Theresa Smith's Blog, page 80
March 25, 2020
Author Talks: Natasha Lester on The Amazing Women Who Ruled the Skies in The Paris Secret
I’ve talked a lot on social media about the Dior gowns that form a big part of the story in The Paris Secret. But there’s another really important side of the book: a group of female pilots who were some of the bravest women working for the war effort in England during the 1940s.
Imagine being asked to fly an open-cockpit aeroplane (that means there is no cockpit; you’re totally exposed to all the elements) for four hours to Scotland in winter in minus thirty degrees wind-chill. I don’t know that I would survive such a trip. But the pilots in The Paris Secret survived thousands of flights just like that, as well as many other, even more dangerous, activities.
When I was researching my previous book, The French Photographer, I found a brief mention in a book I was reading of the Air Transport Auxiliary. This was a civilian flying organisation set up by the War Ministry in the UK to ferry RAF planes from maintenance units and factories to RAF bases. And as there weren’t enough male pilots – flying was a very new pursuit at the time – some women worked for the Air Transport Auxiliary, or ATA.
Female Aviators Branded Disgusting, Contemptible Show-Offs
I knew immediately that I wanted to write about the women of the ATA because, once again, here was a story of women doing something extraordinary for that time in history – most women didn’t even have a driver’s license during the 1940s – and who fought against stiff opposition from the male establishment to be able to do their job.
This is an extract from a letter written by a man to Aeroplane magazine in late 1939, soon after it was revealed that eight women had been employed to fly planes for the ATA:
“I think the whole affair of engaging women pilots to fly aeroplanes when there are so many men fully qualified to do the work is disgusting! They are contemptible show-offs.”
And another letter:
“The trouble is that women insist on wanting to do jobs which they are quite incapable of doing. The menace is the woman who thinks she ought to be flying a high-speed bomber when she really has not the intelligence to scrub the floor properly.”
Let’s bear in mind that the female pilots selected for the ATA each had more than one thousand hours flying experience. They were more capable of flying planes than many male pilots and, given that they were simply trying to help their country by delivering much-needed plates to a desperate RAF, it’s hard to see how their actions could be called disgusting or contemptible. I’ll leave it to you to imagine what Skye, the main character in The Paris Secret, has to say about those letters.
Risking Their Lives for the War Effort
The fact was: those women were risking their lives for their jobs.
They flew using only a compass to guide them and with the assistance of the old Roman roads, and the railway tracks as their journey-markers. That was all. They had no navigation instruments whatsoever. They had no radio to call in if they lost their way while following a railroad, or if their plane experienced mechanical problems.
Because they needed to remain in sight of the ground in order to know where in England they were at any one time, they were told only to fly if the cloud base was eight hundred feet or higher. But is English weather predictable? No.
So many of these courageous female pilots set out on what appeared to be a fine day. Then the weather changed en-route and they would be stuck in the midst of a thick layer of clouds with no way of knowing where they were. They died crashing into hills they couldn’t see, or they died as they flew on, hoping for the cloud to clear, but eventually running out of fuel and falling into the sea. Sometimes, they were even shot at by the Luftwaffe.
Fighting Prejudice and Danger
Let’s return to those sub-zero flights to Scotland for a minute. When the women landed in Scotland, their bodies were so frozen that they couldn’t get out of the plane. They had to be lifted out by male engineers, which must have been mortifying. Of course, the RAF tried to use that as evidence the women couldn’t do jobs, despite the fact that no one, not even a man, could stand up after enduring such a flight and in such conditions.
The women of the ATA could do their jobs and they did them well. They were incredibly brave and they fought continually against both prejudice and danger to help the Allies win the war. I’m so sad that they’re honoured with a small and insignificant statue in a town where they once ruled the skies.
I hope you enjoy finding out more about Skye and her fellow female aviatrixes in The Paris Secret – and finding out how on earth I connected a collection of Dior gowns to a group of female pilots!
Click to view slideshow.
