Tag: advance review copy

#BlogTour #BookReview The Jeweller by Caryl Lewis @Honno

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I’m delighted to be hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for The Jeweller by Caryl Lewis, translated from the Welsh by Gwen Davies. My thanks to Julia Forster for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Honno Press for my advance review copy.

the jeweller coverAbout the Book

Mari supplements her modest trade as a market stall holder with the wares she acquires from clearing the houses of the dead. She lives alone in a tiny cottage by the shore, apart from a monkey that she keeps in a cage, surrounding herself with the lives of others, combing through letters she has gleaned, putting up photographs of strangers on her small mantelpiece.

But Mari is looking for something beyond saleable goods for her stall.  As she works on cutting a perfect emerald, she inches closer to a discovery that will transform her life and throw her relationships with old friends into relief. To move forward she must shed her life of things past and start again. How she does so is both surprising and shocking…

Praise for The Jeweller

A moving, quirky, and gorgeously written meditation on the haunting afterlife of the objects we leave behind. There is a lapidary beauty hidden in almost every sentence.” Tristan Hughes

Format: Paperback, ebook (208 pp)         Publisher: Honno Press
Publication date: 19th September 2019 Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Literary Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk | Hive (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Jeweller on Goodreads

My Review

Mari lives alone in a remote cottage by the sea with only her cat and a rather needy and temperamental pet monkey for company.   The latter has the same love of trinkets as Mari. The ‘clutter’ that fills the cottage is the vintage clothing and jewellery gleaned from house clearances or bought at auction that Mari sells on her market stall, along with the letters and photographs she obsessively collects containing the stories of other people’s lives.

From the beginning, I was struck by the author’s imaginative and descriptive writing about landscape and nature, skilfully preserved in Gwen Davies’ translation.

‘The sea was breathing in the distance, dark against the growing light, and seagulls were being flung across the air like litter.’

‘Catkins of pussy willow and hazel caught the light like earrings: grey-silver droplets and knuckles of pale gold that twisted on an updraught.’

I particularly liked the way that inanimate objects become animate in Mari’s eyes. So a beech tree is described as ‘flirting its little fans of beaten neon-green at her’ or freshly laundered vintage clothes destined for her stall are ‘alive on the line as though their new owners were dancing in them right now‘.  Mari even sees the jewels she collects and works with as having a life and personality of their own. At one point, she refers to some jewels as ‘giving her a hard time’.

Unfolding over the course of a year, the reader witnesses Mari’s physical and mental struggles, especially when the future of the market where she has her stall is placed in jeopardy. As summer turns to stormy autumn, things grow darker, events from earlier in Mari’s life are revealed and the reader begins to understand the complex nature of her past relationships.  There is closure of a sort but also a sense of history repeating itself.

The Jeweller is a slim novel but beautifully written.  It’s a book which packs a lot into a small space.

In three words: Lyrical, evocative, intense

Try something similar: The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan

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Caryl_Lewis_Photo_Credit_Keith_MorrisAbout the Author

Caryl Lewis has published eleven Welsh-language books for adults, three novels for young adults and thirteen children’s books. Her novel Martha, Jac a Sianco (Y Lolfa, 2004), won Wales Book of the Year in 2005. Caryl wrote the script for a film based on Martha, Jac a Sianco, which won the Atlantis Prize at the 2009 Moondance Festival. Her television credits include adapting Welsh-language scripts for the acclaimed crime series Y Gwyll / Hinterland. (Photo credit: Keith Morris)

GWEN Davies Credit Jessica RabyAbout the Translator

Gwen Davies grew up in a Welsh-speaking family in West Yorkshire. She has translated into English the Welsh-language novels of Caryl Lewis, published as Martha, Jack and Shanco (Parthian, 2007) and The Jeweller and is co-translator, with the author, of Robin Llywelyn’s novel, published as White Star by Parthian in 2003. She is the editor of Sing, Sorrow, Sorrow: Dark and Chilling Tales (Seren, 2010). Gwen has edited the literary journal, New Welsh Review, since 2011. She lives in Aberystwyth with her family. (Photo credit: Jessica Raby)

#BookReview The Familiars by Stacey Halls @ZaffreBooks @ReadersFirst1

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The FamiliarsAbout the Book

Lancashire, 1612. Fleetwood Shuttleworth is 17 years old, married, and pregnant for the fourth time. But as mistress of Gawthorpe Hall, she still has no living child, and her husband Richard is anxious for an heir. When Fleetwood finds a letter she isn¹t supposed to read from the doctor who delivered her third stillbirth, she is dealt the crushing blow that she will not survive another pregnancy.

