Tag: NetGalley

Book Review: A Gathering of Ghosts by Karen Maitland

whatcathyreadnext3 Comments

A Gathering of GhostsAbout the Book

The year is 1316 and high on the wilds of Dartmoor, hidden by the mist, stands the isolated Priory of St Mary, owned by the Sisters of the Knights of St. John. People travel from far and wide in search of healing at the ancient holy well that lies beneath the chapel.

But the locals believe the well was theirs long before Christianity arrived and there are those who would do anything to reclaim their sacred spring… As plagues of frogs cascade from the well and the water turns to blood, is there witchcraft afoot? Or is the Old World fighting back at last?

Format: Hardcover, ebook (544 pp.)    Publisher: Headline Review
Published: 6th September 2018             Genre: Historical Fiction, Historical Thriller

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

Find A Gathering of Ghosts on Goodreads

My Review

I read my first Karen Maitland book – The Vanishing Witch – in 2016 and immediately upon finishing it added all her other medieval thrillers to my wishlist on Goodreads.  I actually have a copy of The Plague Charmer sitting on my bookshelf unread (which is a crime in itself).  My abiding impression of The Vanishing Witch was of the author’s skill in creating an intense atmosphere and sense of the supernatural, all combined with an intriguing mystery.   I’m pleased to say this is equally evident in A Gathering of Ghosts which has atmosphere and elements of the supernatural by the bucket load!

The Dartmoor of the book is not a place for the casual sightseer but a wild place of wind  and rain, and bogs waiting to trap the unwary traveller.  It’s certainly not somewhere you want to venture late at night when it takes on a nightmarish quality and, as some of the locals believe, the spirits of the netherworld hold sway. As one visitor to the Priory observes, ‘…both sisters and servants had babbled about rampaging tinners and murderous outlaws, as if Dartmoor was to be found on the edge of the world among the isles of the dog-headed men rather than in the civilised realm of fair England.’

Set largely in the isolated Priory of St. Mary, cut off for months at a time due to winter storms and autumn rains, the author creates a unsettlingly claustrophobic atmosphere that seems to affect some of the Sisters more than others.  (Shades of Black Narcissus here.)  The arrival of one small boy creates an even more unnerving atmosphere, for reasons the reader will soon discover.

The presence of an ancient holy well beneath the priory chapel, now dedicated to St. Lucia but believed by the locals to belong to the pagan goddess, Brigid, is just one of the many oppositions explored in the book: religious belief versus superstition, pagan versus Christian, good versus evil.   Whatever their beliefs, though, their adherents seem to share a similar conviction that, if they only make their appeals fervently enough, their wishes will be granted.  On occasions, this doesn’t happen exactly in the way they were expecting.  Another opposition in the book is male versus female but, happily, the men don’t always escape punishment for their actions and, in some ways, the female characters are seen as possessing if not superior power in this world, then the ability to call on superior power from the spirit world or from God.

The book contains some fascinating detail about the tin mines found on Dartmoor at the time and the so-called ‘stannary’ law that applied to their operation.  For some, the tin mines are a vital source of employment and food in a time of famine or a refuge.  Others see the excavations as a wounding of the land, upsetting the balance of nature.  For some, the threat the tinners pose is more commercial.  As one of the book’s narrators, Sorrel, finds out they certainly weren’t pleasant places to be, particularly for a woman. ‘But as we breasted the rise, the noise that burst in my ears made me stagger backwards: iron hammers smashing granite, stones crashing into buckets, the whinnying of packhorses, the shouts of men, the bellows of women and the yells of children… It was as if the ground had yawned wide before me and I was starting down into the pit of Hell.’

Readers who like a good dose of the supernatural in their historical mysteries will love A Gathering of Ghosts.  Readers who like a strong sense of period atmosphere will likewise be more than happy.  And all will no doubt appreciate the extent of the author’s research, as evidenced by the fascinating Historical Notes and extensive Glossary at the end of the book.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of publishers, Headline, and NetGalley in return for an honest and unbiased review.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

In three words: Atmospheric, spooky, dark

Try something similar…The Dark Monk (The Hangman’s Daughter #2) by Oliver Potzsch

Karen MaitlandAbout the Author

Karen Maitland has recently moved to the wonderful county of Devon and has a doctorate in psycholinguistics. She is fascinated by the myth and magic of the Middle Ages, which she draws on for her novels. She experienced the medieval lifestyle for real, when she worked for eighteen months in a rural village in Nigeria, living without electricity, plumbing or sanitation.

Her first medieval thriller was Company of Liars, was set at the time of the Black Death in 1348. This was followed by The Owl Killers, about the beguinages, the medieval cities of women. The Gallows Curse is set in the reign of bad King John and Falcons of Fire and Ice, which is a dark thriller, set in Portugal during the Inquisition and Iceland at the time of the Reformation. She is published by Michael Joseph/Penguin.

Karen is also one of six historical crime writers known as the Medieval Murderers – Philip Gooden, Susannah Gregory, Michael Jecks, Bernard Knight and Ian Morson – who together write an annual joint murder-mystery novel, including The Sacred Stone, Hill of Bones and The First Murder published by Simon & Schuster.