The Paris Secret
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A wardrobe of Dior gowns, a secret kept for sixty-five years, and the three women bound forever by war… from the New York Times bestselling author of THE FRENCH PHOTOGRAPHER.
England, 1939 Talented pilot Skye Penrose joins the British war effort where she encounters her estranged sister, Liberty, and childhood soulmate Nicholas Crawford, now engaged to enigmatic Frenchwoman Margaux Jourdan.
Paris, 1947 Designer Christian Dior unveils his extravagant first collection to a world weary of war and grief. He names his debut fragrance, Miss Dior, in tribute to his sister, Catherine, who worked for the French Resistance.
Present day Australian fashion conservator Kat Jourdan discovers a secret wardrobe filled with priceless Dior gowns in her grandmother’s vacant cottage. As she delves into the mystery, Kat begins to doubt everything she thought she knew about her beloved grandmother.
An unspeakable betrayal will entwine all of their fates.
THE PARIS SECRET is an unforgettable story about the lengths people go to protect one another, and a love that, despite everything, lasts a lifetime.
Published by Hachette Australia
Released 31st March 2020
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About the Author:
Natasha Lester worked as a marketing executive before returning to university to study creative writing. She completed a Master of Creative Arts as well as her first novel, What Is Left Over, After, which won the T.A.G. Hungerford Award for Fiction. Her second novel, If I Should Lose You, was published in 2012, followed by A Kiss from Mr Fitzgerald in 2016, Her Mother’s Secret in 2017 and the Top 10 Australian and international bestsellers The Paris Seamstress in 2018 and The French Photographer in 2019. The Age described Natasha as ‘a remarkable Australian talent’ and her work has been published in numerous anthologies and journals.
In her spare time Natasha loves to teach writing, is a sought after public speaker and can often be found playing dress-ups with her three children. She lives in Perth. For all the latest news from Natasha, visit www.natashalester.com.au, follow her on Twitter @Natasha_Lester, or Instagram (natashalesterauthor), or join the readers who have become Natasha’s friend on Facebook.
*All photos provided by the author*
March 24, 2020
Book Review: The Animals at Lockwood Manor by Jane Healey
About the Book:
Some secrets are unspoken. Others are unspeakable . . .
August 1939.
Thirty-year-old Hetty Cartwright is tasked with the evacuation and safekeeping of the natural history museum’s collection of mammals. Once she and her exhibits arrive at Lockwood Manor, however, where they are to stay for the duration of the war, Hetty soon realizes that she’s taken on more than she’d bargained for.
Protecting her charges from the irascible Lord Lockwood and resentful servants is work enough, but when some of the animals go missing, and worse, Hetty begins to suspect someone – or something – is stalking her through the darkened corridors of the house.
As the disasters mount, Hetty finds herself falling under the spell of Lucy, Lord Lockwood’s beautiful but clearly haunted daughter. But why is Lucy so traumatized? Does she know something she’s not telling? And is there any truth to local rumours of ghosts and curses?
Part love story, part mystery, The Animals at Lockwood Manor by Jane Healey is a gripping and atmospheric tale of family madness, long-buried secrets and hidden desires.
My Thoughts:
Shades of Kate Morton and Kayte Nunn merge with themes akin to Rebecca within this moody and atmospheric historical mystery. Nothing is what it seems at Lockwood Manor. Is it haunted? Or is there something more sinister afoot?
One thing that I was sure of quite early on in the story was the vile nature of Lord Lockwood. With a predilection for very young women, gas lighting seemed to be his default setting. The way he treated Hetty from the get-go was appalling but that was nothing compared to the true depths of his depravity. Such a well-crafted villain!
Hetty was such a champion character, a woman working in a man’s role, only on account of the war. She was undervalued, disrespected, and over qualified, yet afflicted with so much self-doubt and social anxiety. Just as Lord Lockwood was well crafted in his villainy, Hetty really shone as a heroine. Lucy’s story was utterly tragic. The only child of a truly toxic coupling, the psychological damage that both of her parents inflicted upon her was devastating. There is a lot to unpack from Lucy’s story but to do so here would lead to unforgivable spoilers!
