Book Review – Ravenglass by Carolyn Kirby @novelcarolyn @northodoxpress

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About the Book

In 18th century Whitehaven, Kit Ravenglass grows up in a house of secrets. A shameful mystery surrounds his mother’s death, and his formidable, newly rich father is gambling everything on shipping ventures. Kit takes solace in his beloved sister Fliss, and her sumptuous silks, although he knows better than to reveal his delight in feminine fashion. As the family’s debts mount, Kit’s father turns to the transatlantic slave trade – a ruthless and bloody traffic to which more than a fortune might be lost.

At a private Naval Academy, Kit is jolted into unruly boyhood and scandal before his first taste of life at sea. Adventures will see him turn fugitive and begin living as ‘Stella,’ before being swept into the heady violence of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s rebellion. Driven by love, revenge and a desire to live truly and freely, Kit must find a way to survive these turbulent times – and to unravel the tragic secrets of the Ravenglass family.

Format: Paperback (448 pages) Publisher: Northodox Press
Publication date: 25th September 2025 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

It was only as I was planning my trip tomorrow to see Carolyn Kirby interview fellow author Andrew Taylor at Oxford Literary Festival (event details here) that I realised I’d never published my review of this wonderful book, one of my favourite historical novels of last year.

From his earliest years, Kit has felt uncomfortable in male attire and found pleasure in wearing his sister’s clothing. He even invents a female persona for himself, whom he christens Stella. It is something he knows will inevitably bring him into conflict with his father. ‘For more than anything, my father wanted me to be manly. And so it was my fate to always let him down.’

The opening section of the book is set in Whitehaven, a port on the north-west coast of England. It’s a ‘wind blasted’ town where the presence of the sea constantly assails the senses. There’s the ‘the crack of sailcloth, the creaking of hulls and the disquieting growls of the shipmen’, the taste of salt on the tongue and the odour of the harbour, a ‘rumbling, pulsing shit-slopping belly’. The town’s fortunes rest on trade, with ships coming and going carrying coal and other cargo. Sadly it’s also reliant on the increasingly lucrative slave trade with Kit’s father being a leading share-holder of the Resolve, a slave ship.

The author immerses the reader in daily life in 18th century Whitehaven, introducing us to archaic industries such as the milling of snuff. I particularly loved the description of the Lammas Day fair where activities include boxing bouts, races and a cockerel eating competition (yes, really). ‘Prentices and servant-girls, all in their best holland coats and camlet petticoats, crowd around peddlers of trinket-toys and ribbands.‘ Unfortunately events take a darker turn with Kit an unwilling witness to an example of everything he abhors about being a man.

Determined to purge his son of his ‘unmanly’ tendencies, Kit is sent to sea by his father where he experiences the rigours of life on board a ship where, on the lower decks, ‘nothing is odourless’, including the old seaman he is expected to share a hammock with. Completely against his nature, Kit finds himself having to demonstrate ‘manliness’, whether that’s uttering oaths, entertaining the crew with bawdy, bloodthirsty songs or climbing the mast in a storm. It typifies Kit’s struggle between what is expected of him as a man and what he instinctively feels to be his true identity.

Following a series of tragic events, Kit takes to the road dressed as a woman, resurrecting Stella. What follows is a series of adventures that have a picaresque quality, involving encounters with a multitude of colourful characters. For example, millinery shop owner Mrs McMemeny, complete with green velvet eye patch. Kit’s travels take him to Carlisle, Edinburgh and beyond, often buffeted by external events such as the Jacobite Revolution. And sometimes Kit discovers he’s got people completely wrong.

As well as being a thrilling adventure story, Ravenglass explores themes of sexuality and identity. Events often turn on items of clothing: a sulphur-yellow quilted petticoat, an embroidered silk waistcoat. And a person’s true sex is often revealed through bodily functions: menstruation or lack of menstruation, the way you pass urine, the inconvenient growth of hair.

A small niggle is that I would have liked more detail about Kit’s later years but aside from that I loved everything about Ravenglass. It’s a historical romp with a wonderfully engaging central character and authentic detail. A great example of accomplished storytelling.

