The Blurb (from Goodreads):
From the high seas to the deep seabed, from the latticed verandahs of Buccaneer Bay to the gambling dens in Asia Place, The Pearler's Wife is a stunning debut, inspired by a small yet pivotal moment in Australian history. A distant land. A dangerous husband. A forbidden love. It is 1912, and Maisie Porter stands on the deck of the SS Oceanic as England fades from view. Her destination is Buccaneer Bay in Australia's far north-west. Her purpose: marriage to her cousin Maitland, a wealthy pearling magnate - and a man she has never met. Also on board is William Cooper, the Royal Navy's top man. Following a directive from the Australian government, he and eleven other 'white' divers have been hired to replace the predominantly Asian pearling crews. However, Maitland and his fellow merchants have no intention of employing the costly Englishmen for long ... Maisie arrives in her new country to a surprisingly cool reception. Already confused by her hastily arranged marriage, she is shocked at Maitland's callous behaviour towards her - while finding herself increasingly drawn to the intriguing Cooper. But Maisie's new husband is harbouring secrets - deadly secrets. And when Cooper and the divers sail out to harvest the pearl shell, they are in great danger - and not just from the unpredictable and perilous ocean ...
My Thoughts:
An assured debut by author Roxane Dhand, The Pearler’s Wife is a sweeping romance set in a little-known corner of Australian history, the pearling industry in the far north of Western Australia. The heroine, nineteen-year-old Maisie, is sent to Australia from England to marry a man she has never met. Her new home is called Buccaneer Bay, which sounds like something out of a pirate novel but is in fact a real place (the Buccaneer Archipelago was named after the English buccaneer and privateer William Dampier, who charted the area in 1688).
Maisie’s new husband is a cruel and ruthless man who treats his employees with reckless disregard. Lonely and bored, Maisie finds herself drawn to a British diver named William Cooper. The sensual tension between them, and the slow realisation of dangerous secrets hidden by her husband, add slow-burning suspense to the narrative. The claustrophobic setting of a small pearling town in 1912 is superbly evoked, and the story is full of action, drama and romance, making it perfect escape reading for a long, hot summer.
You might also like to read my review of The English Wife by Lauren Willig:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/book-review-the-english-wife-by-lauren-willig
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Britain is a nation of bird-lovers. However, few of us fully appreciate the sheer scale, variety and drama of our avian life. From city-centre hunters to vast flocks straight out of the Arctic wilderness, much-loved dawn songsters to the exotic invaders of supermarket car parks, a host of remarkable wildlife spectacles are waiting to be discovered right outside our front doors.
In A Sky Full of Birds, poet and nature writer Matt Merritt shares his passion for birdwatching by taking us to some of the great avian gatherings that occur around the British isles – from ravens in Anglesey and raptors on the Wirral, to Kent nightingales and Scottish capercallies. By turns lyrical, informative and entertaining, he shows how natural miracles can be found all around us, if only we know where to look for them.
My Thoughts:
Matt Merritt is a poet and the editor of Bird Watching magazine, and in this beautiful book he brings together his love of words and birds into one beautiful package.
I’ve always liked birds too. I do my best to tell magpies apart from currawongs, and I’d love to see an owl in flight one day. I also love the collective nouns for birds – murders of crows, murmurations of starlings and exaltations of larks, for example.
Matt Merritt writes with simple and lyrical elegance of his own fascination with gatherings of birds, weaving in personal experience with quotations from a 10th century Anglo-Saxon poem about wild swans, Shakespeare, Samuel Coleridge and other writers and poets.
Each chapter is a self-contained essay about a different kind of bird, so it’s an easy book to pick up and read and then put down and leave for a while. A lovely addition to my collection of books about the natural world.
You might also like to read my review of The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/vintage-book-review-the-wild-places-by-robert-macfarlane
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Damaris Chance’s unhappy past has turned her off the idea of marriage forever. But her guardian, Lady Beatrice Davenham, convinces her to make her coming out anyway—and have a season of carefree, uncomplicated fun.
When Damaris finds herself trapped in a compromising situation with the handsome rake Freddy Monkton-Coombes, she has no choice but to agree to wed him—as long as it’s in name only. Her new husband seems to accept her terms, but Freddy has a plan of his own: to seduce his reluctant winter bride.
Will Damaris’s secrets destroy her chance at true happiness? Or can Freddy help her cast off the shackles of the past, and yield to delicious temptation?
My Thoughts:
Anne Gracie is my favourite living romance novelist; she never disappoints. The Winter Bride is the second in a Regency-times series featuring four plucky young women trying to make their own way in the world, and finding all sorts of trouble along the path towards true love. Read The Autumn Bride first, but have this one close to hand as once you’ve read one, you’ll want more. I’m just hanging out for the next in the series now.
