This is a biographical novel about Florence (Florrie) Stoker, the sometimes maligned and little-known wife of Bram Stoker, the author of “Dracula”. She was destined to play a prominent role in the artistic and society salons of her era, and in her later years became the champion of copyright laws and regulations, but has remained largely forgotten.
 
Before marrying Bram, Florrie has a close relationship with Oscar Wilde and her extensive roll-call of friends include other celebrities and luminaries such as the actress Ellen Terry, W.S. Gilbert (as in Gilbert & Sullivan), Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), George Bernard Shaw, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and many, many others.
 
But there is one man that she could never get along with and, in fact, comes to detest, and that is the prominent actor Sir Henry Irving, who has an inexplicable - one might even suggest sinister - hold over Bram, who acts as his manager and general factotum.
 
This strange situation tasks Florrie to the limit and comes to taint her marriage. The attempted rescue of a drowning man by Bram is the catalyst for Florrie’s horrific ghostly dreams that play their part in the creation of Bram’s most famous character. There are even suggestions that other famous supernatural works such as Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and George du Maurier’s “Trilby” are sparked by conversations with Florrie.
 
This is the age when one must be extremely careful and secretive about any “irregular” relationships or sexual inclinations. Florrie becomes concerned that Bram is unhealthily obsessed with Henry Irving and perhaps is similarly inclined to Wilde who would soon famously be tried and found guilty of unnatural conduct.
 
As Florrie observes after reading “Dracula” for the first time, being struck with the  wickedness and the sensuousness of the story, and how all of us are shapeshifters: “Adopting a guise to suit the occasion … Hiding our real selves from the world, wearing masks and elaborate costumes, assuming socially acceptable behaviours to pass as one thing in a world that didn’t allow us to be anything else. I thought of Oscar, his defiance and the cost … The notion that someone can control another, take over their life, drain them of their will …” and that the drinking of blood could be “… a metaphor for stealing someone’s soul.”
 
In her later years, Florrie has longstanding battles with unscrupulous playwrights and movie companies over the blatant theft of the “Dracula” plot by the makers of the film “Nosferatu” and her final victory is to secure copyright laws for authors that are still in place today.
 
The background history and research are thorough, sitting neatly into the story without ever overwhelming it. All of the main characters are complex and strong. Florrie is endlessly conflicted in her love for Bram, who is often found wanting as both a husband and father to their only son, Noel. The only slight quibble is that once we share in Florrie’s loathing of living in the shadow of Henry Irving - which even continues long after his death – a phantom “always there, waiting in the wings for his cue” – perhaps doesn’t need quite as much repeated reinforcement.
 
Before her passing in 1937, Florrie finally has her revenge: “Dead for thirty years now, Sir Henry Irving, the man who’d pack the theatres, had become a ghost, a mere shadow. It was a rich irony that few remembered who he was or what he’d done, and it was the name Bram Stoker that was repeated with respect … That his employee had eclipsed him would be a stake in Henry’s heart.”
 
The author’s extensive notes summarise the research and any liberties taken with the truth. This is a masterful novel that gives voice to “Mrs Dracula”, a woman who definitely deserves to be remembered, especially for her battle and determination to protect authorly copyright.
 
Four-and-a-half stars

amazon.com

amazon.co.uk (audible)

Booktopia

Told through dual narratives, this is an imagining of the lives of the South African polymath, Eugene Marais (who considered himself “the Mark Twain of the Transvaal” and was also acknowledged as “the father of modern Afrikaans”), and his only son, Charles Marais.
 
Following the death of his beloved wife Lettie shortly after Charles’ birth in 1895, Eugene rejects his journalism career and leaves the boy in the care of his sister Sophie. He travels to England where he trains as both a doctor and lawyer.  Back in South Africa at the time of the Boer War, and increasingly addicted to morphine, he continues with erratic occupations. While involved in tin mining he becomes fascinated with research into the “hive mind” of weaver birds, beetles, tortoises, baboons, and later termites.
 
In 1936, Charles is at Harvard, teaching the sacred Buddhist language of Pali and comes into conflict with a sinister group of academics who are flirting with Hitler and fascism. They try to recruit him in order to use his father’s research to prove their convictions that it is possible to control and eliminate undesirable races. Charles is horrified by this, but is caught in a difficult situation as he's hoping for tenure. Even though he’s had virtually nothing to do with his father for more than thirty years, he refuses. Then he starts receiving urgent letters from Eugene that initially he ignores but inevitably draw him back to the country of his birth and what will be a challenging reunion with the father he believes had abandoned him.
 
This remarkably perceptive and intricate novel takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the scholarly and metaphysical, moral issues, and the politics of Empire and race. There are also episodes of high adventure and romance plus the complexities of personal relationships. An immensely readable work that never falters as it brings to light these flawed individuals from the forgotten corners of history. A memorable and enlightening reading experience. (The author’s concluding notes clarify what is fact and fiction.)
 
(With thanks to the author’s publicity team and Green City Books for the ARC.)
 
Five stars
 
amazon.com
 
amazon.co.uk
​

After some lacklustre reading experiences with many recent novels, I felt it was time to explore more non-fiction, and this book has done much to renew my faith - not religious, given its subject matter, I hasten to add - but rather faith in knowing there are still excellent writers out there who are able to capture and retain the reader’s attention with beautiful and heartfelt prose.
 
Researched and written during the Covid epidemic, the author took himself across the UK visiting both well- and little-known religious or spiritual structures and during the course of which he encountered an array of interesting characters and made new discoveries. I’ve visited some of the destinations myself in the past, others I’ve known nothing about, so I was fascinated to learn about the bizarre and hellish medieval frescoes hidden in small parish churches, cathedral cats, colonies of bats, and the garlanded mysterious holy wells of Wales, among others.
 
