Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke had been on my TBR list for a very long time, and it was one of the last books I listened to while I was still commuting, pre-pandemic, to work every day.
This book was long and sort of dense, but I enjoyed it all the same. The story takes place in sort of an alternate victorian England where magic has left but has made a return in the form of our title characters. Strange and Norrell have to navigate their complex relationship as the only two magicians left in England. They have different ideas of what magic should be and do.
I’m not going to lie, if you’re looking for a fast-paced, action-packed fantasy adventure, you’re going to be disappointed. What this is is a study of complex character and a sort of mystery. The magic had strange rules, the fae were part of the book but not the biggest part.
I listened to this book but didn’t read it – supposedly there are footnotes and illustrations and so if you’re someone who gets a lot of the reading experience this might be a book to read instead of to listen to. I listened to it because it’s much easier for me to listen to books than to read all of them, but this is one I’d like to go back to if given the opportunity to read it.
As I said, I recommend this if you like alternate history, complex characters, and speculative fantasy. I wouldn’t recommend this if you’re looking for the George RR Martin style fantasy, or Tolkien style fantasy, or even Harry Potter style fantasy. The tone is masterful and the prose is great, but it’s not a typical fantasy novel in terms of action or magic. It’s part of what makes it special.
Tag Archives: genre: historical fiction
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
The Art Forger
My last book of 2019 was The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro.
I won’t say it was bad, exactly, but there were parts of it I didn’t care for at all.
The plot is set against the backdrop of the still unsolved theft of thirteen priceless paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990, the most valuable of which were taken from ‘The Dutch Room.’ The most valuable piece of art itself was a painting called ‘The Concert‘ by Johannes Vermeer (a work you are probably more familiar with is ‘Girl With a Pearl Earring‘). There are only 34 paintings that are attributed to him in the world. In spite of a ten million dollar reward, the stolen artwork has never been recovered. Considering the value of the artwork is now considered upwards of $600 million, maybe no takers for the rather generous reward isn’t surprising. You can read more about the art theft here and here.
Claire Rothe makes her living forging famous artworks for an online retailer. She enters into a Faustian bargain with a gallery owner who will show her own original artwork if she’ll forge one of the Degas works stolen in the heist. Claire doesn’t ask questions about how the supposedly original Degas work from the theft was acquired but she begins to suspect it’s also a forgery. Claire is made out to be particularly hard up; even though she is a talented artist with an excellent talent and skillset, she is persona non-grata in the art world.
And this is the part of the story that I really, really didn’t like. Claire is persona non-grata in the art because while she was sleeping with one of her professors who is the great artist Isaac somebody or other (who I think is also cheating on his wife), he’s having some kind of artistic block and she paints a painting for him that he takes credit for. It becomes absurdly famous and when she says, “Hey, I painted that, give me credit,” he turns on her. There’s an investigation where she reproduces the work and he can’t, but the investigation concludes that she forged the work basically so everyone can save face. Isaac eventually kills himself without clearing her name (still, yay though) and Claire is blamed for this and is further unwelcome in any meaningful art circles.
There was also the inevitable romance with the gallery owner that left me sighing in ‘Can we please get past this part?’ as well. He’s young and rich and handsome and charming and in over his head and Claire saves him. It was so predictable.
Anyway. What I really liked about The Art Forger was the art stuff. The art history, the oddly specific information about paint, the mystery of the Gardner Museum theft and the mystery of Gardner herself. The mystery about the shady dealings of the gallery owner was also actually pretty good in terms of plot. The only stuff I really disliked was Claire’s ‘Backstory of Sad and Dumb’ which was a lot of the book. I dunno. Maybe I am unusual or dysfunctional or programmed incorrectly or whatever, but I never fell for manipulative guys like Isaac. I never believed them when they said only I could help them. I love my husband very much but I don’t for one second think that I am the only one who can save him from his own artistically void state of blah blah blah BS. Most romance bores me at the best of times and this tragic romance of young woman manipulated by her professor into painting a masterpiece she never gets credit for and he kills himself over thereby doubling her burden had me rolling my eyes so hard I pulled a muscle.
I guess this book is for somebody. It wasn’t for me. The art stuff was awesome. The rest? Meh.