You might also like to read my review of Marriage of Convenience series by Anne Gracie:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/book-review-marriage-of-convenience-series-by-anne-grace
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
This book is based on the life of Nancy Wake, an Australian expat who worked as a reporter for Hearst in Paris just before WWII and later as a spy for the British. Lawhon throws readers into the middle of the action, as Nancy, under the alias Hélène, prepares to parachute from an RAF plane into France to help the Resistance in 1944, carrying in her head memorized lists of vital data, including bridges targeted for destruction and safe house addresses. After she lands, the story flashes back eight years, as Nancy struggles for respect and recognition as a journalist; despite her firsthand observations of Nazi brutality in 1930s Vienna, her editor is reluctant to publish a story about what she's seen. Frequent jumps in time draw out the arc of Wake's remarkable life; despite her statement early on that women's weapons of warfare were limited to "silk stockings and red lipstick," by the end she's proven herself skillful at physical combat as well.
My Thoughts:
Inspired by the daring true-life adventures of Nancy Wake in France during the Second World War, Code Name Helene is a very readable account of an extraordinary life. Born in Australia, Nancy worked as a reporter for Hearst in Paris just before the outbreak of the war. She married a Frenchman, and was later dropped behind enemy lines to work as a spy for the British. The book begins as Nancy jumps by parachute from an RAF plane into Nazi-occupied France, then moves back and forth in time explaining how she came to be the head of a resistance network there. Nancy is an appealing character, full of spirit and life, and the story of how she struggles against misogyny and mistrust to help win the war is brought to vivid and compelling life on the page. It’s a big book – 437 pages – and has a cast of hundreds. At times, the jumps around in time can be a little confusing – for example, scenes where Nancy meets people who have already appeared dozens of times in previous pages. But Ariel Lawhon writes with such verve that the pages seem to fly past, and Nancy’s big, bold, brave personality is given every chance to shine.
Get Your Copy of Code Name Helene HereYou might also like to read my review of The Paris Seamstress by Natasha Lester:
VINTAGE BOOK REVIEW: The Paris Seamstress by Natasha Lester
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
1932. After the Great War took both her beloved brother and her fiancé, Violet Speedwell has become a "surplus woman," one of a generation doomed to a life of spinsterhood after the war killed so many young men. Yet Violet cannot reconcile herself to a life spent caring for her grieving, embittered mother. After countless meals of boiled eggs and dry toast, she saves enough to move out of her mother's place and into the town of Winchester, home to one of England's grandest cathedrals. There, Violet is drawn into a society of broderers--women who embroider kneelers for the Cathedral, carrying on a centuries-long tradition of bringing comfort to worshippers.
Violet finds support and community in the group, fulfillment in the work they create, and even a growing friendship with the vivacious Gilda. But when forces threaten her new independence and another war appears on the horizon, Violet must fight to put down roots in a place where women aren't expected to grow. Told in Chevalier's glorious prose, A Single Thread is a timeless story of friendship, love, and a woman crafting her own life.
My Thoughts:
Tracy Chevalier is one of my favourite writers. I find we have a lot of common interests –women’s stories, women’s art, women’s struggle. She’s one of the few authors whose books I will buy and read as a matter of course, regardless of where and when her books are set. And all of her books are very different – I never feel she is telling the same story over and over again which some authors unfortunately seem to do.
A Single Thread is set in Winchester in 1932. Violet Speedwell lost both her brother and her fiancé in the Great War, and has struggled to overcome her grief and the loss of all her dreams for her future. She cannot bear to stay at home, caring for her embittered mother, and so she has moved away from home and is working as a secretary for a mere pittance. She is independent, but poor, sad and lonely. One day she finds out about a group of women who meet regularly to embroider kneelers for the cathedral. The idea of making something beautiful that will bring comfort to those in need appeals to her. Hesitantly Violet approaches the broderers, and begins to learn the craft. She makes new friends, and finds new purpose in her life. But life as a single woman between the wars can be difficult, fraught with complications and dangers. Violet must discover hidden reserves of strength and courage if she is to build a new future for herself.
I loved this book so much. I am actually trying to teach myself embroidery at the moment, partly because the craft is at the heart of the novel I am writing myself right now, and partly because I love to make beautiful things with my hands. I also loved the book because of its themes – an ordinary woman struggling to make her way in the world, the importance of female friendships, the need for compassion and self-reliance, the beauty of women’s traditional arts. A book full of luminous grace.
Get Your Copy of a Single Thread HereYou might also like to read my review The Viennese Girl by Jenny Lecoat:
BOOK REVIEW: The Viennese Girl by Jenny Lecoat
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
A reimagination of one of the most famous stories in all of literature-Achilles's slaughter and desecration of Hector, and Priam's attempt to ransom his son's body in Homer's "The Iliad"-Ransom is the first novel in more than a decade from David Malouf, arguably Australia's greatest living writer.