“I had found comfort in the churches I visited, though not because of their promise of a better world. Why was that?  It was more to do with what they said about those who had built them, tried their best to maintain them and valued these old places, in all their cobwebbed glory, as manuscripts on which is written the unfinished human story. We read about ourselves in churches, I think, as much as we read about God. We sing our own lives.
​ ... ...
Those people I had encountered on my journey seemed to me strong-hearted, not saints or martyrs - ordinary men and women with a tremendous capacity for endurance and love.”
 
An absolute delight to read. There is grace here, optimism and wonder. A book to recommend, savour and treasure.
 
Five stars

 
amazon.com
​
amazon.co.uk
 
Booktopia

Jack McNulty is the “temporary gentleman”. Originally from the west of Ireland, he’s had a varied career and is writing down his experiences while living in Accra, Ghana, at the time of that country’s independence in 1957.
 
It is his wife, Mai, who dominates the story. Once a known beauty in Sligo, Jack felt privileged to have snared her as his wife, but she comes with dark and difficult complications that challenge them throughout their married life together. Both are flawed characters. Sometimes it is Mai who is the selfish one and nearly sabotages the marriage, other times it is Jack who fails to give her the support she needs.
 
This novel has all the hallmarks of the Irish tradition, i.e. there is a great deal of alcohol and drunkenness, sentimentality, lingering historical resentments against England, chaotic family rifts and squabbles, gambling and psychological issues, the usual problems of Protestants vs. Catholics, anti-war and anti-imperial opinion, prejudices towards unwed mothers, etc.
 
Neither Jack nor Mai are particularly likeable but their faults still make them interesting. There are amazing, fervent, rambling streams of prose when the protagonist Jack is close to dying; this happens several times - at sea, working with the bomb squad, a road accident. Also, there are few baffling literary quirks in having other men all named Tom or Jack, and an encounter with another Jack McNulty which has little relevance.
 
Not an easy read, and readers familiar with the social background may find more to appreciate than younger generations, but it excels with evocative prose, such as in this observation by Jack as he walks through dead soldiers strewn across the desert during the North African campaign:
 
"A lark, a single bird with her dowdy plumage, burst up from her cup of sand just in front of me and like a needle flashing in my mother's hand of old made a long stitch between earth and heaven, with a joyousness that rent my heart."
​
 
Three stars
 
amazon.com
 
amazon.co.uk
 
Booktopia
​

As a fan of John Field’s graceful nocturnes that are perhaps not as well-known or appreciated as those of the more famous Frederic Chopin, I was eagerly looking forward to this novel, that finally an author had seen the potential in giving readers a chance to discover his dramatic life through historical fiction, from his beginnings as a child prodigy in Ireland to his eventual acclaim in the aristocratic circles of Russia. Half of the novel is also about his wife, Adelaide Percheron, a shrewd and talented mixed-race pianist who came from the French enclave of Pondicherry in India.
 
One has to admire and appreciate the author’s research and insight into the pressures and price of fame with its echoes of what happened to Mozart and other musical prodigies, but it gets sidelined in literary pretension, with rambling swathes of immaterial or implausible dialogue (Adelaide’s precociousness and sly interaction with adults at the age of only seven is particularly grating). There are historical digressions and info-dumps about numerous individuals from Napoleon to Beethoven, and flash-forwards to the future, leaving no surprises for any reader unfamiliar with the Field story. We are told almost from the beginning that the marriage between John and Adelaide is doomed, that he never fulfills his promise, is a womanizer, short, fat, alcoholic, dies forgotten, etc. Even if readers are already aware of all of this, more light or positivity could have enhanced the reading experience.

Also on the downside for readers keen to know the historical truth behind novels, there are no author's notes detailing the background or primary sources and it is difficult to know how much of Adelaide's story in particular is based on fact. I thank Edelweiss for the ARC, but have to be honest with these comments. It appears this may be the first in a trilogy but doubt I'll be reading the sequels. In the meantime, I’ll just keep listening to Field’s music – ultimately his uplifting legacy (Also see my blog about John Field.)

Two stars

amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

Booktopia

Set over fifty years in the Western Australian outback, this is the saga of the MacBride family that is beset by a string of tragedies triggered by a vehicle colliding with a kangaroo. (Most country Australians will have had similar experiences with these animals, so it’s not a rare occurrence.) After losing his father Phil and brother Warren in the crash, Matt suffers brain damage and is on a long road to recovery. As the sole surviving sibling, he will have responsibility for the family’s station of Meredith Downs, helped by his mother, Lorna, and to some degree by his only sister, Rose, and later on by Rose’s illegitimate son, Andy.
 
The magnificence isolation of Western Australia is beautifully conveyed in the writing, as is the authenticity of life and politics in this tough and challenging terrain. There’s an interesting range of secondary characters, who reflect the various complexities of humanity.
 
However – and this is where it becomes difficult to appraise this novel impartially – there’s a disturbing and dispiriting basis to the story. Much of our modern, civilised society now accepts, and even embraces, inclinations or diverse behaviours that in the past would have seen you ostracised, beaten, even executed, and few taboos remain. This novel tackles one of them. Here, a certain event is justified by alcohol and mental incapacity and its description has an unsettlingly romantic quality to it. For some readers, this will be an outrage and an instant turn-off. Others, like myself, may persevere for a while through the darkness of what follows, but at the half-way mark I admitted defeat and scanned much of the remainder to get to the resolution. Another concern is that the ancient reasons for this particular taboo are not reflected in the relevant character’s portrayal, i.e. no physical or mental issues, the opposite if anything. Even if this is fiction, is this some sly way of projecting a future where this taboo becomes acceptable?
 
