The Blurb (from Goodreads):
The Perfume Garden combines the gripping storytelling of Kate Morton with the evocative settings of Victoria Hislop to tell this sumptuous story of lost love and family secrets set between modern day Valencia and the Spanish Civil War. High in the hills of Valencia, a forgotten house guards its secrets. Untouched since Franco's forces tore through Spain in 1936, the whitewashed walls have crumbled, the garden, laden with orange blossom, grown wild. Emma Temple is the first to unlock its doors in seventy years. Guided by a series of letters and a key bequeathed in her mother's will, she has left her job as London's leading perfumier to restore this dilapidated villa to its former glory. It is the perfect retreat: a wilderness redolent with strange and exotic scents, heavy with the colours and sounds of a foreign time. But for her grandmother, Freya, a British nurse who stayed here during Spain's devastating civil war, Emma's new home evokes terrible memories. As the house begins to give up its secrets, Emma is drawn deeper into Freya's story: one of crushed idealism, lost love, and families ripped apart by war. She soon realises it is one thing letting go of the past, but another when it won't let go of you.
My Thoughts:
A young woman inherits an old house in Spain, discovers clues to buried family secrets, meets a gorgeous Spaniard, and finds her true path in life ... interposed with flashbacks to her grandmother's work during the bloody and turbulent Spanish Civil War as a nurse ... this book is exactly the sort of book I love to read the most. And I did love it!
The Perfume Garden switches between two timelines. The first is set in contemporary times – soon after 9/11 – and deals with Emma’s grief and attempt to rebuild her life after the loss of her lover. The second is set during the Spanish Civil War and tells the story of Emma’s grandmother Freya, her brother Charles and a beautiful Spaniard Rosa. Both storylines are strong, the setting is wonderfully romantic and evocative, and Emma’s job as a perfumier adds an extra frisson of sensuous interest.
The Spanish Civil War was a bloody disaster, in all sense of the word, and these sections were sometimes heart-wrenching. I have always been fascinated by this period of history, and THE PERFUME GARDEN does any extraordinary job of bringing it to life.
As for the house in Valencia and its old perfumed garden … well, all I can say is: I WANT!
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Inspired by the true story of a young Jewish girl - Hedy Bercu - who fled to Jersey from Vienna only to find herself trapped on the island during the German occupation.
In June 1940, the horror-struck inhabitants of Jersey watch as the German army unopposed takes possession of their island. Now only a short way from the English coast, the Germans plan their invasion.
Hedy Bercu, a young Jewish girl from Vienna who fled to the isolation and safety of Jersey two years earlier to escape the Nazis, finds herself once more trapped, but this time with no way of escape.
Hiding her racial status, Hedy is employed by the German authorities and secretly embarks on small acts of resistance. But most dangerously of all, she falls in love with German lieutenant Kurt Neumann -- a relationship on which her life will soon depend.
A remarkable novel of finding hope and love when all seems at its darkest.
My Thoughts:
One of my all-time favourite novels is The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society, and so this novel about a young Jewish woman hiding on the British island of Jersey during the German occupation in World War Two caught my eye at once. I’m writing my own story of resistance and subterfuge at the moment, and reading a lot of memoirs about brave people who hid those most at risk from the Nazis, so I was interested to learn this novel was inspired by the true story of its two main female characters, Hedwig Bercu and Dorothea Le Brocq.
Hedwig (called Hedy) is an Austrian Jew who flew to Jersey from Vienna only to find herself trapped on the island during the German occupation.
Dorothea is a local Jersey girl who falls in love with Hedy’s best friend, who is a German soldier. This means she is called a ‘Jerrybag’ by the locals, and accused of collaboration.
They are not friends to begin with, but as conditions under Nazi occupation worsen, Dorothea proves she is the most courageous and loyal of friends, keeping Hedy hidden within her home for months.
Matters are greatly complicated by the fact Hedy has also fallen for a German soldier, who risks his own life to try and help the two ostracised women.
Simply and directly told, this is a gentle story of friendship, love, and moral complexity. It does not demonise the Germans and idolise the British, as so many similar stories so. It shows that there is goodness and evil on all sides in a war, and that even the most ordinary people are capable of cruelty or courage, depending on what choices they make.
You might also like to read my review of A Letter From Italy by Pamela Hart:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/vintage-book-review-a-letter-from-italy-by-pamela-hart
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
It′s the early 1930s. Antarctic open-sea whaling is booming and a territorial race for the mysterious continent between Norwegian and British-Australian interests is in full swing.