A novel of suffering, sorrow, and redemption, "Ransom "tells the story of the relationship between two grieving men at war: fierce Achilles, who has lost his beloved Patroclus in the siege of Troy; and Priam, king of Troy, whose son Hector killed Patroclus and was in turn savaged by Achilles. Each man's grief demands a confrontation with the other's if it is to be resolved: a resolution more compelling to both than the demands of war. And when the aged father and the murderer of his son meet, "the past and present blend, enemies exchange places, hatred turns to understanding, youth pities age mourning youth."
My Thoughts:
I am currently writing a novel set in Greece during World War II. As part of my research, I like to immerse myself deeply in the stories, myths and poems of my setting, and so have been reading a lot of Sappho and Homer, as well as books inspired by their works. Ransom is a slight, delicate, sensitive book inspired by just one scene in The Iliad.
In the original poem – thought to have been composed ten centuries ago – the great Greek warrior Achilles grieves the death of his friend and companion Patroclus at the hands of the Trojan hero, Hector. Every morning, he tied Hector’s dead body behind his chariot and dragged him at full speed around his dead friend’s tomb, but every morning the broken and ravaged corpse lies as if untouched. At last, after twelve days, Hector’s father King Priam goes to the Greek war camp, kneels at Achilles’s feet, and offers to ransom his son’s body. It is a scene of extraordinary humility, grace and forgiveness that delivers the true message of this famous poem of rage and masculine violence: the horror and futility of war.
David Malouf takes this scene and reimagines it from the point-of-view of the ageing Priam, whose son lies dead and desecrated in the dust. His grief for his son and Achilles’s grief touch for just a moment, and open up a space for understanding, compassion, sorrow and a kind of quiet redemption: Words are powerful. They too can be the agents of what is new, of what is conceivable and can be thought and let loose upon the world.
David Malouf’s writing is so spare and lyrical, Ransom almost reads like a poem in itself, like an extension of the original Homer. A really beautiful and unusual book.
You might also like to read my review of The King Must Die by Mary Renault:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/book-review-the-king-must-die-by-mary-renault
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
China, 1941. Elspeth Kent has fled an unhappy life in England for a teaching post at a missionary school in northern China. But when Japan declares war on the Allies and occupies the school, security and home comforts are replaced by privation, uncertainty and fear.
For ten-year-old Nancy Plummer and her school friends, now separated from their parents indefinitely, Miss Kent’s new Girl Guide patrol provides a precious reminder of home in a land where they are now the enemy.
Elspeth and her fellow teachers, and Nancy and her friends, need courage, friendship and fortitude as they pray for liberation. But worse is to come. Removed from the school, they face even greater uncertainty and danger at a Japanese internment camp, where cruelty and punishment reign.
Inspired by true events, this is an unforgettable read about a remarkable community faced with unimaginable hardship, and the life-changing bonds formed in a distant corner of a terrible war.
My Thoughts:
I have always loved books set during World War II, and read a lot of novels set during that harrowing and tumultuous time. Most of the books I read are set in Europe, but I’ve long been interested in books set in the Asia-Pacific arena where my own great-uncles fought – one of them was a prisoner-of-war in a Japanese camp and I was brought up on stories of his courage and suffering. I’ve even been thinking of writing a book set during that time. So I wanted to read The Bird in the Bamboo Cage as soon as I heard about it.
It is inspired by the true story of the British teachers and children of the Chefoo Missionary School in China who were interned by the Japanese following the bombing of Pearl Harbour. The author Hazel Gaynor heard the story on a podcast and knew at once she wanted to bring it to life. Her narrative is told in alternating chapters between Elspeth Kent, a teacher at the school, and one of her pupils, ten-year-old Nancy. Elspeth and the other teachers do their best to guard their young charges against the horrors of war, but as the school is moved into an internment camp to wait out the long years of the way, their courage and faith almost quails. The story is told in restrained and elegant prose, slowly building to a heartrending finale that had me choking back tears. A truly unforgettable story of the bravery and resilience of ordinary people in an extraordinary situation, it would make an astounding film. I hope someone makes it one day!You might also like to read my review of TheViennese Girl by Jenny Lecoat:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/book-review-the-viennese-girl-by-jenny-lecoat
The Blurb (from Goodreads)
Why do we react so strongly to certain places? Why do layers of mythology build up around particular features in the landscape? When Philip Marsden moved to a remote creekside farmhouse in Cornwall, the intensity of his response took him aback. It led him to begin exploring these questions, prompting a journey westwards to Land's End through one of the most fascinating regions of Europe.
