Tag: historical fiction

Book Review: The Twelve-Mile Straight by Eleanor Henderson

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The Twelve-Mile StraightAbout the Book

Cotton County, Georgia, 1930. In a house full of secrets, two babies-one light-skinned, the other dark-are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper’s daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged behind a truck down the Twelve-Mile Straight, the road to the nearby town. In the aftermath, the farm’s inhabitants are forced to contend with their complicity in a series of events that left a man dead and a family irrevocably fractured.

Despite the prying eyes and curious whispers of the townspeople, Elma begins to raise her babies as best as she can, under the roof of her mercurial father, Juke, and with the help of Nan, the young black housekeeper who is as close to Elma as a sister. But soon it becomes clear that the ties that bind all of them together are more intricate than any could have ever imagined. As startling revelations mount, a web of lies begins to collapse around the family, destabilizing their precarious world and forcing all to reckon with the painful truth.

Format: eBook (560 pp.), Hardcover (pp.) Publisher: Harper Collins UK/4th Estate
Published: 12th September 2017 (ebook)   Genre: Historical Fiction

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

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My Review

The book is written in a distinctive narrative style which conjures up the period and location in which it is set. From its immensely powerful opening chapter, the book tells a story of poverty, cruelty, prejudice and secrets.

‘There were things no one wanted known by the outside, and no one knew that better than Elma.’

Although it would be unfair to describe it as a ‘misery-fest’, it’s certainly the case that for the characters in The Twelve-Mile Straight happiness is rare and, where it exists, it is often fleeting.  The book depicts a situation in which power over livelihoods, housing, even life and death, is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals. It’s a world in which corruption or the complicity of officialdom allows a blind eye to be turned to their misdeeds. And, notably, it’s a patriarchal society where women are viewed as domestic slaves and sexual objects to be used and abused. For too many of the people who live in the environs of the Twelve-Mile Straight their experience of life is one of grinding poverty, backbreaking labour, disease, alcohol abuse and early death.

The storyline weaves back and forth in time giving the reader the back stories of characters and their different perspectives on events. I enjoyed The Twelve-Mile Straight (if ‘enjoyed’ is quite the right word given the experiences of most of its characters) but think I would have appreciated it just as much had it been around 150 pages shorter.

I received a review copy courtesy of NetGalley and publishers Harper Collins UK/4th Estate in return for an honest and unbiased review.

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In three words: Powerful, tragic, drama

Try something similar…Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke or If The Creek Don’t Rise by Leah Weiss (click on titles to read my review)

Eleanor HendersonAbout the Author

Eleanor Henderson was born in Greece, grew up in Florida, and attended Middlebury College and the University of Virginia, where she earned her MFA. Her debut novel Ten Thousand Saints was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2011 by The New York Times and a finalist for the Award for First Fiction from The Los Angeles Times. Her stories and essays have appeared in publications including Agni, Ninth Letter, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Poets & Writers, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Best American Short Stories. With Anna Solomon she is also co-editor of Labor Day: True Birth Stories by Today’s Best Women Writers (FSG, 2014). An associate professor at Ithaca College, she lives in Ithaca, New York, with her husband and two sons. Her second novel, The Twelve-Mile Straight, was published by Ecco on September 12, 2017.

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Book Review: Corpus by Rory Clements

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CorpusAbout the Book

It’s 1936. Europe is in turmoil. The Nazis have marched into the Rhineland. In Russia, Stalin has unleashed his Great Terror. Spain has erupted in civil war.

In Berlin, a young Englishwoman evades the Gestapo to deliver vital papers to a Jewish scientist. Within weeks, she is found dead in her Cambridge bedroom, a silver syringe clutched in her fingers. In a London club, three senior members of the British establishment light the touch paper on a conspiracy that will threaten the very heart of government. Even the ancient colleges of Cambridge are not immune to political division. Dons and students must choose a side: right or left, where do you stand?