With any other plot device, the quality of the prose would have guaranteed a high rating, with perhaps a few marks off for the annoying erratic switches between present and past tense. But for just saddening and depressing me, one star.
 
 
amazon.com
 
amazon.co.uk
 
Booktopia

​Is there any point in writing a review for a book that’s been (metaphorically) sitting in my TBR pile for over twenty-five years? What has made me decide I must finally get around to reading it? Perhaps it’s a form of nostalgia for a lost way of life, or just in order to round out a trilogy of sorts of “missionary novels” that were popular in the 1980s/1990s and set in the backyard of my own African childhood. The two other novels are A Man Cannot Cry by Gloria Keverne and the more famous The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. *
 
The solemn opening to this novel is the funeral in the mid-1970s of Kate Carrington’s missionary parents who have been brutally murdered. Kate is determined to put her childhood and the notorious events in Tanganyika (Tanzania) behind her, cut all ties. She returns to the family home in Australia, even changing her name so that no-one might know her history. In 1990, she comes into contact with the strange woman, Annah, who lives next door and who also seems to have an African background. Their connection is revealed and the doors to the past are thrown open. Annah’s story takes up most of the book and tells of her experiences, firstly as a devoted missionary nurse, later as a renegade and outcast white woman healer who makes spontaneous or scandalous choices and for which she, and some of those who are associated with her, must pay a high price.
 
There is much here that resonates for me personally, having grown up in an adjacent region and in that time of great change when the old traditions and tribal systems came into conflict with a new Africa emerging from its colonial past. My father often travelled in this territory on business, visiting various centres and meeting many individuals as he did so, so I have a few quibbles about some of the details as to how far from civilization these missionary places really were by the 1960s as Annah’s difficulties with supplies and communications makes it seem more like what life would have been like thirty years earlier.
 
Perhaps there were lone white nurses operating clinics in remote places during what was an extremely volatile and dangerous era throughout much of this part of Africa, but without any indication in the author’s notes to say it inspired by a true story, it is presumed to be complete fiction. It's a novel that some readers will find inspiring while others may not be as moved by some of Annah's actions. The narrative hasn't dated too much although it is slow going in places.
 
Three-and-a-half stars
 
Second-hand copies available from:
 
Amazon.com

Abebooks
 
* My own African novel, Land of the Long Grass, features some missionaries but it is set in an earlier era and is based on truth with a broader adventurous and saga-style focus. It’s also now out of print but copies are available through second-hand dealers. 
 

I’d had this much-lauded epistolary novel on reserve for many months with my library before becoming available. As its plot (or lack of) is well covered elsewhere with nearly 85,000 starred reviews and well over half-a-million ratings on Goodreads alone, my opinion hardly matters, although I notice there are more than 50,000 people there who feel somewhat the same as I do.
 
Everyone is aware of the decline in the art of letter-writing so there’s a note of nostalgia about this book, and thus the need to make Sybil, the protagonist, a woman in her seventies. We learn some of the reasons why she’s become a letter writer rather than a face-to-face communicator and one can understand this to some extent. However, it still doesn’t make her a particularly likeable character.
 
Sybil is opinionated, kinder towards strangers than her own family. Her overwrought and righteous letters and those that she receives all seem to have a similar tone, with younger individuals often as precise in their grammar and style which isn’t close to modern reality. A transcription of SMS texts would make the other correspondents seem much more authentic for the 21st Century.
 
Another irritation is how every piece of correspondence begins with the address blocked to the left which is how business communications are created on a keyboard and you wouldn’t address handwritten letters to your nearest and dearest in that style. Presumably this is an editing device to assist the reader, but once you are familiar with the cast of characters, is superfluous. (And why does nearly every missive suffer from having a PS, i.e. postscript?)
 
Elitism and politically correct inclusivity dominate this novel, with far too many themes packed into Sybil’s existence. Perhaps this is a deliberate decision to try and appeal to the widest range of readers who can all find some aspect with which to identify. There’s the obligatory gay son, a teenager with ADHD or similar, adoption and a DNA mystery, family dysfunction, racism, anti-immigration, feminist discrimination and sexual harassment in academia, the Holocaust, overwhelming grief and various deaths (including that of a cat), encroaching blindness, other disabilities and dementia, IVF problems, infidelity, divorce, stalking and threats, even the election of Trump. The icing on the cake is the far-fetched scenario of an irascible, decrepit and not particularly loveable woman having to decide between two men who bizarrely seem to find her attractive. All this without that other dubious pretentiousness involving book reading and letters to, and occasionally from, famous authors that hints at influential friends in the world of literature. Perhaps therein lies a clue as to how this managed to get voted the best book in this year's Women's Prize for Fiction.

An underwhelming experience.
 
Two stars
 
 
amazon.com
 
amazon.co.uk
 
Booktopia

​
The late Princess Margaret was perhaps one of the sadder members of the royal family, if only for the fact that she seems to have been a chain-smoker and whisky-drinking cougar who never did very much at all apart from waltzing about being an entitled princess, in all its connotations. This memoir is written by the lady-in-waiting who was closest to her, Anne, Lady Glenconner, now in her nineties, a blue blood connected either by family or friendship to nearly everyone in aristocratic circles in the UK.
 
Anne knew she was a disappointment right from birth, when she should have been a boy destined to become the next Earl of Leicester. In her era, upper-class girls had little value other than finding a suitable husband before she was out of her teens, preferably one with money and high status, and to produce more heirs, while putting up with husbands that any self-respecting modern woman would kick out. She didn’t receive any form of higher education and was expected to tolerate all her husband’s foibles, including abuse, gas-lighting and adultery, and keep her mouth shut.
 
