Tag: advance review copy

#BookReview Two Storm Wood by Philip Gray @vintagebooks

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Two Storm WoodAbout the Book

1919. On the desolate battlefields of northern France, the guns of the Great War are silent. Special battalions now face the dangerous task of gathering up the dead for mass burial.

Captain Mackenzie, a survivor of the war, cannot yet bring himself to go home. First he must see that his fallen comrades are recovered and laid to rest. His task is upended when a gruesome discovery is made beneath the ruins of a German strongpoint.

Amy Vanneck’s fiance is one soldier lost amongst many, but she cannot accept that his body may never be found. She heads to France, determined to discover what became of the man she loved.

It soon becomes clear that what Mackenzie has uncovered is a war crime of inhuman savagery. As the dark truth leaches out, both he and Amy are drawn into the hunt for a psychopath, one for whom the atrocity at Two Storm Wood is not an end, but a beginning.

Format: Hardcover (368 pages)         Publisher: Vintage Publishing
Publication date: 13th January 2022 Genre: Category: Historical Fiction, Mystery

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My Review

Two Storm Wood is billed as a historical thriller and whilst there is certainly a thriller element to it, it wasn’t the most compelling aspect of the book for me. In fact, I guessed a key part of the plot pretty early on thanks to some detail in the prologue.

For me, the key strength of the book was how it revealed the ‘debris’ of war, whether that’s material debris, such as abandoned military equipment or bombed out buildings, human debris such as the bodies (or remains of bodies) of fallen soldiers like those Captain Mackenzie’s battalion is tasked with recovering and identifying, or physical debris in the form of the damaged and scarred bodies of those who survived but were terribly injured.

And then there’s the psychological debris: the survivors traumatised by what they witnessed and what they were forced to do. If you’ve never considered just what close combat, such as carrying out a silent raid on an enemy trench, involves in reality, Two Storm Wood will leave you under no illusions. ‘An enemy who chose the bayonet, the knife or the club was an enemy who had lost touch with self-interest, the calculating instinct for self-preservation, an enemy devoted to the collective cause, unafraid to die.’ As the book reveals, often only drugs could provide the necessary impulse to carry out orders, to blank out the dreadful memories or to provide the strength to endure days spent in endless watchfulness.

Amy Vanneck encapsulates the grief of those whose siblings, spouses or loved ones never came back or whose fate remained unknown.  Perhaps unusally given the times, she travels alone to the heart of the now abandoned battlefields searching for the truth about how her fiancé Edward Haslam died, or if indeed he did.  As she edges closer to the truth, it becomes increasingly clear that ‘War is a contest of violence, not virtue’ and the cruelty of what one human being can do to another knows no bounds.

With its vivid battle scenes, Two Storm Wood conjured up pictures in my mind that I’m not sure I want to recall in a hurry. The book powerfully, and at times graphically, illustrates that ‘War poisons everything that it does not destroy’. It also features one of the most evil and ruthless fictional characters I’ve come across in a long time, a key ingredient for a really absorbing thriller.

I received an advance review copy of Vintage via NetGalley.

In three words: Chilling, dark, immersive

Try something similar: The Glorious Dead by Tim Atkinson

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Philip GrayAbout the Author

Philip Gray was inspired to write Two Storm Wood by his grandfather who fought in the First World War. (Photo credit: Author website)

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#BookReview The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal @picadorbooks

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The Doll FactoryAbout the Book

London. 1850. The Great Exhibition is being erected in Hyde Park and among the crowd watching the spectacle two people meet. For Iris, an aspiring artist, it is the encounter of a moment – forgotten seconds later, but for Silas, a collector entranced by the strange and beautiful, that meeting marks a new beginning.

When Iris is asked to model for pre-Raphaelite artist Louis Frost, she agrees on the condition that he will also teach her to paint. Suddenly her world begins to expand, to become a place of art and love.

But Silas has only thought of one thing since their meeting, and his obsession is darkening . . .

Format: Hardcover (336 pages)   Publisher: Picador
Publication date: 2nd May 2019 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

The Doll Factory, the author’s debut novel, is set in Victorian London and provides a vivid picture of life in the period.  Whilst those in the higher echelons of society throng the glittering halls of the Great Exhibition or the Royal Academy, the poor wander ‘narrow and fetid’ passages, dark alleys with ‘green slime on their walls’ and inhabit the crowded rookeries where poverty-stricken young men and women support themselves through petty crime or prostitution. Those lucky enough to find employment, like Iris and her sister Rose, work long hours in thrall to the whims of their employers.

It’s no wonder Iris longs to escape her current occupation painting the faces of dolls and fulfil her artistic potential. When the opportunity comes it seems to her ‘as if her life was charcoal before, and now it takes on the vividness of oil paint’.  However, Iris’s new found freedom comes with consequences and also a degree of trepidation. ‘Her life was a cell before but now the freedom terrifies her. There are times when she longs for the enclosed familiarity of her previous life, because this expansive liberty seems like it will engulf her.’  As it turns out, Iris will soon realise just how precious liberty is.

The Doll Factory is a story of obsession and desire in various forms. Artist Louis Frost, and the other members of the self-styled Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, have a desire to challenge current artistic conventions. Street urchin Albie wishes to free his sister from a life of prostitution, one in which, obscenely, dying girls are the most treasured by clients. Albie also has rather specific ambitions of his own.  Meanwhile Silas, the owner of a shop filled with curiosities of a rather gruesome nature, harbours an obsession of a more sinister nature. The more the reader learns about his past the more menacing and disturbing his actions become.

There are some melodramatic scenes as events move towards their climax with the book’s ending inviting the reader to reach their own conclusion about the fate of the main characters. Part mystery, part love story, The Doll Factory positively oozes period atmosphere and will appeal to readers who like a good helping of the Gothic in their historical fiction… or those who desire to make the aquaintance of a wombat called Guinevere.

In three words: Atmospheric, chilling, dark

Try something similar: Crimson & Bone by Marina Fiorato

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Elizabeth MacnealAbout the Author

Elizabeth Macneal was born in Edinburgh and now lives in East London. She is a writer and potter and works from a small studio at the bottom of her garden. She read English Literature at Oxford University, before working in the City for several years. In 2017, she completed the Creative Writing MA at UEA in 2017 where she was awarded the Malcolm Bradbury scholarship. The Doll Factory, Elizabeth’s debut novel, won the Caledonia Noel Award 2018. (Photo/bio: Goodreads)

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