Moralistic themes along the lines of hunter versus scientist within the world of natural history are explored intimately. Hetty’s protectiveness for the animals ran deep and her reverence for the science of the specimens was profound. Natural history makes me uneasy, and as such, is a topic I like to continue reading about, challenging myself to dig in and learn more about it from every angle. The Animals at Lockwood Manor afforded me much opportunity to do this.
Precise and beautiful imagery is frequently conveyed throughout the narrative, making this novel a joy to read. With a surprising, yet plausible love story unfolding alongside the deepening mystery that lies within the house, all set against a backdrop of England at war, The Animals at Lockwood Manor is the type of novel that has wide appeal. I thoroughly enjoyed this one and highly recommend it to fans of historical fiction.
Thanks is extended to Pan Macmillan Australia for providing me with a copy of The Animals at Lockwood Manor for review.
About the Author:
Jane Healey studied English Literature at Warwick University. She has been shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize 2013, the Costa Short Story Award 2014, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2016 and the Penguin Random House WriteNow mentoring programme 2017. The Animals at Lockwood Manor is her first novel. She lives in Edinburgh.
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The Animals at Lockwood Manor
Published by Mantle
Released 10th March 2020
March 23, 2020
Book Review: My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
About the Book:
An era-defining novel about the relationship between a fifteen-year-old girl and her teacher.
ALL HE DID WAS FALL IN LOVE WITH ME AND THE WORLD TURNED HIM INTO A MONSTER.
Vanessa Wye was fifteen-years-old when she first had sex with her English teacher.
She is now thirty-two and in the storm of allegations against powerful men in 2017, the teacher, Jacob Strane, has just been accused of sexual abuse by another former student.
Vanessa is horrified by this news, because she is quite certain that the relationship she had with Strane wasn’t abuse. It was love. She’s sure of that.
Forced to rethink her past, to revisit everything that happened, Vanessa has to redefine the great love story of her life – her great sexual awakening – as rape. Now she must deal with the possibility that she might be a victim, and just one of many.
Nuanced, uncomfortable, bold and powerful, My Dark Vanessa goes straight to the heart of some of the most complex issues our age.
My Thoughts:
My Dark Vanessa is a profoundly disturbing narrative of manipulation disguised as love. Beautifully written literary fiction, yet challenging like no other novel I’ve read before. The scenario is provocative, the characters emotionally charged, the content instinctively relevant. Compulsive reading that I can’t help but recommend even if it does journey into territory I’d rather not contemplate. This is not a novel I devoured though, more like a partaking in fits and bursts. Vanessa herself is quite a toxic character, filled with so much self-loathing, and Jacob, well, he was sickening. And of course, the themes are ultimately distressing, so lightly does it in terms of approaching this one.
“I should be used to this by now but it’s still surreal – how he can talk about the books and also about me, and they have no idea. It’s like when he touched me behind his desk while everyone else sat at the table, working on their thesis statements. Things happen right in front of them. It’s like they’re all too ordinary to notice.”
Thanks is extended to HarperCollins Publishers Australia for providing me with a copy of My Dark Vanessa for review.
About the Author:
Kate Elizabeth Russell is originally from eastern Maine. She holds a PhD in creative writing from the University of Kansas and an MFA from Indiana University. Her work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Mid-American Review, and Quarterly West, among other journals, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. This is her first novel.
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My Dark Vanessa
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia – Imprint: 4th Estate – GB
Released 23rd March 2020
March 22, 2020
Book Review: Sheerwater by Leah Swann
About the Book:
Emotional, powerful, unforgettable. From a stunning new literary talent, you won’t be able to put down this novel about a mother’s love for her children – it will break your heart.