This upbringing explains to some extent why Anne married the ghastly and mentally unstable Colin Tennant and stuck with him through behaviour that would break anyone else. The honeymoon “education” in France should have been enough for her to bolt and demand an annulment. It is interesting to speculate if she’d married her first love, Johnnie Spencer (who ditched her because of perceived insanity in her genes) how modern royal history might have been different. Johnnie married another woman instead and became the father of the late Princess Diana. (One can see echoes of Anne’s experiences in Diana’s own story.)
 
Much of the book covers the tedious development by Colin of the island of Mustique in the Caribbean, which became Princess Margaret’s famous bolt-hole after her marriage failed, and the haunt of many other celebrities. The locals who had once independently grown cotton for export were deemed capable of simply turning into menials serving the rich and royal tourists.
 
Whether she wrote this autobiography herself, or was helped by a ghost writer, is debatable. Whoever did the historical copy editing didn’t bother to closely check facts and there are a number of anachronisms that have slipped through, e.g. Anne reminisces about Sir Thomas Cook, “… the founder of the package holiday incidentally …”, coming to her school. This must have been time-travel given he died in 1851. There are also confused references to mad King Ludwig of Bavaria’s numerous castles and one of his mistresses, Anne’s ancestor, Jane Digby. It was the gay and mad King Ludwig II who was famous for dabbling in castles, but not women. Jane Digby’s lover was his grandfather, King Ludwig I, who may have been only slightly mad and was definitely not gay. And quite a few more that perhaps only fussy history fiends like me would spot!
 
Some behind-closed-door stories also feel apocryphal but, given the general nuttiness and eccentricity endemic in this family, others are so outrageous or improbable that they are probably true. These stories found their way into the media, with one particularly appalling episode featuring Colin who was so incensed at his wife and Princess Margaret being put into first class on a plane while he was relegated elsewhere, that he lay down in the aisle and had a full-on tantrum worthy of any three-year-old, resulting in him being forcibly removed, after which British Airways banned him for life. It wasn’t the first time Colin had behaved in such a manner, he had another tantrum during an opera which was so bad Anne had to put a rug over his head to shut him up and the conductor had to repeat the scene. These antics by any normal person would result in them being certified and cared for in some mental institution. Apparently, all the royal family were aware of his tendency to tantrums and somehow blithely ignored them.
 
The coup de grace came when the insufferable Colin left everything in a two-line Will to a male friend that could have left Anne and her children destitute. She fortunately had some assets in her own name and, of course, good connections to rally round and support her.
 
One has to admire Anne’s psychological strength. How she coped without coming apart from the seams herself with the tragedies involving her three sons in particular is more than the average person could dare to imagine. Perhaps she had become so used to denial or those proverbial English traits of pulling up socks and gritting teeth as defences, they helped through these events in her life.
 
Unlike other biographers who perhaps never knew Princess Margaret personally, she is kinder towards her, and the Princess comes across as smarter, funnier and a little more likeable than might be expected.
 
If there’s anything to be gleaned from this expose, it’s the familiar trope that a privileged birth and wealth will never guarantee happiness.
 
Three stars.

amazon.com
 
amazon.co.uk
 
Booktopia

This novel opens with the stealing of a valuable Japanese netsuke from an exhibition in Oxford in 1976 by an unknown person, then it splits into two narratives set in the late 1940s and the cusp of the millennium in 1999.
 
Olivia is an intern in with an art dealer in London when she is sent on a journey to the house of an elderly widow, Beatrix, who apparently has the netsuke in her possession and is thinking of putting it up for sale.
 
Cut to 1945 and the war in Burma, where Beatrix is one of a group of women called the “Wasbies” (Women's Auxiliary Service, Burma) who run mobile canteens in difficult and dangerous jungle conditions, catering for Allied troops on the battlefront.
 
Eventually, the two narratives intersect when Olivia accompanies Beatrix to a New Year’s Eve reunion in Ireland with her old war-time friends and the dramas and secrets behind the netsuke and the reasons for its heist are revealed.
 
Inspired by facts, this is an excellent novel for anyone interested in little-known aspects of World War II, especially in the Far East, and the intrepid women who played their part. The background research doesn’t overload the story and the dialogue fits the era and its characters well. Olivia’s role is low-key, and it is the feisty, grumpy, but ultimately likeable, Beatrice who is centre stage. There is a love story and quite a number of inevitably violent and tragic aspects, and the conclusion may seem a bit too contrived in order to reach its feel-good ending, but overall an entertaining and memorable read.
 
Four stars

amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

Booktopia

This novel was inspired by a true story. [See the author's website for the background.]
 
Roza Meszaros arrives in America from Hungary. Born an aristocrat, she’s also been a celebrated ballerina and is eagerly looking forward to seeing her soldier fiance, Joe, for the first time in two years, and marry him. However, when she arrives at her destination in Minnesota, there is no sign of Joe. Instead she is met by a Hungarian couple, Jakab and Mariska Wykowsi who will have difficult news. Roza is devastated to discover Joe has married an old girlfriend. She’s been jilted.
 
The option is to return to Hungary, but it is now under the Communist iron fist and would expose her to new dangers. Roza is desperate to stay in America. She resorts to a plan to find someone else to marry her before her visa runs out. She approaches a local newspaper and the editor spots a great human interest story. He publishes her appeal and Roza receives well over 1,000 proposals. She narrows them down to just five. Eventually, she chooses stoic and quiet war veteran, Finn Ericksen. It’s a rocky road for both, however, as it is complicated by Finn’s shell shock (now better known as PTSD) and Roza’s difficulty in adjusting to the role of a housewife, not helped by her lingering feelings for Joe and her own psychological war damage.
 