Aboard a ship setting sail from Cape Town carrying the Norwegian whaling magnate Lars Christensen are three women: Lillemor Rachlew, who tricked her way on to the ship and will stop at nothing to be the first woman to land on Antarctica; Mathilde Wegger, a grieving widow who′s been forced to join the trip by her calculating parents-in-law; and Lars′s wife, Ingrid Christensen, who has longed to travel to Antarctica since she was a girl and has made a daunting bargain with Lars to convince him to take her.
Loyalties shift and melt and conflicts increase as they pass through the Southern Ocean and reach the whaling grounds. None of the women is prepared for the reality of meeting the whaling fleet and experiencing firsthand the brutality of the icy world.
As they head for the continent itself, the race is on for the first woman to land on Antarctica. None of them expect the outcome and none of them know how they will be changed by their arrival.
Based on the little-known true story of the first woman to ever set foot on Antarctica, Jesse Blackadder has captured the drama, danger and magnetic pull of exploring uncharted places in our world and our minds.
My Thoughts:
‘Chasing the ‘Light is a beautifully written novel about Ingrid Christensen, the first woman to ever see Antarctica (and, quite possibly, the first woman to ever set foot there). It’s also about the two women who accompany her there, the grief-wracked Mathilde and the determined and vivacious Lillemor, who is determined she shall be the first – and will stop at virtually nothing to get her way.
Antarctica herself is a character (is it wrong to call a continent a ‘she’? Because somehow that vast, mysterious, and dangerous land just seems like a woman to me).
Sorrow and courage and the singing of whales weave their way through the story, adding poetry and depth – yet the story swings along at a compelling pace, never losing its narrative drive. The novel is not only about the race to be the first woman in Antarctica, but also about friendships, betrayals, and the hidden mysteries of the human heart.
Most stories about Antarctica are about men – explorers and scientists and flawed heroes – and how they seek to imprint their names upon its vast whiteness. ‘Chasing the Light’ illuminated beautifully the real women in history who longed to see its wild beauty for themselves, and who had to struggle against those who felt it wasn’t the place for a lady.
I really loved Jesse’s novel ‘Raven’s Heart’ which was one of my favourite reads last year, and so I was eager to read her latest fictive outing (even though Antarctica is not really one of my things.) Suffice it to say I now have that indefinable longing to go somewhere and see it for myself – I might just have to cruise to the South Pole myself one day!
You might also like to read my review of The Raven's Heart by Jesse Blackadder:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/vintage-book-review-the-ravens-heart-by-jesse-blackadder
I have been watching & listening to the anger & anguish of the #BLM movement these past few weeks, with tears burning my eyes and a great choke of grief in my throat. As an Australian, I am particularly moved by the #AboriginalLivesMatter. I find our long and ugly history of racism, injustice and cruelty unbearable and unendurable, and I have always tried, in my own small way, to express my shame and sorrow.
This past weekend, I was shown – very gently and respectfully – that I was not doing enough. I was contributing to the great white silence by not speaking up, by not adding my voice to the thousands shouting themselves hoarse. The small things I try to do are really not enough.
I’ve been thinking & worrying & thinking & worrying about it all week, and I’ve decided that I must do more. But what can I do? I’ve asked myself again and again. Reading and retweeting and liking and sharing is easy. I need to do something that is difficult, that costs me in some way, that is a long-term change in the way I deal with this great and terrible issue of our times.
I believe passionately that storytelling has true power to change the world, because stories have such a way of piercing the heart. I have always tried to affect change in the world by the stories I tell. I say, ‘we all have the right to tell our stories, we all have the right to lift up our voices.’
All I really know is storytelling.
And so I thought I would set up a kind of fellowship to help Indigenous writers find their voices and tell their stories. What I want to give is my time, my knowledge, my insight – something that will cost me dear as my own writing time is so precious to me and so hard to guard. I was thinking that, every year, for as long as I am wanted, I will give an hour a month to one Australian Aboriginal creative artist, just to listen and talk and give advice and read their work and give feedback, if wanted. One hour every month for the twelve months of the year. Every year.
I’m thinking of calling it the Errombee Fellowship.
To explain why, I need to tell you a story about my family.
