Cynthia Sally Haggard's Blog: Cynthia Sally's Blog, page 57

THE SUN SISTER by Lucinda Riley (THE SEVEN SISTERS #6). Narrated by Weruche Opia & Sophie Roberts.

[image error]What another wonderful book to add to THE SEVEN SISTERS family. This time, we deal with youngest sister Electra, who is just as fiery (and out-of-control) as her name suggests. This is the cynical sister, the confrontational sister, the one who asks awkward questions, and the only one who is ever openly rude to Pa Salt.

Electra is a world-famous super-model, and suffice it to say that this life-style does not agree with her. Like the other sisters, she goes on a journey to find her family, this time to the world of 1930s Kenya with its eccentric British aristocrats (misbehaving by the shores of Lake Naivasha).  Like the other novels, two narratives – past and present – are braided together. As a consequence we get two wonderfully moving stories about two very different women, each of whom had the devastating experience of losing a child.

If you enjoyed her previous five novels, you will enjoy this one. Personally, I can’t wait for #7 to come out! Five stars.

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Lucinda Riley’s THE SEVEN SISTERS SERIES. Narrated by Lucinda Riley and others.

How I loved the concept of this book. The idea that an elusive billionaire (Pa Salt) adopted six baby girls and named them after the Pleiades, the seventh one, Merope, mysteriously absent.

When Pa Salt dies (or disappears), each young woman is left with coordinates and clues that lead the to find their true identity. Thus in Book One (THE SEVEN SISTERS)[image error] Maia, the eldest goes to Brazil. In THE STORM SISTER[image error] Alcyone (Ally) finds a home in Norway. In THE SHADOW SISTER[image error] Asterope (Star) finds a family in England. In THE PEARL SISTER[image error] Celaeno (Cee-Cee) flies around the world to find her origins in Australia. In THE MOON SISTER[image error] Taygete (Tiggy) is happy nursing animals in Scotland until she finds her family in Granada. And then there is Electra…(to be reviewed soon.)

Lucinda Riley is an experienced writer who immerses her reader in each story, with its atmosphere, ambiance, culture and colorful characters. But the overarching story is also fascinating. Who is Pa Salt? Is he really dead? Where is the seventh sister? Why did Pa Salt adopt all these babies?

I highly recommend ALL the books in this series. Ms. Riley has performed the magnificent feat of making them all equally strong. Five stars.

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Reading Sundays: HAUNTED BY DREAMS (Part 1) A Short Story by Cynthia Sally Haggard

The dreams started once Helena stopped seeing him.

His laughter chimed with some unfathomable feeling as he drew something from his pocket. The chain gleamed in the sunlight as it swung in slowing arcs, revealing a ring at the end. He picked up that ring the color of fire topped by a blazing diamond,[image error] freed it from the chain and placed it on my finger. I smiled my answer up into his radiant face.

Helena blinked into the dull half-light of a darkened bedroom. The digital alarm proclaimed 02:16. She had to rise at 05:00 to ready herself for her day before rousing the children from their beds. She turned onto her side, foggily aware that Jake’s side of the bed was empty. He must be in the living room of their small two-bedroom apartment. Sliding out of bed as softly as she could, she padded to the door and peeked. Jake was hunched over his computer, chain-smoking, his bursts of typing conveying irritation rather than pleasure.

Her husband was a PhD candidate in comparative literature. His future should have been bright, but things were not going well. Helena wasn’t sure, but maybe Jake changed his thesis topic several times? She was not an academic, she worked as a receptionist at the local doctor’s office. But wouldn’t his advisor want him to settle on something? But Jake wasn’t the settling type. Even their six-years-old marriage had been a mistake, a convergence of her family’s religious views, his insouciance, and her unrealized hunger for children.

She retreated, back into the safe darkness of the bedroom, when he raised his well-shaped head and looked at her. [To be continued.]

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Reading Sundays: A SURPRISING CURE (Part 13) a short story by Cynthia Sally Haggard

Eventually, Robert came downstairs, a small bag in his hand. “I’ll make sure she sends our new address.”

“There is no need,” I remarked stiffly.

“I personally have no objection to your visiting,” he said, lighting another cigarette. “That is, if you’d care to.” He gave me his half-lidded smile.

