Category: HF Reading Challenge

Book Review – Bonjour, Sophie by Elizabeth Buchan @CorvusBooks

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About the Book

Book cover of Bonjour, Sophie by Elizabeth Buchan

It’s 1959 and time for eighteen-year-old Sophie’s real life to start. Her existence in the village of Poynsdean, Sussex, with her austere foster-father, the Reverend Osbert Knox, and his frustrated wife Alice, is stultifying. She finds diversion and excitement in a love affair, but soon realizes that if she wants to live life on a bigger canvas she must take matters into her own hands.

She dreams of escape to Paris, the wartime home her French mother fled before her birth. Getting there will take spirit and ingenuity, but it will be her chance to discover more about her family background, and, perhaps, to find a place where she can finally belong.

When Sophie eventually arrives in the Paris arising from the ashes of the war, it’s both everything she imagined, and not at all what she expected…

Format: eARC (448 pages) Publisher: Corvus
Publication date: 4th April 2024 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

Fifteen years might seem a long time after the end of the Second World War but in fact its impact lingers on, as the author deftly explores in Bonjour, Sophie. For some, like Sophie’s foster mother Alice, war had been so much a battle for survival that even the slim pickings of life offered afterwards are, if not enough, then better than nothing. For others, there are physical scars but also mental scars from the things they saw and the things they were forced to do in order to survive.

Along with her dream of a more fulfilling and independent life, Sophie harbours a deep need to know about her father, a man she never met, including how he died. Was he the hero of the French Resistance she has always believed him to be?

Having made it to Paris, her first job involves contact with people who also looking for someone but for quite different reasons. She describes them to her friend Hettie as ‘drenched in yearning’. Her own search for answers involves some subterfuge, as well as ignoring the warnings that she may not like what she finds out. ‘War triggers vendettas. Paris was, and is, not exempt. Asking questions exposes secrets, and some are best left hidden.’ A brief glimpse of a more luxurious lifestyle proves tempting but, she realises, would bring the sort of obligations and constraints she has set her face against.

Paris offers Sophie myriad new experiences which help to banish, albeit not completely, memories of the disappointments, losses and unpleasant experiences of her life in Sussex. Yet even here, the buildings carry the marks of conflict. ‘The war was over. The war was not over. Peeling paint. Damaged stonework.’

Sophie makes a spirited and engaging heroine. She’s intelligent, witty and once she has decided on a course of action she is resolute – and resourceful – in following it through. I also liked the storyline involving Sophie’s friend and confidante, Hettie, who belatedly embarks on her own journey from the constraints of parental and societal expectations.

Bonjour, Sophie is an engaging, nuanced coming-of-age story that captures a world on the cusp of social change and I very much enjoyed spending time with Sophie on her journey.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of Corvus Books via NetGalley.

In three words: Absorbing, insightful, emotional
Try something similar: A Complicated Matter by Anne Youngson

About the Author

Author Elizabeth Buchan

Elizabeth Buchan was a fiction editor at Random House before leaving to write full time. Her novels include the prize-winning Consider the Lily, international bestseller Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman, The New Mrs Clifton and The Museum of BrokenPromises. Buchan’s short stories are broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in magazines. She has reviewed for the Sunday Times, The Times and the Daily Mail, and has chaired the Betty Trask and Desmond Elliot literary prizes. She was a judge for the Whitbread First Novel Award and for the 2014 Costa Novel Award. She is a patron of the Guildford Book Festival and co-founder of the Clapham Book Festival.

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Book Review – The Book of Secrets by Anna Mazzola

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About the Book

Book cover of The Book of Secrets by Anna Mazzola

Rome, 1659. Months after the plague has ravaged Rome, men are still dying in unnatural numbers, and rumour has it that their corpses do not decay as they should. The Papal authorities commission prosecutor Stefano Bracchi to investigate, telling him he will need considerable mettle to reach the truth.

To the west of the Tiber, Girolama and her female friends are at work, helping other women with childbirths and foretelling their futures. Elsewhere in the city, a young wife, Anna, must find a way to escape her abusive husband. But in a city made by men for men, there are no easy paths out.

Stefano’s investigation at the Tor di Nona prison will introduce him to horror, magic and an astonishing cast of characters. He will be left wondering if certain deeds should remain forever unpunished…

Format: eARC (384 pages) Publisher: Orion
Publication date: 21st March 2024 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

The Book of Secrets alternates between three points of view: Stefano Bracchi, judge turned inquisitor, keen to prove he is not the weak character his father believes him to be; Anna, wife of a failed artist whose disappointments are expressed in violence; and Girolama, a Sicilian woman skilled in midwifery and the creation of herbal remedies. One particular ‘remedy’ of hers has become sought after, a recipe handed down and recorded in the ‘book of secrets’ of the title and distributed via a network of female associates to women in need of escape.

Although Stefano knows only that he has been asked to investigate a series of suspicious deaths amongst men of Rome, all of which exhibit unusual features, the reader knows from pretty early on what Girolama and her assistants are doing and why. It becomes less a mystery more an interesting moral question about whether the women’s actions are justified, but no less absorbing for that. It’s a question that even Girolama begins to ask herself, especially once many of her assistants are rounded up as part of the investigation. And can she be sure that in every case, the action was justified, that every man who died was an abuser or merely an obstacle standing in the way of financial gain? She’s strong but can her associates exhibit similar strength?

Stefano also faces a dilemma as he is forced by his superiors to use more and more severe methods – many of which are harrowing to read about – to try to extract confessions from Girolama and her associates. Is the suffering he is inflicting on the women justified merely in order to further his career? He finds himself wondering what kind of man has he become and wishing he had listened to his sister, Lucia, who warned him about the dark place his investigation might take him, and that it was a poisoned chalice.

Although inspired by real events, the author freely admits in the Historical Note that she has allowed herself a degree of artistic licence in places. That didn’t bother me at all as the book immerses the reader in the sights, sounds and smells of 17th century Rome. It’s a male-dominated society, though, one ‘preoccupied with honour, status and vendetta’. Women have few, if any, rights meaning they must find their own way to fight back. And it’s a society in which if you have power and influence you need not fear being brought to justice. I found it a compelling story and, even though it involves an investigation and a trial, more nuanced than a straightforward historical mystery.

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

In three words: Intriguing, immersive, absorbing
Try something similar: The Poison Keeper by Deborah Swift

About the Author

Anna is the award-winning and bestselling author of four Gothic historical novels. Her debut novel, The Unseeing, won an Edgar Allan Poe award. Her third novel, The Clockwork Girl, set in 18th century Paris, has been nominated for two CWA Dagger awards as well as the Dublin Literary award. Her fourth novel, The House of Whispers, a ghost story set in Fascist Italy, reached number 7 in the Saturday Times Chart and is a Sunday Times historical fiction pick for 2023.

Her novels explore the impact of crime and injustice and her influences include Sarah Waters, Daphne du Maurier and Shirley Jackson. Anna also writes legal thrillers under the name Anna Sharpe, the first of which will be published in 2024.

When not writing or tutoring, Anna is a human rights and criminal justice solicitor, working with victims of crime. She lives in South London with her husband, their two children, a snake and a cat. (Photo/bio: Amazon author page)

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