Warlight
Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight was one of the few books I physically read in 2019. I believe it came out in 2018 and was on the long list for The Booker Prize, for those of you who care about these things.
This was one of those books that was heartbreakingly beautiful and also so bittersweet and sad that I was devastated when it was over.
It follows 14 year old Nathaniel towards the end of the second world war in London. Nathaniel’s parents leave Nathaniel and his older sister, Rachel, in the care of their lodger while they go off for “work” in Singapore. The lodger, The Moth (actually named Walter), associates with an eccentric crowd that shapes the children’s lives during the postwar period.
Another acquaintance, ‘The Darter’ helps Nathaniel gain employment, where he meets and sleeps with Agnes (not her real name). After the year is up and their parents still haven’t returned, Nathaniel and Rachel begin to suspect that their mother is still in England, and Nathaniel begins to suspect he is being followed.
Nathaniel, Rachel, and Walter are eventually attacked by the men following Nathaniel, and when he and Rachel awaken, they’ve already been rescued, but Walter was killed. They briefly see their mother, who implies that giving up her children was part of “the deal” she made to keep them safe. Nathaniel and Rachel are then separated and rehomed.
In 1959, Nathaniel, now and adult, is working in the Foreign Office. He is part of a censorship effort regarding espionage activities towards the end of the war. Nathaniel is looking for the people from that part of his life, including his mother, which is part of his motivation for working in the Foreign Office. He spends the rest of the book looking for her and the people who so shaped his life as an adolescent.
This is one of those books that hints the past never really stays in the past, and that memory is a construct of the older, wiser self. The second part I admit I didn’t totally come up with on my own, I’m summarizing the reviews I read after the book. The first part I did, though! It’s also obviously a book about the lingering effects of war.
The book itself was beautifully written – the language is engaging and intricate, with many plot points more implied than revealed.
I really enjoyed this book even though it broke my heart. If you don’t like that kind of thing, don’t read it, but if you do…this is a good one.
The Wolf in the Attic
I picked up Paul Kearney’s The Wolf in the Attic by chance when I was in Barnes & Noble one day with my mom. I was attracted by the title which interested me, and by the blurb on the back which featured CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. They weren’t huge parts of the story but they did clearly inspire some of the setting and I appreciated that.
The story revolves around Anna Francis, a refugee of the Great War, in England from Greece, where her village was destroyed by (IIRC) the Ottomans. Her mother and brother were killed, and Anna and her father managed to make it to England, where Anna was bullied for being foreign so badly that she was eventually pulled out of school. Aside from her tutor, her only friend is her doll, Penelope, who Anna is aware is not real but is still acknowledged to be her best friend. Penelope is the only one Anna can talk about her homeland and her mother and brother with; her father does not want to talk about it. Her father has become involved with a political group of Greek ex-pats and has taken to heavy drinking.
With little else to do when not studying, Anna explores the house in which she lives and wanders the streets of Oxford and the surrounding countryside. She eventually meets a boy with yellow eyes in the attic and then his family in the woods – and her life takes quite the turn.
This was a historical fiction and fantasy book which I truly enjoyed, even though books like this aren’t usually my jam. Anna is a wonderful character, childlike but still smart and insightful, and her loneliness pervades the entire story. The writing was quite beautiful. I read part of the book on the train to and from New York City, and remember vividly looking out the window, startled to find I was on the Hudson River in New York, not in Oxfordshire.
The book’s ending suggested a sequel and I would not hesitate to read another of Kearney’s books, especially one featuring Anna. I absolutely look forward to this, although it will probably be even further down the line than this review as I have so many other books to read.
That said, The Wolf in the Attic was a wonderful story and I highly recommend it.
Dragon Teeth
Dragon Teeth is the first of Michael Crichton’s novels that I’ve read. You’d think I’d have read Jurassic Park, as it’s one of my all time favorite films, but no, I never have. I was originally going to listen to Jurassic Park, but it was on loan, and this came up as available.
I wanted to be a paleontologist as a kid. I was obsessed with dinosaur bones and knew an abnormal amount about them for a four to nine year old child. I still have tons of books about them and am still fairly obsessed all things considered. I don’t know why I didn’t follow that dream. It’s one of the things about my life that I really regret.
