#WWWWednesday – 8th March 2023

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WWWWednesdays

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

Currently reading

The Spy Across the WaterThe Spy Across the Water by James Naughtie (ARC, Head of Zeus)

Will Flemyng, originally trained as a spy, is now British ambassador to Washington. Meanwhile, his older brother Mungo is recuperating from a heart attack in their beloved Scottish highland family home, and Abel, the youngest of the three, has died mysteriously in America. Abel’s unexplained death sets in motion an unstoppable chain of events, beginning with an unexpected glimpse of a face at his funeral.

Soon Will finds himself on a dangerous journey into his clandestine past, from conflict in Ireland to the long shadows of the Cold War. Will possesses a silky veneer, but he often doesn’t know who to trust, nor who trusts him. Now he finds himself alone once again as duty forces him to risk everything…

Why has the past come back to haunt him now?

The third book in the author’s series of spy thrillers, so far it’s living up to the description as having ‘echoes of le Carré’.

The RomanticThe Romantic by William Boyd (Viking) Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2023

Born in 1799, Cashel Greville Ross experiences myriad lives: joyous and devastating, years of luck and unexpected loss.

Moving from County Cork to London, from Waterloo to Zanzibar, Cashel seeks his fortune across continents in war and in peace. He faces a terrible moral choice in a village in Sri Lanka as part of the East Indian Army. He enters the world of the Romantic Poets in Pisa. In Ravenna he meets a woman who will live in his heart for the rest of his days. As he travels the world as a soldier, a farmer, a felon, a writer, a father, a lover, he experiences all the vicissitudes of life and, through the accelerating turbulence of the nineteenth century, he discovers who he truly is.

This is the romance of life itself, and the beating heart of The Romantic.

I’ve heard some great things about this book with people whose opinion I rate tipping it to make the shortlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, possibly even win it. 

Recently finished

Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry (Viking)

Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door. Occasionally, fond memories return, of his family, his beloved wife June and their two children, Winnie and Joe.

But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one which Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past. (Review to follow but in a word, brilliant)

Three Gifts by Mark A. Radcliffe (époque press)

What Cathy (will) Read Next

No Life for a LadyNo Life for a Lady by Hannah Dolby (eARC, Aria via NetGalley) 

It’s remarkable how men react when women break the rules… but the people of Hastings are about to discover, women can be remarkable too…

1896. At 28, Violet’s father is beginning to fear she will never marry. But every suitor he puts forward, she finds an increasingly creative way of rebuffing. Because Violet is a woman who knows her own mind – and her mind is on her mother, who went missing 10 years earlier, vanishing from Hastings Pier without a trace.

Looking for the missing is not a suitable pastime for a lady. But when Violet hires a seaside detective to help, she sets off an unexpected chain of events that will throw her life into chaos.

Can Violet solve the mystery of Lily Hamilton’s vanishing? Or will trying cost her more than she can afford to lose?

#BookReview #Ad The Witch in the Well by Camilla Bruce

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The Witch in the WellAbout the Book

Over a hundred years ago, the citizens of F- did something rather bad. And local school teacher Catherine Evans has made writing the definitive account of what happened when Ilsbeth Clark drowned in the well her life’s work.

The town’s people may not want their past raked up, but Catherine is determined to shine a light upon that shameful event. For Ilsbeth was an innocent, after all. She was shunned and ostracised by rumour-mongers and ill-wishers and someone has to speak up for her. And who better than Catherine, who has herself felt the sting and hurt of such whisperings?

But then a childhood friend returns to F -. Elena is a successful author whose book, The Whispers Inside: A Reawakening of the Soul, has earned her a certain celebrity. In search of a new subject, she takes an interest in the story of Ilsbeth Clark and announces her intention to write a book about the long-dead woman, focusing on the natural magic she believes she possessed.

And Elena has everything Catherine has not, like a platform and connections and no one seems to care that Elena’s book will be pure speculation, tainting Ilsbeth’s memory rather than preserving it. Catherine is determined that something must be done and plots to blunt her rival’s pen. However she had not allowed for the fact that the past might not be so dead after all – that something is reaching out from the well, disturbing her reality.

Before summer’s over, one woman will be dead, the other accused of murder . . . but is she really guilty, or are there other forces at work? And who was Ilsbeth Clark, really? An innocent? A witch? Or something else entirely?

Format: eARC (304 pages)                        Publisher: Bantam Press
Publication date: 23rd February 2023 Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Mystery, Fantasy

Find The Witch in the Well on Goodreads

Purchase links
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My Review

The publisher describes The Witch in the Well as ‘a deliciously disturbing Gothic tale of a revenge reaching out across the years’. There are elements that match that description, notably the sections entitled ‘The Nicksby Documents’ which have a really fantastical, malevolent and creepy feel.  Unfortunately I found the modern day storyline less diverting. It essentially depicts the increasingly fractious relationship between two women, Catherine and Elena, who were once childhood playmates but are now involved in a rivalry about who has the right to tell Ilsbeth Clark’s story.

Neither of the women are particularly likeable. Elena is a prolific poster on social media, a fan of hashtags and an advocate of listening to the voice of one’s SOUL (her capital letters, not mine).  For her, the ancient well is not a place of menace but somewhere magical, hence it being her favourite place for her morning yoga workout. She believes she has formed a spiritual connection with Ilsbeth and is possessed by the idea that she can use this to prove the existence of ‘good magic’. Unfortunately, the situation is rather different, creepily different in fact.

On the other hand, Catherine sees Ilsbeth as a victim of prejudice, like so many other women through history, and is intent on bringing this injustice to light.  Catherine can’t stop herself posting instalments from an open letter to the inhabitants of F- in response to their accusations against her. She feels she’s the victim of a modern day ‘witch hunt’.  Unsurprisingly, comments such as ‘In my humble experience, none of you are geniuses’ don’t endear her to the local people. And her unfiltered posts which include conversations with her family and her lawyer, Louise don’t go down well either. Responding to Catherine’s protestation that she felt she had to write it all down, Louise says, ‘Then keep a journal, for God’s sake! You don’t have to paste it all over the internet!’. Quite.

A combination of folk tale, horror story and mystery, the book incorporates a number of narrative structures, including Elena’s journal, Catherine’s Facebook posts, emails,  excerpts from Catherine’s novel about Ilsbeth Clark and the aforementioned ‘Nicksby Documents’ written by an unnamed author but whose identity it’s not too difficult to guess . The latter was probably the most successful bit of the book for me but overall the story felt rather disjointed and moved a bit too slowly.

I received a review copy courtesy of Bantam Press via NetGalley.

Camilla BruceAbout the Author

Camilla Bruce was born in central Norway and grew up in an old forest, next to an Iron Age burial mound. She has a master’s degree in comparative literature, and have co-run a small press that published dark fairy tales. Camilla currently lives in Trondheim with her son and cat. (Photo: Twitter profile)

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