Category: Reading Challenges

Book Review – Remember, Remember by Elle Machray

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About the Book

Book cover of Remember, Remember by Elle Machray

1770. Delphine lives in the shadows of London: a secret, vibrant world of smugglers, courtesans and small rebellions. Four years ago, she escaped enslavement at great personal cost. Now, she must help her brother Vincent do the same.

While Britain’s highest court fails to administer justice for Vincent, little rebellions are no longer enough. What’s needed is a big, explosive plot – one that will strike at the heart of the transatlantic slave trade. But can one Black woman, one fuse and one match bring down an Empire?

Format: eARC (336 pages) Publisher: HarperNorth
Publication date: 29th February 2024 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

Remember, Remember begins as a campaign for justice, moves – after a pivotal event – to a quest for vengeance and, latterly, to a daring plan to bring about radical social change.

Vincent’s trial, which forms the first section of the book and is inspired by an actual case, exposes the conflict between the right to personal liberty and the financial interests of those who have profited from slavery and the products of slavery. But if you’re rich and powerful, perhaps you can ignore the findings of a court and impose your own form of justice, with even Parliament unable to uphold an individual’s democratic rights.

Contemporary resonances are not difficult to find; the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement being the obvious ones. At the same, the reader is immersed in the world of 18th century London from gentleman’s clubs to brothels, from wide streets to stinking alleys. Although the book possesses many of the hallmarks of a period adventure story – a secret conspiracy, underground tunnels, deception, betrayal and perilous escapes – its cast of characters is distinctively diverse in terms of race and sexuality.

The cruelty of slave owners towards those they view as their ‘property’ is epitomised by Lord Harvey. Ruthless, implacable and sadistic, I felt the author managed – just – to keep him from being a pantomime villain. I found some of the scenes towards the end of the book in which his true nature is revealed difficult to read.

Initially focused on achieving justice for Vincent, Delphine gradually has her eyes opened to the many other injustices in society, things that are also in desperate need of change. But when peaceful protest brings no results or is suppressed, what other options do you have? The radical solution at which Delphine eventually arrives brings a moral dilemma; essentially, do the ends ever justify the means? Personally, I found her decision problematic and its result just a little too convenient. Having said that, Remember, Remember is a bold and inventive debut novel.

I received a digital review copy courtesy of HarperNorth via NetGalley.

In three words: Imaginative, thought-provoking, immersive
Try something similar: Babel by R. F. Kuang

About the Author

Elle Machray grew up in Birmingham to Welsh–Caribbean and Scottish parents, and is now based in Edinburgh. After graduating from the HarperCollins Author Academy in spring 2021, their debut novel Remember, Remember was longlisted for the Mslexia Novel Prize, judged by Hilary Mantel. In the fleeting moments between writing and working, you can find Elle on social media talking about neurodivergence, books and a never-ending quest to relax. (Photo: X profile)

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Book Review – The Slowworm’s Song by Andrew Miller

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About the Book

Book cover of The Slowworm's Song by Andrew Miller

An ex-soldier and recovering alcoholic living quietly in Somerset, Stephen Rose has just begun to form a bond with Maggie, the daughter he barely knows, when he receives a summons – to an inquiry in Belfast about an incident during the Troubles, which he hoped he had long outdistanced. Now, to testify about it could wreck his fragile relationship with Maggie. And if he loses her, he loses everything.

He decides instead to write her an account of his life – a confession, a defence, a love letter. Also a means of buying time. But as time runs out, the day comes when he must face again what happened in that distant summer of 1982.

Format: Paperback (288 pages) Publisher: Sceptre
Publication date: 19th January 2023 [2022] Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

The Slowworm’s Song is one of the books by Andrew Miller I chose to be part of my Backlist Burrow reading challenge; the other is Pure which I hope to read soon.

Moving between past and present, Stephen recalls events in his life. Some are joyful, such as his first meeting with Evie, the woman who became his wife. ‘We didn’t speak – I’m sure we didn’t speak at all that night – but we had noticed each other and that was enough. You wake to somebody. You feel them wake to you. The first moment is so small.’ Other events are not joyful, or small.

It takes some time before we learn the details of the pivotal event that took place during his time as a young soldier in Northern Ireland. It’s as if he is putting off the moment at which he has to set it down because then it will be out there and cannot be taken back. When it’s revealed, it is shocking in nature and its consequences for the people involved. The incident is something he has kept to himself for over twenty years, unwilling to have anyone else share the burden of knowing about it. ‘I would attend to it in the dark, my secret illness.’ However, the fact that a momentary lapse for which he cannot forgive himself has weighed on Stephen’s mind for so long meant he retained my sympathy.

The author effortlessly takes us inside the mind of Stephen. He’s torn between his desire to reveal the truth in his own way, conscious of the inevitability that it will come out at the inquiry, and his fear that Maggie, when she learns about his role in the incident, will decide to sever all contact with him, just when they have begun to build a relationship. ‘Maggie, I know I’m labouring this but I want you to know I was once someone others could speak well of. That I could do things without making a mess of them…’

The Slowworm’s Song is a quietly powerful book about secrets, guilt, the courage to face up to your past and the gift of forgiveness.

In three words: Moving, insightful, compelling
Try something similar: Perfume River by Robert Olen Butler

About the Author

Author Andrew Miller

Andrew Miller‘s first novel, Ingenious Pain, was published by Sceptre in 1997 and greeted as the debut of an outstanding new writer. It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour prize for the best foreign novel published in Italy. He has since written Casanova, Oxygen, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, The Optimists, One Morning Like a Bird, Pure, winner of the Costa Book of the Year, The Crossing and Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, which won the Highland Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize. Andrew Miller’s novels have been published in translation in twenty countries. Born in Bristol in 1960, he now lives in Somerset.