So this book called to me. It was my second historical fiction book in a row, but not on purpose.
This story follows William Johnson, a college student who gets involved in the rivalry between two men searching for dinosaur bones in the American West during the 1870s on a bet with another student. The ‘Bone Wars‘ as they were called, was a real rivalry between Othenial Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, both of whom are fictionalized and play prominent roles in this story.
Johnson becomes an assistant to first Marsh, who is portrayed as a paranoid lunatic, and Marsh eventually abandons Johnson (a student!) in Cheyenne when he suspects he’s a spy for Cope. Johnson then actually joins up with Cope. They head out west, and make it, in spite of Marsh doing everything in his power to discredit them. News of Custer’s defeat by Sitting Bull at the Battle of Little Bighorn means travel to Montana is banned, but Cope’s group sneaks in and start digging up dinosaur bones.
On their journey back, the group is attacked by the Sioux and are separated, and Johnson is missing and presumed dead. Cope wires his parents and the remaining team leaves for the east coast. Johnson manages to drag himself, injured, to Deadwood Gulch, and the rest of the story is his journey to get home and what happens to the dinosaur bones in his possession.
This book was actually really funny. I listened to a lot of it at the gym, and it was wildly hilarious. Marsh is a lunatic and Cope isn’t much better but is at least not also paranoid, and Johnson kind of can’t believe how in over his head he is. I will have to check out more of Crichton’s books in the future.
It was fun. Everything I wanted in a story about the search for dinosaur bones in 1876. Made me regret not becoming a paleontologist again.
The Winter Station
The first time I noticed Jody Shields’ The Winter Station, I tagged it as a book I had to read based on the title alone. I also remember reading the synopsis and thinking it was interesting, but when I finally got around to reading the book, I must have confused it with another because it wasn’t about what I thought it was about at all.
“So what was it about?” you ask. Good question!
During the freezing cold winter of 1910 in Kharbin, a remote but major Russian controlled rail outpost in Manchuria, Northern China, the bodies of two men are found frozen in the snow outside Central Station. Because the deaths were of two Chinese men, they were not considered relevant, and the city’s chief medical officer, Baron von Budberg, was not called. There were no death certificates, the bodies were not examined, and were quickly forgotten. And then, suddenly, people are mysteriously dying at an alarming rate. Baron von Budberg is a Russian aristocrat who finds himself facing a plague that he and his colleagues are struggling to contain before it spreads to the rest of the world on the trains that come and go so frequently. Bodies are disappearing. The doctor finds himself battling Russian custom, as well as human prejudice, and the dichotomy of western medical science and his own respect for Chinese traditional medicine. In his fight, he finds himself allied with a black market mercenary, a French doctor, and a theatrical Chinese dwarf. He hides from the world in the arms of his young Chinese wife, who also has secrets.
This book sounds a lot more exciting than it is, but it isn’t a bad book. I read a lot of reviews for it after I completed it and the main complaint seemed to be this wasn’t a thriller. I guess the problem with the blurbs on the jacket of the book is that the they’re trying to get you to buy the book, not necessarily enjoy it. The blurb on this book does make it sound like it’s a quick paced race against time, and while it is a race against time, it’s not a mile a minute seat of your pants race against time. It’s an atmospheric slow burning medical drama with someone trying to do the right thing while being pulled in several different forceful directions and frustrated by bureaucracy.
I have to say, it was a bit slow but overall I enjoyed it. It took me awhile to enjoy it though. Much like my experience with Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, I was quite close to the end before fully understanding and liking the book. The protagonist, von Budberg, is a good man who is a well written, fully developed character. Some of the supporting characters could have used some fleshing out, but it wasn’t a deal breaker. There was some beautiful language in this book, but I spotted some incongruities in the writing – sometimes a character would start speaking that I wasn’t even aware was in the room. Again, not a deal breaker, just something that took me momentarily out of the story.
This is another historical fiction work that has highlighted how lacking my historical education has been in many cases. The jacket says this is based on a story that has been lost to history, but it’s not *that* lost, I think. I can find stuff on it with a Google search – the story coming to light again due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Winter Station was based on the 1910-1911 plague outbreak in Manchuria. The general outline of events is this: a pneumonic plague that was believed to have originated from a tarbagan marmot infected with bacterial pneumonia jumped to humans who were probably hunting the marmots for their fur. An airborne disease that was also highly contagious, this plague had a near 100% fatality rate and wiped out about 60,000 people over the course of one winter.