Ava and her two young sons, Max and Teddy, are driving to their new home in Sheerwater, hopeful of making a fresh start in a new town, although Ava can’t help but keep looking over her shoulder. They’re almost at their destination when they witness a shocking accident – a light plane crashing in the field next to the road. Ava stops to help, but when she gets back to the car, she realises that somehow, among the smoke, fire and confusion, her sons have gone missing…
From a substantial new Australian writing talent, Sheerwater is tense, emotional, unforgettable. Perfect for readers of Mark Brandi’s Wimmera and Stephanie Bishop’s The Other Side of the World, this is a beautifully written, propulsive, gut-wrenching and unputdownable novel – an aching, powerful story of the heroic acts we are capable of in the name of love.
My Thoughts:
I really could have done with one more chapter to this novel. I didn’t need it, but I definitely wanted it. For reassurance. In my imagination, I am pushing for a couple of key outcomes, so I guess I’m just going to have to go with that. What a novel though! This is a powerful story, almost gentle in its brutality; quite a literary achievement.
Alternating between character perspectives, the novel spans only three days – three very intense days. The beginning of the sections that cover day two and day three are prefaced with a piece of writing about the shearwaters’ migration. Shearwaters are the most abundant seabird species in Australian waters and they are commonly known as the mutton-bird. It wasn’t until I reached the end of the novel that I realised that these two pieces of writing about the migration of the birds were in some way a premonition of what was next to come in the journey of the boys, Max and Teddy. Reaching that climatic part of the novel, towards the end, gave me goosebumps as my mind instantly reached back to the preface of day three. I even went back and re-read it, confirming my feelings about this correlation.
I feel as though this novel is a cautionary tale of an utterly preventable tragedy. When domestic violence meets mental illness there is never going to be a positive outcome, but I can’t help feel that there shouldn’t automatically always be a tragic one either. There were several instances throughout this story where I really felt enraged at the police. We have a woman here, whose two young children have gone missing while she is fleeing from their father. This couple are separated, but there is an intervention order against the husband, who is being treated for a mental illness, and there is a history of documented violence. That’s the scenario we have here. It’s all very clear, and while the husband attempted at every opportunity to rewrite the narrative, the facts really spoke for themselves. And yet, the woman in this scenario still gets asked a question like this by the detective investigating the disappearance of her children:
“Why did you marry someone like this, who tells lies, who makes you feel so unsafe that you get an intervention order taken out against him?”
This was just one of many questions that did nothing at all to aid in the investigation, and also did nothing at all to prevent the ultimate tragedy. Questions like this only serve one purpose: to victim blame. To change the narrative and put the responsibility of a grown man’s actions back onto his wife, who should what? Not try and protect herself and her children from harm in case it angers him? Not flee from her family home in terror because that’s ‘not fair’ to a father because ‘he’s a good guy just going through a rough patch’? Everything that happened within this novel was avoidable, and this is why we still have so far to go when it comes to preventing death from domestic violence within our society. This is a novel that taps into a crisis that exists within our country today. It’s very much a statement novel, but not in a gratuitous way. It was devastating, yet written with a beauty that seemed to paradoxically soften the blow while also remaining sharply on point.
I really loved Ava and was desperate for her to get the freedom for herself and her children that she so deserved. There was another character, Simon, who I also really liked. He was going through his own issues and was pulled into what was happening with Ava merely by chance and proximity. He seemed to be a ‘seer’ or perhaps just highly intuitive, I’m not sure, but this aspect of his persona appealed to me greatly. In my imagination, there is more for Simon and Ava, beyond the pain.
Sheerwater is a novel that will leave an impression upon anyone who reads it. I have a feeling I will be seeing more about this novel within the next year, perhaps listed for prizes. I don’t often get hunches like that, but the last time I did was after I read The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood, and we all know how that turned out!
Thanks is extended to HarperCollins Publishers Australia for providing me with a NetGalley copy of Sheerwater for review.
