MI’m a sucker for a good lavish portrait of this 1920’s, preferably with Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald in it, and this one is as comforting as wrapping yourself in a fluffy sun-warmed towel after a dip in the chilly ocean. It concerns Sara and Gerald Murphy, wealthy American builders of a stunning house in the […]
Historical Fiction
Munich by Robert Harris
I do hope Robert Harris will again reach the gripping literary heights of the Cicero Trilogy and Fatherland, but alas he doesn’t with this one. Munich takes place in September 1938; it’s well written, dense with the comings and goings of gentlemanly diplomats, but never really engages or intrigues.
Love and Ruin by Paula McLain
Normally I avoid books with cursive writing on the cover or the word ‘love’ in the title (CHICK LIT) but for McLain I will make an exception. She has a way of getting right inside the minds of the women she writes about. Love and Ruin is her second novel based on the wives of […]
Mrs Hemingway by Naomi Wood
Ah, I loved this one. It traces Ernest Hemingway’s relationships with each of his four wives and paints a believable portrait of each of them and the times they lived through. All of the Mrs Hemingways are interesting, intelligent, memorable women in their own right. You have to wonder what they all see in him. […]
Jane Seymour The Haunted Queen by Alison Weir
All credit to Weir- I knew what happened to Jane Seymour, Henry VIII’s third wife, before beginning the book but nevertheless I wanted to read on and on. This is well written, compelling historical fiction. Jane comes across as less wimpy and insipid than in most other novels and there are times when she is […]
The Scent of Death by Andrew Taylor
This well written piece of historical fiction meanders along quite nicely, with the murdered bodies piling up to the general indifference of those around them in the midst of the US revolutionary war. I must admit the ending left me quietly confused, with enough loose strings to make a decent sized pom pom. It’s an […]
Dissolution by CJ Sansom
The first novel in a series of six, Dissolution immerses us in the world of hunchback lawyer Matthew Shardlake, the thinking woman’s crumpet. He’s an intelligent, compassionate man with the misfortune to be born during the rule of Henry VIII. His physical deformity makes him an object of almost constant sniggering and ridicule yet he plods […]
Six Tudor Queens: Anne Boleyn A King’s Obsession by Alison Weir
This is a rather more sympathetic portrait of Anne Boleyn than many others. It is widely acknowledged Henry had an affair with Anne’s sister Mary and fathered a child with her before beginning a relationship with Anne. Weir suggests in this novel that Henry’s relationship with Mary began with him raping her, leading Anne to loathe […]