Category: Blog Tour

#BlogTour #BookReview The Shanghai Wife by Emma Harcourt @RandomTTours @Harper360UK

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Shanghai Wife by Emma Harcourt. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tour for inviting me to take part in the tour and to HarperCollins for my digital review copy.

The Shanghai WifeAbout the Book

Forbidden friendship, political conspiracy and incendiary passion draw Australian woman Annie Brand deep into the glamour and turmoil of 1920s Shanghai.

Shanghai, 1925. Leaving behind the loneliness and trauma of her past in country Australia, Annie Brand arrives to the political upheaval and glittering international society of Shanghai in the 1920s. Journeying up the Yangtze with her new husband, the ship’s captain, Annie revels in the sense of adventure but when her husband decides the danger is too great and sends her back to Shanghai, her freedom is quickly curtailed.

Against her will, Annie finds herself living alone in the International Settlement, increasingly suffocated by the judgemental Club ladies and their exclusive social scene: one even more restrictive than that she came from. Sick of salacious gossip and colonial condescension, and desperate to shake off the restrictions of her position in the world, Annie is slowly drawn into the bustling life and otherness of the real Shanghai, and begins to see the world from the perspective of the local people, including the servants who work at her husband’s Club.

But this world is far more complex and dangerous than the curious Annie understands and unknowingly, she becomes caught in a web of intrigue and conspiracy as well as a passionate and forbidden love affair she could not have predicted: one with far–reaching consequences…

Format: Paperback (304 pages)             Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date:16th September 2021 Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance

Find The Shanghai Wife on Goodreads

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Bookshop.org
Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

Hive | Amazon UK
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

I really enjoyed the book’s opening section in which Annie travels along the Yangtze river on the working boat captained by her husband, Alec. In fact, I was as disappointed as Annie when, because of the fear of attack by pirates, she is forced to return to Shanghai and the relative safety of the International Settlement, the part of the city not under Chinese control. (The author’s Historical Note provides more information on the political situation in Shanghai during the period in which the book is set.)

The Shanghai Wife provides a vivid insight into the growing unrest in Shanghai in the 1920s, although this is almost exclusively seen from the point of view of the foreign inhabitants living securely within the confines of the International Settlement. In particular, the ladies of the Shanghai Maritime Club are largely oblivious to what is going on in the old city, more interested as they are in their bridge parties, preparations for the next Club ball or when tea will be served. Only Annie senses a growing apprehensiveness as she travels around the city. ‘This was more than the edginess of summer heat; there was fresh tension in the streets’. That tension will shortly erupt into violence.

Annie is well-meaning but impulsive and rather naive, as a result of which she frequently puts herself – and others – at risk, on occasions with deadly consequences. Even Annie admits at one point that ‘she had made a terrible mess of things’. From the beginning, there are hints of a traumatic event in Annie’s past the nature of which is only revealed at the end of the book but goes some way to explaining her instinct to try to rescue others in danger.  Despite expressing a desire to learn more about the daily lives of the Chinese people and railing against the racist attitudes of the Club ladies, Annie demonstrates a degree of hypocrisy, relying as she does on servants whose names are never used, referred to merely as ‘houseboy’ or ‘wash amah’.

Chow, the maitre d’hotel of the Club, is the exception; he’s a living, breathing individual not just one more ‘Chinaman’. Annie welcomes his attentive attitude and kindness towards her, especially when events leave her feeling lonely and isolated.  Their friendship is frowned upon by other less enlightened members of the International Settlement; interracial relationships definitely being a no-go area. Nevertheless, Chow tries to respond to Annie’s wish to experience the ‘real’ Shanghai, not all of which she finds attractive.  He chides her, ‘This is my Shanghai, Mrs Brand, the vitality and the poverty, but perhaps you are not ready. Remember, please, that your standards are not ours, do not judge what you don’t understand.’  It turns out the city is a place of hidden dangers leading to some dramatic events towards the end of the book.

If you long for a combination of mystery, romance and melodrama set in a fascinating location, then The Shanghai Wife may be just the book for you.

In three words: Romantic, dramatic, action-packed

Try something similar: Summer of the Three Pagodas by Jean Moran

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Emma Harcourt Author PicAbout the Author

Emma Harcourt has worked as a journalist for over 25 years, in Australia, the UK and Hong Kong. In 2011, she completed the Faber Academy Writing a Novel course and The Shanghai Wife was born. Emma lives in Sydney with her two daughters. She is currently working on her second novel.

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#BlogTour #BookReview The Improbable Adventures of Miss Emily Soldene: Actress, Writer, and Rebel Victorian by Helen Batten @AllisonandBusby

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Improbable Adventures of Miss Emily Soldene: Actress, Writer, and Rebel Victorian by Helen Batten. My thanks to Helen at Helen Richardson PR for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Allison & Busby for my review copy. Do be sure to check out the reviews by the other book bloggers taking part in the tour.

