Category: Reading Challenges

#BookReview #Ad The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually by Helen Cullen

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The Truth Must Dazzle GraduallyAbout the Book

On an island off the west coast of Ireland, the Moone family gathers.

Maeve is an actor, struggling with her most challenging role yet – as a mother to four children. Murtagh, her devoted husband, is a potter whose craft brought them from the city to this rural life.

In the wake of one fateful night, the Moone siblings must learn the story of who their parents truly are, and what has happened since their first meeting, years before, outside Trinity College in Dublin.

We watch as one love story gives rise to another, until we arrive at a future that none of the Moones could have predicted. Except perhaps Maeve herself.

Format: ebook (325 pages)               Publisher: Penguin
Publication date: 20th August 2020 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually on Goodreads

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My Review

When I read Helen Cullen’s debut novel The Lost Letters of William Woolf back in 2018 I commented that the real achievement of the book was the way she explored the dynamics of the relationship between William and his wife, Clare. It was a portrait of a marriage that had gone slightly astray because they had lost the ability to communicate openly and honestly about their feelings, hopes and ambitions.  

The author repeats that feat – in fact, with even greater skill –  in The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually. The book depicts the relationship between Maeve and Murtagh and, in particular, Maeve’s struggles with being the sort of mother to her four children she would like to be. In fact, to be the sort of person she would like to be. 

Following the tragic events of the opening chapter, the reader is taken back in time to witness Maeve and Murtagh’s first meeting and the blossoming of their relationship. It’s not hard to understand what attracts Murtagh to the beautiful, spirited but mercurial Maeve, a budding actor. In reality though Maeve’s life is something of a performance. As she observes, ‘Here people see the theatre student, the vinyl collector, the poet, Murtagh’s girlfriend, the American, the actress; so many different things, and none of them are the sick girl, or the other far worse things we know some folks called me’. 

When Murtagh is given the opportunity to pursue his career as a potter on Inis Óg, a small island off the coast of Galway in Ireland, it means Maeve giving up her own aspirations. It’s just one of the things that creates the first small fissures in Maeve’s mental state. Those fissures will gradually expand until the whole edifice comes crashing down. As the book progresses, we witness heartbreaking moments such as Maeve recording in her journal her ‘good’ days and ‘bad’ days and finding the second have become more numerous than the first. She worries about the impact the days when despair overwhelms her is having on her children, and on Murtagh in particular. ‘Murtagh is so loyal, he would never leave me. He would endure the challenge of living with me and my moods and my difficulties until the end of time if I let him.’  

It leads her to take a decision born out of love but which won’t appear that way to her family. Just the opposite in fact. It’s only years later that some kind of understanding dawns, bringing together a family which has become fractured, resentful and distant from one another. I absolutely fell in love with Murtagh who is the most wonderful character. I felt I shared with him every moment of joy, every moment of grief and silently cheered when he reflected, ‘There was room in his life for one more dream, maybe.’

If this is making it sound like a story of interminable sadness, I can reassure you it is not. There are moments of humour too and the book ends on the most wonderfully uplifting note. I’m not ashamed to admit I shed a few tears at some of the sadder moments but also got slightly misty-eyed at the end. I thought The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually was wonderful and I’m so glad I finally got around to reading it.

I received a review copy courtesy of Penguin via NetGalley.

In three words: Powerful, insightful, moving

Helen CullenAbout the Author

Helen Cullen is an Irish writer living in London. Helen worked at RTE (Ireland’s national broadcaster) for seven years before moving to London in 2010. Her debut novel, The Lost Letters of William Woolf, was published by Penguin in July 2018 in the UK, Ireland, Australia and South Africa, and published in America by Harper Collins in June 2019. The novel is also available in translation in numerous foreign markets including Italy, Germany, Russia, Greece and Israel where it hit the bestseller charts. The Lost Letters of William Woolf has also been optioned for television by Mainstreet Pictures. The novel also garnered Helen a Best Newcomer nomination in the An Post Irish Book Awards 2018. Her second novel, The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually, was published in Ireland and the UK and as The Dazzling Truth in the USA and Canada in August 2020.

Helen holds an M.A. Theatre Studies from UCD, an M.A. English Literature at Brunel University and commenced a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia in October 2020. She is now writing full-time and also contributes to the Irish Times newspaper and Sunday Times Magazine. (Photo/bio: Author website)

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#BlogTour #BookReview #Ad Forest of Foes by Matthew Harffy @AriesFiction

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BLOG TOUR BANNER Forest of FoesWelcome to the opening day of the blog tour for Forest of Foes by Matthew Harffy, the latest book in his Bernicia Chronicles series. My thanks to Andrew at Head of Zeus for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my review copy.

