Tag: historical fiction

#BookReview The Familiars by Stacey Halls @ZaffreBooks @ReadersFirst1

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The FamiliarsAbout the Book

Lancashire, 1612. Fleetwood Shuttleworth is 17 years old, married, and pregnant for the fourth time. But as mistress of Gawthorpe Hall, she still has no living child, and her husband Richard is anxious for an heir. When Fleetwood finds a letter she isn¹t supposed to read from the doctor who delivered her third stillbirth, she is dealt the crushing blow that she will not survive another pregnancy.

Then she crosses paths by chance with Alice Gray, a young midwife. Alice promises to help her give birth to a healthy baby and to prove the physician wrong. As Alice is drawn into the witchcraft accusations that are sweeping the north-west, Fleetwood risks everything by trying to help her. But is there more to Alice than meets the eye?

Soon the two women’s lives will become inextricably bound together as the legendary Pendle witch trials approach, and Fleetwood¹s stomach continues to grow. Time is running out, and both their lives are at stake.

Only they know the truth. Only they can save each other.

Format: Hardcover (432 pp)                 Publisher: Zaffre
Publication date: 7th February 2019 Genre: Historical Fiction

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Find The Familiars on Goodreads

My Review

The Familiars is a tale of superstition, ignorance and misogyny that sees ‘wise women’ skilled in herbal medicine and midwifery accused of witchcraft for political gain and royal favour, or because they are a convenient target to blame for natural events such as crop failures or for unexpected deaths. As the book’s heroine, Fleetwood Shuttleworth, observes about local magistrate, Roger Nowell, the chief instigator of the accusations, “Roger is on a witch hunt. He is collecting women like cards at a table”.

At the same time it’s also a story of personal betrayal, as Fleetwood will discover. A battle of wills ensues – between Fleetwood and her husband Richard, between Fleetwood and Roger Nowell, and between Fleetwood and her mother – as she fights for her rights, her independence, her very future even. She is also forced into action to try to save her midwife, Alice, from suffering the same fate as the other unfortunate women under suspicion. Full disclosure: throughout I was one hundred percent Team Fleetwood, even if I did marvel at her ability to travel the countryside on horseback even when heavily pregnant.

From the moment of their first strange encounter, Fleetwood and Alice form an unlikely friendship. Although they occupy very different positions in society, they share a common bond and have similar stories, namely of misuse by men. Friendship soon turns into dependency as Fleetwood becomes convinced her life, and that of her unborn child, are inextricably linked to the fate of Alice. ‘We were bound together in some dreadful destiny, and it was clearer now than ever that to survive, we needed one another just as equally, and just as desperately.’

There are hints of the supernatural throughout the book with the reader never entirely sure if Alice’s powers are simply those of a skilled healer or something more. The inclusion of a strange child, Jennet Device, Fleetwood’s disturbing nightmares and unsettling night time visitations to her chamber by an unidentified ‘something’ all add to the sense of unease.

The vivid descriptions of the landscape surrounding Gawthorpe over which our splendidly named heroine loves to wander matches the book’s gorgeous dust jacket. I liked the fact that the cover design cleverly incorporates elements from the story. The author’s research is also evident in the detailed descriptions of food (oyster pie or salmon poached in beer with pickled herring anyone?), costume and furnishings.

I was interested to learn from the book’s Historical Note that Fleetwood Shuttleworth and numerous other characters in the book existed in real life. If I’m honest I expected the Pendle witch trials to feature more prominently in the story. However, in using her imagination to bring to life Fleetwood and Alice, the author has created an atmospheric and compelling story of life in 17th century Lancashire.

I received a review copy courtesy of Zaffre Books and Readers First.

In three words: Atmospheric, magical, assured

Try something similar: Widdershins by Helen Steadman (read my review here)

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staceyAbout the Author

Stacey Halls grew up in Rossendale, Lancashire and has always been fascinated by the Pendle witches. She lives in London and has worked as a journalist for Stylist, Psychologies and Fabulous. The Familiars is her first novel. (Photo credit: author website)

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Buchan of the Month: Introducing The Blanket of the Dark by John Buchan #ReadJB2019

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The Blanket of the Dark is the ninth book in my John Buchan reading project, Buchan of the Month 2019. You can find out more about the project and my reading list for 2019 here. What follows is a (spoiler-free) introduction to The Blanket of the Dark.   I will be publishing my review of the book later this month.

20190916_105622_resizedThe Blanket of the Dark  was published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton on 21st July 1931 and in the United States on 2nd September 1931 by Houghton Mifflin.

A return to historical fiction, The Blanket of the Dark is set in the Cotswolds during the period of the so-called Pilgrimage of Grace, an uprising that began in Yorkshire in October 1536 before spreading to other parts of Northern England. In the book, Buchan explores an imagined ‘might-have-been of history’ in which a lowly Abbey clerk, Peter Pentecost, learns he is in fact the son of the last Duke of Buckingham and should by rights be king instead of Henry VIII. Peter becomes the tool of unscrupulous men who would overthrow Henry VIII and place him on the throne of England. Many adventures ensue.

Janet Adam Smith notes that, as in Midwinter, the ‘high life is balanced by the low’ in the person of Solomon Darking and his band of followers (similar to the self-styled The Naked Men of Midwinter). She argues it’s Buchan’s way of showing history from the point of view of the ‘unimportant’.

Janet Adam Smith regards The Blanket of the Dark as Buchan’s ‘most deeply felt novel’. She is not alone in her regard for the book. David Daniell reports that Rudyard Kipling called it a ‘tour de force’ and Rose Macauley described it as ‘enchanting and beautiful’. Ursula Buchan, author of the recently published biography of her grandfather, Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps: A Life of John Buchan describes it as ‘one of Buchan’s very best novels’. It’s the one she always personally recommends. David Daniell praises the way in which Buchan knits together all the book’s elements, remarking that ‘the tone is relaxed but the control is tight…as if Buchan is drawing together all his skills under the influence of his response to the land and its people’.

Janet Adam Smith reports that combined sales for the Hodder & Stoughton and Nelson editions of The Blanket of the Dark totalled 73,000 copies by 1960 with a further 32,000 copies of the Penguin paperback edition sold up to 1964. Therefore, despite this being one of the most admired of Buchan’s novels, it was relatively unsuccessful in commercial terms, like much of his  historical fiction.

Sources:

  • Janet Adam Smith, John Buchan: A Biography (OUP, 1985 [1965])
  • David Daniell, The Interpreter’s House: A Critical Assessment of John Buchan (Nelson, 1975)
  • Kenneth Hillier and Michael Ross, The First Editions of John Buchan: A Collector’s Illustrated Biography (Avonworld, 2008)
  • Ursula Buchan, Beyond The Thirty-Nine Steps: A Life of John Buchan (Bloomsbury, 2019)

buchan of the month 2019