Tag: historical fiction

#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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#BookReview So Much Life Left Over by Louis De Bernières

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So Much Life Left OverAbout the Book

A sweeping, heartbreaking novel following Daniel in his troubled marriage with Rosie as they navigate the unsettled time between the World Wars.

Rosie and Daniel have moved to Ceylon with their little daughter to start a new life at the dawn of the 1920s, attempting to put the trauma of the First World War behind them, and to rekindle a marriage that gets colder every day. However, even in the lush plantation hills it is hard for them to escape the ties of home and the yearning for fulfilment that threatens their marriage.

Back in England, Rosie’s three sisters are dealing with different challenges in their searches for family, purpose and happiness. These are precarious times, and they find themselves using unconventional means to achieve their desires. Around them the world is changing, and when Daniel finds himself in Germany he witnesses events taking a dark and forbidding turn.

By turns humorous and tragic, gripping and touching, So Much Life Left Over follows a cast of unique and captivating characters as they navigate the extraordinary inter-war years both in England and abroad.

Format: Hardcover (288 pages)  Publisher: Harvill Secker
Publication date: 5th July 2018  Genre: Historical Fiction

Find So Much Life Left Over on Goodreads

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

My Review

When I picked up this book, I didn’t realise it was the second book in a planned trilogy that started with The Dust That Falls From Dreams. Although it works perfectly well as a standalone, the book description makes me feel I would have enjoyed following the characters through the events of the earlier book first.

In So Much Life Left Over all the characters find themselves dissatisfied to a certain extent with what their lives have become. They are looking for direction, fulfilment, a challenge, a chance to contribute or pondering the ‘road not taken’. For example, Rosie’s sister, Sophie, is looking for something to replace the feeling of being valued she got from her war work. Her other sister, Christabel, is realising some opportunities only come along once in a lifetime. As she observes, ‘When I’m on my deathbed, I don’t want to be lying there thinking about all the things I never did.’

For some, like Daniel, the simple fact they have survived the war is unexpected leaving them, to quote the book’s title, with so much life left over. Their war experiences also make the boring, unimportant details of everyday life difficult to bear. ‘There is a kind of man who, having been at war, finds peacetime intolerable, because he cannot develop the civilian’s talent for becoming obsessed with irrelevant details and procedure. He hates the delays and haverings, the tedious diplomacy, the terrible lack of energy and discipline, and, above all, he hates the feeling that what he is doing is not important.’ As the humorously named Oily Wragge remarks, ‘War makes everything simple. There’s a tunnel in front of you and you put your head down, and you struggle forward for the light at the end of it one bloody impossible step at a time, and that frees you up somehow…’

Although I enjoyed the book, I wasn’t sure about the number of different points of view and the occasional switches between first and third person. Some of the narrators introduced felt as if they were there purely for the author to show off his (considerable) skill in creating distinct voices. Having said that, there were some great touches of humour and some memorable characters such as Mrs McCash who opines on subjects as diverse as when it’s appropriate to use the second best teapot and individuals who (horror!) conclude a sentence with a preposition and start a sentence with a conjunction. And you may chuckle like me at her response to the surprise contained in Mr McCash’s will, namely that he was ‘always a man for two birds with one stone’.

So Much Life Left Over is a beautifully told story of love and loss that certainly left me eager to find out what happens next. The final book in the trilogy, The Autumn of the Ace, is due to be published in November 2020.

In three words: Moving, intimate, assured

Try something similar: The Road to Grantchester by James Runcie

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IMG_6488printAbout the Author

Louis de Bernières is the bestselling author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Best Book in 1995. His most recent books are The Dust That Falls From Dreams, Birds Without Wings and A Partisan’s Daughter, a collection of stories, Notwithstanding, and two collections of poetry, Imagining Alexandria and Of Love and Desire. (Photo credit: author website)

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