In three words: Sweeping, immersive, spirited
Try something similar: The Romantic by William Boyd

About the Author

Carolyn Kirby’s debut novel The Conviction of Cora Burns was chosen for awards by the Historical Writers Association and by the Specsavers/Crimefest debut crime fiction prize. Carolyn’s second novel When We Fall was one of The Times’ top 20 historical novels of 2020. Originally from the northeast of England, Carolyn studied history at St Hilda’s College, Oxford and she is now on the organising committee for the annual St Hilda’s Crime Fiction Weekend.

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When We Fall

Book Review – What Remains After A Fire: Stories by Kanza Javed @dylanthomprize #SUDTP26

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About the Book

In eight unflinching and stunningly crafted stories, Kanza Javed unspools the lives of characters desperately trying to forge a path for themselves on the margins of society. An addict teaches his young son to shoot feral dogs on the streets of Lahore. A Christian nurse gets drawn into a plan to trap the ghost of her patient’s former lover. A Pakistani student in a small Appalachian town grapples with a startling act of violence that shatters her illusions of safety and freedom. A lonely wife becomes increasingly obsessed with a cloth worry doll left behind by a previous tenant.

Written with sharp insight and remarkable empathy, these stories reach across divides of class, gender, and religion as Javed deftly examines questions of identity and agency, belonging and loss. What Remains After a Fire is a moving portrayal of fiercely resilient characters who desire more than what their circumstances can offer them—and what these desires ultimately cost them.

Format: Hardcover (240 pages) Publisher: W. W. Norton
Publication date: 28th October 2025 Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Short Stories

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My Review

Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2026, the description of What Remains After A Fire as ‘a haunting, powerful collection of stories’ is absolutely spot on. It’s a fantastically strong collection, each story containing something to admire, to move you or to make you think about things in a different way.

Recurring themes of the stories include motherhood, grief and loss, the weight of cultural expectation and family obligations, and the often unbearable burden of secrets. Many of the female characters (and they are predominately female) are struggling to keep things together or to move forward with their lives. Death and dying feature frequently, often associated with facing up to guilt about past actions, even the idea that current suffering is the price to be paid for wrongdoings. Past trauma is replayed in nightmares or the ghosts of departed loved ones. Misfortune is seen as evidence of evil spirits, a much more convenient explanation than the result of human actions.

The male characters are often predatory, or cowed by social pressure or purveyors of a toxic masculinity. For example, in ‘Stray Things Do Not Carry A Soul’, a boy begins to absorb his father’s negative attitude to the women of the household, the boy’s mother and sister. ‘Do you see how the witches are conspiring against us?’ When the boy suggests his sister should be married off, his father responds approvingly ‘Now you’re thinking like a man’.

Each story is beautifully crafted and I found myself frequently jotting down phrases that stood out for me. For example, in ‘Rani’, a young woman’s dying grandmother is described as existing ‘in fragments, in vapors’. And in ‘I Will Follow You Home’, the city of Lahore is ‘a mottled mess of vanishing history and new regimes.’ In ‘Carry It All’ a woman who has suffered multiple miscarriages imagines ‘a heavenly orphanage for ghostly, unborn children’. She’s made to feel a failure by her husband’s family for being unable to bear a son, her childhood dreams of marriage and motherhood recognised now as mere fantasy. ‘In the real world – bodies matter, and in some houses, fertility was the only currency.’ And in ‘My Bones Hold A Stillness’, a young student reflects, ‘Guilt wrecks people. It chews them right up.’

In What Remains After A Fire the author explores what is left behind after loss, betrayal and displacement. Sometimes it’s nothing, sometimes mere fragments of a previous life, sometimes it’s a seed of something that just might grow and flourish if nurtured.

My thanks to Henrietta at Midas for inviting me to join the blog tour celebrating the longlist and to W.W. Norton for my review copy.

In three words: Poignant, intimate, disquieting

About the Author

Kanza Javed is a Pakistani author with an MFA in Fiction from West Virginia University, where she received the Rebecca Mason Perry Award. She is also the winner of the 2020 Reynolds Price Prize for Fiction. Her writing has been published in the American Literary Review, Punch Magazine, Salamander and Greensboro Review, among other publications.

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