My great-great-great-great-grandfather James Atkinson emigrated to Australia from England in late 1819, arriving in Port Jackson in May 1820. He worked for two years for Governor Lachlan Macquarie as principal clerk in the Colonial Secretary’s office and was given 1,500 acres of land at Sutton Forest in the Southern Highlands of NSW (in our family myth, he was told he could have as much land as he could ride around in a day). He established a farm there in 1821, naming it Oldbury after his birthplace in Kent.
The beautiful rolling landscape he claimed lay to the south of Gingenbullen Mountain and belonged to the Wodi Wodi people of the Dharawal Nation. Their leader was a man named Errombee (sometimes called Yarrawambie or Jim Vaughan). James described him as ‘an elderly man of the most quiet inoffensive disposition’ and his ‘tribe … the most docile and peacable possible.’
In 1822, James set out to explore the countryside between Sutton Forest and the coast, looking for grazing land and red cedar. Errombee was his guide. They became lost in the deep forest gorges of the Shoalhaven. When their provisions ran out, Errombee caught and roasted a goanna and harvested honeycomb for them to eat, but gave all the food to James.
Errombee saved my great-great-great-great-grandfather’s life, and so enabled me to be born.
What an extraordinary act of kindness, generosity and forgiveness!
So it seems fitting to acknowledge him in this small way, and to try and give something back for the gift of life he gave.
I need to think about the best way to set up this fellowship, and establishing a few guidelines to how it might run, and so any feedback or advice you can give me would be most gratefully received!
PS: this pencil drawing of Errombie was made by my great-great-great-great-aunt Louise Atkinson in 1863, to illustrate an article about the lives of Australian Aborigines which was published in the Sydney Mail. In that article, Louisa called the English colonials ‘white invaders’, the first person to do so. It is held at the National Library of Australia.
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Virginia Woolf is one of the world’s most famous writers, and a leading light of literary modernism and feminism. During the 1920s she had a passionate affair with a fellow author, Vita Sackville-West, and they remained friends until Virginia’s death in 1941. The hero of Virginia’s novel Orlando was modeled on Vita and the book has been described as "one of the longest and most charming love letters in history." That’s on top of the more than 500 letters they wrote to each other. Vita was also a highly regarded and award-winning novelist before the War, but she is most famous today as the co-creator of the garden at Sissinghurst, one of the most influential and visited gardens in the world. This double biography of two extraordinary women examines their lives together and apart.
My Thoughts:
This is a beautifully presented and illustrated double biography of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, friends, lovers, muses and rivals.
I’ve always been fascinated by their story, which I’ve read about in snippets elsewhere. This is the first book I’ve read that chronicles both their lives in equal measure.
In her introduction, Sarah Gristwood writes: ‘Virginia told a friend, just months before her death, that apart from her husband Leonard and her sister Vanessa, Vita was the only person she really loved … The bond that endured between those two women was predominantly, though not exclusively, one of the heart, and of the mind.'
Virginia was born in 1882 into a literary and artistic family, with an older half-sister born to her father, three older half-brothers born to her mother, as well as a sister and two brothers. Molested by one of her half-brothers as a child, and grieving the early death of her mother and half-sister, Virginia was unhappy and troubled.
Vita was born ten years later, at Knole in Kent, in 1892. Her grandfather was the Lionel Sackville-West, second Baron Sackville, and Knole had been given to an ancestor by Elizabeth I in the 16th century. Her grandmother was a Spanish dancer named Pepita. Vita’s mother, the illegitimate offspring of this unlikely liaison, married her cousin, her father’s nephew and heir. As an only child, and a girl, Vita could not inherit the house she grew up in, and this was to be the defining tragedy of her youth.
The two found solace in their writing.
They met in December 1922, and had a passionate affair. Vita inspired the gender-shifting protagonist of Virginia’s novel Orlando, described as ‘one of the longest and most charming love letters in history’. Their passion did not last, but their friendship did – Vita went on to have other lovers and to build her famous garden at Sissinghurst Castle, while Virginia wrote other books and struggled with her depression and manic moments.
A great deal of the allure of this book comes from the many quotes from the two women’s letters and diaries, and from the many gorgeous illustrations of their houses and gardens, no doubt facilitated by the book being published by the National Trust which protect properties the two women once lived in. To see their living-rooms and writing-rooms and gardens – preserved as they were when Virginia and Vita lived there – adds such intimacy and warmth. I have longed wanted to visit Sissinghurst Castle and Monk’s House; after reading this book, they are top of my list.
