Category: HF Reading Challenge

Book Review: The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason

whatcathyreadnext2 Comments

The Winter SoldierAbout the Book

Vienna, 1914. Lucius is a twenty-two-year-old medical student when World War I explodes across Europe. Enraptured by romantic tales of battlefield surgery, he enlists, expecting a position at a well-organized field hospital. But when he arrives, at a commandeered church tucked away high in a remote valley of the Carpathian Mountains, he finds a freezing outpost ravaged by typhus. The other doctors have fled, and only a single, mysterious nurse named Sister Margarete remains.

But Lucius has never lifted a surgeon’s scalpel. And as the war rages across the winter landscape, he finds himself falling in love with the woman from whom he must learn a brutal, makeshift medicine. Then one day, an unconscious soldier is brought in from the snow, his uniform stuffed with strange drawings. He seems beyond rescue, until Lucius makes a fateful decision that will change the lives of doctor, patient, and nurse forever.

From the gilded ballrooms of Imperial Vienna to the frozen forests of the Eastern Front; from hardscrabble operating rooms to battlefields thundering with Cossack cavalry, The Winter Soldier is the story of war and medicine, of family, of finding love in the sweeping tides of history, and finally, of the mistakes we make, and the precious opportunities to atone.

Format: Hardcover, ebook (336 pp.)    Publisher: Pan Macmillan/Mantle
Published: 20th September 2018 (ebook)   Genre: Historical Fiction, Historical Romance

Pre-order/Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Winter Soldier on Goodreads

My Review

The reader witnesses in brutal detail Lucius’ struggle to do his best for the soldiers in his care, many of whom have suffered terrible injuries that challenge his medical knowledge and surgical skills.  His task is made more difficult by the basic conditions in the makeshift field hospital to which he has been posted, the lack of food and medical supplies and the long, cold winters.

Along with a few orderlies, Lucius, and the hospital’s only nurse, Sister Margarete, care for the patients as best they can, battling not only the injuries themselves but the scourge of infection and disease.  Before long, the mutual dependence between Lucius and Margarete grows into a forbidden intimacy.

Although Lucius tries to fulfil the principle of ‘do no harm’, this conflicts with his military oath to ‘patch and send’; to return soldiers as quickly as possible back to the front to fight.  This dilemma becomes personified in the case of one patient.  What follows will have far-reaching consequences for Lucius and others.

I don’t really ‘do’ romance in novels, especially if it’s at all soppy or sentimental, but I’ll freely admit I was slightly tearful at the end of The Winter Soldier.    It made me think of Dr. Zhivago, albeit David Lean’s marvellous film version rather than the original novel by Boris Pasternak.

The Winter Soldier is a beautifully written novel that depicts the bonds formed through shared experiences in the worst of situations.  It’s a story of people thrown together by war, of separation and reunion, of love and loss.  I thought it was fantastic.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of publishers, Pan Macmillan/Mantle and NetGalley.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

In three words: Epic, intense, emotional

Try something similar…The Good Doctor of Warsaw by Elisabeth Gifford (read my review here)

Daniel MasonAbout the Author

Daniel Mason is the author of The Piano Tuner (2002), A Far Country (2007), and The Winter Soldier (2018). His writing has been translated into 28 languages, adapted for opera and stage and shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Northern California Book Award. His short stories and essays have appeared in Harper’s, Zoetrope: All Story and Lapham’s Quarterly, and have been awarded a Pushcart Prize, and a National Magazine Award.  In 2014, he was a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

A Clinical Assistant Professor in the Stanford University Department of Psychiatry, his research interests include the subjective experience of mental illness and the influence of literature, history, and culture on the practice of medicine.

Connect with Daniel

Website  ǀ Goodreads

Book Review: The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton

whatcathyreadnext8 Comments

The Clockmaker's DaughterAbout the Book

My real name, no one remembers. The truth about that summer, no one else knows.

In the summer of 1862, a group of young artists led by the passionate and talented Edward Radcliffe descends upon Birchwood Manor on the banks of the Upper Thames. Their plan: to spend a secluded summer month in a haze of inspiration and creativity. But by the time their stay is over, one woman has been shot dead while another has disappeared; a priceless heirloom is missing; and Edward Radcliffe’s life is in ruins.

Over one hundred and fifty years later, Elodie Winslow, a young archivist in London, uncovers a leather satchel containing two seemingly unrelated items: a sepia photograph of an arresting-looking woman in Victorian clothing, and an artist’s sketchbook containing a drawing of a twin-gabled house on the bend of a river.

