Book Review – The Map of Bones by Kate Mosse

About the Book

Olifantshoek, Southern Africa, 1688. When the violent Cape wind blows from the south-east, they say the voices of the unquiet dead can be heard whispering through the deserted valley. Suzanne Joubert, a Huguenot refugee from war-torn France, is here to walk in her cousin’s footsteps. Louise Reydon-Joubert, the notorious she-captain and pirate commander, landed at the Cape of Good Hope more than sixty years ago, then disappeared from the record as if she had never existed. Suzanne has come to find her – to lay the stories to rest. But all is not as it seems…

Franschhoek, Southern Africa, 1862. Nearly one hundred and eighty years after Suzanne’s perilous journey, another intrepid and courageous woman of the Joubert family – Isabelle Lepard – has journeyed to the small frontier town once known as Oliftantshoek in search of her long-lost relations. A journalist and travel writer, intent on putting the women of her family back into the history books, she quickly discovers that the tragedies and crimes of the past are far from over. Isabelle faces a race against time if she is not only going to discover the truth but escape with her life…

Format: ebook (462 pages) Publisher: Mantle
Publication date: 10th October 2024 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

The Map of Bones is the fourth and final book in the series chronicling the lives of the Joubert family, a series which has taken us from 16th century France to 19th century Cape Town. (You can read my reviews of the previous books in the series – The Burning Chambers, The City of Tears and The Ghost Ship – by following the links from each title.) I suggest The Map of Bones is best enjoyed if you have read previous books in the series since there is an extensive family tree and a deadly rivalry which extends all the way back to the first book. If you haven’t got time to embark on the whole series, then a good compromise would be to read The Ghost Ship as events in this book follow straight on from that one.

Suzanne’s search for the truth about what happened to her forbear, Louise Reydon-Joubert (the infamous captain of the vessel known as the ‘Ghost Ship’) after she arrived in Cape Town, involves a perilous voyage of her own and a journey to the interior of a country in which relations between settlers and the indigenous population are fragile and likely to explode at any moment.

The author’s reasearch is always second to none, and as in all her novels, the period setting is wonderfully evoked so that you can imagine yourself walking the streets of early Cape Town or traversing the interior of the country dodging jaguars and maurauding baboons.

Suzanne’s quest is partly successful, although not before she has experienced great danger, but still leaves many unanswered questions about Louise’s life and the reason she stayed in South Africa. It’s only in the second part of the book that those gaps begin to be filled. I used to think the secret diary a convenient trope of historical fiction but, of course, for many women living in earlier times a journal was the only medium through which they could document events in their lives or express their feelings, so I greet its use by authors with more generosity these days.

Isabelle’s financial situation, the result of an inheritance, may make her journey across the world more comfortable but it’s still a perilous one for a single woman travelling alone. It requires her to marshall all the courage and independence of spirit of her female forbears because when she embarks on her enquiries in Cape Town she finds the legacy of that rivalry I mentioned at the beginning still persists. And what she discovers is a story of violence but also of an intense and loving relationship that could only flourish beyond the fringes of society.

The book’s finale reflects the author’s own passion for bringing the achievements of women, past and present, out of the shadows and into the light.

I would have loved to learn more about the latter years of Suzanne’s life, which is rather glossed over in the book. Perhaps the author is saving that for a companion novel? Although The Map of Bones doesn’t have quite the riproaring adventure of The Ghost Ship, it’s still an enthralling and satisfying conclusion to the series.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of Mantle via NetGalley.

In three words: Dramatic, intricate, immersive

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About the Author

Kate Mosse CBE, FRSL is an award-winning novelist, playwright, essayist and non-fiction writer. The author of eleven novels and short-story collections, her books have been translated into thirty-eight languages and published in more than forty countries. Fiction includes the multimillion-selling Languedoc Trilogy, The Joubert Family Chronicles, and number one bestselling Gothic fiction. Her highly acclaimed non-fiction includes An Extra Pair of Hands and Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries: How Women (Also) Built the World.

The Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, she is the founder of the global #WomenInHistory campaign. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Kate is a Visiting Professor of Contemporary Fiction and Creative Writing at the University of Chichester, President of the Festival of Chichester, Fellow of the Society of Authors and a Trustee of the British Library.

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