When a renowned member of the county set and his wife are found horribly murdered, a maverick history professor finds himself dragged into a world of espionage which, until now, he has only read about in books. But the deeper Thomas Wilde delves, the more he wonders whether the murders are linked to the death of the girl with the silver syringe – and, just as worryingly, to the scandal surrounding King Edward VIII and his mistress Wallis Simpson…

Format: Hardcover (352 pp.)                   Publisher: Bonnier Zaffre
Published: 26th January 2017                  Genre: Historical Fiction, Thriller

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

 

Find Corpus (Tom Wilde #1) on Goodreads

My Review

I’m a huge fan of Rory Clements’ John Shakespeare series set in Elizabethan England. I was lucky enough to hear Rory speak at the Henley Literary Festival in June, when I also got the chance to ask him to sign my copy of Corpus. To read my review of the event, click here. However, to save you looking, I will say that Rory revealed plans to return to John Shakespeare in the future after he’s completed the planned three books in his new Tom Wilde series.

Corpus_Signed

There were a couple of things that struck me as I was reading Corpus. The first was that, by chance, I was reading the book at the same time of year as the majority of story is set, namely the first few days of December (albeit quite a few decades apart). The second was that there were numerous parallels between Corpus and the author’s John Shakespeare series.

The obvious one is that the specialist subject of the protagonist of Corpus, Professor Thomas (Tom) Wilde, is the Tudor spymasters Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir Robert Cecil, who feature in the John Shakespeare books. Incidentally, the author gives us a few hints about Tom Wilde’s back story, including that there is a tragedy in his past which we will no doubt learn more about in future books.

Drawn into investigating a suspicious death, Wilde approaches detection with the eye of an historian.  As he tells his students: “Argue with me! […] Make me prove my points, demand evidence, get as near the truth as you can. Re-examine everything you have ever been told and make your own mind up on the evidence you can find. And if there is not enough evidence, then keep an open mind. Become a detective – because if you don’t, you’ll never become a historian.”

As I read on, I started to see other links between the world of John Shakespeare and the world of Tom Wilde.  For instance, the covert action, spying, intrigue and plots that infected Elizabethan times are mirrored in the turbulent politics of 1930s Britain.   As in the Tudor period, there are ruthless zealots prepared to die for a cause, men of cunning practised in the art of duplicity, and unknowing dupes drawn into plots through greed, ‘fake news’ or misguided adherence to organisations much more extreme than they appear on the surface.

And you have a clash of two different belief systems – in this case Communism and Fascism – with the adherents of each out to destroy the other. Finally the abdication crisis of 1936 sees a monarch in peril, with different political factions anxious either to preserve the status quo or to advance the fortunes of another candidate more sympathetic to their views.  Where you have the Duke of York (later George V) in the case of Edward VIII, you have Mary, Queen of Scots in the case of Elizabeth I. As Wilde, an American of Irish heritage, ruefully observes, “You English haven’t really moved on much from the Middle Ages, have you?”

The storyline unfolds with plenty of twists and turns. There are action-packed confrontations and dangerous situations for our hero to navigate, including answering that crucial question: who can I trust? Corpus is a compelling historical thriller with a storyline full of plots and intrigue that melds actual and imaginary events in a plausible way. I really enjoyed it and cannot wait to read the next book in the series, Nucleus.

Luckily for me, thanks to the lovely people at Bonnier Zaffre, I have an advance reading copy of Nucleus sitting on my bookshelf. Watch out for my review around the time of its publication in January 2018.  A third outing for Tom Wilde is promised as well…

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In three words: Compelling, atmospheric, suspenseful

Try something similar…The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

RoryClementsAbout the Author

Rory Clements has had a long and successful newspaper career including being features editor and associate editor of Today, editor of the Daily Mail‘s Good Health Pages, and editor of the health section at the Evening Standard. He now writes full-time in an idyllic corner of Norfolk, England.

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