Roza is an interesting, complex woman, someone who was born with a silver spoon but who must learn how to be ordinary, deal with a new culture, improve her strengths and face up to her weaknesses. And it is so refreshing to read a novel with an appealing male character like Finn. He has his own demons and faults, but is determined that the marriage should succeed.
 
What may appear to be a modest, romantic novel, has far more layers than you expect. It also enlightens readers about what life was like for many individuals and refugees who had to flee from oppression in Europe and elsewhere after World War II.
 
With thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC.
 
Four stars
 
(As a personal aside - this novel initially caught my attention because of my fascination with marriages of convenience since first becoming aware of at least of two in my parents’ circle of friends in post-war Africa. One was our neighbour’s “mail-order” bride from Greece whom the husband had never even seen, but it seemed the marriage worked and I believe they stayed together for life. The other was of a Polish woman who’d married a South African soldier after the war, also partly in order to escape family persecution by the Communists. It was another marriage that seemed happy and their son was a playmate of mine. Although she wasn’t aristocratic, her traumatic background involving the Nazis was not dissimilar to Roza’s.)


amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

Booktopia

Nina Fraser and Simon Jordan are childhood sweethearts and live in a small town in Vermont. They seem to be perfectly suited and their respective families expect them to get married. But after a weekend away together in a cabin, Simon returns home alone alleging they had a row and broke up, that Nina told him she was interested in someone else. He says she arranged for a friend to collect her, but clearly this never happened. She’s disappeared.
 
Nina’s parents are convinced Simon knows where she is and what really happened, while his parents pull out all the stops to protect their son. Being far wealthier and more influential than the Frasers, the Jordans have the advantage. Detective Matthew Wright also has his suspicions about Simon, but proving them correct is another matter.
 
Is Simon guilty? Nina’s disappearance hits the headlines with the resulting plethora of social media armchair detectives, conspiracy theorists and vicious anonymous opinions. The Jordans even get their lawyers and PR agents to use this to their advantage to make it look as if not is all as it should be in the Fraser family, causing them additional distress.
 
I’ve now read most of this author’s thrillers as she has proved to be top-rate in her genre, but this stand-alone novel (several of her others are about an Irish detective) has to be her best so far. Her portrayal of the two mothers, one who has lost her child and is determined to know the truth, the other defending hers no matter the cost, is particularly skilful, and her hard-hitting dialogue as it relates to that curse of our modern world, “trial by media”, is exceptional.
 
If you’ve never read Dervla McTiernan, then this novel is a great place to start.
 
Four-and-a-half stars.
 
 
amazon.com (audio)
 
amazon.co.uk (Kindle)
 
Booktopia

-
My father had known a man - whose name unfortunately I don’t recall - who’d worked and sailed with Errol Flynn in Australia and New Guinea in the years before he was famous and he’d told my father some of the shocking and hair-raising experiences with Flynn that wouldn’t have been common knowledge at the time, including Flynn's relationships with native women and involvement in rough justice meted out to plantation workers.

As an impressionable teenager rather obsessed with movie stars, this prompted me to surreptitiously read “My Wicked, Wicked Ways”, the shocking memoir of Flynn, although it now appears that early edition had been edited or expurgated in order to avoid possible law suits and more recent editions have been restored to include Flynn’s real opinion of the dark underbelly of the Hollywood he knew, plus his own guilt at having embraced what it stood for.
 
This new biography reveals much more. The author has been able to draw on private letters of Flynn and his family members and other rare hitherto unpublished archival material.
 
At the present time when the Epstein scandal shows no sign of going away, the searing similarities to what was going on in Hollywood from the 1920s onwards can’t be avoided. Starry-eyed girls and young women were trafficked with the promises of glamorous careers in the movies in exchange for sexual favours. Nearly all of the studio bosses and many others in powerful positions were culpable, and of course leading virile actors like Flynn took full advantage of the system. Flynn became notorious for his penchant for under-age girls and even faced a trial for rape, acquitted by a jury top-heavy with middle-aged women who were probably fans. When he died aged only 50, his partner was still a teenager. He’d also been married three times, always disastrously.
 
Flynn’s family was dysfunctional going back several generations and is covered here in detail. His academic father was a womaniser and his mother also had a relationship while still married. She was reputedly descended from Edward Young, one of the infamous “Bounty” mutineers – an interesting fact considering Flynn’s first film role was that of Fletcher Christian, leader of the mutineers. There was nothing glamorous about those mutineers, they kidnapped and exploited both Tahitian women and men, and what took place on Pitcairn Island, then and since, doesn’t augur well for a long genetic line of moralists. (See photo below taken by me of Flynn’s ring at the Bounty Museum, Norfolk Island.)
 
An immensely readable biography, although in some places there is extensive exposition on world events or history as background to Flynn’s antics that may not require reinforcement for some readers and easily can be skipped through.
 
This paragraph sums up Flynn’s life and legacy:
 
“Errol Flynn’s incredible life elicits competing emotions that run the full gamut from ardent admiration and curiosity to disgust. This journey through his life … reveals something greater than the life of one man … [his] story gives insight into the turbulent worlds he inhabited, and the great points of friction that made him both celebrated and contested, then and now. The questions about men’s power and sexual privileges, the entitlements and enablement of celebrities and the rich and powerful, the searing politics and enduring impacts of race and morality campaigns, the way men and women relate to each other, and the immense gulfs between what society permits for one sex and not the other, continue to convulse our lives.”
 
Four-and-a-half stars
 
amazon.com
 
amazon.co.uk
 
Booktopia

Clara Heywood is one of few Australian female doctors working in Sydney when World War I breaks out. As she watches her fiance Edward, another doctor, head to the battlefields of Europe, she is frustrated and determined also to contribute to the war effort.
 