*     *     *     *     *

I could not forget my wayward wife. Every once in a while, I would go to visit her in St Philip’s Marsh, a low-lying area across the canal from the cotton works, and quietly offered her monetary assistance in the form of a pound a week. She always refused. Inevitably, disaster struck and she was obliged to leave for the United States.[image error] Even defiant Miriam knew that the birth of an illegitimate child would mean ostracism from Bristol society.

I confess I was very hurt by this news. I believed Miriam’s relationship with Mr. Nicol to be entirely Platonic, assuring myself that her condition would prevent her from straying. Now I realized that I was done a great wrong by Miriam’s lady doctor. How convenient to tell an overly amorous husband, whose attentions were not appreciated, that his wife’s cancer precluded marital relations. That Nicol fellow obviously had no qualms, but he had studied medicine at university.

When I think of those long dreary years of marriage when I was kept apart from my Miriam, I cannot help feeling bitter. I believe to this day that had we shared the same bed, had Miriam borne me a child, that our marriage could have been saved.

THE END

A Surprising Cure first appeared in Fiction on the Web.

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Pat Barker’s THE SILENCE OF THE GIRLS

[image error]Pat Barker writes with such empathy. Imagine you are a high-born girl, married at 15 to some man of your father’s choosing. You become Queen of your husband’s dominion. Then the fortunes of war turn against your husband, and you find yourself under siege, huddled with other women and children, listening to the sounds of your city falling. Then the foreign men barge in and you brace yourself for the worst.

This is how Pat Barker’s THE SILENCE OF THE GIRLS begins. We witness the powerlessness of women against male aggression, very timely in the age of “Me too” and the unsavory revelations connected to Brett Kavanaugh, Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump and others. We like to think we have made progress. In many ways we have. But all too often, young women find themselves prey to greedy men.

Five stars.

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Was Homer a Steppe Nomad? (WHY HOMER MATTERS by Adam Nicolson)

[image error]It never occurred to me that Homer and the Greeks could have anything to do with the Steppe Nomads or the likes of Genghis Khan, until I read Adam Nicolson’s WHY HOMER MATTERS. As I read his claim near the beginning of the book, that Homer’s tales were about a thousand years older than commonly thought I shook my head. That doesn’t seem right, I remember thinking to myself. (Most experts seem to agree they were written down in around 800 BCE, and refer to a time-period of around 1250-1400 BCE.)

However, I now think Nicolson may be right, based upon his reading of the text. I am not an expert in Greek, so I have to take his word for it when he says that some of the language comes from around 1800 BCE. But what struck me was his evidence, from the text, that the Iliad reflects a people recently come from the Steppe, all those images of horses, all those comparisons of the sea with a sea of grass.

If you want an interesting new take on the Iliad (and the Odyssey), you should definitely read this book. Five stars.

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Jeff Wheeler’s THE HARBINGER SERIES

[image error]I was first introduced to Jeff Wheeler via STORM GLASS (#1 in the series,) which came highly recommended by the Historical Novel Society, of which I am a member. I don’t usually think of myself as a great fan of fantasy, but how I loved the Dickensian alternate world that Jeff Wheeler conjured up with his TWO female protagonists.

One of the reasons why I loved this series so much is because it deals with a crisis that bedevils modern-day United States today, that of a widening income gap between rich and poor. Sara FitzEmpress has everything one could want, money, power, and the promise of a throne one day. But she is so lonely, and not treated very well by her estranged parents.

Cettie Pratt is doomed to live in an ash-heap of a city, in darkness, as any light that reaches it is blocked out by the sky manors of the rich which float overhead. But Cettie persuades someone rich and powerful to save her, and thus begins a series of five volumes: MIRROR GATE (#2) [image error] IRON GARLAND (#3)[image error] PRISM GATE (#4)[image error] and BROKEN VEIL (#5),[image error] which trace the different life paths of two young women from the ages of 12 through 21.

Highly recommended! Five stars.

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Reading Sundays: A SURPRISING CURE (Part 12) a short story by Cynthia Sally Haggard

She puffed on her cigarette, her eyes hard.

“What I want you to understand, both of you,” I let my gaze sweep over that arrogant youth, “is that I will not countenance this tract. If you persist in your plans to publish it—”

“—you’ll throw us out?” he drawled.

Miriam stopped smoking and glared at me, her features hardening into a kind of bulldog mulishness. “Fine. I don’t care. Come, Robert.” He disappeared with her.

“Miriam.” I came to the bottom of the stairs just as she was halfway up. “What are you doing?”

“I’m leaving.”

“Please don’t do that.”

