Tag: historical fiction

#BookReview Fred’s Funeral by Sandy Day

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Fred's FuneralAbout the Book

Fred Sadler has just died of old age. It’s 1986, seventy years after he marched off to war, and his ghost hovers near the ceiling of the dismal nursing home. To Fred’s dismay, the arrangement of his funeral falls to his prudish and disparaging sister-in-law. As Viola dominates the remembrance of Fred, his ghost agonizes over his inability to set the record straight.

Was old Uncle Fred really suffering from shell shock? Why was he shut away for most of his life in the Whitby Hospital for the Insane? Why didn’t his family help him more?

Fred’s memories of his life as a child, his family’s hotel, the War, and the mental hospital, clash with Viola’s version of events as the family gathers on a rainy October night to pay their respects.

Format: ebook (129 pages)                       Publisher:
Publication date: 2nd December 2017 Genre: Historical fiction

Find Fred’s Funeral on Goodreads

Purchase Links*
Amazon UK ǀ  Amazon.com 
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

My Review

The book’s imaginative premise sees Fred Sadler become an unseen, ghostly presence at his own funeral and a witness, alongside the reader, to the gradual revealing of the unvarnished story of his life. Based on the true story of the author’s great uncle, it is a tale of ignorance at the time about the mental trauma suffered by soldiers as a result of their experiences. The attitude of Fred’s family and the treatment he undergoes at the hands of the medical profession are shocking by today’s standards. Fred is seen as an embarrassment, someone to be shut away and hidden from society.

I found Fred’s story intensely moving and would have welcomed more about the wartime experiences that led to his condition. The sections relating the history of the Sadler family were less compelling for me and I’m afraid I took an active dislike to Fred’s sister-in-law, Viola. Conversely, Dawn, his niece, seemed the only person interested in learning the truth about Fred and ensuring his memory was respected.

You can read an extract from Fred’s Funeral here and an interview in which, amongst other things, Sandy talks about how she came to write the book.

My thanks to Sandy for my review copy of Fred’s Funeral and for her patience in waiting for it to reach the top of my review pile! Sandy’s latest novel Head on Backwards, Chest Full of Sand will be published on 14th February 2020 and is available for pre-order now from Amazon UK

In three words: Moving, thought-provoking, intimate

Try something similar: The Dream Shelf by Jeff Russell (read my review here)

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Sandy DayAbout the Author

Sandy Day is the author of Poems from the Chatterbox. She graduated from Glendon College, York University, with a degree in English Literature sometime in the last century. Sandy spends her summers in Jackson’s Point, Ontario on the shore of Lake Simcoe. She winters nearby in Sutton by the Black River.

Sandy is a trained facilitator for the Toronto Writers Collective’s creative writing workshops. She is a developmental editor and book coach.

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#BlogTour #BookReview The Boy With Blue Trousers by Carol Jones @HoZ_Books

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Boy With Blue Trousers by Carol Jones, published on 14th November in paperback but also available in hardback and as an ebook. Thanks to Lauren at Head of Zeus for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my review copy via NetGalley. Do head over to Instagram to check out my co-host, Kirsty at paperheartsink

cover176261-mediumAbout the Book

On the goldfields of 19th-century Australia, two very different girls are trying to escape their past.

1856, China. In the mulberry groves of the Pearl River Delta, eighteen-year-old Little Cat carries a terrible secret. And so, in disguise as a boy in blue trousers, she makes the long and difficult passage to Australia, a faraway land of untold riches where it is said the rivers run with gold.

1857, Australia. Violet Hartley has arrived off the boat from England, fleeing scandal back home. Like the Chinese immigrants seeking their fortunes on the goldfields, Violet is seduced by the promise of a new frontier. Then she meets Little Cat, a woman who, like her, is trying to escape her past.

As their fates inextricably, devastatingly entwine, their story becomes one of freedom, violence, love and vengeance, echoing across the landscapes of two great continents.

Format: Paperback (320 pages)                Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 14th November 2019 Genre: Historical Fiction

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

Find The Boy With Blue Trousers on Goodreads 

My Review

I really enjoyed Carol Jones’s previous novel, The Concubine’s Child, set partly in 1930s Malaysia. What I particularly admired about the book was the rich cultural detail. The same is true of The Boy With Blue Trousers, especially in the early sections set in the Pearl River Delta where the reader is immersed in daily life in a small village – its inhabitants’ social customs, spiritual beliefs and traditions. Not to mention the fascinating information about the farming of silkworms!

Unlike The Concubine’s Child there is no modern day story running alongside the historical narrative, instead The Boy With Blue Trousers switches two or three chapters at a time between the stories of Little Cat and Violet Hartley. Both women have reason to flee their past and the constraints of social expectations. For me, the story of Little Cat was the most powerful and compelling because she faced the greater adversity and jeopardy. I couldn’t engage quite as fully with Violet’s story although I liked her independence of spirit. Her sense of realism about her position as a single woman and what might be necessary to enhance it was, if not admirable, at least refreshingly honest.

From the beginning, the reader is aware the two storylines will converge but not how. The intriguing prologue provides an extra layer of anticipation and the author skilfully manages the coming together of the two stories in order to keep the reader turning the pages.

The Boy With Blue Trousers will delight fans of historical fiction with its compelling story of love, duty, sacrifice and vengeance, and its wealth of cultural detail.

In three words: Dramatic, compelling, engaging

Try something similar: The Concubine’s Child by Carol Jones (read my review here)

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Autosave-File vom d-lab2/3 der AgfaPhoto GmbHAbout the Author

Born in Brisbane, Australia, Carol Jones taught English and Drama at secondary schools before working as an editor of children’s magazines. She is the author of several young adult novels as well as children’s non-fiction.

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