About the Author:
Leah Swann is an award-winning author and journalist currently employed at World Vision Australia as the CEO’s chief speech writer. Her critically acclaimed collection of stories, Bearings, was published by Affirm in 2011. Her fantasy series for middle grade readers, Irina: The Trilogy, was published by Xoum between 2012 and 2015, with some young readers calling it ‘the best book since Harry Potter’. Swann was the inaugural first place winner of the Overland Story Wine prize for her story That Inward Eye. Swann’s literary fiction, poetry and essays have been published in Meanjin, The Best Australian Stories, The World To Come, Australian Love Stories, Award Winning Australian Writing, page seventeen, Review of Australian Fiction, Australian Country Style, Reflecting on Melbourne, and The Glasgow Herald.
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Sheerwater
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia: 4th Estate – AU
Released 23rd March 2020
March 19, 2020
The Week That Was…
What a week! We now have a 14 year old and a 16 year old in the house. It’s been a good week for cake. Not such a good week for humanity though. I am still at work: public education. I really wish those making the decisions to keep schools open would come in for a day and see just how impossible it is to police hand hygiene and social distancing for hundreds of teenagers. This whole issue is concerning for me, as asthma and previous respiratory complications (including a collapsed lung and pneumonia) puts me in the risk category for this virus. I don’t want to make this whole post about this though, but it is weighing on my mind, so much so, that I’ve hardly done any reading this week. My book of the week is also my current read.
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I did make time on the weekend to watch a film I’ve been itching to see for ages, and I really did enjoy it.
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Joke of the week:
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Many authors have been faced with cancelled book launches and book tours this week as well as festival opportunities postponed for the foreseeable future. With bookish events moving to an online forum, I’d like to make known to writing and reading friends that the Australian Women Writers Challenge has a Facebook group dedicated solely to book news and events. Anyone is welcome to join:
Australian Women Writers Challenge News and Events group
And another newly formed group that has a similar purpose, but not restricted to the writing of women:
Writers Go Forth. Launch. Promote. Party.
If you are looking for some online bookish communal activity, these two groups are an ideal place to start.
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#moodlifter
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What I’m reading right now:
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Until next week… 
March 17, 2020
Book Review: Truths I Never Told You by Kelly Rimmer
About the Book:
It begins with the discovery of a tattered letter in the attic … A heart-tugging story of family secrets by the Top 10 bestselling Australian author
1959: Grace is a young mother with four children under four. All she ever wanted was to have a family of her own, but there are thoughts Grace cannot share with anyone in the months after childbirth. Instead she pours her deepest fears into the pages of a notebook, hiding them where she knows husband Patrick will never look. When Grace falls pregnant again, she turns to her sister, Maryanne, for help.
1996: When Beth’s father, Patrick, is diagnosed with dementia, she and her siblings make the heart-wrenching decision to put him into care. As Beth is clearing the family home, she discovers a series of notes. Patrick’s children grew up believing their mother died in a car accident, but these notes suggest something much darker may be true.
TRUTHS I NEVER TOLD YOU is the unputdownable, unforgettable story of motherhood and marriage by Kelly Rimmer, author of BEFORE I LET YOU GO and THE THINGS WE CANNOT SAY
My Thoughts:
Kelly Rimmer doesn’t shy away from tackling the hard stuff within her novels. This is the third novel by Kelly that I’ve read and she is often compared to Jodi Picoult, a comparison that is not unwarranted. In Truths I Never Told You, Kelly takes an intimate look at inter-generational postpartum depression, using a dual timeline narrative to contrast attitudes and treatment options during the 1950s and the 1990s.
Along the way, she dips into women’s reproductive rights and abortion as a method of contraception for women from previous generations. These are heavy issues and when you throw a dying father into the mix, who is also suffering from dementia, and a whole host of marriage and family dysfunction issues, the narrative was for me, at times, challenging to relax into.
