Tag: historical fiction

#BlogTour #BookReview Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell @TinderPress

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for giving me a slot on the tour and to Tinder Press for my digital review copy. Be sure to check out the posts by my tour buddies Juliet at Book Literati Book Reviews and Melanie at Melanie’s Reads.

HamnetAbout the Book

Warwickshire in the 1580s. Agnes is a woman as feared as she is sought after for her unusual gifts. She settles with her husband in Henley Street, Stratford, and has three children: a daughter, Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith. The boy, Hamnet, dies in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the husband writes a play called Hamlet.

Award-winning author Maggie O’Farrell’s new novel breathes full-blooded life into the story of a loss usually consigned to literary footnotes and provides an unforgettable vindication of Agnes, a woman intriguingly absent from history.

Format: Hardcover (384 pages)       Publisher: Tinder Press
Publication date: 31st March 2020 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find Hamnet on Goodreads

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

My Review

Hamnet draws on the author’s abiding fascination with the little-known story behind Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet.  Because it is an established (if not necessarily widely-known) fact, having the reader aware from the outset that Hamnet will die is unavoidable. In other hands, it might reduce the narrative thrust of the book but in this case it only seems to increase the sense of anticipation and tension. With a feeling of foreboding, the reader knows it will happen but not exactly how and at what point in the book. I found that every positive thought, kindly action or interaction with another family member by Hamnet – however minor – increased the poignancy, acting as a constant reminder of the fine young person Hamnet might have become had he lived.

The author takes the unusual step of never mentioning by name William Shakespeare. Instead he is referred to in relation to other characters – he is Hamnet’s father, Agnes’s husband, the Latin tutor, the glovemaker’s son. It’s a move that helps to put Agnes front and centre of the story giving her more influence on events than she may have been able to exert in real life.

The narrative moves between different points of view, and back and forth in time between the days leading up to and after Hamnet’s death, and Agnes’ first meeting with her future husband and their subsequent very deliberate action to ensure they can be married. Agnes’s ‘gift’ of insight into future events only adds to the sense of foreboding previously mentioned. The reader knows she senses correctly what will happen but at the same time that she is mistaken about the way it will happen.

What I found particularly clever – and chillingly prescient given what’s going on at the moment – was the small section of the book that demonstrates how a chain of seemingly random interactions can have unforeseen and devastating consequences around the world.

When Hamnet’s death does occur, it’s clear it leaves a gaping hole in the family. ‘How were they to know that Hamnet was the pin holding them together? That without him they would all fragment and fall apart, like a cup shattered on the floor?’ The author describes with insight the different ways in which members of the family feel his absence. If only they had done this or that? If only they had noticed or acted earlier? I was particularly moved by the reaction of Hamnet’s twin sister, Judith.

Hamnet’s death also puts a strain on the marriage of Agnes and her husband, made greater by an act that initially Agnes struggles to understand – or forgive. It is only in the vibrant and moving final scene of the book, she finally appreciates that it is her husband’s way of grieving and that he has honoured the memory of their son in the only way he can, bringing him back to life if only for a few short hours.

Hamnet is a poignant portrait of a marriage, a family and the impact on both of the loss of a child.

In three words: Moving, poignant, emotional

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Maggie Author PicAbout the Author

Maggie O’Farrell is the author of the Sunday Times no. 1 bestselling memoir I Am, I Am, I Am, and eight novels: After You’d Gone, My Lover’s Lover, The Distance Between Us, which won a Somerset Maugham Award, The Vanishing Act Of Esme Lennox, The Hand That First Held Mine, which won the 2010 Costa Novel Award, Instructions For A Heatwave, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Costa Novel Award, This Must Be The Place, which was shortlisted for the 2016 Costa Novel Award, and Hamnet. She lives in Edinburgh.

Hamnet BT Poster

#BlogTour #BookReview The Philosopher’s Daughters by Alison Booth @RedDoorBooks

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The Philosophers Daughters BT PosterWelcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Philosopher’s Daughters by Alison Booth. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and for organising my review copy. Be sure to check out the post by my tour buddy, Haley at The Caffeinated Reader.

