narrated in sections by different characters - an aborigine, the ship's captain, the vicar, the doctor, the youth, and shorter sections by other minor characters. Each one has a wholly different voice - you hardly need to read the section heading to know who's talking. It's a great book to read to see how this can be done, and the effectiveness of using different voices for each character.

I was blown away by this book, did not want to get to the end though I did want to know what happened to all the characters. Very satisfying ending. Thoroughly recommended - if you like historical novels you will love this one

Living In Perhaps

Living In Perhaps by Julia Widdows

Bought this one after reading a review on Sally Zigmond's blog (she has great taste in books, so I just follow her around like a puppy...).

Really enjoyed it. Brilliantly written, cleverly drawn unreliable narrator who you know you just can't trust from one page to the next. But what I loved most was the details of sixties suburbia, so beautifully observed. The author has created a world which felt so real I was really there. Carol's adopted, feels alienated from her family, isn't sure who she is, prefers visiting the eccentric neighbours, and living in her made-up world in which she's far more important.

The ending was left hanging - up to the reader what to believe. After all, the narrator's been lying all through, so who knows what really happened?

A spot of social history

I've just finished reading 'Through the Hard Times and the Good' by Chris Hare. This is a non-fiction book, a social history of Worthing from the early 1930s. It focusses on the creation and works of the organisation now known as Guild Care, which was previously known as Worthing Council for Social Services, and was a forerunner of the welfare state in Worthing.

The reason I bought and read this book is because I've been researching my family history, and my mum's side of the family are all from Worthing. Not only that, but my great-aunt was one of the original founders of Guild Care. In fact, she seems to have been something of a saint. I never met her - she was dead long before I was born - but I'd heard she was 'a bit of a charity worker'. Well that's the understatement of the century. She worked tirelessly, for no pay, for decades, helping Worthing's poor, needy and elderly. Some examples - she arranged for free dental treatment for children, care homes for the elderly, nursery provision for the young. A memo arrived from the Government, suggesting the setting up of Citizen's Advice Bureaus. My great-aunt got straight on to that the next day, and Worthing was the first town to get a CAB. Methold House, Guild Care's HQ in Worthing, is named after her.

This was a very readable book, well researched and illustrated. I feel I got to know my great-aunt as a result of it. It would be of interest to anyone interested in social history, or the history of Worthing.