Against her father’s wishes, she travels to France and joins the staff of the Scottish Women’s Hospital at Royaumont which is run entirely by women and cares for mostly wounded French soldiers.
 
Under the tutelage of the chief surgeon, Miss Ivens, Clara takes on many challenging situations, honing her craft as she goes. She inevitably makes mistakes, but also succeeds in saving the lives of many men. Relationships with other members of staff also need careful negotiation, especially with an uncompromising nurse who has some reason to dislike Australians.
 
For anyone unfamiliar with the difficulties faced by early women in the medical profession, and especially during war in the early part of the 20th Century, this novel can give context to their struggles as it is based in part on real stories. There is also considerable description of operations and procedures that may appeal to readers keen on such detail, but others may find them confronting or of less interest. Clara’s character has flaws, but her humanity can’t be denied when she makes difficult decisions that put her career at risk. 
 
Without revealing details, the ending suggests there’s unlikely to be a sequel. Whether this was a good choice on the part of the author and/or her editors is debatable, as these women need to be celebrated, and perhaps further novels about their struggles would help to have their accomplishments more widely recognised, thus ensuring that the real women involved are better remembered.
 
Three-and-a-half stars
 
 
amazon.com
 
amazon.co.uk
 
Booktopia

​Judith Lee is a Detective Sergeant in Melbourne. She interviews a mysterious young woman, Alexis Turner, who makes accusations against Robert Walker, a prominent psychologist and husband of Vanessa, a well-known TV anchor, of sexual misconduct.
 
Judith then remembers another young woman who made a similar claim ten years before and whom she turned away. After discovering that woman took her own life, she regrets her actions and tries to recontact Alexis. But she seems to have disappeared and is untraceable.
 
Vanessa receives a mysterious package that contains a shocking video allegedly proving Robert’s guilt. Shortly afterwards Robert is found shot dead.
 
Jack Miller, single father of ten-year-old Cameron, also receives a mysterious package. To his shock, it contains a gun. He is on his way to report it, when his departure is pre-empted by the arrival of the police who arrest and charge him with the murder of Robert. He has no idea who Robert is and is distraught, worried at what will happen to Cameron. Fortunately, Jack’s good friend, Elsa Anderson, successful businesswoman, takes him in.
 
But then Elsa receives a third package which will result in a tragedy.
 
The race is on to find out what links all three individuals and who is sending the packages, each of them containing cryptic notes.
 
Judith’s own past still haunts her and causes complications for her in investigating the case. She’s already on thin ice with her superiors in relation to internal police issues and she makes some decisions to hide evidence that she is bound to regret. When her best friend, Katy, is drawn into the net, it becomes even more desperate to find out the common link.
 
This author’s books are always a nail-biting read and this one set in Australia is no exception. Readers familiar with Melbourne will recognise the locations where the action takes place.
 
Judith is tough but she has vulnerabilities and weaknesses. The pacing is excellent and the convolutions of the main plot and its various sub-plots are brought together successfully at the end. There are a few slow sections and questions that aren’t fully resolved, but otherwise it’s another cracking McTiernan read and highly recommended.
 
(With thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC.)
 
Four stars
 
amazon.com
 
amazon.co.uk
 
Booktopia

Another random selection from my towering TBR pile, this novel published in 2007 is set between the two World Wars in London and in France and is described by the publishers as: “A Gripping Historical Fiction Mystery of Hidden Identities and Scandalous Secrets.”
 
Artist Polly Smith needs a passport and has difficulty locating her birth certificate, about which her mother is stubbornly vague. With good reason, as it transpires that Polly is not her child but is her sister’s illegitimate daughter, born in Paris with the outlandish name of Polyhymnia Tomkins. Polly’s now worried that her stiff, pompous fiancé Roger won’t be happy to know the truth.
 
Max Lytton is a dashing man about town who appears to be a bit of a dilletante when, in fact, he’s an agent in the intelligence services. His sister Cynthia has caused a scandal in social circles by getting a divorce and has taken up with tycoon Sir Walter Malreward, who appears to be above board but may be involved in nefarious businesses, including dubious art sales. Cynthia has mysterious reasons for delaying their marriage.
 
Polly’s marriage to Roger is also put off for some months and she takes up the offer from her wealthy (secretly gay) friend, Oliver, to join him and several artists in his family’s home in the South of France. There are more sub-plots featuring other individuals who aren’t who they say they are. These all collide in a somewhat limp conclusion, overloaded with too many coincidences and tidy revelations of those “hidden identities” and “scandalous secrets”.
 
Admittedly, it wasn’t easy for women to assert themselves in that era but Polly’s character is disjointed; she’s fearless speaking out at certain times and a complete wuss at others. The dialogue of Oliver’s sister, the acerbic Katriona, is taken to extremes and a more subtle bitchiness could have been just as effective. Likewise, the annoyingly critical Roger. His about-face in the last chapter is contrived and unexplained. The various romances all feel lukewarm at best, and even an attempted murder seems low-key.
 
On the research side, the tone of the 1930s is well-presented, but overall, this meanders along never quite deciding if it should be just a lightweight Riviera romance or take risks and become a more serious novel with significant commentary on politics and the abuse of power and money.
 
Two-and-a-half stars
 
amazon.com (published as Villa on the Riviera – audio version)

amazon.co.uk (Kindle)

Narrated by Evelyn Dolman, a London “hack” writer/journalist at the turn of the 19th Century, this tells the story of his seemingly fortuitous recent marriage to Laura, the daughter of T. Willard Rensselaer, a wealthy American, and what happened on their wintry honeymoon in Venice.
 
