Reading Challenges – Page 241 – What Cathy Read Next…

#Blog Tour #Extract #BookReview A Woman’s Lot (Meonbridge Chronicle 2) by Carolyn Hughes

June 5, 2018March 9, 2022 whatcathyreadnext3 Comments

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I’m delighted to be hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for A Woman’s Lot by Carolyn Hughes. A Woman’s Lot is the second in the Meonbridge Chronicles series, the sequel to Fortune’s Wheel which I read last year and really enjoyed. Read my review of Fortune’s Wheel here. I’m excited to learn that a third in the series is well under way.

You can read an extract from A Woman’s Lot below as well as my review of this fascinating historical novel which immerses the reader in the daily life of a small village in 14^th century Hampshire.

About the Book

How can mere women resist the misogyny of men?

When a resentful peasant rages against a woman’s efforts to build up her flock of sheep… Or a husband, grown melancholy and ill-tempered, succumbs to idle talk that his wife’s a scold… Or a priest, fearful of women’s “unnatural” power, determines to keep them in their place…

The devastation wrought two years ago by the Black Death changed the balance of society, and gave women a chance to break free from the yoke of chatteldom, to learn a trade, build a business, be more than just men’s wives.

But many men still hold fast to the teachings of the Church, and fear the havoc the daughters of Eve might wreak if they’re allowed to usurp men’s roles, and gain control over their own lives.

Not all men resist women’s quest for change – indeed, they want change for themselves. Yet it takes only one or two misogynists to unleash the hounds of hostility and hatred…

Format: ebook, paperback (288 pages) Publisher: SilverWood Books
Published: 4^th June 2018 Genre: Historical Fiction

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

Find A Woman’s Lot on Goodreads

**Extract from A Woman’s Lot by Carolyn Hughes**

At that moment, the constable knocked on Emma’s door. ‘Is Mistress Titherige with you, Mistress Ward?’

Emma invited him inside and he bowed to Eleanor. ‘Your sheep are found, mistress.’

She blanched at the gloomy expression on the constable’s face. ‘Are they dead?’ she asked, in a whisper.

He shuffled his feet and, when he spoke, his voice was quiet too. ‘Two dead, mistress. The third, nearly so––’

Eleanor cried out. ‘Dead! My lovely ewes. And their unborn lambs.’

Emma put her arm around Eleanor’s shoulders. ‘It’s wicked, that’s what it is. Those poor innocent creatures…’

Eleanor got to her feet. ‘Take me to them, master constable.’

But Geoffrey demurred. ‘No, no, Mistress Titherige, there’s no need—’

She tossed her head. ‘Yes, there is. I want to see them. Please lead me, master constable.’ And she swept from Emma’s house and strode down the lane behind Geoffrey, who was still trying, but failing, to dissuade her from her mission.

But if Eleanor had been determined to see what had happened to her sheep, when she did so, she wished she had not come after all.

The derelict barn was cold and damp, its roof partly fallen in, and the ancient hay piled up in the stall where her sheep were penned was giving off a foul and musty stink. As Geoffrey had already said, two of the sheep were dead, lying close together in the rotten hay, their tongues lolling from their mouths, their lovely fleeces all filthy and reeking. One had dried blood around her tail and, when she saw it, Eleanor’s hand flew to her mouth.

‘Had she already birthed?’ she said, a choke rising in her throat. She cast about her, looking for a lamb. Then Geoffrey hurried forward and scrabbled in the hay, one of his men holding a lantern high.

Shortly, Geoffrey stood up. ‘It’s here, mistress. Don’t look––’

But, refusing his advice, Eleanor went forward too. He pointed, and she pressed both hands to her face, as she stared down on the pitiful little body, dark and bloodied, nestled in the foul hay a short distance from its dam.

‘Where’s the third?’ she said, her voice a whisper.

‘Over ’ere, missus,’ said the constable’s man.

The third sheep lay apart from the others, on its side, panting, its eyes sunken.

‘She’s been deprived of water,’ said Eleanor, kneeling by the animal’s side. ‘How cruel…’

‘Or mebbe just ignorant?’ said the constable. He bent down and picked up some hay. ‘The hay’s all rotten, mistress. It’s been here years. Won’t ’ave done them no good.’

She looked up at him. ‘Bad hay and no water?’ She stroked the sheep’s muzzle, and tears filled her eyes. ‘The poor, poor creatures.’

Eleanor wiped away the tears on the sleeve of her kirtle. ‘Anyway, she’s past saving. So please, master constable, arrange for her to be freed from her suffering.’

