Marina Maxwell
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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, Book Depository or Dymocks Australia are only for the reader's reference.
(Due to some poor experiences recently with Booktopia, from 2023 I will no longer link to them.)

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

25/9/2020

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This is an Aussie crime novel with a difference. There are no grisly Outback serial killers, city gang shoot-outs or corrupt cops – too often the standard fare of the Australian crime genre.

Detective Grant Johnson from the town of Fresh Well has a suspicious fire to investigate and a lot of shenanigans to negotiate.

In the rural village of Stony Creek, someone has burnt down the tiny school. The culprit is likely to be someone indulging in an illicit cigarette shortly before a meeting of the school’s Parents and Citizens association. Naturally, there is a main cast of characters with something to hide.

Sarah accidently sees P & C chairwoman Jennifer having it off with the Principal, Brock.

Shocked, she then returns home to spring her husband Ian having it off with the babysitter, Madison, Jennifer and Andy’s teenage daughter.

Andy is secretly conducting an internet relationship with old flame Abi but forgets to delete his computer's History.

From his verandah, Madison’s elderly grandfather Mack watches the comings and goings of white utes set about mysterious liaisons involving cigarettes and comes to his own conclusions.

Shades of the English bedroom farce but Aussie-style, this is a most refreshing change of pace from grim or intense crime fiction. You know everyone will end up with egg on their faces as things unravel, but the journey is a light-hearted ride that will have you grinning and even laughing out loud in places.

Oh, what a tangled web is woven and in one word - Delightful!
 
Four stars

Booktopia

Amazon.com.au


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The Goldminer's Sister

25/9/2020

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​This is the second novel by Alison Stuart set during the 1870s and to feature the gold-mining town of Maiden’s Creek in the Gippsland area of Australia. (Although not essential to have read the first, The Postmistress, it does help to set the scene and the background of some of the secondary characters.)
 
Eliza Penrose arrives from England, expecting to be met by her brother, Will. However, he is not there and she soon learns from her uncle, mine-owner Charles Cowper, that he is dead, having fallen accidentally from a tailings heap late at night, presumably being drunk. Eliza is devastated.

When it seems that there had been a falling-out between uncle and nephew shortly before his death, Eliza is determined to get to the truth of the matter.
 
Meanwhile, after a disastrous early encounter with him, Eliza is increasingly drawn to widowed mining engineer, Alec McLeod, and their relationship slowly blossoms. However, all is put at risk by discoveries of underhanded greedy practices in the operation of the mines and danger from those who would stop at nothing, not even murder, to protect their evil schemes.
 
This is a really entertaining page-turner, as well-crafted as the earlier novel and with plenty of gold-mining history (some of it based on real events) woven beautifully throughout.
 
(Click here for my review of The Postmistress.)
 
Four stars.
 
Booktopia
 
Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk



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So Much Life Left Over

11/9/2020

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This novel is not what I expected as I had assumed it was set in Ceylon in the 1920s but it soon transpired that most of the action takes place in England and Europe.


Also – and not stated in the blurb - it turns out it is a sequel to an earlier book. This became increasingly obvious (and a tad annoying) as the story progressed with the appearance of lesser individuals whose back stories were unknown but who’d had considerable influence on the development of the leading protagonists, including Daniel and his wife Rose, his brother Archie, and their various neighbours, relatives and associates.


Primarily it is Daniel’s story: he is a flying ace who survived World War I when so many didn’t and thus suffers from survivor guilt. Family and children are all that really matter to him but when Rose spurns him, stopping him from forming a strong bond with his son and daughter, Daniel finds comfort and solace elsewhere.

It is hard to like Rose who treats Daniel so appallingly. His brother Archie is a whimsical sad case, Rose’s Lesbian sister and her partner weren’t sufficiently fleshed out, but the girls’ poor batty and snobbish mother provided some light relief. And I did not know what to make of the character called Oily Wragge who slept in a wheelbarrow and obviously suffered from a kind of PTSD from the war. It is assumed he features more strongly in the first book.

The prose is pacey and extravagant, with much that is both said, and unsaid, about the meaning of life as it touches on all the big philosophical questions – religion, sexuality, racism, honour, loyalty.

The author knows how to write about the fading era of the British Empire and its infamous “stiff upper lip” attitudes, but his flourishes with phrases and sentences in French, German, and even Sinhalese or Tamil (the languages of Ceylon/Sri Lanka) not to mention the use of obscure English words, had me distracted with sorties to translation sites and the online dictionary which was disruptive. Some readers enjoy such writing as a form of authenticity but it can border on scholarly superiority at times.

The tragic and ambivalent ending bodes another sequel. Not sure that I’ll bother, however.

Three stars. (Maybe more if I’d read the first book.)





Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Booktopia

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