Ruth Appleby

Most of my reading these days tends to be of new or other fairly recently published novels or other non-fiction. Browsing my TBR (to be read) pile over the Christmas holidays, I spotted a book that had been sitting there gathering dust - a random purchase from a second-hand source. 

Its cover has all the hallmarks of what is sometimes disparagingly referred to as "clogs and shawl" romantic fiction and popular around the 1970s-1980s heyday of authors like Catherine Cookson, who wrote about the gritty industrial North of England in the Victorian or Edwardian age, hence the heroines invariably wore clogs and shawls. 

With a whopping 686 small-print pages and a plot that edges towards "Gone with the Wind" territory (the American Civil War) this is an epic, but I was soon utterly immersed in the novel as it was so easy to read.

I didn't have to struggle with time period changes, dual or multiple narrative strands, and irritating switches in tenses that are the hallmarks of so much recent fiction. Refreshingly written, it manages to be historically accurate without swamping you with academic research. There is no artifice or authorly superiority on display here, and it made me wonder why reading has become so complicated and why the chronological saga written purely to entertain and engage the reader has fallen out of favour. Sure, this edition was cheaply produced and there are a few typos or editing errors, clunky phrases, and odd switches in point of view that the fussy perfectionist reader might have issues with, but they don't matter when the story itself is so robust and moves at an absorbing pace.

I won't detail the plot here as there is just so much going on but, in a nutshell, Ruth Appleby is a working class lass from Yorkshire with a complicated love life who ends up running a boarding house in New York and suffers loss and heartache along with the way. She is feisty and opinionated, impulsive, yet loyal. All these attributes make her likeable and occasionally annoying, yet she feels real enough to retain your interest throughout. The secondary characters likewise. The men in her life have their faults but also positive attributes. Her long-suffering husband Sean is a particularly well-drawn character, as is her flighty sister, Maria. Their behaviour and attitudes all fit the period in which they lived and that suits me just fine. 

Four plus stars.

Note: This paperback edition is out of print, but new Kindle editions are available from whichever amazon is relevant for your country.

amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

amazon.com.au

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