This is totally not fair to tarbagan marmots, by the way, because they are freaking *adorable.* They’re like little fat woodchucks who are mostly harmless but who definitely carry pneumonic disease that can spread to humans when the marmots are eaten (especially if the meat is uncooked) or if a flea bites the human after biting an infected marmot (like the plague spread by rats in Europe, but the marmots are WAY cuter).
The Manchurian plague was one of the first disease outbreaks that highlighted the need for a multi-national response, foreshadowing international medical groups, like the World Health Organization. Because Japan and Russia had economic interests in Manchuria and the disease was so fatal, the Chinese government requested help from the international community and support from foreign doctors.
At least one of the characters in this book was real. Dr. Wu Lien-teh was a Cambridge trained Malaysian doctor who was called in to assist the situation. He advocated for the use of masks as personal protective equipment, to be worn by doctors, nurses, patients, and when possible, the population at large. The mask he developed was a predecessor of the N-95, popular today as PPE medical providers use to protect themselves from Covid-19. In the book, Dr. Wu faces massive prejudice from certain members of the majority white, European team of doctors, but Dr. Wu turns out to be right, so he get the last laugh, as it were. Baron von Budberg, to his credit, thinks very highly of Dr. Wu in the story.
Dr. Wu probably deserves a book all his own. He may have one that I just haven’t found yet, for all I know. But he practiced medicine until he was 80 and helped develop the first hazmat suit.
Again, The Winter Station was *not* a fast paced thriller but a slow burning medical drama. I greatly enjoyed it, although I didn’t realize how much I was enjoying it until it was nearly over. As long as you know it isn’t a Dan Brown novel going in, there’s no reason why you can’t also enjoy it.
The Winternight Trilogy
Katherine Arden’s Winternight Trilogy is an adult historical fantasy series that consists of three books:
The Bear and the Nightingale
The Girl in the Tower
The Winter of the Witch
I listened to all of them in 2019, and I loved them so much that I bought them as books.
These books contained what was, by far, my favorite story of 2019 and I loved the saga so much that I cried when it was over (not a typical reaction for me).
The series centers on Vasilisa Petrovna, or Vasya, the youngest of five children in a remote Russian village. Her father is the boyar of the village (basically a lord in the Eastern European feudal system), and Vasya is the only (living) member of her family who has the ability to see creatures of Russian folklore, such as the domovoy who lives in their home, the rusalka of a lake in the forest, the bannik of the bathhouse, and Morozko, the frost king.
The story follows Vasya’s journey for personal freedom, from adolescent to young adult woman, within the confines of both her gender and her society’s values in medieval Russia. She is a likable and compelling heroine, and I *really* liked her. Per the author: “She is strong enough to embrace her differences, but she still reads as a woman of her time.” I felt alternately elated and terrible for her, as she struggled to do what was right for herself, her family, and eventually her country. The world building was impressive and immersive, and I enjoyed wandering through the forests with Vasya and Solovey.
There are also clear elements of Russian folklore and Slavic myth woven into Vasya’s tale, and I learned more about the history of medieval Russia than I ever learned in school. My favorite creature was definitely the domovoy, although I liked Morozko a lot too. There is also insight into Russian names, which I have never been able to figure out before (not that I extensively tried), but the explanations of how names work in the translation from Russian to English made this book *much* easier to understand.
In case you can’t tell, I highly recommend this novel series. You know how sometimes you leave a story feeling like you’ve been changed? I felt like that here. I’m not sure why, exactly, but I came out in love with Vasya’s world and plan to reread the series again in the not too distant future. I hope everyone else who reads it enjoys it as much as I did. I loved it.
A Gentleman in Moscow
Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow was the last novel I got through in 2018 and was also, quite possibly, my favorite.