Things are not going smoothly for the newlyweds. Evelyn is aware of friction between Laura and her father over some past indiscretion of hers, on which she refuses to speak.

After T. Willard had promised Evelyn the authorship of his biography, thus elevating his status in literary circles, the tycoon is killed in a riding accident and rather than bequeathing a healthy proportion of his vast wealth to Laura, the complete Rensselaer fortune goes to her sister, Thomasina, who is much disliked by Evelyn. In turn, Thomasina cancels Evelyn’s right to author the biography. It’s no wonder he is in a disillusioned and confused state of mind.
 
From the outset, Evelyn is uneasy and at odds with La Serenissima, the romantic name for Venice, finding it a dismal city suffering from a “long-drawn-out terminal decay … where over the centuries the action of the tides had eaten into the very fabric of the foundations … leaving them tattered and ragged, like the soiled and drenched hems of the petticoats of a succession of dropsical old ladies.”

​The couple rent rooms full of “fustian grandeur” in the Palazzo Dioscuri, the home of the sinister County Barbarigo. When Evelyn encounters another dubious character, Freddie Fitzherbert and his mysterious sister, Francesca, with whom he becomes besotted, he is progressively drawn into their web. What was intended to be a happy honeymoon turns into a dark journey of the soul. Laura disappears and Evelyn is left to ruminate and agonise over his actions. All of the characters are flawed and the ending has an interesting twist of sorts.
 
This random choice from my local library has provided an unusual and entertaining reading experience. It is noted that many Goodreads reviewers have derided it without perhaps taking into account how well the author has conveyed the fin de siècle flavour and atmosphere. Yes, the writing can be florid with many obscure words, but it suits the age and the setting. Venice was, and still is, to some extent, redolent of wicked events and a decadent, flowery past grandeur.
 
Evelyn is definitely not a modern man of the 2020s, he’s firmly in the grip of late Victorian values and expectations, and those other reviewers who have been outraged by what he did to Laura, have failed to step outside of our time and look on his actions as not unexpected, given how he had been duped by her father, Laura’s dishonesty and her remote attitude towards him – not to mention the lusty urges created by another femme fatale, and the inevitable effects of too many shots of grappa in the Café Florian. This is a novel to be read with an open mind.
 
Four stars
 
 
amazon.com
 
amazon.co.uk (audio)
 
Booktopia

 
Many families have myths about their ancestors. These often involve descent from someone historically important via the “other side of the blanket”, or illegitimacy, and there’s at least one family member who is convinced it is true without any shred of evidence. My mother-in-law was adamant they had at least two Earls in the family tree, the Irish Earl of Shannon and possibly the Scottish Earl of Bute. She even wrote to the then Earl of Shannon setting her case, and, to his credit, he replied with a gentle let down. (We still have his letter.) She remained undeterred, however, and continued to tell everyone that his ancestor had his wicked way with an innocent Devon girl resulting in her family line even after subsequent genealogical research disproved it all.
 
My father’s sister had a painting of King Charles II in her bedroom, totally convinced for some irrational reason that she was related to him and therefore somehow a member of the House of Stuart. On my mother’s side, there were whispers about an ancestor being an indiscretion of Catherine the Great of Russia. All total nonsense.
 
Why do people think having royalty or prominent individuals in their DNA is important? Is it a sign of insecurity, a need to prove they are better than others for some reason? Go back far enough and we are all related to one another, so why does it matter? I guess the psychologists can explain it better.
 
This novel is inspired by a similar story in the author’s family tree and creates quite a number of issues for anyone with a healthy dose of scepticism about such notions.
 
Throughout history, the great, good - and not so good – men have left the lives of many women in disarray. The Duke of Wellington (of boots and Waterloo fame) was certainly no exception, with a notoriously unhappy marriage and a litany of affairs with a range of women from Ireland to India and throughout Europe. He had two legitimate sons, but it is highly likely he had other descendants.
 
Mary Ann Marshall is just thirteen and a maid in the London household of the Countess of Mornington when she first encounters the youthful Arthur Wesley (later Wellesley) and over the years they become firm friends and, much later, lovers.  In time, Mary Ann gives birth to his daughter, Elizabeth. Complicating this situation is Arthur’s marriage to Catherine (Kitty) Pakenham. After being spurned several times, when he finally does marry her, he is on his way to becoming the greatest military man of his age but is no longer in love with her. His prowess on the battlefield is matched by the same in the bedroom and he has numerous affairs, including some with former mistresses of his arch nemesis, Napoleon. As their children grow up together, both Kitty and Mary Ann must deal with Arthur’s capriciousness with women and his increasing fame.
 
The modern-day narrative features Ava Washington, a Sydney journalist, who discovers she is reputedly descended from the Duke via an illegitimate line and she starts an investigation into her own family tree that includes digging in archival institutions and travel to places where he is known to have lived and the battlefields where he saw his greatest actions.
 
While Mary Ann’s story set in the early 1800s has the author's recognisable style with  evidence of meticulous historical research, the contemporary component flounders. Not only is there repetition of what we’ve already discovered from the other narrative, there is over-explanation of facts and travel details that read like tourist brochure copy.  Ava's complicated personal relationships and involvement in sideline research into property issues do little to advance the main objective.
 
As to characterisations, Mary Ann is amiable but unconvincing and naïve about the Duke’s intentions. Any chemistry in their relationship feels lukewarm at best. The seemingly empty-headed Kitty proves to be kind and forgiving in difficult circumstances. The Duke is attractive/repellent depending on your own opinion of how dynamic men treat women. Ava is annoying and silly at times; more than once she berates herself for not asking the right questions as a journalist. And as for her putting up with the truly awful Darren who gaslights her several times over, one despairs at her behaviour when any self-respecting intelligent woman would have sent him packing. (Am I expecting too much to have writers give us stronger 21st Century female protagonists with more self-respect and not be at the mercy of their fluttering hormones, easily swayed by men and therefore unable to assert themselves?)
 