From the Neolithic ritual landscape of Bodmin Moor to the Arthurian traditions of Tintagel, from the mysterious china-clay country to the granite tors and tombs of the far south-west, Marsden assembles a chronology of our shifting attitudes to place. In archives, he uncovers the life and work of other 'topophiles' before him - medieval chroniclers and Tudor topographers, eighteenth-century eighteenth-century antiquarians, post-industrial poets and abstract painters. Drawing also on his own travels overseas, Marsden reveals that the shape of the land lies not just at the heart of our history but of man's perennial struggle to belong on this earth.
My Thoughts:
I love books which take a place or a time or a person or a natural phenomenon, and then uses that as a springboard into a wide-ranging meditation on art, history, science, poetry, or any manner of things. And I have always wanted to go to Cornwall.
So I was interested in Rising Ground as soon as I heard about it.
Philp Marsden has a degree in anthropology and has written a number of books about his travels in Ethiopia and Russia, as well as numerous essays for The Spectator. He was, however, raised in Cornwall and recently bought a farmhouse on a creek there with his wife and children. The book is not a memoir of the renovation of this old house, though some of his personal experiences are woven into the narrative. It is more about ‘topophilia’, a lovely word which means ‘love of place’, and examines some of the little-known but interesting people of the past who have loved Cornwall and studied it and written and painted about it.
It’s the sort of book that you can pick up and enjoy, then put down and not pick up again for a few weeks, as each chapter is an essay on a particular aspect of Cornwall. I was particularly interested in the chapters on the standing stones and barrows and graves and other ancient monuments, and on the blind-and-deaf Cornish poet Jack Clemo, who I had never heard of before.
A really interesting read.
You might also like to read my review of The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/vintage-book-review-the-shepherds-life-by-james-rebanks
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
"Elizabeth and Her German Garden," a novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, was popular and frequently reprinted during the early years of the 20th century. "Elizabeth and Her German Garden" is a year's diary written by Elizabeth about her experiences learning gardening and interacting with her friends. It includes commentary on the beauty of nature and on society, but is primarily humorous due to Elizabeth's frequent mistakes and her idiosyncratic outlook on life. The story is full of sweet, endearing moments. Elizabeth was an avid reader and has interesting comments on where certain authors are best read; she tells charming stories of her children and has a sometimes sharp sense of humor in regards to the people who will come and disrupt her solitary lifestyle.
My Thoughts:
Every month or so, I like to read an old favourite classic. This time I chose Elizabeth and her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim – it’s a tiny sparkling jewel of a book, first published in 1898 and only a hundred or so pages long. It purports to be the diary of a young woman who finds solace and liberation in the garden of her husband’s old country house. It begins ‘May 7th: I love my garden’ and goes on with such glorious quotes as: ‘When I got to the library I came to a standstill, - ah, the dear room, what happy times I have spent in it rummaging amongst the books, making plans for my garden, building castles in the air, writing, dreaming, doing nothing’.
Or this one: ‘What a happy woman I am living in a garden, with books, babies, birds, and flowers, and plenty of leisure to enjoy them! Yet my town acquaintances look upon it as imprisonment … what can life in town offer in the way of pleasure to equal the delight of any one of the calm evenings I have had this month sitting alone at the foot of the verandah steps, with the perfume of young larches all about, and the May moon hanging low over the beeches, and the beautiful silence made only more profound in its peace by the croaking of distant frogs and hooting of owls?”
Elizabeth and her German Garden was published anonymously, and the names of all the people within the book are concealed behind nicknames. The author calls her husband ‘the Man of Wrath’, an irreverent appellation that I have since adopted for my own husband, while her children are simply called ‘the April baby’ and ‘the May baby’ and so on. The author was in fact born in Kirribilli in Sydney, Australia, and christened Mary Annette Beauchamp, but called May by all her friends and family. The New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield was her cousin. She met the German aristocrat, Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, while travelling in Europe and married him soon after. They lived in Berlin initially, but then she moved to his country estate in what is now Poland. Elizabeth and her German Garden was her first book and it was a runaway bestseller, being reprinted eleven times in its first year of publication and earning her over £10,000. She became so famous that everyone called her Elizabeth and she ended up adopting her pseudonym as her name. Her marriage was unhappy and did not last, and the estate was eventually sold. It gave me an enduring desire to marry a count and build a garden in the ruins of a castle somewhere – a dream that seems increasingly unlikely to ever come true. Luckily I can dip in and out of this charming little book as often as I want!
Get your copy of Elizabeth and her German Garden hereYou might also like to read my review of Hanns & Rudolf: The True Story of the German Jew who Tracked Down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz by Thomas Harding:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/vintage-book-review-hanns-rudolf-the-true-story-of-the-german-jew-who-tracked-down-and-caught-the-kommandant-of-auschwitz-by-thomas-harding