Geoffrey bowed his head. ‘Will Cole’ll do it.’

My Review

It’s 1352 and Meonbridge is still struggling to cope with the impact of the ‘Mortality’. Not just the fact that there are wives left widowed and alone, husbands left without wives, families mourning the loss of children or children made orphans but because of the far-reaching social and economic changes the plague has left in its wake. A shortage of skilled labour means workers find they have more bargaining power and are prepared to travel for better opportunities, something they would never have considered in the past.

One of the chief changes is that the women of the village are grasping opportunities for independence; some through necessity, some through inclination. Unfortunately, this isn’t going down well with some of the men folk who seem less able to (or perhaps, less prepared to) adapt to the changing environment. They greet the attempts of their women to get more involved in activities outside the home with unease, distrust, scorn, even outright hostility. “Women have taken it into their heads they’re as good as men in matters that shouldn’t concern them…. It’s not natural.”

The author chooses to focus the story on four female characters. There’s Eleanor, trying to build her flock of sheep into a successful business but considering matrimony for reasons of social propriety, support and companionship. There’s Agnes, finding motherhood a bit of a challenge but whose efforts to enhance her woodworking skills are dismissed by carpenter husband. There’s Susanna, whose previously loving husband Henry, the village miller, seems fiercely opposed to her getting involved in any aspect of the business. And there’s Emma, one of the poor cottar families who eke out a hand-to-mouth existence, who believes better opportunities for her husband and family may lie elsewhere.

A Woman’s Lot plunges the reader right into the midst of this upheaval and the struggles facing the inhabitants of Meonbridge. (Readers new to the series will probably want to make frequent use of the helpful dramatis personae as they get to know the different characters.) A dramatic event in the village suddenly changes the atmosphere and when one of their number falls under suspicion, some of the women band together to try to discover the truth. But will justice prevail?

A Woman’s Lot provides the reader with a fascinating insight into day-to-day life in a period when people lived without many of the things we now take for granted: being able to dry your clothes easily when they get wet; a house that doesn’t let in the wind and rain; a slice of bread that doesn’t involve a trip to the communal bakehouse; not having to exist only on what you can grow. At the same time, the book brings to life the small, if infrequent, joys of life such as when the travelling market comes to the village green, Christmas and Midsummer festivities, music and dancing at a wedding feast (or ‘bride ale’, as mentioned in the helpful glossary). And I always enjoy descriptions of food in books: ‘Soon, there were coneys in wine, and little pies of venison, a brewet of beef in a think spicy sauce, and hens stuffed and roasted and glazed with green.’

I would suggest treating A Woman’s Lot as a fascinating meander through the village of Meonbridge noticing everything that goes on as you pass by rather than a canter at breakneck speed in pursuit of answers to the mystery. As I did, immerse yourself in the daily life of Meonbridge. Amid the struggles, feuds and malicious gossip there are acts of courage and hope for the future. As her friend Susanna says to Eleanor, “It’s about grabbing the chance of happiness when it comes”. And after what the villagers have been through, surely they deserve that?

I received a review copy courtesy of the author and Brook Cottage Books, in return for an honest and unbiased review.

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In three words: Authentic, absorbing, immersive

Try something similar…The Last Hours by Minette Walters (read my review here)

About the Author

Carolyn Hughes was born in London, but has lived most of her life in Hampshire. After a first degree in Classics and English, she started her working life as a computer programmer, in those days a very new profession. It was fun for a few years, but she left to become a school careers officer in Dorset. But it was when she discovered technical authoring that she knew she had found her vocation. She spent the next few decades writing and editing all sorts of material, some fascinating, some dull, for a wide variety of clients, including an international hotel group, medical instrument manufacturers and the Government. She has written creatively for most of her adult life, but it was not until her children grew up and flew the nest, several years ago, that creative writing and, especially, writing historical fiction, took centre stage in her life. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from Portsmouth University and a PhD from the University of Southampton.

Carolyn blogs at The History Girls on the 20^th of every month.

Connect with Carolyn

Website ǀ Blog | Facebook ǀ Twitter ǀ Goodreads

My Week in Books – 3rd June ’18

June 3, 2018 whatcathyreadnext3 Comments

MyWeekinBooks

New arrivals

Hmm, it could be the start of a new Kindle Monthly Deal selection on Amazon. Possibly…

The Shady Side of Town: Reading’s Trees by Adrian Lawson and Geoff Sawers (paperback)

Three hundred years ago, an acorn germinated at the edge of a field; today a mighty oak stands in the middle of a congested roundabout. What has it witnessed and what can we discover from it?