Connect with Karen

Website  ǀ  Goodreads

Book Review: The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

whatcathyreadnext4 Comments

The Silence of the GirlsAbout the Book

From the Booker Prize-winning author of Regeneration and one of our greatest contemporary writers on war comes a reimagining of the most famous conflict in literature – the legendary Trojan War.

When her city falls to the Greeks, Briseis’s old life is shattered. She is transformed from queen to captive, from free woman to slave, awarded to the god-like warrior Achilles as a prize of war. And she’s not alone. On the same day, and on many others in the course of a long and bitter war, innumerable women have been wrested from their homes and flung to the fighters.

The Trojan War is known as a man’s story: a quarrel between men over a woman, stolen from her home and spirited across the sea. But what of the other women in this story, silenced by history? What words did they speak when alone with each other, in the laundry, at the loom, when laying out the dead?

In this magnificent historical novel, Pat Barker charts one woman’s journey through the chaos of the most famous war in history, as she struggles to free herself and to become the author of her own story.

Format: Hardcover, ebook (336 pp.)    Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
Published: 30th August 2018         Genre: Historical Fiction

Pre-order/Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Silence of the Girls on Goodreads

My Review

In The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker sets out to give voice to the women ‘silenced’ in previous versions of the story of the Trojan War.  Unfortunately, I’m not sure she entirely succeeds.  It all starts promisingly as the reader experiences the fall of Lyrnessus to the Greek army, commanded by Agamemnon, through the eyes of Briseis, wife of King Mynes.  The horror of the battle, the dreadful consequences of defeat for the female inhabitants of the city in particular and the aftermath of the battle are evocatively described.

After the fall of the city, Briseis and noble women like her are ‘awarded’ to leading figures in the Greek army in the manner of battle honours or prizes of war.  Because of her status, youth and beauty, Briseis is allocated to the legendary warrior, Achilles, becoming his slave and, effectively, his possession.   Briseis wryly notes that in some cases individual women’s lives are changed for the better following their capture if, that is, they possess youth, beauty and fertility.  ‘One girl, who’d been a slave in Lyrnessus – and a kitchen slave at that, the lowest of the low – was now the concubine of a great lord, while her mistress, a plain, slack-bellied woman near the end of her childbearing years, had to scratch and scrape for food around the fires.’

Surprised and unaccustomed to being on public view and unveiled when serving at Achilles’ table, Briseis eventually realises why he is happy for her to be seen by his comrades. ‘Nobody wins a trophy and hides it at the back of a cupboard. You want it where it can be seen, so that other men will envy you.’  The use of the word ‘it’ is relevant as, throughout the book, the author sheds light on the way the women are treated as objects.

For example, when Agamemnon later demands Briseis be handed over to him, Achilles’ anger is at being deprived of what he believes is rightfully his. ‘She’s his prize, that’s all, his prize of honour, no more, no less.  It’s nothing to do with the actual girl.’  His response to this perceived dishonour will have far-reaching and tragic consequences.  Later Briseis observes, ‘Men carve meaning into women’s faces; messages addressed to other men’. For example, messages that demonstrate their status or their ability to wield power over others.

In parts two and three of the book, however, Briseis’ first hand narrative is interspersed with sections from the point of view of Achilles.  Given his pivotal role in subsequent events and his strange heritage (his father, Peleus, is a mortal but his mother is a sea goddess), I found the power of his unfolding story rather took over the book, especially when it comes to the intense relationship between Achilles and his friend, Patroclus.  Effectively, I felt Briseis was being silenced again.  This was underlined for me when Briseis notes, ‘Once, not so long ago, I tried to walk out of Achilles’ story – and failed. Now, my own story can begin.’  These are the last lines of the book.

The book does assume the reader has some prior knowledge of the story of The Trojan War and its key characters.  I had a little but not enough to recognise all the characters, their relationships or their role in the story.  I think a dramatis personae would be a really helpful addition to the book.   I wanted to love The Silence of the Girls and feel thrilled from beginning to end at witnessing the story of the clever, resourceful and resilient Briseis through her eyes and those of other women.  Instead I found that, although I could admire the skilful writing, I felt slightly disappointed at the end, that my high expectations had not been met.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of publishers, Hamish Hamilton, and NetGalley, in return for an honest and unbiased review.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

In three words: Intense, immersive, dramatic

Try something similar…Twilight Empress by Faith L. Justice (read my review here)

Pat BarkerAbout the Author

Pat Barker was born in Yorkshire and began her literary career in her forties, when she took a short writing course taught by Angela Carter. Encouraged by Carter to continue writing and exploring the lives of working class women, she sent her fiction out to publishers. Thirty-five years later, she has published fifteen novels, including her masterful Regeneration Trilogy, been made a CBE for services to literature, and won awards including the Guardian Fiction Prize and the UK’s highest literary honour, the Booker Prize. She lives in Durham and her new novel, The Silence of the Girls, will be published by Hamish Hamilton in August 2018.

Connect with Pat

Website  ǀ  Goodreads