Henry is born in 1916, and raised by a Shakespeare-quoting grandmother. His artistic talent is colouring and copying which leads him to art history. Marriage to Alice ends with a tragic accident and a disastrous war experience leads to PTSD. Best of all, art and history permeates Richardson’s writing: Giller short-listed and highly recommended.
Category: Historical fiction
The Mountains Sing – Nguyen Phau Que Mai
A sweeping saga of Viet Nam told as stories a grandmother tells her granddaughter. The context is the North, mainly from the 1930s to the 80s. Conflicts abound: internal (north versus south) and external (French, Japanese, American influences). But at its core, this story is about the extreme actions a mother takes to ensure survival of her children.
The Paris Bookseller – Kerri Maher
The cover of this book of historical fiction/fact has the phrase: “a love letter to bookstores and libraries” – enough said! This is the story of Sylvia Beach, an American who opens an English language bookstore in Paris in 1920, called Shakespeare And Company. Ms. Beach acquires fame and notoriety by publishing James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922. Insight into her motivations and candid descriptions of the many writers who frequent her store makes this a treasure to read.
The Girl In His Shadow – Audrey Blake
Nora is a young woman in 1845, a cholera survivor. As the ward of the talented and eccentric Victorian surgeon Dr. Horace Croft, Nora acquires forbidden medical knowledge. But despite her impressive abilities and skills, she will be both persecuted and prosecuted if she is caught practicing medicine. Much like Fayne, the treatment of women at this time is abysmal. Thanks Elliott, for this recommendation.
Fayne – Ann-Marie MacDonald
Full disclosure: this sweeping sage is long (722 pages) but Ms. MacDonald’s exquisite writing makes the reading very worthwhile. The setting: Fayne, an estate straddling the border between England and Scotland. The time: late 19th century. The main players: Lord Henry Bell and wife Mae, and children Charles and Charlotte. The story is rife with family secrets, with cruelty and cowardice in male-female and father-child relationships. A shifting timeline accentuates the drama: highly recommended.
PS: A-MM wrote the wonderful Fall On Your Knees a long time ago.
The Weight of Ink – Rachel Kadish
Be advised: this sweeping story of historical fiction is long (652 pages) but exquisite writing creates a literary mystery. In 2000 in England, an elderly female historian with Parkinson’s and an American graduate student are asked to evaluate a newly discovered cache of Jewish documents from the 1660s, the writings of the blind Rabbi HaCoen Mendes and his scribe Aleph. Eventually, Aleph is discovered to be a woman, Ester Velasquez. There are two critical tensions in this book. First, what are the prospects for a Jewish woman more than 300 years ago in London? Is there a brief bloom of intellectual freedom or is there a longer lasting consequence of a hunger for knowledge and learning? And second, the description of contemporary academic politics is vicious and compelling. This is an astonishing novel about a quest for knowledge: highly recommended.
The Dickens Boy – Thomas Keneally
The acclaimed author of Schindler’s List and The Daughters of Mars (just 2 of his 33 books) has turned his attention to his Australian homeland. Edward Dickens, the 10th and youngest child of his father Charles Dickens, travels to Australia in 1868 at age 16 to make something of himself in the outback. What follows is written with impeccable detail of the following two years: sheep shearing and cricket, encounters with Aboriginals (darks), colonialists and criminals. Very entertaining.
Babel – R. F.Kuang
This is an imaginative work of historical and speculative fiction. The context is all important: Oxford in the 1830s where scholars (professors and students) work in the Royal Institute of Translation, in an academic tower known as Babel. Is there power in words, in etymology? Words lost in translation can be added to silver bars to create magic: protective wards and the casting of spells. Academics can also serve colonialism; can change ever occur peaceably, or does profound change encompass the necessity of violence? What is striking in this book is the role of indecision and questionable motives. Highly recommended.
Circus of Wonders – Elizabeth Macneal
In Victorian England, the circus featured “human curiosities”, aka the freak show. The “performers” are exploited and objectified but also experience fame as someone no longer relegated to the shadows. There is also an interesting back-story of the Crimean War. A richly detailed historical novel, an enthralling slice of Victoriana.
What David Read 