The stories of towns are so often told in terms of their architecture, or the humans that have lived in them. This book brings trees to the fore, with evocative illustrations and beautifully told stories of the natural wonders of Reading.

The Visitor by Katherine Stansfield (ebook)

Cornwall. 1880. Pearl, Jack and Nicholas play among the fishing boats of Skommow Bay, not understanding the undercurrents beneath their games. As they grow older, the choices they make shape the pattern of their lives.

1936 and everything has changed. The fish have stopped coming and the Pilchard Palace is abandoned. Pearl, exiled in favour of holidaymakers, turns to the memory of her great love, and her greatest loss. She’s waiting for her own visitor. Will he come for her? The sea’s ghosts are stirring. The past can be more alive than the present…

A cliff top romance in the style of Daphne Du Maurier and set in a fictional village based on St Ives, The Visitor is a novel steeped in the coast and people of Cornwall. It shivers and flashes with visions as elusive as the fish at the centre of its story.

Downed Over Germany (War Girl #0.5) by Marion Kummerow (ebook, new subscriber giveaway)

Tom Westlake is a Britsh RAF pilot. His struggle to survive starts the moment his fighter-bomber is shot down over Germany in 1943. Follow his adventures and find out if he manages to stay alive despite Gestapo hunting him down.

The Incendium Plot (Christopher Radcliff #1) by Andrew Swanston (paperback, review copy courtesy of the author)

England in 1572 is a powder keg of rumour, fanaticism, treachery and dissent. All it would take is a single spark . . .

In the England of Elizabeth I, the fear of plague and invasion, and the threat of insurrection are constant. As the Earl of Leicester’s chief intelligencer, lawyer Dr Christopher Radcliff is tasked with investigating rumours of treachery at home and the papist threat from abroad. And with heresy and religious unrest simmering beneath the surface of a country on the brink, Radcliff is under pressure to get results.

Then two brutal and seemingly motiveless killings point alert Radcliff to the whisper of a new plot against the queen. There are few clues, and all he and his network of agents have to go on is a single word: incendium. But what does it mean – and who lies behind it? Christopher Radcliff must find out before it’s too late . . .

The Reading Party by Fenella Gentleman (advance review copy courtesy of Muswell Press and Random Things Tours)

It is the 1970s and Oxford’s male institutions are finally opening their doors to women…

Sarah Addleshaw – young, spirited and keen to prove her worth – begins term as the first female academic at her college. She is, in fact, its only female ‘Fellow’.

Impulsive love affairs – with people, places and the ideas in her head – beset Sarah throughout her first exhilarating year as a don, but it is the Reading Party that has the most dramatic impact.

Asked to accompany the first mixed group of students on the annual college trip to Cornwall, Sarah finds herself illicitly drawn to the suave American Tyler. Torn between professional integrity and personal feelings, she faces her biggest challenge yet.

A German Requiem (Bernie Gunther #3) by Philip Kerr (ebook)

In postwar Vienna, the term ‘peace’ is relative – the Americans, British and Russians govern the city in an uneasy truce, and the main difference is that now it’s the Soviet secret police making people disappear rather than the Nazis. When Bernie is asked by a high-ranking Soviet official to clear an old Kripo colleague’s name of the murder of an American officer, he quickly realises he’s in over his head.

Bernie’s ex-colleague Becker was working for a secret society of Nazi hunters, tracking down and executing war criminals who faked their own deaths to escape the noose at Nuremberg. Infiltrating the group, Bernie finds himself face to face with men he thought he’d never see again. They’ve cheated justice once – now Bernie must see that they don’t get away a second time.

Different Class by Joanne Harris (ebook)

After thirty years at St Oswald’s Grammar in North Yorkshire, Latin master Roy Straitley has seen all kinds of boys come and go – the clowns, the rebels, the underdogs, and those he calls his Brodie boys. But every so often there’s a boy who doesn’t fit the mould. A troublemaker. A boy capable of twisting everything around him. A boy with hidden shadows inside.

With insolvency and academic failure looming, a new broom has arrived at the venerable school, bringing Powerpoint, sharp suits and even sixth form girls to the dusty corridors. But while Straitley does his sardonic best to resist this march to the future, a shadow from his past is stirring. A boy who even twenty years on haunts his teacher’s dreams. A boy capable of bad things.