There is also the thread of a mystery running through this story pertaining to the circumstances surrounding Grace’s death and the inconsistency between her date of death and the memories her grown children have of her. This angle of the story appealed to me more than the beginning focus of the novel. The introduction of Maryanne, Grace’s sister, into the 1950s storyline was a welcome one; I found her interesting as a character and insightful in terms of offering a holistic perspective on women’s lives in the 1950s.
Kelly Rimmer writes with her usual mix of empathy and insight to deliver a compelling, well informed, and intensely emotional read.
+1/2
Thanks is extended to Hachette Australia for providing me with a copy of Truths I Never Told You for review.
About the Author:
Kelly Rimmer is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of ten novels, including The Secret Daughter and The Things We Cannot Say. She’s sold more than one million books, and her novels have been translated into more than 20 languages. Kelly lives in rural Australia with her family and fantastically naughty dogs, Sully and Basil.
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Truths I Never Told You
Published by Hachette Australia
Released 25th February 2020
March 16, 2020
Book Review: Wolfe Island by Lucy Treloar
About the Book:
Kitty Hawke, the last inhabitant of a dying island sinking into the wind-lashed Chesapeake Bay, has resigned herself to annihilation…
Until one night her granddaughter blows ashore in the midst of a storm, desperate, begging for sanctuary. For years, Kitty has kept herself to herself – with only the company of her wolfdog, Girl – unconcerned by the world outside, or perhaps avoiding its worst excesses. But blood cannot be turned away in times like these. And when trouble comes following her granddaughter, no one is more surprised than Kitty to find she will fight to save her as fiercely as her name suggests…
A richly imagined and mythic parable of home and kin that cements Lucy Treloar’s place as one of our most acclaimed novelists.
My Thoughts:
‘Slice a life any way you like and it’ll tell a different story. Each cut shows something new; each might surprise or confound. Some parts you must expose with a delicate blade to keep them whole. It’s not an easy task; it takes patience. Not everyone likes to know this. You decide for yourself the things you want to know about yourself, even if not in your entirely conscious self; you choose not to peer down into the mess of it all.’
Wolfe Island is not a quick read. The novel itself is reasonably long, yes, but that’s not really what I’m talking about. It’s a story to savour and linger over; there is so much here within its pages to dwell on and reflect about within the context of the world and the changing environment that we are currently living in. The story is immersive and spans quite a long period of time from beginning through to the end. In this, it resembles a family saga, with Kitty at the helm. But along with the themes of family that drive the narrative, Wolfe Island is also a rather political novel, as well as providing a wealth of commentary on the more obvious theme of climate change that the story fundamentally orbits around.
Wolfe Island is my first taste of Lucy Treloar’s writing and what a treat this was. She writes in a way that makes you stop and think, hence the dwelling and lingering that was going on all the while that I was reading it. Many people have told me that this was a standout read for them last year, and it’s currently sitting on the ABIA 2020 literary fiction longlist. After having finally read it, I can see why. The praise is well deserved and I can now join the ranks of those who highly recommend it. I’m going to let Lucy’s own words from Wolfe Island close out this review, and I challenge you not to feel their impact as you read them.
On child birth:
‘She looked not light or loving or soft, but ferocious, like she knew things she hadn’t known before, and had been through something she didn’t know she could. No one can prepare you for it. You’ve been somewhere. Your body’s surprised you. Whatever you’ve felt before meant nothing. Nothing. This is the thing that matters. Nothing is more important; nothing explains more. You’re holding the world.’
On dogs:
‘There is something about a dog. They love freely; they do not judge or blame; they forgive. That’s a blessing every day of their lives and you pay for it when they die. It is a pure grief, and it carries all your other griefs along with it and sets them free, sweeping them up and carrying them along as fast and awful as any body of running water.’
On killing:
‘I felt hopeless now, saturated in the dreary violence of what I had made happen. I had lost something and I would never get it back.’
‘It’s not what you do, it’s why. That’s always true.’
Thanks is extended to Pan Macmillan Australia for providing me with a copy of Wolfe Island for review.
