Category: Reading Challenges

Book Review – A Better Place by Stephen Daisley

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About the Book

Book cover of A Better Place by Stephen Daisley

The old people in the district would often say that Roy was not quite the same after he come back. There was a brother. A twin brother, Tony. Tony Mitchell, different boy but a good rugby player. Bit of a mental case, they said, but Roy would have none of it. He always stayed close to Tony when they were growing up.

They both went off to fight, must have been 1940. Only the one come back, though. Crete, they thought. We lost Tony over there.

Format: ebook (224 pages) Publisher: Text Publishing
Publication date: 4th July 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

A Better Place is one of the books on the longlist for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2024. It’s a book I would probably never have come across were it not for its inclusion on the longlist. (You can find a full list of the longlisted books here.)

In the author’s hands, war is a machine that consumes human beings. ‘Screaming. Explosions. The spraying of sand and dust. Charging soldiers being shot to bits.’ The scenes on the battlefield are brutal, graphic and harrowing but they also feel absolutely authentic. And the horrors aren’t just confined to the combatants but to civilians as well. Many of the male characters’ behaviour is challenging, especially that of Roy’s comrade, Manny Jones. But there are also moments of unexpected tenderness and self-sacrifice.

Before reading this book I knew very little about the involvement of troops from New Zealand in World War 2. One of the things that struck me was the very particular bond of comradeship that existed between soldiers hailing from the same regions of New Zealand.

Roy is plagued by guilt at what he believes was his failure to save Tony despite the fact that, being brothers, they should not have been assigned to a position so near to the enemy. He’s sure that Tony would never have left him behind had the positions been reversed.

It’s difficult to say much more about how the story unfolds without giving too much away. What I can say is the reader always knows more about Tony’s fate than Roy does. This allows the author to take the reader beyond the battlefields of Crete, North Africa and Sicily to Silesia where there are experiences just as gruelling and cruel.

When Roy returns home to New Zealand’s North Island after the war he adopts a solitary existence, farming a piece of land allocated to him by the government. It’s as if he doesn’t want to engage with a world that doesn’t have Tony in it. When Roy eventually discovers what happened to Tony, it confounds his expectations in more ways than one.

A Better Place is not an easy read because of its subject matter but the writing is wonderful. It definitely deserves its place on the Walter Scott Prize longlist.

In three words: Powerful, moving, visceral
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About the Author

Author Stephen Daisley

Stephen Daisley was born in 1955 and grew up in the North Island of New Zealand. He has worked on sheep and cattle stations, on oil and gas construction sites and as a truck driver, among many other jobs.

His first novel, Traitor , won the 2011 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction. Coming Rain won the Ockham Prize in 2015. Stephen lives in Western Australia. (Photo/bio: Publisher author page)

Book Review – The Paris Peacemakers by Flora Johnston @allisonandbusby

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Paris Peacemakers by Flora Johnston. My thanks to Josie at Allison & Busby for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my review copy. Do check out the reviews by my tour buddies for today, Chrissie at hiddengirl.41, Joanne at Portobello Book Blog and Kelly at Love Book Tours.

About the Book

Book cover of The Paris Peacemakers by Flora Johnston published by Allison & Busby

Paris, 1919. Will the brittle pieces of Europe ever fit together again?

As the fragile negotiations of the international Peace Conference get underway, typist Stella Rutherford throws herself into her work and the mixture of glamour and devastation the City of Light reveals. Anything to escape the grief coming in waves for her beloved brother Jack.

Her sister Corran is about to put her academic career to use among the troops in France, a chance to see what the experience was like for countless men, including her fiancé Rob.

Rob Campbell, profoundly changed by his time as a surgeon on the front line, has had little chance to lift his head from the incessant grind of the injured, dying and dead. If he did the ghosts of his teammates, the Scottish rugby players who followed the same path into hell, would surely be waiting for him.

Format: Hardcover (384 pages) Publisher: Allison & Busby
Publication date: 18th April 2024 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

Flora Johnston has crafted the most wonderful novel set against the backdrop of the Paris Peace Conference, responsible for formulating the agreement that would become the Treaty of Versailles. Woven into the historical details of the Peace Conference are the stories of Scottish sisters Stella and Corran, and Corran’s fiancé, Rob.

Stella knows better than anyone the price of war. She is devastated by the loss of her brother Jack, to whom she was so close, especially since she alone possesses the evidence of the toll his experiences on the front line had taken on him. One of the many poignant scenes in the book is the train journey she and Corran take to the site of Jack’s grave through countryside devastated by war. ‘It was impossible to imagine what this wasteland had looked like before the war, as they travelled slowly through ravaged, abandoned fields of death. The streaky light of dawn revealed the blackened, disfigured remains of what had once been trees.’

Stella is overjoyed to be chosen to work in Paris as one of the typists responsible for recording the output from the conference but becomes disillusioned once she realises that the more interesting roles, as usual, have been given to men. However, she embraces the luxury of the Majestic hotel and life in Paris even if the bright lights sit uneasily alongside the evidence of war: ruined buildings, women and children begging in the streets. ‘In this city the chic and the shattered were held together as close companions.’

Corran has already experienced the prejudice displayed towards educated women. She finds her vocation teaching in France, equipping soldiers with the education necessary for them to gain employment once they return home. I loved Corran’s strength of will in rejecting what might have been the safe, socially acceptable option in order to maintain her independence.

The character I was most drawn to was Rob. The scenes of his time as a surgeon in a Casualty Clearing Station on the Western Front are rendered in brutal, graphic detail. They’re difficult enough to read but they must have been indescribably more difficult to witness first-hand. Rob struggles with the notion his role is to patch up men so they can return to the front. He agonises over the men he’s not able to save (including men he knew), the lives that will be changed forever as a result of the grave injuries they have suffered and the crude methods he and his fellow surgeons have to use. (I couldn’t help thinking of the medical staff currently operating under gruelling conditions in Gaza.) Such experiences have a longlasting psychological impact on him and for a time he’s rudderless, unsure whether he still retains the necessary skills or vocation to be a surgeon. Gone is the man who represented his nation on the rugby field; now all he sees is the team mates who never returned or were punished for their pacifist principles.

Sadly we know from history that the First World War was not ‘the war to end all wars’ and that many of the misgivings voiced about the treaty proved well-founded. ‘It was everywhere, this creeping sense of fear that, after everything they had been through and all they had lost, the world might not be so very much better after all.’ Germany was humilated – as France was insistent it should be – and the Allied powers argued amongst themselves as they carved up Germany’s former dominions for their own gain. It instilled a longlasting sense of grievance that was used as motivation by Hitler in the 1930s.

The end of the book gives us a glimpse of the ways in which Stella, Corran and Rob – like so many others – might move on from what they have experienced, and even find happiness in a world that has utterly changed. As one character observes, ‘It’s not just the nations that need to rebuild: we’ll all be picking up the pieces of these years for a long time to come.’

There was so much about this novel I loved, and so much I learned from reading it. And I’ll freely admit to having been moved to tears at several points. The Paris Peacemakers is easily one of the best historical novels I’ve read so far this year.

In three words: Powerful, emotional, poignant
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About the Author

Flora Johnston worked for over twenty years in museums and heritage interpretation, including at the National Museums of Scotland, which has greatly influenced the historical fiction she now writes.

Her debut novel, What You Call Free, was published by Ringwood Publishing. She studied at St. Andrews University and lives in Edinburgh.

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