Good historical fiction is rarely so dramatic, but Brooks just about manages to pull this one off. We all imagine the Black Plague of 1666 was brutal but this story of widowed Anna Frith losing her two sons and her village plunging into barely restrained chaos brings it all home. Brooks is not quite as […]
Historical Fiction
March by Geraldine Brooks
Who hasn’t read Little Women and wondered what the girls’ mother thought of the father, leaving her and three girls to struggle in straightened circumstances while he went off to chaplain the soldiers in the American civil war? March answers that question: the mother was not impressed. This novel is about his journey and it’s fine historical […]
Private Life by Jane Smiley
This beautiful book is about women who dedicate their lives to men who are not quite worthy of them. So good, you will be pressing it on others.
Heartstone by CJ Sansom
Samson’s account of the sinking of the King’s warship, the Mary Rose, in Hearstone is unforgettable. Sansom renders it real, compete with rats frantically clambouring over the netting as the ship sinks into the water with the trapped men beneath. This is what Samson is so good at; history so vital and compelling it makes […]
Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel
Wolf Hall is very good, but Bring Up The Bodies is even better. Ridiculous to be reading about Cromwell and Henry’s courting of Jane Seymour and the trial of Anne Boleyn as if you don’t know what happens next, but Mantel makes you live through those times instead of just knowing about them. She’s so good, you […]
Imperium by Robert Harris
Imperium rocks. It’s the first book in a trilogy about Cicero and his life in Ancient Rome, narrated by Cicero’s secretary/slave, Tiro. If only history were always this sensibly written and accessible. Love it. The following two books in the trilogy are not quite as gripping but still very readable.
The Crime Writer by Jill Dawson
Like Patricia Highsmith’s novels, this fictionalised account of a part of Patricia Highsmith’s life is well written and emotionally cool. It’s engaging enough to amble through, but nothing to write home about. Perhaps it would appeal more to great fans of Highsmith.
The House on Half Moon Street by Alex Reeve
Really quite good. Leo Stanhope is a coroner’s assistant in Victorian London. He is also a woman dressed as a man and in love with Maria, a prostitute. When Maria turns up dead he is determined to find her killer even though that puts him in contact with a bunch of lowlifes who repeatedly cause […]