Forest of FoesAbout the Book

AD 652. Beobrand has been ordered to lead a group of pilgrims to the holy city of Rome. Chief among them is Wilfrid, a novice of the Church with some surprisingly important connections. Taking only Cynan and some of his best men, Beobrand hopes to make the journey through Frankia quickly and return to Northumbria without delay, though the road is long and perilous.

But where Beobrand treads, menace is never far behind. The lands of the Merovingian kings are rife with intrigue. The queen of Frankia is unpopular and her ambitious schemes, though benevolent, have made her powerful enemies. Soon Wilfrid, and Beobrand, are caught up in sinister plots against the royal house.

After interrupting a brutal ambush in a forest, Beobrand and his trusted gesithas find their lives on the line. Dark forces will stop at nothing to seize control of the Frankish throne, and Beobrand is thrown into a deadly race for survival through foreign lands where he cannot be sure who is friend and who is foe.

The only certainty is that if he is to save his men, thwart the plots, and unmask his enemies, blood will flow.

Format: Hardback (448 pages)            Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 8th December 2022 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

I first discovered Matthew Harffy’s Bernicia Chronicles when I read Storm of Steel, book six in the series. Since then I’ve read the two subsequent books – Fortress of Fury and For Lord and Land – and I’ve also been taking advantage of opportunities to acquire earlier books in the series.  The latest is a copy of The Cross and the Curse which I spotted the other day in my local Oxfam bookshop. I also enjoyed the two books – A Time for Swords and A Night of Flames – that have appeared so far in the author’s other series, and just to prove I’m becoming a real Harffy groupie, I also loved the standalone Wolf of Wessex.

Forest of Foes sees Beobrand in Frankia far from his beloved Ubbanford, longing for his homeland but constrained by a promise he made at the end of the last book to a woman he feels drawn to but who is seemingly out of reach.  Beobrand is starting to feel his age – he’s about to become a grandfather – but, although he may be battle-scarred, he remains a formidable warrior and a leader whom men will follow unerringly into battle. However each victory comes at a price and the faces of the men he has killed, of fallen comrades or of people he was unable to save often haunt him. It’s at times like these he needs his friend Cynan to rouse him from despondency.

Actually I liked the introspective Beobrand the author gives us in this book. We really get an insight into Beobrand the human being, not just the man of action. He’s a leader who carries the burden of responsibility for the safety and wellbeing of a community, and for the lives of the men who follow him. And he’s keenly aware he may not be able to save them all. He’s also, at times, a rather lonely man who regrets the breakdown in his relationship with his son, and mourns the woman he loved and lost. Of course, Beobrand the fearless – and to be feared – man of action is pretty brilliant too and that side of him is never far away. As one character observes, ‘Beobrand is no normal man. He is like a storm, or a raging tide. A force of nature’.

If you love the action scenes that have become one of the trademarks of the series, then you needn’t wait long for Beobrand’s cry of ‘To me, my gesithas’ as he summons the famed Black Shields to his side to embark upon yet another bloody encounter.  There are plenty of bone-crunching, skull-splitting, shield-shattering encounters involving sword, spear and axe. However, Beobrand and his comrades find themselves in some pretty sticky situations, with the odds seemingly stacked against them. As Beobrand observes at one point, ‘We are far from home. We are but few, and we are surrounded by a forest of foes’. He is also reunited with a ‘monster’, a ruthless enemy from his past with whom he has scores to settle – and he’s not the only one. What’s more, as Beobrand will discover, your deadliest enemies may not be those you face across the shieldwall.

As always the meticulous detail really immerses the reader in the period.  The author’s Historical Note provides fascinating information about the events that underpin the plot and also about the character of Wilfred who plays a key role in the book. It also contains a tantalising promise of ‘more action, adventure and intrigue, and just maybe, love and peace’.  To borrow Beobrand’s favourite curse, by Tiw’s cock, I’ll be disappointed if there isn’t.

In three words: Action-packed, immersive, gripping

Try something similar: The Serpent King by Tim Hodkinson

Harffy_MatthewAbout the Author

Matthew Harffy lived in Northumberland as a child and the area had a great impact on him. The rugged terrain, ruined castles and rocky coastline made it easy to imagine the past. Decades later, a documentary about Northumbria’s Golden Age sowed the kernel of an idea for a series of historical fiction novels. The first of them is the action-packed tale of vengeance and coming of age, The Serpent Sword.

Matthew has worked in the IT industry, where he spent all day writing and editing, just not the words that most interested him. Prior to that he worked in Spain as an English teacher and translator. Matthew lives in Wiltshire, England, with his wife and their two daughters.

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