2022 ~ Your Historical Fiction Adventures ~ Part II

Time to pick up here where we left off the first half of this year.

Starting this OverDrive audio selection ~

A Sunlit Weapon: A Novel (Maisie Dobbs series, Book 17)
by Jacqueline Winspear
(Eleanor Roosevelt is included in this historical fiction installment)

I'm currently reading Bugles in the afternoon and it's quite a pleasant surprise, so far.

I'm reading Karen Harper's The Royal Nanny, a fictionalized life of Charlotte ("Lala") Bill, nanny to Edward VIII, George VI and their four younger siblings, particularly the youngest, Prince John, who suffered from epilepsy and possibly autism, and was kept from the public eye. It's quite interesting, though I could do with less of the presumably fictional unconsummated romance with the Sandringham gamekeeper.

I just finished Ken Follett’s Century trilogy Fall of Giants, Winter of the World, Edge of Eternity about the 20th century. He’s not the most lyrical writer but his books are very well-plotted and entertaining.

>4 tealadytoo:, Gina McKee played Charlotte ("Lala") Bill in the "Lost Prince" on "Masterpiece Theatre" in 2003. She previously played Irene in the 2002-03 adaptation of The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy

>6 princessgarnet: Oh, cool! I'll have to look for that.

I read The Woman in the Moonlight, which was the fictionalized account of Beethoven and his dedication of 'The Moonlight Sonata' to a 16 year old student of his (later to become his lover?), Giulietta Guicciardi. Most of the book focused on Giulietta though, instead of Beethoven, although he was central to the story.

Starting this historical fiction OverDrive audio ~

The Tobacco Wives: A Novel
by Adele Myers

Just finished the opening of The Baker's Secret by Stephen P. Kiernan. Occupied France, WWII, and I could smell the baguettes baking.

The Paris Orphan Natasha Lester. A different topic than other World war II novels and an engaging read

I just finished The Barrakee Mystery, the first book in a series set in the Australian bush in the early 20th century. Quite good and look forward to continuing the series.

revisiting

Gone With The Wind
(via hoopla audio)

I finished A Man Without Breath, the 9th book in Philip Kerr's excellent Bernie Gunther noir crime series. The beginning of this series found Bernie Gunther as a Berlin homicide detective in 1935, as the Nazi's were quickly taking over all aspects of life in Germany, much to Gunther's dismay and disgust. Gunther has both a solid moral compass and a backbone, and was not loath to let his strong anti-Nazi sentiment be known. It is 1943. Gunther, due to his long career as an investigator, finds himself, to his own disgust, officially a member of the SD, the intelligence wing of the SS. He is sent to Smolensk in German occupied Russia. The war's great turning point, the German defeat at Stalingrad, has just occurred. But just outside Smolensk, a giant unmarked graveyard has just been discovered in a place called Katyn Woods. Gunther sets about doing this job, surrounded by a cast of German officers and Russian locals who motives vary. And then murders begin occurring, as murders will in murder mysteries. Gunther has his mission, and yet, of course, his homicide detective instincts come to the fore. As always, Gunther is swimming in a stream of shifting motives, violence, compromise and downright evil. He manages to keep his own sense of right and wrong afloat, but his soul becomes more battered and scarred with each book.

I just finished Wolf Hall which, as by now everybody knows, is an excellent novel about the early to middle reign of Henry VIII, focusing on and seen through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell. The genius of this book is Mantel's focus on the details of Cromwell's life: his personal relationships and tragedies, political maneuverings and skillful use of power, which he is always accumulating more of. Who knows how absolutely accurate all Mantel's day-to-day details are about the figures in Cromwell's household and his minute-by-minute political strategies. Mantel herself in her acknowledgements speaks of her own "fumbling speculations." I don't really care much about that. This is fiction after all, and Mantel provides an aura of authority about, at the very least, the principal political/religious players and their opinions and actions. I will say, though, that after a while (about halfway through) the tone and narrative voice began to seem repetitive to me. I had to push through that somewhat in order to get re-involved with the storytelling. That, plus Cromwell did seem a little too good to be true. Anyway, those reservations are relatively minor. Mantel's navigations through the pitch and yaw of the political scene of 16th century England, which, as we read, not incidentally provides plenty of insight into the use and abuse of power more generally, and the frequent vanity and crassness of the powerful, adds up all in all to a very rich and enjoyable artistic experience.

I have finished The siege of Krishnapur which was everything I was promised it would be.

I finished Snow Country by I.J. Parker, the third entry in Parker's Sugawara Akitada Mysteries series. Akitada is a low-level nobleman in 11th-century Japan who's become known, in the series' first two books, for his ability to solve murders and annoy his superiors. Now he's been sent to be the governor of a far northern province where the emperor's authority is but barely acknowledged and a powerful warlord holds sway instead. Akitada's job is to get this situation in hand. He is accompanied by his wife and by his two loyal lieutenants, Tora and Hitomara. Soon, as will happen in murder mysteries, there is a murder. Then the bodies begin accumulating. Plus there is the problem for Akitada of asserting his imperial authority. These books have been fun all along, and I will say that in this third book the quality of the writing has gone up a notch, both in terms of the sentence-level work (many fewer cliches, for one thing) and the the plotting.

I am having fun with the adventure classics of Rafael Sabatini. The Sea-Hawk features Barbary pirates in the Elizabethan age, The trampling of the lilies is set during the French Revolution. Ripping yarns both.