Marina Maxwell
  • Home
  • MMMusings
  • Blogs
  • About Me
  • My Books
  • Book Reviews
  • FAMILY TALES

Reviews

Categories

All


I read and review both historical fiction and non-fiction, but also enjoy biographies, crime and some contemporary fiction. 
Please note that unless stated that I have received these books directly from the publisher or author in exchange for an honest review, I either purchase my own copies or source them from my local library service.
​Links to Amazon or Booktopia are only for further reference.

My reviews for Historical Novels Review, the magazine of the Historical Novel Society, can be found online here
​

Beyond the Wild River

25/5/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture

It is 1893 and Evelyn Ballantyre, who has had a restricted life growing up in the Scottish Borders, accompanies her wealthy father and a group of friends to Canada and on an expedition up the Nipigon River.
 
Evelyn is shocked when she discovers that their guide is James Douglas, who had been her friend when he worked for her father as a stable hand and who had vanished after the murder of a poacher. Evelyn always believed in his innocence and that her father has never told the truth about the event. Isolated in the wilds of Ontario and without the constraints of mannered society, the secret of what happened that night is finally revealed.
 
Initially, everything about this book captured me:- the lyrical title, atmospheric cover (Australian version) and plot summary. (It also helped that I grew up on tales of the Nipigon told by my father who had worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company in that area in the 1920s.) With so much going for it I anticipated a rewarding reading experience but most disappointed that this was not to be.

There are swathes of excellent writing here, including descriptions of Canada’s beautiful wild places and the burgeoning frontier towns like Port Arthur, but overall it is just too lethargic, let alone inspiring. Plus, whenever narrative lacks pace in a novel marketed as romantic adventure, including potentially boring subjects such as fishing and finance can just slow it down even more.

But the main issue is that I could not get sufficiently into the head of the vacuous Evelyn to even like her, let alone care about her, and the other characters, even the unjustly accused James, also seemed flat or elusive as well. To cap it off, there are also those annoying random flashbacks that are a particular bug-bear of mine and only work when the editing is tight. By mid-way, I started to skip read and the final mystery wasn’t all that surprising.

Much as I wanted to give it more I'm rather sad that, in all honesty, I can only give this three stars.

(With many thanks to Hachette Australia for the advance reading copy.)

Booktopia

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com
​

0 Comments

Sorrow of the Earth. Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull and the Tragedy of Show Business

22/5/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
This slim volume by Eric Vuillard takes us on a very powerful journey in its scant 192 pages. Originally published in French and translated into English by Ann Jefferson, it packs an emotional punch that few lavish biographies or epic novels are able to do.
 
The narrative is pure quicksilver, hypnotic and shiny, slipping this way and that around the incontrovertible bluff of the greatest showman of all time, Buffalo Bill Cody, who created the mass spectacle to which thousands flocked in order to witness for themselves recent historical events in the Wild West. Woven throughout are fictional impressions of Cody’s private life, his spurious beginnings and carpetbagger associates, his womanising, even his town, Cody in Wyoming, and how he became consumed by his own legend and ultimately unable to distinguish truth from the showman’s lies.
 
There is equal force in the retelling of Sitting Bull’s relationship with Cody and how this stately Native American was reduced to being part of the freak sideshow for fifty bucks a week. Then there are the the cast of other  “injuns” who are jeered at, insulted and made to recreate their own massacre every night, only to rise and fight and die again the next day, and the next. Most of them are now forgotten and lost to history, like stunt rider Feather Man who had a fall in Marseilles and died in agony, “all alone on the other side of the world, unable to speak either French or English” with no-one to claim his body and whose remains were eventually discarded in a communal grave. The disturbing tale of Zintkala Nuni (Lost Girl), the infant survivor of Wounded Knee, is especially poignant in how she fell victim to good intentions, transient curiosity and ultimate degradation at the hands of white men.
 
Real history and imagination mix so well here, that it is difficult to slot this book into a specific genre but its impact is in its poetic prose and its brevity. Even the busiest reader can find the time for this rewarding work on how the tragedy of show business is a spectacle that ".... steals from us, and lies to us, and intoxicates us, and gives us the world in every shape and form. And sometimes, the stage seems to exist more than the world, it is more present that our own lives, more moving and more persuasive than reality, more terrifying than our nightmares.”

Five stars.

​
(With many thanks to Edelweiss for the advance reading copy.)


Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Booktopia

(For more examples of the fine writing in this book, an edited extract can be found here on The Independent book review site.)

0 Comments

    Categories

    All

    Archives

    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015

    RSS Feed

    Reviews Published
    Professional Reader
    2016 NetGalley Challenge
    See
    Historical Novel Society
    ​
    for my reviews of historical fiction
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • MMMusings
  • Blogs
  • About Me
  • My Books
  • Book Reviews
  • FAMILY TALES