About the Author:
Lucy Treloar is the author of the novel Salt Creek (2015), which won the Indie Award for Best Debut, the ABIA Matt Richell Award and the Dobbie Award, and was shortlisted for prizes including the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the UK’s Walter Scott Prize. Lucy has also been a recipient of the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Pacific Region) and the 2013 Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award. Her short fiction has been published in Sleepers, Overland, Seizure and Best Australian Stories, and her non-fiction in newspapers and magazines including The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, and Womankind. A graduate of the University of Melbourne and RMIT, Lucy works as a writer and editor, and plies her trades in Australia as well as Cambodia, where she lived for a number of years. In between writing, Lucy finds the time to teach creative writing at RMIT and Writers Victoria. She lives in inner Melbourne with her family.
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Wolfe Island
Published by Pan Macmillan Australia
Released August 2019
March 15, 2020
Book Review: The Art of Dying by Ambrose Parry
About the Book:
The second gripping historical crime novel set in 19th century Edinburgh, co-written by bestselling author Chris Brookmyre and consultant anaesthetist Dr Marisa Haetzman.
Edinburgh, 1850. Despite being at the forefront of modern medicine, hordes of patients are dying all across the city, with doctors finding their remedies powerless. But it is not just the deaths that dismay the esteemed Dr James Simpson – a whispering campaign seeks to blame him for the death of a patient in suspicious circumstances.
Simpson’s protege Will Raven and former housemaid Sarah Fisher are determined to clear their patron’s name. But with Raven battling against the dark side of his own nature, and Sarah endeavouring to expand her own medical knowledge beyond what society deems acceptable for a woman, the pair struggle to understand the cause of the deaths.
Will and Sarah must unite and plunge into Edinburgh’s deadliest streets to clear Simpson’s name. But soon they discover that the true cause of these deaths has evaded suspicion purely because it is so unthinkable.
My Thoughts:
What a book! I’ve always favoured historical fiction set within the Victorian era, and this novel is an example of why. The Art of Dying is the follow up to The Way of All Flesh and just like its predecessor it’s about medicine, mayhem, and madness, all playing out with gripping certainty against a gritty Victorian Edinburgh background.
‘Every woman has felt the fear that derives from her own weakness before men whose greater power derives from a stature that is not merely physical.’
Just as in The Way of All Flesh, I relished all of the medical parts of this story. Obstetrics is still very much a non-surgical field as abdominal surgery is deeply frowned upon by the ‘establishment’. Yet Will Raven is convinced that many patients could benefit from a change in attitude about this, particularly women suffering from ovarian cysts and tumours, as well as those suffering ectopic pregnancies. The pioneering aspect of medicine within this era is something I find particularly fascinating. There was still a great deal of resistance to progress and innovation, and women were still barred from studying the field, much less even practising as a doctor. Sarah Fisher’s circumstances have changed markedly since the previous book and she finds herself in a position of being able to seriously consider travelling abroad so that she can set about becoming something quite rare: a female doctor.
‘For this I know: every true demon was once a child, one that knew fear and suffering. Every true demon learned cruelty and evil at the hands of another.’
Events within the book orbit around a medical mystery that soon reveals itself to be the work of a serial killer. What I loved about this was that it wasn’t so much a who-dunnit – we know exactly who it is fairly early on – but rather a why-dunnit. As the story unfolds, more about this killer is revealed, in pieces, from childhood through to the present day, and it is an extremely disturbing story, all the more so because it is based on an historical crime that took place in New England during the 19th century.
This is historical fiction at its gothic Victorian best. I don’t recommend reading The Art of Dying as a stand-alone though. You will get far more enjoyment out of it as a follow-up to The Way of All Flesh.
Thanks is extended to Allen & Unwin for providing me with a copy of The Art of Dying for review.