Tin Man by Sarah Winman (ebook)

It begins with a painting won in a raffle: fifteen sunflowers, hung on the wall by a woman who believes that men and boys are capable of beautiful things.

And then there are two boys, Ellis and Michael, who are inseparable.

And the boys become men, and then Annie walks into their lives, and it changes nothing and everything.

The Road to Newgate by Kate Braithwaite (eARC, courtesy of the author)

What price justice?

London 1678. Titus Oates, an unknown preacher, creates panic with wild stories of a Catholic uprising against Charles II. The murder of a prominent Protestant magistrate appears to confirm that the Popish Plot is real. Only Nathaniel Thompson, writer and Licenser of the Presses, instinctively doubts Oates’s revelations. Even his young wife, Anne, is not so sure. And neither knows that their friend William Smith has personal history with Titus Oates. When Nathaniel takes a public stand, questioning the plot and Oates’s integrity, the consequences threaten them all.

Root of the Tudor Rose by Mari Griffith (ebook, review copy courtesy of Accent Press)

When King Henry V and his bride, Catherine de Valois, are blessed with the birth of a son, their happiness is short-lived. Henry’s unexpected death leaves Catherine a widow at the age of twenty-one. Then her father, King Charles of France, also dies, and her son inherits both crowns. Henry VI, King of England and France, is just ten months old and needs all his mother’s watchful care to protect him from political intrigue.

The queen, an attractive young widow, is a foreigner at the English court and now finds herself regarded with suspicion, particularly by the Duke of Gloucester, who will seemingly stop at nothing to protect his own claim to the throne. But lonely, vulnerable Catherine has found true friendship with another foreigner at court, a young Welshman named Owen. Their friendship deepens, but their liaisons must be kept secret at all costs, because Catherine, Queen of England and forbidden to remarry, is in love with a servant…

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I shared my review of historical fiction novel, War Girl Ursula by Marion Kummerow. Set in World War 2 Germany, the book is first in the author’s War Girl series which charts the experiences of a family of sisters. I’m grateful to the author for sending me a review copy.

Tuesday – I published my review of The Last Day by Claire Dyer, sharing ten of the many things I loved about the book. This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Bookish Worlds I’d Never Want To Live In. My list seemed pretty scary to me but on reflection gave me an all too chilling sense that fiction may be reflecting reality. What do you think?

Wednesday – WWW Wednesday is the opportunity to share what I’ve just finished reading, what I’m reading now and what I’ll be reading next. I also published my review of May’s Buchan of the Month, A Lost Lady of Old Years. Although I call myself a Buchan fan this is a book of his I’d never read. Set against the backdrop of the Jacobite Rebellion, it follows the exploits of a troubled young man, Francis Birkenshaw. I also shared my list for the 20 Books of Summer Challenge hosted by Cathy at 746 Books. I enjoyed putting together my list and I’ve enjoyed even more seeing other people’s lists!

Thursday –My Throwback Thursday book was The Dream Shelf by Jeff Russell in which a son seeks clues to his father’s past using as a starting point the objects stored on the titular ‘dream shelf’.

Friday – I published my review of The Concubine’s Child by Carol Jones, a fascinating historical fiction novel set in Malaysia in the 1930s and the present day. It was also time for another of my Fact in Fiction Friday features where I pick out interesting things I’ve learned through reading novels. This week my list included Scots dialect words, ‘self-combed’ women, and how some wartime brides ended up getting married to a steel helmet!

Saturday – I shared my Five Favourite of the books that I read in May. I also took part in the Six Degrees of Separation meme. This month’s starting book was The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell which proved quite a challenge for a few of us.

Challenge updates

Goodreads 2018 Reading Challenge – 82 out of 156 books read, 3 more than last week
Classics Club Challenge – 15 out of 50 books read, 1 more than last week
NetGalley/Edelweiss Reading Challenge 2018 (Gold) – 30 ARCs read and reviewed out of 50, 1 more than last week
From Page to Screen– 10 book/film comparisons out of 15 completed, same as last week
2018 TBR Pile Challenge – 5 out of 12 books read, same as last week
Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2018 – 40 books out of 50 read, 3 more than last week
When Are You Reading? Challenge 2018 – 7 out of 12 books read, same as last week
What’s In A Name Reading Challenge – 1 out of 6 books read, same as last week
Buchan of the Month – 5 out of 12 books read, 1 more than last week
NEW 20 Books of Summer Challenge – 0 out of 20 books read