Tag: dual time

#BookReview #Ad My Mother’s Shadow by Nikola Scott

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My Mother's ShadowAbout the Book

Hartland House has always been a faithful keeper of secrets…

1958. Sent to beautiful Hartland to be sheltered from her mother’s illness, Liz spends the summer with the wealthy Shaw family. They treat Liz as one of their own, but their influence could be dangerous…

Now. Addie believes she knows everything about her mother Elizabeth and their difficult relationship until her recent death. When a stranger appears claiming to be Addie’s sister, she is stunned. Is everything she’s been told about her early life a lie?

How can you find the truth about the past if the one person who could tell you is gone? Addie must go back to that golden summer her mother never spoke of…and the one night that changed a young girl’s life for ever.

Format: Paperback (368 pages)  Publisher: Headline
Publication date: 8th May 2018 Genre: Historical Fiction, Dual Time

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My Review

Some serious subject matter, namely society’s attitude towards and treatment of young women in the 1950s, is contained within this dual time story about family secrets. I won’t say much more other than, in a small way, it put me in mind of Claire Keegan’s acclaimed novel, Small Things Like These.

Much my favourite element of the book were the sections from the point of view of Addie’s mother, Elizabeth, during the time she spends at Hartland House. She’s at an impressionable age and has been brought up in a household ruled by her strict father. I thought the author depicted really well the conflict Elizabeth feels between her joy at a glimpse into a different, freer kind of life and her guilt at being apart from her seriously ill mother. Elizabeth documents her experiences, including the relationships she forms with the members of the Shaw family, in meticulous detail in her journal. (Yes, I know, that trope beloved of historical novels, the secret diary.) She also writes the most heartrending letters to her mother.

I liked the way the author described the Sussex countryside and also how she subtly wove into the story themes of social inequality and the lingering impact of the Second World War. For example, Elizabeth is surprised at the spaciousness of Hartland House and the way the family live. She observes, ‘They must have no idea at all what other families live like. That living space for the majority of people is precious and rare, that up in London whole neighbourhoods have not yet been rebuilt after the Blitz, that people cram together in terrible hovels or ten to a house, with everyone from Grandma to the lodger slotted into bedrooms like sardines.

I’m going to be honest and say I was less engaged by the present day element of the story. I tried my best but I really couldn’t warm to Addie, who seemed to me to act in a much less mature way than you’d expect from someone supposed to be forty years old. She comes across as rather self-absorbed, a bit ditsy and someone whom chaos follows in her wake. However, I could sympathise with the situation she finds herself in as revelations about her family and demands for her attention from her (annoying) sister and her father come thick and fast in ‘an onslaught of needs and wants’. I thought she was rather mean to her best friend, Andrew and the side plot involving their childhood plan to go into business together was superfluous.

I’m afraid I also found the book rather slow – it’s 368 pages but felt longer partly perhaps because of the small text –  although the pace does pick in the final third of the book as answers to the mystery are gradually revealed. And there’s a pretty good twist at one point although it does occur as a result of what I term a ‘Casablanca moment’, i.e. ‘Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine’. There were also a few elements, for me, that stretched credulity. Having said that, My Mother’s Shadow is an absorbing story with moments of real emotion that I’m sure many readers will enjoy.

I received a review copy courtesy of Headline.

In three words: Emotional, engaging, intimate

Try something similar: Only May by Carol Lovekin

Nikola ScottAbout the Author

Born in Germany, Nikola Scott studied English and American literature before moving abroad to work as a fiction editor in New York and London. After over a decade in book publishing, she now lives in Frankfurt with her husband and two sons.

My Mother’s Shadow is her first novel. (Photo: Twitter profile)

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#BookReview The Night Ship by Jess Kidd

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The Night ShipAbout the Book

1629. Embarking on a journey in search of her father, a young girl called Mayken boards the Batavia, the most impressive sea vessel of the age. During the long voyage, this curious and resourceful child must find her place in the ship’s busy world, and she soon uncovers shadowy secrets above and below deck. As tensions spiral, the fate of the ship and all on board becomes increasingly uncertain.

1989. Gil, a boy mourning the death of his mother, is placed in the care of his irritable and reclusive grandfather. Their home is a shack on a tiny fishing island off the Australian coast, notable only for its reefs and wrecked boats. This is no place for a teenager struggling with a dark past and Gil’s actions soon get him noticed by the wrong people.

Format: Hardback (384 pages)         Publisher: Canongate
Publication date: 11th August 2022 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

The story unfolds in alternating chapters moving between 1629 aboard the Batavia, and 1989 on Beacon Island (also known as Batavia’s graveyard) off the cost of Western Australia. Initially I imagined I would be more drawn to Mayken’s story than to Gil’s. As I expected, the author does a brilliant job of conjuring up the awful realities of daily life onboard a ship travelling thousands of miles on a voyage likely to take many months. The conditions for the more privileged passengers, including Mayken and her nursemaid Imke, are bad enough but lower down in the ship, what Mayken comes to know as ‘the Below World’, there is horrendous squalor, overcrowding and disease. Meanwhile the captain and officers feast in the Great Cabin enjoying fine food and wine.  As I said, I expected to be captivated by Mayken’s story – and I was – but gradually I became totally invested in Gil’s story too. It’s the story of a lonely, sensitive boy transported to a small island where he knows no-one except for his gruff grandfather and the way of life is completely new to him.

You might not expect two children, separated by over three hundred years, to have much in common but the really clever thing about The Night Ship is the way the author creates subtle connections between them that are like little echoes reverberating down through the centuries.

Both Mayken and Gil have lost their mothers in circumstances they are either encouraged or unwilling to talk about. Mayken is travelling across the world to live with her father. Gil does not know his father and has been taken in, rather reluctantly, by his grandfather.  Mayken’s desire to explore the lower decks of the Batavia involves her disguising herself as a boy whilst Gil is fascinated by the contents of his late grandmother’s wardrobe.  Both children are told stories of a fantastical monster whose appearance may presage death. Mayken, who loves a ghoulish story, becomes convinced this monster, named Bullebak, is stalking the bowels of the ship and must be captured and destroyed.  Gil is told a similar story about a mythical creature, a bunyip. While Mayken finds companionship from amongst the Batavia’s crew, in particularly the lovely Holdfast, Gil forms a bond with a companion quite different in nature, the ‘invariably pissed off looking’ Enkidu.

The real literary magic happens in chapters 33 and 34 when the two stories connect in the most brilliant way, as if a door has been opened between the 20th century and the 17th century.  It’s clever. I repeat, it’s clever.

Normally the mention of magical realism in relation to a book would have me running a mile but I had no difficulty in accepting that a tragedy such as the sinking of the Batavia with the loss of so many lives might leave traces in the place where it happened; and I don’t just mean the physical finds being discovered by the team of scientists working on Beacon Island. In the final pages, that more supernatural connection between the two children happens again and it’s both heartbreaking and heartwarming.

In The Night Ship, the author has taken a true story and used it to create something magical. I loved it.

I received a proof copy courtesy of Canogate via Readers First.

In three words: Haunting, immersive, enthralling

Try something similar: The White Hare by Jane Johnson

Jess KiddAbout the Author

Jess was brought up in London as part of a large family from County Mayo. She is the author of three acclaimed novels for adults, Himself, The Hoarder and Things in Jars. In 2017, Kidd won the Costa Short Story Award and in 2020 she was picked by The Times as one of the best emerging Irish writers. (Photo: Author website)

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