[image error]She turned, holding her skirts up with one hand. “The situation here is quite intolerable. I will not have you dictate my life to me. You’ve just said that you object to our pamphlet. As long as I stay under your roof I have to abide by your rules because you’re my husband. Isn’t that what society demands of wives?”

I nodded miserably.

“Well, I don’t care to do that, so I’m leaving.”

“Miriam,” I said again. But she had gone, Robert following. I could hear bumping and thumping coming from up above as I stood at the bottom of the stairs.

Eventually, Robert came downstairs, a small bag in his hand. “I’ll make sure she sends our new address.”

“There is no need,” I remarked stiffly.

“I personally have no objection to your visiting,” he said, lighting another cigarette. “That is, if you’d care to.” He gave me his half-lidded smile. [To be continued.]

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A personal tale that is NOT narrated by the protagonist (JASSY)

[image error]Jassy is one of those Norah Lofts novels set in East Anglia around the fictional town of Baildon, patterned on the real one of Bury St. Edmunds. So the landscape is bleak, flat and stark, and those of us who’ve lived in those parts remember that biting East wind in winter that seems to come straight from Siberia. The landscape is a fitting backdrop for this story, which is at once stark, haunted, beautiful, noble and sordid.

Jassy is an outsider. To make matters worse she is female, and as everyone is well aware, strong, intelligent women often seem to be the lightning rods for society’s frustrations.

And so it is here. Jassy is unusually intelligent and perceptive, and she carries herself well. She impresses people. But she has some qualities that put people’s backs up. She has trouble governing her temper. She is the kind of person that things happen to. And she has powers of prophecy. Jassy is not bland, neutral or easy to ignore. People either love her or hate her. That is what makes her such a wonderful protagonist. It is also what leads to her downfall.

What is so striking about this book from a craft perspective is that none of it is in Jassy’s voice, breaking the conventional rule that one gets from agents, that the best way of making a character vivid is to use first person.

In spite of the fact that throughout this novel we are NOT privy to Jassy’s own thoughts via interior monologue and the like, the reader will come away from this knowing Jassy thoroughly.

How does Ms. Lofts do it?

The novel is written in four books, and each one is narrated by a different person, so that we get a collage of opinions and impressions of the protagonist. What I found really helpful was at the beginning of each book, Ms. Lofts has included a quote about Jassy from the person narrating the book, as well as an introductory sentence about that person. So Book One opens: GENESIS IN EXILE. “She was a local girl , of rather peculiar parentage…” So this story is told by BARNEY HATTON, who lived next door and took an interest in his neighbours. (Barney Hatton is a young man of around Jassy’s age.)

Wonderful! It was a brilliant way to orient the reader to the narration that followed.

Book Two is narrated by Elizabeth Twysdale, who ran a school for Young Ladies.

Book Three is narrated by Dilys Helmar, a young lady of around Jassy’s age, who escaped with Jassy from school and brought her home to Mortiboys.

Lastly, Book Four is narrated by Belinda Wicks, who is subject to Visitations.

All four of these people have strong reactions to Jassy, and it is through THEIR interior monologs as they try to puzzle her out that we learn so much about her. What a novel, and interesting way of writing about a protagonist.

If you have never read this book before, and you love absorbing characters, you should read it now! Five stars.

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GREEN DOLPHIN STREET by Elizabeth Goudge

[image error]Is it Marianne, or Marguerite? Poor William could never remember the names of the two sisters, even though they had very different personalities. Marianne was a fiery independent woman, who would not have been out of place in the 21st century. Her gentle sister Marguerite had more old-fashioned qualities. When William had successfully made a life for himself in New Zealand, he decided to write home to St. Pierre in Guernsey, and ask for the hand of the woman he loved. The woman he loved was gentle Marguerite. But in the letter he wrote to their father, he asked for Marianne.

So Marianne set off for an unknown place, happy to be shed of provincial St. Pierre that hemmed her in. Fiery and courageous, she made a success of herself in New Zealand, taking the inevitable hardships in stride. She had no idea that she was not the bride her husband had in mind until they returned to Guernsey.

The scene where she confronts her sister Marguerite with her knowledge that she was the wrong bride is one of my favorites. One doesn’t expect nuns to be speechless with laughter, but this scene is such a luminous one, for the laughter, the love and the forgiveness.

Elizabeth Goudge (1900 -1984) is a mostly forgotten author, but at her best, she married wonderful storytelling with spiritual depth. I often wish I could write like her.

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