​I like to switch between weathers in my reading as well as settings, eras and genres and this is another title that has long loitered in my TBR (to be read) pile. The only reason I can think of is that I acquired it around the time I read the extraordinary, but emotionally exhausting, The Winter Station, another novel set in a grimly frozen Russian medical world and I suspect I put it aside as I went off in search of sunnier climes and subjects.

Paul Bauer is a surgeon who is part of the occupying Wehrmacht forces pushing into Russia in 1941. His medical unit sets up a hospital in the home of the famous author Leo Tolstoy, Yasnaya Polyana. They come up against the fiery Katerina Trubetzkaya, who is caretaker of the estate. She walks a fine line between being shot or imprisoned as she challenges and even mocks the invaders. In spite of their situation, it is their mutual passion for exploring ideas and literature that irrevocably draws Katerina and Bauer together.

The intelligent and compassionate narrative style is excellent; largely dialogue that is honest and concise in its observations of the weaknesses and strengths of character of individuals dealing with perilous situations on both sides of war. Philosophy and politics run alongside base human needs like the struggle to keep warm and find relief in liquor and sex. There are the flashes of black humour that are common – even essential – to medical staff working on individuals in extremis. Bauer remains the solid anchor while his irascible superior Metz is determined to retain control as he falls under the spell of Tolstoy’s ghost that may, or may not, be the result of the pharmacist Drexel’s experimentation. Bauer takes a German edition of War and Peace from Tolstoy’s library and although Metz insists it be destroyed, he reads it surreptitiously. (It will be helpful if you have read this famous work and are familiar with its characters.)

Around the two-thirds point, the novel diverts into an exchange of letters from the future. This may dismay readers who don’t like to know what happens in advance. Normally, I would feel the same but somehow in this case the letters work well, as you think you will know what happen, but it may not be the case.

Here are a couple of passages that demonstrate the quality of this writing.

Bauer, on finding consolation in War and Peace in which Tolstoy said:

“… the rhythms of life would remain the same. The young would be foolish, hopeful and wild, would fall in love and out of it, become sadder, maybe wise. Some would meet their deaths sooner than others, yet there would come a day when everyone engaged in the struggles of their age would without exception die, bequeathing the world they had made to those strangers, their children, who would struggle to change it again.”

And Katerina’s observations in her later years on the importance of novels as “engines of empathy”:

“To borrow a Stalinist idiom, the novel is a machine, a noisy, violent thing whose product, oddly enough, is often human understanding, perhaps even a kind of love. I daresay some might look at the last one hundred years and say, ‘Nonsense, what love?’, but if so they are naïve because it could have been worse. Hitler could have won. Kennedy and Khrushchev could have blown us all to hell. And who knows what other horrors we’ve evaded because someone, or someone’s teacher, once put down a novel and thought, ‘My God, I am like that stranger’ or ‘That stranger is like me’ or even ‘That stranger is utterly different from me, and yet how understandable his hopes and longings are’.”

Five stars (plus!)
 
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Booktopia

 
Unheralded or pioneering women from history have always been a great interest of mine (many of them subjects of my blog The History Bucket) so this novel about Evelyn Gifford, one of the earliest female lawyers in Britain, drew my attention in a local remainder bookstore.

In 1924, like countless other women who seem destined to remain single due to the dearth of eligible men following World War I, Evelyn must rely on making her own way in life. Fired with a deep sense of belief in justice, especially for the underprivileged, she works as an assistant in a firm where is she is lucky enough to be taken under the wing of Mr Breen, who sees her potential in spite of her sex. Progressively, she becomes involved in two separate cases that will see her having to pit wits against the male establishment while also dealing with an unexpected attraction to the barrister, Nicholas Thorne.

All of this is complicated by events at home where Evelyn lives with her mother, grandmother and a great aunt. A capricious woman called Meredith arrives from Canada unannounced with a small boy, Edmund, in tow and claims to have been the lover of Evelyn’s late brother, James, who is deeply mourned by everyone in the family following his death in the war. Everything Evelyn believed about her late, sainted brother is called into question as she battles to find the truth and understand Meredith’s motives.

Complex storytelling that never falters, realistic emotions, well-drawn characters, important social issues and an excellent historical sense of the era come together in this marvellous novel, which I may well read again – a very rare occurrence for me.

Quite a few years ago I recall that Katharine McMahon had me enthralled with her brilliant novel about the Crimean War, The Rose of Sebastopol. She is definitely one of the best historical fiction writers around and deserves a much wider readership. I am currently sourcing her other books to read, including the sequel to this one, The Woman in the Picture.
 
Five Stars

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(Second-hand or remainder copies can be found through your usual booksearch links.)

​This is mainly the story of Elise, only daughter of Louis Salignac, who owns the enchanting Burgundy estate of Sainte Madeleine. It covers more than fifty years from the early 1920s through to the 1970s as Elise and members of her family face numerous challenges in juggling family upheavals while trying to keep the ancient vineyards operating successfully. Personal failings, disappointments and tragedies all play their part.

Apart from her great passion for Sainte Madeleine, Elsie is obsessed with her distant cousin, Laurent Senard, but their lives become so intertwined with others that the path of true love is definitely not smooth.

One of Elise’s brothers, Alex, is forced to forge a new life for himself in America after a disastrous falling out with his family. The other, Didier, is incapacitated psychologically and suffers his own trials.

The first half of the book is reasonably enjoyable, but once World War 2 is over it becomes a slog of in-fighting that doesn’t reflect well on any of the characters. At close to 500 pages, I admit it took some grit to finish it. There’s an almost melodramatic pattern of killing off certain characters to the point where you know in advance who is doomed in order to move the plot on. No guessing as to who must die to reach the happy-ever-after conclusion.

Sure, this is a story about wine production, but there is a lot of drunkenness too. It is hard to generate much sympathy for Elise with her bitter and idle life and her impulsive actions. She’s self-absorbed and unappealing and becomes even more so as the years pass by. Her ruthless American niece, Willow, is just as bad as she turns into a clone of her aunt. Both Laurent and Didier have greater depth and they were the only characters that kept me reading.

Apart from needing a harder edit overall, there are also a fair number of anachronisms and proof-reading errors that are surprising in a book from a major trade publisher.
 
Two-and-a-half stars

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