About the Author:
Ambrose Parry is a pseudonym for a collaboration between Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman. The couple are married and live in Scotland. Chris Brookmyre is the international bestselling and multi-award-winning author of over twenty novels. Dr Marisa Haetzman is a consultant anaesthetist of twenty years’ experience, whose research for her Master’s degree in the History of Medicine uncovered the material upon which this series, which began with The Way of All Flesh, is based. The Art of Dying is the second book in the series.
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The Art of Dying
Published by Allen & Unwin (Canongate)
Released 5th November 2019
See my review of the first book in this series, The Way of All Flesh, here.
March 14, 2020
Book Review: Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow by Rashi Rohatgi
About the Book:
It’s 1905, and Japan’s victory over the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War has shocked the British and their imperial subjects. In India, 16-year-old Leela and her younger sister, Maya, are spurred on to wear homespun as a sign of protest to show the British that the Indians won’t be oppressed for much longer, either.
But when Leela’s betrothed, Nash, asks her to circulate a petition amongst her classmates to desegregate the girls’ school in Chandrapur, she’s wary. She needs to remind Maya that the old ways are not all bad, for soon Maya will have to join her own betrothed and his family in their quiet village. When she discovers that Maya has embarked on a forbidden romance, Leela’s response shocks her family, her town, and her country firmly into the new century.
Published after winning Galaxy Galloper’s “Novella Spectacular” contest to find the best unpublished novella, Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow is the beautifully written story of a girl who has no plans to become anything more than what has been promised to her by history—until those promises become untenable.
My Thoughts:
This was an interesting novella, very well written and beautifully immersive in terms of day to day life in India in the early 20th century. There is, however, an assumption that the reader will be familiar with the political history of India during this era. I was not, and after being thoroughly confused on what was actually going on and why, I took a break from reading so I could instead read up on the history and politics. This did help, to a certain extent, but as is often the way with novellas, they don’t have enough space for background details and a slowing down of the pace. The ending was particularly dramatic, but somewhat out of character. Much of this novella left me feeling exhausted by the whirlwind of loaded conversations with little context provided to the reader for clarity. All the what was there, but not enough of the why to satisfy my reading tastes.
Thanks is extended to the publisher for providing me with a copy via NetGalley of Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow for review.
About the Author:
Rashi Rohatgi is the author of Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow. An Indian-American Pennsylvania native who lives in Arctic Norway, her short fiction and poetry have appeared in A-Minor Magazine, The Misty Review, Anima, Allegro Poetry, Lunar Poetry, and Boston Accent Lit. Her non-fiction and reviews have appeared in The Review Review, Wasafiri, World Literature Today, Africa in Words, The Aerogram, and The Toast. She is a graduate of Bread Loaf Sicily and associate professor of English at Nord University.
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Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow
Published by Galaxy Galloper
Released 8th March 2020
March 13, 2020
#BookBingo2020 – Round 3: Coming of Age
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This is more than a novel about friendship. The era in which she set the story plays just as much of a role in the telling as the characters. Italy’s turbulent history is evidenced within the very fabric of these characters, the community, and the codes they lived by. My Brilliant Friend is a coming of age novel not just for two girls, but for a nation, who had, in a relatively short amount of time, experienced extreme political turbulence under multiple political regimes, civil war, and two world wars. The characters wear this, they struggle with it, the younger generation want to break free from the fear and ways of the older generation.
Visit my full review on this book here.
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I’ve teamed up once again with Mrs B’s Book Reviews and The Book Muse. It’s going to be a little different for 2020, the card has less squares, allowing us to run bingo on the second Saturday of each month. Also, for the first time since beginning bingo, I haven’t specified genre, type, or even fiction or non-fiction for the categories. 2020 is all about themes, and from there, the choice is wide open.
Hope to see you joining in! If you want to play along, just tag us on social media with your bingo posts each month. You can also join the Page by Page Book Club with Theresa Smith Writes over on Facebook, where we all post in the same place on the same date and chat over each other’s entries. Alternatively, drop a link each month into the comments of my Saturday bingo post so I can follow your progress blog to blog.
#BookBingo2020