Why does Birchwood Manor feel so familiar to Elodie? And who is the beautiful woman in the photograph? Will she ever give up her secrets?

Told by multiple voices across time, The Clockmaker’s Daughter is a story of murder, mystery and thievery, of art, love and loss. And flowing through its pages like a river, is the voice of a woman who stands outside time, whose name has been forgotten by history, but who has watched it all unfold: Birdie Bell, the clockmaker’s daughter.

Format: Hardcover, ebook (600 pp.)    Publisher: Pan Macmillan/Mantle
Published: 20th September 2018   Genre: Historical Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Clockmaker’s Daughter on Goodreads

My Review

The Clockmaker’s Daughter switches frequently between different time periods and points of view, some of the latter being introduced for the first time quite a long way into the book.  The first person narrator referred to in the book description as ‘a woman who stands outside time’ may require the willing suspension of disbelief by some readers; others will find it intriguing and inventive.  I enjoyed this narrator’s mischievous nature whilst at the same time feeling an empathy with her evident underlying sadness.

In the depiction of the group of friends who arrive at Birchwood Manor in 1862, the author conveys the insular atmosphere of an artistic community, full of petty rivalries and jealousies.  (I was reminded of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot mystery, Five Little Pigs, and Ngaio Marsh’s Inspector Alleyn novel, Artists in Crime.)  There’s a sense of simmering discontent that may boil over at any moment.  When it does, it’s in a quite unexpected way and with far-reaching consequences .

Appropriately given its title, the book makes frequent reference to the passing of time. ‘There was no going back. Time only moved in one direction.  And it didn’t stop.  It never stopped moving, not even to let a person think.  The only way back was in one’s memories.’  Timing devices have significance as well.  At one point, a character remarks, ‘There was no clock inside the studio.  There was no time.’  Another character recalls a grandfather clock whose ‘tick-tock’ sounded louder at night, ‘counting down the minutes, though to what he was never sure; there never seemed to be an end’.

The book also explores the idea of a sense of place, epitomized by Birchwood Manor which sits at the centre of a web connecting it to the different characters to varying degrees.  The melding of past and present is another recurrent theme.   For example, the book refers to a character entering the house and feeling that they were ‘stepping back in time’.  At another point, Birchwood Manor is described as being like ‘a Sleeping Beauty house’ as if just waiting for someone to reawaken it.

From my point of view, The Clockmaker’s Daughter marks a return to form for Kate Morton as I really liked The Secret Keeper but didn’t get on at all with The Distant Hours (which is still, I’m afraid, sitting unfinished on my bookshelf).  Although the author has delivered another chunky book and the multiple timelines and points of view demand a good deal of concentration from the reader (a few more reminders of the time period in the chapter headings would have helped), it has a great sense of atmosphere and the unfolding of the mystery is skillfully intertwined with the stories of the various characters.   Edward Radcliffe’s sister, Lucy, observes at one point, ‘a story is not a single idea; it is thousands of ideas, all working together in concert’.  There are certainly a lot of different ideas and narrative strands in The Clockmaker’s Daughter but, on the whole, I believe they do all work together in concert to create a satisfying read (perfect for autumn/winter nights, by the way).

I received an advance review copy courtesy of publishers, Pan Macmillan/Mantle, and NetGalley.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

In three words: Atmospheric, haunting, mystery

Try something similar…Call of the Curlew by Elizabeth Brooks (read my review here)

Kate MortonAbout the Author

Kate Morton was born in South Australia, grew up in the mountains of south-east Queensland and now lives with her family in London and Australia. She has degrees in dramatic art and English literature, and harboured dreams of joining the Royal Shakespeare Company until she realised that it was words she loved more than performing. Kate still feels a pang of longing each time she goes to the theatre and the house lights dim.

“I fell deeply in love with books as a child and believe that reading is freedom; that to read is to live a thousand lives in one; that fiction is a magical conversation between two people – you and me – in which our minds meet across time and space. I love books that conjure a world around me, bringing their characters and settings to life, so that the real world disappears and all that matters, from beginning to end, is turning one more page.”

Kate Morton’s five previous novels – The House at Riverton, The Forgotten Garden, The Distant Hours, The Secret Keeper and The Lake House – have all been New York Times bestsellers, Sunday Times bestsellers and international number 1 bestsellers; they are published in 34 languages, across 42 countries.

Connect with Kate

Website  ǀ  Facebook  ǀ Instagram ǀ Goodreads