You might also like to read my review of Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life by Samantha Ellis:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/book-review-take-courage-anne-bronte-and-the-art-of-life-by-samantha-ellis
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
If Elizabeth Bennet had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah often thought, she’d most likely be a sight more careful with them. In this irresistibly imagined belowstairs answer to Pride and Prejudice,the servants take center stage. Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet household. But there is just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs. When a mysterious new footman arrives, the orderly realm of the servants’ hall threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended. Jo Baker dares to take us beyond the drawing rooms of Jane Austen’s classic—into the often overlooked domain of the stern housekeeper and the starry-eyed kitchen maid, into the gritty daily particulars faced by the lower classes in Regency England during the Napoleonic Wars—and, in doing so, creates a vivid, fascinating, fully realized world that is wholly her own.
My Thoughts:
What a brilliant premise this book has! Did you ever wonder – when reading Pride & Prejudice - about the lives of the servants toiling away quietly downstairs? No, me either. Jo Baker did wonder, however, and from that imagining has spun a beautiful, intense, heart-wrenching tale. Do not expect the wit and charm of Jane Austen; do not expect the well-beloved characters to be lauded. In fact, most of the cast of Pride & Prejudice come off badly – some are selfish and narcissistic, others merely oblivious. Do expect to have your understanding of the world of Jane Austen turned upside down and inside out, and made richer and truer as a result. Longbourne is driven by a strong sense of social justice, and we see just how hard life in Regency times could be for the poor and the weak. Much as I love Jane Austen, I always wondered why we heard nothing of the political turmoil of her times, nothing about the impassioned debate over slavery, nothing about the Napoleonic wars, nothing about the Luddites and the costs of the Industrial Revolution. Jo Baker has attempted to engage with many of these gaping holes in Jane Austen’s world, and has achieved a work of great beauty and serious intent. Longbourne caused an international bidding war and has already sold film rights, and I can certainly see why.
You might also like to read my review of Jane Austen at home by Lucy Worsley:
BOOK REVIEW: Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
In 2000, Gabriel Lambert is a celebrated painter who hides a dark secret. Sophie Cass, a journalist struggling to begin her career and with a family connection to Lambert, is determined to find the truth about his past and the little known story of the real Casablanca.
In 1940, an international group of rescue workers, refugee intellectuals, and artists gather in the beautiful old Villa Air Bel just outside Marseilles. American journalist Varian Fry and his remarkable team at the American Relief Center are working to help them escape France, but "the greatest man-trap in history" is closing in on them. Despite their peril, true camaraderie and creativity flourishes - while love affairs spring up and secrets are hidden. At the House of Dreams, young refugee artist Gabriel Lambert changed the course of his life - and now, sixty years later at his home in the Hamptons, the truth is finally catching up with him.
My Thoughts:
The House of Dreams is a dual timeline novel that moves between Nazi-occupied France and Long Island in the US in contemporary times. The primary narrative – and the most interesting – is the historical story which is centred on The American Relief Centre run by Varian Fry, who was the first American to be named “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem (Israel’s official memorial to Holocaust victims). He was a journalist who was employed by the relief centre to help anti-Nazi and Jewish artists escape France between 1940 and 1941. Among the 2,000 people he helped save were Marc Chagall, André Breton, André Masson, Max Ernst, Walter Mehring, and Wanda Landowska. It’s an interesting story, and not one that has been explored in fiction before, at least that I know of.
The contemporary narrative is set in the year 2000, presumably to make it believable that a young artist who was helped by the American Relief Centre could still be alive. This artist – named Gabriel Lambert - escaped Vichy France, moved to the US, and built a life for himself and his wife on Long Island. However, he has many buried secrets and a young journalist named Sophie is determined to uncover them.
Kate Lord Brown has a beautiful, lyrical writing style, and I really enjoyed two of her earlier books, The Perfume Garden and The Beauty Chorus. I did not enjoy this one quite as much. As is often the case, I found the historical narrative much more engaging, probably because of the very real courage shown by Varian Fry and his team. I rather wish that this had been written as a straight historical, with more time spent developing the situation and characters of Marseilles in the 1940s, without the contemporary storyline distracting from such a powerful story. But this is only a small niggle. On the whole, I enjoyed The House of Dreams very much and feel I learned a lot about the brave people of the The American Relief Centre.
