Category: Reading Challenges

Book Review: The Illumination of Ursula Flight by Anna-Marie Crowhurst

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The Illumination of Ursula FlightAbout the Book

Born on the night of an ill-auguring comet just before Charles II’s Restoration, Ursula Flight has a difficult future written in the stars.

Against the custom of the age she begins an education with her father, who fosters in her a love of reading, writing and astrology.

Following a surprise meeting with an actress, Ursula yearns for the theatre and thus begins her quest to become a playwright despite scoundrels, bounders, bad luck and heartbreak.

Format: ebook, hardcover (416 pp.)    Publisher: Allen and Unwin UK
Published: 3rd May 2018                        Genre: Historical Fiction

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 Illumination of Ursula Flight on Goodreads

My Review

Ursula gives us the story of her life in her own inimitable fashion starting with her birth as a comet crosses the sky and her childhood encounter with an actress that sparks her interest in the theatre.  Having an unusually enlightened father, Ursula learns Latin, Greek and other languages, studies astronomy and reads every book and play she can lay her hands on.  Soon she’s trying her own hand at writing plays, depicting scenes of love, comedy, mischief and a little wishful thinking that are acted out with her young friends.

Unfortunately for Ursula, all the fun and games come to an end when she is promised in marriage to Lord Tyringham.  As well as being an unfortunate match, Ursula misses her friends and family and finds herself bored with the responsibilities of being a wife.  Things come to a head when Ursula discovers secrets about her husband that the alert reader may have suspected for some time.

Although I found the whole book entertaining, I’ll admit it really picked up for me in the last third when the location changes and Ursula finally gets a chance to take her future into her own hands.  Unfortunately, this is not before she has learned through bitter experience that men are not always to be trusted!

The story is told in the distinctive voice the author has created for Ursula and interspersed with excerpts from Ursula’s plays, diary entries and personal notes that reveal her innermost thoughts.   I really enjoyed the humour in the plays and some of her lists are extremely funny.  For example, her ‘Discourse on Matrimony & Wiving for New Brides’ by  ‘A Married Woman Who Knoweth’ in which the most useful piece of advice is probably: ‘If all other courses fail you, and you are brought down by worries or woe or other encumbrances suffered by the dutiful wife and feel fit to burst with ill feeling and frustration and love-lack, steal yourself out of doors away from prying eyes and running as fast as and as furious as you can, scream every oath you know in English, and other languages.’  Yep, I reckon that still works.   There’s also the particularly saucy list she comes up with later in the book.  (Those who have read the book will immediately recognise the bit I’m talking about.)  The quirky chapter headings (such as ‘In which we dine en famille and I am perturbed’) also give a sense of the period in which the book is set.

The Illumination of Ursula Flight is great fun and deserves all the curtain calls and cries of ‘Author, Author’ it will no doubt receive.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of publishers, Allen and Unwin, and NetGalley in return for an honest and unbiased review.

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In three words: Lively, inventive, funny

Try something similar…The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar (click here to read my review)

Anna-Marie CrowhurstAbout the Author

Anna-Marie Crowhurst has worked as a freelance journalist and columnist for more than 15 years, contributing to The Times, The Guardian, Time Out, Newsweek, Emerald Street and Stylist. In 2016 she studied for an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, where her debut novel The Illumination of Ursula Flight was born. She lives in London.

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Buchan of the Month: Greenmantle by John Buchan

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Buchan of the Month

GreenmantleAbout the Book

In Greenmantle (1916) Richard Hannay, hero of The Thirty-Nine Steps, travels across war-torn Europe in search of a German plot and an Islamic Messiah. He is joined by three more of Buchan’s heroes: Peter Pienaar, the old Boer Scout; John S. Blenkiron, the American determined to fight the Kaiser; and Sandy Arbuthnot, Greenmantle himself.

The intrepid four move in disguise through Germany to Constantinople and the Russian border to face their enemies: the grotesque Stumm and the evil beauty of Hilda von Einem.

Note: I read my personal copy of Greenmantle published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1950 but the details and links below are for an ebook  public domain edition available free on Amazon.  Other paperback editions are widely available.

Format: ebook (178 pp.)    Publisher:
Published: [1916]               Genre: Adventure, Thriller

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Greenmantle on Goodreads

 My Review

Greenmantle is the fourth book in my Buchan of the Month reading project.  For a spoiler-free introduction to Greenmantle, including details of its first publication and context, click here.  To find out more about the project and my reading list for 2018, click here.

Recovering from injuries sustained at the Battle of Loos, Richard Hannay is charged by Sir Walter Bullivant with investigating rumours of an uprising in the Muslim world.  It seems the Germans plan to use religion to help them win the war by causing Britain and its allies to divert troops from the Western Front. Hannay reluctantly accepts the case seeing it as a diversion from his true role leading his troops on the front line.

The action of the book moves from wartime Germany to Asia Minor as Hannay and his comrades seek to disrupt the plot.  This involves a perilous journey through enemy territory to meet up with his friend, Sandy Arbuthnot, in Constantinople.  Hannay and his other companions Peter Pienaar and John S. Blenkiron, have to outwit some formidable foes, including the thuggish Ulric von Stumm, Turkish army officer Rasta Bey and the charismatic but malevolent, Hilda von Einem.

It’s all terrific fun involving coded messages, a dying prophet, disguises and a secret band known as The Companions of the Rosy Hours as Hannay seeks to foil the dastardly plot.  However, there are also elements of real life events.  For example, the character of Sandy Arbuthnot is based on Buchan’s friend Aubrey Herbert – with a touch of Lawrence of Arabia thrown in.  It all comes to a climax in a vividly described battle scene, again inspired by actual events in the First World War.

Next month’s Buchan of the Month is A Lost Lady of Old Years, first published in 1899.

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In three words: Action-packed, thrilling, adventure

Try something similar…The Three Hostages by John Buchan

John BuchanAbout the Author

John Buchan (1875 – 1940) was an author, poet, lawyer, publisher, journalist, war correspondent, Member of Parliament, University Chancellor, keen angler and family man.  He was ennobled and, as Lord Tweedsmuir, became Governor-General of Canada.  In this role, he signed Canada’s entry into the Second World War.   Nowadays he is probably best known – maybe only known – as the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps.  However, in his lifetime he published over 100 books: fiction, poetry, short stories, biographies, memoirs and history.

You can find out more about John Buchan, his life and vast literary output by visiting The John Buchan Society website.