Tag: historical fiction

#BookReview The Unquiet Heart by Kaite Welsh

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The Unquiet HeartAbout the Book

Sarah Gilchrist has no intention of marrying her dull fiancé Miles, the man her family hope will restore her reputation and put an end to her dreams of becoming a doctor, but when he is arrested for a murder she is sure he didn’t commit she finds herself his reluctant ally.

Beneath the genteel façade of upper class Edinburgh lurks blackmail, adultery, poison and madness, and Sarah must return to Edinburgh’s slums, back alleys and asylums as she discovers the dark past about a family where no one is what they seem, even Miles himself.

It also brings her back into the orbit of her mercurial professor, Gregory Merchiston – he sees Sarah as his protegee, but can he stave off his demons long enough to teach her the skills that will save her life?

Format: Hardcover (288 pages)    Publisher: Tinder Press
Publication date: 30th May 2019 Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Crime

Find The Unquiet Heart (Sarah Gilchrist #2) on Goodreads

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My Review

The Unquiet Heart is the second in the author’s historical mystery series featuring medical student turned detective, Sarah Gilchrist. Like its predecessor, The Wages of Sin, it is set in Victorian Edinburgh. There are some references to events and characters in the previous book but it would be possible to read The Unquiet Heart as a standalone.

Sarah Gilchrist continues to resist the expectations of her family – and of society – that she will marry and give up her ambition to qualify as a doctor. She frequently rails against the restrictions placed upon her as a woman. ‘I’m sick of being told that women are weak – too weak for surgery, too weak for intellectual thought.’ And she is roused to anger by the double standards that mean, had she been a man, her medical studies would be ‘the object of praise rather than disgust’. Added to this is the unfairness that, because of previous traumatic events, she is considered ‘damaged goods’, including by her family, even though the damage in question was not of her own making and has had lasting consequences.  

Despite a number of suspicious deaths early on, the pace of the book is a little on the slow side for those interested mainly in the mystery element. In addition, for a lot of the time the action moves largely between the houses of Sarah’s friend, Elizabeth Chalmers, her aunt Emily and the University where Sarah attends lectures, meaning it’s only later in the book that one gets a glimpse of the seamier side of Edinburgh. I would have liked a bit more of the latter, to be honest.

However, readers like me who were intrigued by the relationship between Sarah and Professor Gregory Merchiston that featured in the first book will enjoy the simmering sexual tension between them that continues in this one. But will it ignite into a conflagration or fizzle out?  And are they destined to remain merely pupil and tutor?

Despite the prejudice displayed by others, Merchiston is willing to introduce Sarah to the techniques of forensic medicine, even if this does demand a strong stomach. “Our bodies tell stories, Miss Gilchrist. The language may be foreign to most but learn to translate it and you will be privy to all the secrets of our species, living or dead.”  By the way, I think we really need to learn more about how Merchiston’s housekeeper, Mrs Logan, came to be, in her words, ‘in a music hall dressing room stripped down to my unmentionables armed with nothing but a prop knife’.

By the end of the book, Sarah seems faced with a choice between marriage to a wealthy if unremarkable man and the end of her medical career before it’s even begun, or a less socially acceptable relationship with a man who will preserve, even actively encourage, her ambitions. Unfortunately the latter is also likely to cause a potentially irreconcilable breach with her mother. But are those the only choices available to Sarah?

I received a review copy courtesy of Headline via NetGalley.

In three words: Well-crafted, engaging, intriguing

Try something similar: A Corruption of Blood by Ambrose Parry

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Kaite WelshAbout the Author

Kaite Welsh is an author, critic and journalist and the former Literature Officer at Creative Scotland. Her work has appeared in various newspapers and magazines from The Times Literary Supplement to Cosmopolitan. Her short fiction, featuring roller derby, Greek myths and ghosts, has been published in several anthologies and she guest lectures on Creative Writing at universities around the UK. She is the author of the Sarah Gilchrist series, and lives in Edinburgh with her wife, cats and a lot of books (Bio/photo: Agent author page)

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#BookReview Little by Edward Carey @BelgraviaB

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LittleAbout the Book

In 1761, a tiny, odd-looking girl named Marie is born in a village in Switzerland. After the death of her parents, she is apprenticed to an eccentric wax sculptor and whisked off to the seamy streets of Paris, where they meet a domineering widow and her quiet, pale son. Together, they convert an abandoned monkey house into an exhibition hall for wax heads, and the spectacle becomes a sensation.

