Tag: historical fiction

#BookReview Violets by Alex Hyde @grantabooks

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VioletsAbout the Book

A young woman, Violet, lies in a hospital bed in the closing days of the war. Her pregnancy is over and she is no longer able to conceive. With her husband deployed to the Pacific Front and her friends caught up in transitory love affairs, she must find a way to put herself back together.

In a small, watchful town in the Welsh valleys, another Violet contemplates the fate she shares with her unborn child. Unwed and unwanted, an overseas posting offers a temporary way out. Plunged into the heat and disorder of Naples, her body begins to reveal the responsibility it carries even as she is drawn into the burnished circle of a charismatic new friend, Maggie.

Between these two Violets, sung into being like a babe in a nursery rhyme: a son. As their lives begin to intertwine, a spellbinding story of women’s courage emerges, suffused with power, lyricism and beauty, from an exhilarating new voice in British fiction.

Format: Hardcover (256 pages)         Publisher: Granta
Publication date: 3rd February 2022 Genre: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

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My Review

Set towards the end of the Second World War, the book tells the story of two women, both called Violet, with the narrative alternating seamlessly between the experiences of the two women.

The first Violet we meet has just suffered a miscarriage and she and her husband, Fred, find themselves without any prospect of having the child they have longed for, and prepared for.  ‘And the room upstairs, ready and waiting, the walls still bare. No summer baby, she thought. No noise and mess.’ With Fred posted abroad, Violet has to bear her grief alone and try to pick up the pieces of her life.

The second Violet is in the opposite position, pregnant as the result of a brief relationship. Desperate to hide the fact from her mother and fearful of the response to her unmarried state, she signs up for the ATS and is posted abroad. On the voyage to Italy she meets the vibrant and worldly Maggie and they form an unlikely friendship.  Despite Violet going to greater and greater lengths to disguise the fact she is expecting a child, discovery is inevitable.

The way the lives of the two Violets intersect is perhaps not that surprising but still provides a resolution  for both of them, and for Fred, a character I loved.

However, the most remarkable aspect of the book, and the feature which sets it apart from other books I’ve read, are the lyrical passages which interrupt the text from time to time. Addressed to ‘Pram Boy’, the unborn son of Violet, these passages are poetic in nature and contain some striking imagery. They chart the progress of the child Violet is carrying from conception, through gestation, to birth.  Often the passages use metaphors linked to Violet’s experiences at the time, such as this during her voyage to Italy.

So wait then, stay your course
Decked and berthed and set in the hold, darkly stowed
That’s you, mother-lover, filling her up.
Deep in the womb glow, sweet loving cup.

Finally, Pram Boy makes the journey from being ‘a rounded pod of seed’ in his mother’s womb to the outside world.

Come now, hush
A moment’s respite, release,
Before your un-knit skull crowns to the air
To the burn of a ragged tear
And your Mama a cat panting its litter-runt free

Perhaps the only criticism I can make of the book is that the ‘second Violet’s’ story is more eventful and compelling but this is a minor quibble because Violets is a remarkable debut and I think Alex Hyde is an author to look out for in the future.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of Granta Books via NetGalley.

In three words: Lyrical, intense, imaginative

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#BlogTour #BookReview The Bookseller’s Secret by Michelle Gable @RandomTTours

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Bookseller's Secret BT Poster

Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Bookseller’s Secret by Michelle Gable. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Harper Collins for my review copy.

Booksellers Secret Graphic 2About the Book

In 1942, London, Nancy Mitford is worried about more than air raids and German spies. Still recovering from a devastating loss, the once sparkling Bright Young Thing is estranged from her husband, her allowance has been cut, and she’s given up her writing career. On top of this, her five beautiful but infamous sisters continue making headlines with their controversial politics.

Eager for distraction and desperate for income, Nancy jumps at the chance to manage the Heywood Hill bookshop while the owner is away at war. Between the shop’s brisk business and the literary salons she hosts for her eccentric friends, Nancy’s life seems on the upswing. But when a mysterious French officer insists that she has a story to tell, Nancy must decide if picking up the pen again and revealing all is worth the price she might be forced to pay.

Eighty years later, Heywood Hill is abuzz with the hunt for a lost wartime manuscript written by Nancy Mitford. For one woman desperately in need of a change, the search will reveal not only a new side to Nancy, but an even more surprising link between the past and present…

Format: Paperback (400 pages)               Publisher: Graydon House
Publication date: 11th November 2021  Genre: Historical Fiction, Dual Time

Find The Bookseller’s Secret on Goodreads

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My Review

Alternating between London in the present day and during World War 2, the book is told from the point of view of American author, Katie Cabot, in London to visit her friend Jojo, and Nancy Mitford, at the time the author of three not very successful novels.

Initially, I wasn’t sure if the dual timeline structure would work but as the book progressed I enjoyed how more and more paralells between the two women emerged. For example, both are struggling to come up with ideas for their next book, are either in or trying to move on from unsuccessful relationships and have experienced health issues.  The inclusion of the present day timeline and Katie’s curiosity about the possibility of discovering a lost manuscript by Nancy Mitford allows the author to drip-feed into the story details about Nancy’s life, her wartime activities, her eccentric childhood and, in particular, her infamous sisters.

What links the two women is Heywood Hill bookshop, where Nancy worked during the war and which Katie visits on the recommendation of her friend. A neat touch is the similarity between the women’s first impressions of the bookshop. Katie notes its ‘dusty chandeliers, the cob-webbed tinged corners and nooks’ whilst Nancy describes its ‘cluttered shelves, cob-webbed corners, and teetering stacks of books’.  (I wonder if it is purely coincidence that Katie’s most successful novel, and the only one stocked by the Heywood Hill bookshop, is called A Paris Affair and the author’s first book was entitled A Paris Apartment?)

I particularly enjoyed the sections written from Nancy’s point of view which are lively and gay, and seem very much Nancy in style. I loved her witty repartee with her friends and her waspish comments about other authors. For example, Ernest Hemingway is dismissed as ‘the biggest bore on earth’ and Evelyn Waugh, although supposedly a friend, as ‘a workaday, bloated drunk in a bowler hat’.  The banter between Nancy and her friends is mirrored in Katie’s jokey conversations with the man she meets in the bookshop and who, she discovers, shares her own interest in Nancy Mitford’s wartime experiences. You may not be completely surprised that initially Katie does not particularly take to the gentleman concerned. However, as we learned from Pride and Prejudice, first impressions can be deceptive. Talking of romance (potential or actual), I found the way the author describes Nancy’s relationship with her French Colonel especially touching.

As Katie struggles to come up with an idea for her next book (resisting everyone’s suggestion that she simply write a sequel to A Paris Affair), she is reassured that ‘Every writer struggles, even the late, great Nancy Mitford’.  As we now know, Nancy did finally overcome that struggle and write her most famous novel, The Pursuit of Love (to which she did write a sequel, Love in a Cold Climate).

I really enjoyed The Bookseller’s Secret and it has definitely made me want to read more of Nancy Mitford’s books, and to re-read The Pursuit of Love.

In three words: Absorbing, lively, engaging

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Michelle Gable Author PicAbout the Author

Michelle Gable is the New York Times bestselling author of A Paris Apartment, I’ll See You in Paris, The Book of Summer, and The Summer I Met Jack. She attended the College of William & Mary, where she majored in accounting, and spent twenty years working in finance before becoming a full-time writer.

She grew up in San Diego and lives in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California with her husband and to daughters.

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