The Improbable Adventures of Emily SoldeneAbout the Book

‘I rode on the stage in such style, that the men in front forgot I was a girl, and also forgot to laugh.’

From humble beginnings as the daughter of a Clerkenwell milliner, Emily Soldene rose to become a leading lady of the London stage and a formidable impresario with her own opera company. The darling of London’s theatreland, she later reinvented herself as a journalist and writer who scandalised the capital with her backstage revelations.

Weaving through the spurious glamour of Victorian music halls and theatres, taking encounters with the Pre-Raphaelites and legal disputes involving Charles Dickens in her stride, Emily became the toast of New York and ventured far off the beaten track to tour in Australia and New Zealand. In The Improbable Adventures of Miss Emily Soldene, a life filled with performance, travel and incident returns to centre stage.

Format: Hardcover (320 pages)               Publisher: Allison & Busby
Publication date: 23rd September 2021 Genre: Nonfiction, Biography

Find The Improbable Adventures of Miss Emily Soldene: Actress, Writer, and Rebel Victorian on Goodreads

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Publisher | Hive | Amazon UK
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My Review

Helen Batten’s fascinating book explores Emily’s eventful journey from country girl, to music hall artiste, to doyenne of opera bouffe, to theatrical producer, novelist and journalist.  She also brings out of the shadows Emily’s family – her husband, children, nephews and nieces – who are curiously absent from not only Emily’s memoirs but also largely from her life and career. The exception is the relationship between Emily and her sister, Clara, the dynamics of which the author explores in some detail.

Helen Batten admits in her introduction that there are gaps in Emily’s memoirs – and sometimes downright untruths – which she has filled either with information from other sources or with speculation. The latter is always well-argued and insightful. By the way, in the introduction Helen explains her own very particular connection to Emily Soldene.

Alongside Emily’s story, the author includes fascinating nuggets of social history whether that’s contemporary attitudes to marriage and parenting roles, the Victorian male’s predeliction for saucy postcards, the prevalence of the casting couch in Victorian theatre, or the beginnings of the cult of celebrity journalism. Clearly the product of extensive research, this historical detail is delivered in an accessible way that never feels heavy-handed. Helen Batten also takes the opportunity to bring other female theatrical entrepreneurs out of the shadows, such as Charlotte Cushman, a singer and actress who became the first female theatre manager in the United States.

The author makes judicious use of excerpts from Emily’s memoirs and her newspaper columns. These really allow Emily to come alive, showcasing her keen observational skills and wicked sense of humour. One example is her less than complimentary observations about New York ladies of 1874: ‘They wore diamonds at the breakfast table, and cut through the vast space of the hotel dining-room with elevated, thin, nasal, metallic voices that made one’s skin creep.’ Being thin is something Emily herself could never be accused of.  Many years later attending the Motor Show at Olympia Emily imagines the conversation in the salon set aside for members of the Ladies’ Automobile Club: ‘Tea and transmissions, coffee and clutches, macaroons and magnetos, discussed with ardour and zest’.   As the author rightly observes of Emily’s journalism, ‘Her joie de vivre bubbles up in her prose like the literary equivalent of Offenbach’s champagne bounce’.

There is a great cast of secondary characters with walk-on parts for, among others, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde (‘unconvential, not to say impertinent’ remarks Emily) and aristocratic figures such as Lord Dunraven, whom Emily describes admiringly as ‘Gay, bright, clever and full of life; and who after the opera would walk home with us, cut the cold beef, and open the oysters and stout with the unconvential facility of the man who has been everywhere…’  As it happens, oysters and stout feature prominently in Emily’s life.

During her life Emily was also witness to many historic events including the 1908 London Olympics, the Sidney Street siege, the opening of the Central Line of the London Underground, and even the invention of the mobile phone. Yes, really… okay, an early version of it.  About the latter Emily wonders with uncanny prescience whether it will prove ‘a beneficent boon or a holy terror’.

As well as being a fascinating, impeccably researched and hugely entertaining read, the book contains some wonderful photographs of Emily, members of her family and of locations mentioned in the book. I absolutely loved following Emily’s ‘improbable adventures’ as she criss-crosses the globe. The book is a picture of a woman who lived life at full tilt and on her own terms; an example of girl power in the Victorian age, if you like.

In her introduction to the book, Helen Batten observes that Emily’s memoirs don’t tell the whole story. She writes, ‘I think she left some of the best bits out. So I’ve put them back in’. Helen, you absolutely did.

In three words: Fascinating, spirited, entertaining

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Helen BattenAbout the Author

Helen Batten is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Sisters of the East End, and of The Scarlet Sisters which told the story of her grandmother’s life. She is also the co-author of Confessions of a Showman: My Life in the Circus, Gerry Cottle’s autobiography.

After reading history at Cambridge, Helen studied journalism at Cardiff University. She went on to become a producer and director at the BBC. She now works as a writer and psychotherapist. She lives in West London with her three daughters.

Connect with Helen
Twitter | Goodreads

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