About the Book

A tale of two very different sisters whose 1890s voyage from London into remote outback Australia becomes a journey of self-discovery, set against a landscape of wild beauty and savage dispossession.

London, 1891: Harriet Cameron is a talented young artist whose mother died when she was barely five. She and her beloved sister Sarah were brought up by their father, radical thinker James Cameron. After adventurer Henry Vincent arrives on the scene, the sisters’ lives are changed forever. Sarah, the beauty of the family, marries Henry and embarks on a voyage to Australia. Harriet, intensely missing Sarah, must decide whether to help her father with his life’s work or devote herself to painting.

When James Cameron dies unexpectedly, Harriet is overwhelmed by grief. Seeking distraction, she follows Sarah to Australia, and afterwards into the Northern Territory outback, where she is alienated by the casual violence and great injustices of outback life. Her rejuvenation begins with her friendship with an Aboriginal stockman and her growing love for the landscape. But this fragile happiness is soon threatened by murders at a nearby cattle station and by a menacing station hand seeking revenge.

Format: Paperback (356 pages)     Publisher: RedDoor Press
Publication date: 2nd April 2020 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find The Philosopher’s Daughters on Goodreads

Pre-order/Purchase links*
Waterstones | Hive (supporting UK bookshops) | Amazon UK
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

My Review

The deceptively attractive sounding Dimbulah Downs, to which Sarah and Henry – and later Harriet – travel, is in fact an isolated farm in the Northern Territory of Australia. The author gives the reader a vivid depiction of daily life in the remote outback – basic facilities, unrelenting heat, burning sun and mail deliveries only every six weeks.

However, even in these harsh surroundings, the sisters find things to appreciate. I liked the way in which the author shows how Sarah, a gifted pianist, sees things in musical terms. For example, she observes the water flowing into a series of pools used for bathing as altering its tempo ‘from adagio to allegro’ and varying its volume ‘from pianissimo to fortissimo’. She compares telegraph wires, humming and vibrating ‘with the lives of others’, to the vibrating strings of a piano as the hammers strike them. Later she conjures up thoughts of ‘savage music’ such as Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture to give her courage to tackle difficult tasks.

For Harriet, the harsh beauty of the landscape re-awakens her enthusiasm for painting, helping quell her initial feelings of displacement. ‘She didn’t belong here, even as a visitor. She no longer had any reference points against which to measure her own sense of worth… What she thought she was good at had no value here.’ When she finds someone with whom to share her interest in painting, her outlook changes. It also marks the beginning of an important, if unconventional, relationship that will have dramatic consequences.

Both Sarah and Harriet have their eyes opened to the denial of the rights of the aboriginal people, the disregard for their cultural heritage and, in the worst cases, their savage treatment by neighbouring farm owners. As Sarah realises, ‘I’ve been sheltered all my life…despite my education. Sheltered by Father. Sheltered by Harriet. Sheltered by Henry. Hiding behind my music. Escaping into my music. And blind to what’s happening around me.’

I liked the book’s quirky chapter headings made up of phrases plucked from the text of the chapter, such as ‘A Little Ingenuity and Some Scraps of Wood’. (You’ll have to read the book to find what is constructed using those items.)

The Philosopher’s Daughters sees two young women who have been taught to believe in equality, independence and universal suffrage required to transform theory into practice and tackle challenges of a sort they could never have imagined. It’s a well-crafted story about change, widening your horizons and finding out what’s really important in life.

In three words: Absorbing, insightful, engaging

Try something similar: The Moral Compass by K. A. Servian

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FB_IMG_1583681063126About the Author

Born in Melbourne and brought up in Sydney, Alison spent over two decades studying, living and working in the UK before returning to Australia some fifteen years ago.

Her debut novel, Stillwater Creek, was Highly Commended in the 2011 ACT Book of the Year Award, and afterwards published in Reader’s Digest Select Editions in Asia and in Europe. Alison’s also written The Indigo Sky (2011) and A Distant Land (2012). Alison wrote an article for The Guardian on domestic violence; a major theme in her last book, A Perfect Marriage (2018).

Alison is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the Australian National University. In November 2019, Alison was made Fellow of the Econometric Society, a prestigious international society for the advancement of economic theory in its relation to statistics and mathematics.

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