Our protagonist, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, was a Russian born aristocrat in the late 1880s. He and his younger sister became orphans when he was 10 or 11 (his parents died of cholera within hours of each other, IIRC). His father’s companion in the war, another aristocrat (who was a grand duke, IIRC) told 11 year old Rostov that he had to be strong for his sister and that he had to learn to master his circumstances, or else his circumstances would master him.
Rostov was later sent out of the country by his grandmother for wounding his sister’s suitor (a playboy) that broke her heart. When he returned from Paris in 1917, he was arrested by the Bolsheviks and put on trial for being a social parasite. He refuses to confess, and expects to be shot, but is saved by a revolutionary poem that is attributed to him. He is still found guilty but instead of being shot, is ordered to spend his life under house arrest at his current residence – the Hotel Metropol in Moscow.
Rostov is quickly booted out of his luxurious suite and put in the cramped servant’s quarters in the attic. Most of his possessions are taken from him and he is required to work as a waiter at the hotel to help earn his keep. One of his first friends there is Nina, a nine year old girl who is the daughter of a widowed bureaucrat who is fascinated by princesses.
Nina returns in 1938 as a married woman with a child, whose husband is sentenced to time in the gulag. She’s decided to go with him, so she drops her daughter Sofia off with Rostov and requests he take care of her until she gets back. This is the last time Rostov sees Nina, and he becomes Sofia’s surrogate father.
The story goes on from there.
This story was satisfying and optimistic and hopeful, which I loved. I enjoyed the theme of mastering circumstance – the Count, once a Russian aristocrat who had people serving him, finds himself a waiter, and is working with the people who once waited on him – the other waiters, the bartenders, the seamstresses, the doormen. His social standing drastically plummets, and yet, he becomes their peer, their coworker and confidant, and eventually their friend. He was never a bad guy, but he was someone else, and he makes these friends, and his friends make his situation bearable. He masters his circumstance.
I loved this book. It was a great way to end the year, because it was on such a high note. I highly recommend it.
Mr. Dickens and His Carol
One of my favorite stories ever is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, and Dickens gets a lot of credit for “inventing” Christmas with that story. His tale of a crotchety, miserly old man visited by three ghosts of Christmas whose teachings grow his heart three sizes warms my heart every Christmas. I make it a point to read/listen to A Christmas Carol each year, and each year I watch the movie with my mom. The best version is the black and white version with Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge.
Samantha Silva’s Mr. Dickens and His Carol is one of a series of tellings about Dickens writing his famous Christmas story that have arrived on the scene in the last few years.
The premise: Dickens, his latest novel (Martin Chuzzlewit) a flop with critics turning against him, is blackmailed by his publishers into writing a Christmas story to save them all from financial ruin. This includes Dickens himself, whose growing family and social circle is becoming more and more unruly, with his wife planning a large Christmas party for just about everyone they know. With a nasty bout of writers’ block and an approaching deadline coming up fast, Dickens meets a muse named Eleanor Lovejoy, who sends Dickens on a Scrooge-like journey of his own, testing his beliefs in generosity, friendship, and love.
The story he writes changes the way the world looks at Christmas.
A little history: this era in England – the Victorian era – was the time when celebrating the Christmas season was becoming a big deal. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert popularized the Christmas tree in Britain, and carols had experienced a revival. Other Christmas stories had proven successful, so it isn’t unbelievable that Dickens’s publishers would coerce him into writing one.
I loved this book. I thought it would be sappy and over sentimental but it wasn’t. I liked that Dickens was a grumpy old man and that he bah humbug’d it a couple of times. I liked that his relationship with Eleanor was more that of friendship than dirty old man, which was what I was expecting. I don’t know why I was expecting this, but I was wrong and was happy about it.
A Christmas Carol was supposedly written in a frenzied six weeks, with much of the work composed in Dickens’s head as he took long nighttime walks around London (some accounts say as many as 15-20 miles) and I felt Silva did a particularly good job conveying this time crunch in the book. Writing the whole thing in six weeks required a lot of frenzied periods of activity, and I felt that here.
Dickens put an emphasis on a humanitarian side of the season, and that was felt here too, showing Dickens influences due to his relationships with his family, friends, and fans.
And of course, there was a happy ending.
Mr. Dickens and His Carol is a must read for anyone who loves Dickens, A Christmas Carol, and the spirit of the holiday.
words in scarlet ink 