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/vintage-book-review-the-passengers-by-eleanor-limprecht
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
One family. Nine momentous days. An unforgettable novel of love and folly and heartbreak. It is 1939 and Australia is about to go to war. Deep in the working-class Melbourne suburb of Richmond it is business—your own and everyone else's—as usual. And young Kip Westaway, failed scholar and stablehand, is living the most important day of his life. Ambitious in scope and structure, triumphantly realised, this is a novel about one family and every family. It is about dreams and fights and sacrifices. And finally, of course, it is—as it must be—about love.
My Thoughts:
I had enjoyed Toni Jordan’s first novel ‘Addition’ enormously, describing it to myself as ‘intelligent chick lit’. I remember mostly its warmth, its wit, and its willingness to be bold and unconventional, all qualities I admire.
I’m not a big reader of ‘chick lit’. I am, however, a huge reader of historical fiction, as you all know – it’s my favourite genre of fiction.
So I got all excited when I heard Toni had tackled a historical novel. I was also curious. How would she go? I wondered. Historical fiction is harder to write than most people realise.
Well, firstly I need say to say I absolutely adored ‘Nine Days’!
But it’s not really historical fiction. Not entirely. It is both historical and contemporary, but it’s not a parallel story, where the past and the present are woven together.
Rather it moves through time, each section describing a single day in the life of a character. Each character is joined by bonds of blood, and love, and fate, and heartbreak. It is almost a collection of short stories, except each section is so strongly tied to each other, and there is a clear, taut narrative thread running through the whole book. It is both linear and non-linear, experimental and highly readable, unconventional, yet filled with compassion. I loved it!
This is one of my top picks of the year – I urge you not to miss out!
You might also like to read my review of The Fragments by Toni Jordan:
BOOK REVIEW: The Fragments by Toni Jordan
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
When Jonathan Franklin takes two baby tawny owls back to Eton, he has no idea how chaotic the following months will be. The birds show no respect for Etonian routine and tradition. They trash his room and rule his daily life, and are known throughout the school as 'Dum' and 'Dee'.
Although a keen naturalist, Jonathan struggles to understand his charges and to find the right food for them; at first meat and feathers, soon mice and rats. Even so, they nearly die of malnutrition on two occasions. Frantic, he searches for natural food. How to keep them alive is a constant worry. He watches them grow from ugly balls of fluff into beautiful adults, every change of plumage and behaviour noted. They play truant, they shock others, and lead Jonathan into hilarious adventures. They charm his housemaster and everybody who meets them. Best of all is seeing them flying about over those famous playing fields.
All the time, Jonathan works to train them for eventual return to the wild. Will that be possible? He is never sure whether he will succeed.
My Thoughts:
In April 1959, sixteen-year-old Jonathan Franklin is given two baby owls to care for, after their mother was shot by a gamekeeper. Jonathan liked to think he was a budding ornithologist, and had already cared for a thrush, a jackdaw and a pigeon. It was tawny owls, though, that fascinated him the most: ‘the silent flight, the sharp, mysterious hooting, the soft brown plumage and the extraordinary swivel-like turning of the head.’ So he was thrilled when he was given two ‘small balls of fluffy white down’. His parents, however, objected. Who will look after the owls when you are at school? they demanded.
So Jonathan decided to take the owlets back to Eton with him.
What follows is an utterly delightful book about the difficulties of raising two hungry, noisy, obstreperous owls in an upper-class boys’ school in between lessons, chapel, and cricket practise. Christened Tweedledee and Tweedledum – Dee and Dum for short – the two owls spend their days moulting feathers everywhere, spitting pellets of mouse skeletons on the floor, and biting his pen till the ink spurts, then leaving little owl claw-prints all over his homework.
The hardest struggle for Jonathan is feeding them. Luckily his school mates help, asking their parents to send any dead mouse or sparrow they find in the post, with malodorous results. Once the owls learn to fly, Jonathan’s life grows even trickier. Luckily, everyone – including the dreaded Beak – is charmed by the adorable owlets, and the year passes in a rush of hilarious misadventures.
However, it is Jonathan’s job to train his owls so that one day they can fly free in the wild once more. And that may well be the most difficult challenge of all.
You might also like to read my review of The Wild Places by Robert MacFarlane here:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/vintage-book-review-the-wild-places-by-robert-macfarlane