Then she crosses paths by chance with Alice Gray, a young midwife. Alice promises to help her give birth to a healthy baby and to prove the physician wrong. As Alice is drawn into the witchcraft accusations that are sweeping the north-west, Fleetwood risks everything by trying to help her. But is there more to Alice than meets the eye?

Soon the two women’s lives will become inextricably bound together as the legendary Pendle witch trials approach, and Fleetwood¹s stomach continues to grow. Time is running out, and both their lives are at stake.

Only they know the truth. Only they can save each other.

Format: Hardcover (432 pp)                 Publisher: Zaffre
Publication date: 7th February 2019 Genre: Historical Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com | Hive
*link provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Familiars on Goodreads

My Review

The Familiars is a tale of superstition, ignorance and misogyny that sees ‘wise women’ skilled in herbal medicine and midwifery accused of witchcraft for political gain and royal favour, or because they are a convenient target to blame for natural events such as crop failures or for unexpected deaths. As the book’s heroine, Fleetwood Shuttleworth, observes about local magistrate, Roger Nowell, the chief instigator of the accusations, “Roger is on a witch hunt. He is collecting women like cards at a table”.

At the same time it’s also a story of personal betrayal, as Fleetwood will discover. A battle of wills ensues – between Fleetwood and her husband Richard, between Fleetwood and Roger Nowell, and between Fleetwood and her mother – as she fights for her rights, her independence, her very future even. She is also forced into action to try to save her midwife, Alice, from suffering the same fate as the other unfortunate women under suspicion. Full disclosure: throughout I was one hundred percent Team Fleetwood, even if I did marvel at her ability to travel the countryside on horseback even when heavily pregnant.

From the moment of their first strange encounter, Fleetwood and Alice form an unlikely friendship. Although they occupy very different positions in society, they share a common bond and have similar stories, namely of misuse by men. Friendship soon turns into dependency as Fleetwood becomes convinced her life, and that of her unborn child, are inextricably linked to the fate of Alice. ‘We were bound together in some dreadful destiny, and it was clearer now than ever that to survive, we needed one another just as equally, and just as desperately.’

There are hints of the supernatural throughout the book with the reader never entirely sure if Alice’s powers are simply those of a skilled healer or something more. The inclusion of a strange child, Jennet Device, Fleetwood’s disturbing nightmares and unsettling night time visitations to her chamber by an unidentified ‘something’ all add to the sense of unease.

The vivid descriptions of the landscape surrounding Gawthorpe over which our splendidly named heroine loves to wander matches the book’s gorgeous dust jacket. I liked the fact that the cover design cleverly incorporates elements from the story. The author’s research is also evident in the detailed descriptions of food (oyster pie or salmon poached in beer with pickled herring anyone?), costume and furnishings.

I was interested to learn from the book’s Historical Note that Fleetwood Shuttleworth and numerous other characters in the book existed in real life. If I’m honest I expected the Pendle witch trials to feature more prominently in the story. However, in using her imagination to bring to life Fleetwood and Alice, the author has created an atmospheric and compelling story of life in 17th century Lancashire.

I received a review copy courtesy of Zaffre Books and Readers First.

In three words: Atmospheric, magical, assured

Try something similar: Widdershins by Helen Steadman (read my review here)

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staceyAbout the Author

Stacey Halls grew up in Rossendale, Lancashire and has always been fascinated by the Pendle witches. She lives in London and has worked as a journalist for Stylist, Psychologies and Fabulous. The Familiars is her first novel. (Photo credit: author website)

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