As word of her artistic talent spreads, Marie is called to Versailles, where she tutors a princess and saves Marie Antoinette in childbirth. But outside the palace walls, Paris is roiling: The revolutionary mob is demanding heads, and… at the wax museum, heads are what they do.

Format: Paperback (430 pages)         Publisher: Gallic Books
Publication date: 4th October 2018  Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

I’ve been meaning to pick up this book for ages, ever since the lovely people at Gallic Books sent me a review copy. I’m now kicking myself that it’s taken me so long to read it because I thought it was brilliant – and I’m not alone. Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2019, Little has received many plaudits, described as being ‘the wry, macabre, unforgettable tale of an ambitious orphan in Revolutionary Paris’ and ‘a darkly endearing cavalcade of a novel’. I agree.

Little tells the story of (Anne) Marie Grosholtz who joins the household of the eccentric Doctor Curtius, a sculptor of wax replicas of body parts. Later Curtius moves into creating wax heads, being particularly interested in the heads of murderers and Little begins to learn the art of taking plaster casts and assisting in the creation of the heads.

One of the visitors to Curtius’s workshop is the similarly eccentric Louis-Sébastien Mercier whose obsession is walking the streets of Paris and making notes on the people he sees. ‘So many different sentences of streets have my shoes walked me’.  Noting Marie’s short stature, it is Mercier who coins the name by which she will become known.

‘Aren’t you, little boldness’ – this he called me, and, very pleased with his own observation, he went on, not caring for a moment how I might take his words – ‘little ill-facedness, little minor monster in a child’s dress . . . little thing . . . little howl . . . little crumb of protruding flesh . . . little statement on mankind . . . little . . . little? he concluded, not certain in the end of what I was, only that I was little, a little of something.’

It is Mercier who introduces the increasingly penniless Curtius to the Widow Picot who becomes his landlady. Widow Picot takes an instant dislike to Little banishing her to the kitchen to perform the role of servant and hurling insults at her at every turn. Unfortunately Curtius lacks the courage to challenge Widow Picot and Little finds herself unable to continue to work alongside him. Gradually she forms a friendship with the Widow Picot’s son, Edmond, a quiet and withdrawn young man.

As the book progresses, Little encounters many curious characters, including the locksmith she meets whilst lost in the maze of corridors in the Palace of Versailles during her employment as tutor in wax sculpture to Princess Élisabeth, the sister of King Louis XVI. What Little doesn’t know is that her time at Versailles (even if she is expected to sleep in a cupboard) is shortly to come to an end as the bloody events of the French Revolution engulf Paris.

I loved Little for her determination, her sly wit, her kindness towards Edmond and the compassion she shows to the Widow Picot, the woman who made her life such a misery. In the final chapters, Little recounts the events of her later years, including how exactly she became Madame Tussaud.

LittleIt’s impossible to write a review of the book without mentioning the wonderful illustrations by the author that accompany the text. These include examples of the waxwork replicas of body parts and internal organs crafted by Doctor Curtius, likenesses of the characters who feature in the book and some of the waxwork heads exhibited for the paying public in the Great Monkey House. Amongst my particular favourites were Marie’s sketch of Edmond’s ears and of Florence the pug. The drawing that makes up the inside back cover of the book (pictured right) gives you a flavour of the illustrations.

Little is one of those books whose inventiveness and originality is difficult to convey in words.  By turns it’s macabre, funny, dramatic, dark and a little grotesque.  It’s also rather moving at times. For example, I got a little teary at comments by Edmond such as ‘Very convenient premises, apply within’ or when Little and Edmond explore The Celestial Bed. (I’m afraid you’ll have to read the book to understand the context.)

Little is really quite fabulous, highly recommended for historical fiction fans looking for something a bit different, and definitely one of my favourite books of 2021.

In three words: Quirky, imaginative, engaging

Try something similar: The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal

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Edward CareyAbout the Author

Edward Carey is a novelist, visual artist and playwright. He is the author of two acclaimed novels, Observatory Mansions and Alva and Irva. His YA series The Iremonger Trilogy is published in thirteen countries and has been optioned for film adaptation. Born in England, he teaches at the University of Austin, Texas. (Photo: Goodreads author page)

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