At least the final resolution is probably the only feasible one. 
 
Basically, there isn’t enough substance here for a novel of 440+ pages and it falls into the trap of research padding and oversimplification. And then there are the tacky allusive chapter titles that include: “Hunger Games”, “Sleeping with the Enemy”, “Lord of the Ring”, “Finally Facing his Waterloo”, “Dangerous Liaisons”, “Root Rat”, “Bridgerton Betrayal” and many others. Is this is a case of publishers wanting an author to “dumb down” or to write in a way that will appeal to younger generations of readers who find history and family research boring?
 
A genuine, first-person, non-fiction memoir by the author of how she sought to uncover the family legend would have been so much than better than this.
 
Not the best from this usually excellent author and it is hoped that she reverts to her earlier strengths and doesn’t engage in more dual timelines with contemporary components that have proved problematic for so many other historical novelists - and their readers! - since this became a trend.
 
Two stars for the contemporary narrative, three-and-a-half for the historical.

amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

Booktopia

 
​The infamous Mitford Girls have had numerous outings, both in fiction and non-fiction, but this is the first biography dedicated to their mother, Lady Redesdale (born Sydney Bowles) and it helps to fill in the background to the extraordinary chequered lives of her infamous six daughters.
 
The book’s cover shows “Muv”, as she was called by her family, as a young woman. There is much to be gleaned from the haughtiness of that image; this was not a woman to be messed with, someone who had fixed ideas about social behaviour and, as it turns out, was uncompromising, hypercritical and rigid in her political opinions. In turn, one learns about her father, Thomas Bowles, a man of his own convictions, self-made, successful and also a “maverick”, and the greatest influence on her life.
 
Muv married the eccentric David Freeman-Mitford (“Farve”), who later inherited the baronage of Redesdale, and they had six daughters and just one son. The couple were parodied by three of their daughters in a number of famous novels but they also created controversy through their support of fascism in Europe, and a close connection to Adolf Hitler.
 
For anyone who has read extensively about the Mitford Girls, much of this will already be familiar territory, but it is interesting to observe the dynamics of a family that clashed violently with one another over a range of extremist views, be it racism, antisemitism, communism, or fascism.
 
Although there were estrangements, it is extraordinary to see how Muv did her best to juggle her unruly family.  Unity – whom she looked after for several years after a failed suicide attempt - is perhaps the most tragic figure. Given the full name of Unity Valkyrie Mitford and conceived at a place called Swastika, Ontario, Canada, it seems she was doomed by some bizarre fate to be linked to Hitler!
 
Muv isn’t likeable, and her unwavering support of Hitler, her views on “ugly” Jews and poor people can make one wince. One might even think of her as stupid when she simply refused to ever have her mind changed by events, even the deaths of two of her children linked to the Second World War. As the author states:
 
“Sydney was not stupid; it was her judgement not her intelligence which was at fault. Her obstinate refusal to reassess situations in the light of incontrovertible evidence, alongside her entrenched prejudices and her misguided loyalty, made her hold onto pernicious attitudes which had proved catastrophic on both a global and personal scale. As so often in her life, she only saw what she wanted to see and tightly shut her eyes to anything which might contradict her worldview.”
 
A most intriguing woman, and a book definitely recommended for anyone with a curiosity about who influenced the Mitford Girls and made them into such memorable figures.
 
(My only quibble is the naming inconsistency in the narrative, with paragraphs calling her Muv in one sentence, Sydney in the next, and Lady Redesdale in the following.)
 
Four-and-a-half stars.
 
amazon.com
 
amazon.co.uk
 

Tan Twan Eng’s House of Doors (review here) was one of the best novels I’ve read in recent years. He’s not a prolific author, with only two other major works in print at present, this one being his debut novel, and I admit to a delay in reading it as I’ve felt World War II novels have reached saturation point, although the majority of them is based around the Nazis and Europe and the war with Japan is largely overlooked, certainly as it pertains to its effect on non-Western countries.
 
In the 1990s, a sick Japanese woman, Michiko, comes to the island of Penang off the coast of Malaysia, hoping to solve a mystery about a man she cared about a life time ago and she stays with the elderly Philip Hutton, who tells her his story.
 
Half-English, half-Chinese Philip is 16 when the war breaks out in late 1939. His wealthy merchant father and siblings are in Europe and he remains behind at the family’s lavish estate Istana. While they are away, Philip makes friends with Endo-san, a mysterious Japanese man who lives on a nearby small island. Endo-san begins to teach Philip the art of aikido, and the two form a strong bond, often travelling together around Malaya. After the family return and invasion by the Japanese seems inevitable, Philip is conflicted over duty and loyalties. The decisions he makes before, and during, the occupation of Penang will challenge him and make him ponder deeply on his place in the world and the highs and lows of human existence.
 
This powerful and confronting novel with its doomed characters and moral questions took me a long time to read, often having to put it aside after a few pages, but it is searingly memorable. The prose is intricate and thoughtful; some descriptions are graced with beauty, stoicism and philosophy, while others display in agonising detail all the horrors and depravity unleashed by war.
 
Some readers may find the reincarnation ideas a distraction from reality, but one has to bear in mind this is the East where spirituality and ways of thinking are often quite different from the more pragmatic Christian West. As Endo-san says, “Accept that there are things in this world we can never explain and life will be understandable. That is the irony of life. It is also the beauty of it.”
 
Five stars




amazon.com

amazon.co.uk (the collected novels)

Booktopia

​