Harriet Devine's Blog

Woman Reading the Newspaper

This lovely painting, actually called 'At Breakfast' is a portrait of Sigrid Kohler, the wife of the Danish painter Laurits Anderson Ring (1854-1933). I'm ashamed to say I'd never heard of him, though evidently he is greatly celebrated both in Denmark and internationally. 

Summary Justice by John Fairfax

When I read a review of this novel, published a couple of weeks ago, I knew I really had to read it.Why? Because it's a legal thriller, and that's a genre I really enjoy, whether in books (I love John Grisham), TV (huge fan of the sadly now defunct Good Wife) or film. I was not very well a couple of weeks ago and spent a lot of time on the sofa, reading, among other things, a couple of Grishams I hadn't encountered before, and this one looked as if it might fill an upcoming gap. So I was delighted when the publisher kindly whizzed me off a copy.

This is the first in a series of what's being called the Benson and De Vere novels - a TV series has already been commissioned, apparently. You can see the attraction at once when I tell you that William Benson is a barrister, but one with a difference. He was convicted of murder at the age of twenty-one and spent his years in prison studying law. A couple of years after his release, he was called to the Bar, but clients are not exactly flocking to his chambers, in a converted fishmongers' in a seedy part of London. Benson had always proclaimed his innocence, but changed his plea when it was clear that doing so was, ironically, the only way of getting permission to study.

At his trial sixteen years earlier, the only person who seemed to believe his innocence was a young trainee solicitor, nineteen-year-old Tess De Vere. The two meet again when Benson agrees to take on a case nobody else will touch, the defence of a young woman accused of murdering her boss. Tess has never forgotten their first brief but intense meeting and, though she now works for a high-powered London firm, she agrees to become his instructing solicitor.

Like Benson, Sarah Collinstone, the young woman accused, is absolutely adamant that she is innocent. But, like Benson, she is not believed. And indeed all the evidence is against her. The murder weapon has her DNA on it. She lies about her relationship with the victim and her previous knowledge of him. In fact as the trial goes on, more and more lies come to the surface. The prosecution barrister is brilliant, and really dislikes Benson. Tess, though whose eyes we watch the trial, is in despair - will Benson suffer an ignominious defeat?

The author of Summary Justice, writing under the name of John Fairfax, is actually William Broderick, who was a practicing barrister. Under his own name he is the author of an apparently popular series (of which I'd never heard) called the Father Anselm novels. So his knowledge of the law, and of the legal profession in general, is obviously spot on, and some of the most enjoyable parts of the novel for me were watching the ways in which Benson, who's obviously brilliant, manages to overturn apparently incontrovertible evidence and generally rout his enemies' arguments. 

But of course any crime novel, or indeed series, is going to stand or fall by the quality of its main protagonists, and their relationship with each other. There's got to be some grit in the mix, and we certainly get it with Benson, clearly a deeply troubled man, the legacy of his fourteen years in prison and the experiences he had there proving hard to shake off. He's a bit of a dark horse to us and also to Tess. The two are undeniably drawn to each other but Benson is unwilling to take things further than a few relatively innocent conversations on board the houseboat he lives in. If he has secrets, he's not willing to share them with Tess. And Tess has a secret of her own. Having steadfastly believed all those years in Benson's innocence of the crime, she decides to try some investigation of her own. Can she prove his innocence? Or will she uncover uncomfortable facts she's rather not know about?

Well, it's easy to see that there's a rich vein of material to be explored in the forthcoming novels of this new series. Grisham it's not, and I had a few quibbles not worth mentioning, but I shall certainly be looking out for the next offering.

Lamentation by CJ Sansom (Audible)

I've been giving some thought to my feelings about historical fiction. It's not a genre I actively seek out, and often don't take to it at all (I had a lukewarm reaction to In the Name of the Family, which so many people have loved). But there are some authors who do it superbly - Sarah Waters, Jane Harris, Tracey Chevalier at her best all spring to mind, and there are others. And then there's CJ Sansom. He has produced six of the most stunning novels, all set in the Tudor period and revolving around his central character, the 'crookback' lawyer Matthew Shardlake. 

These books have been around for a while - the first one, Dissolution, was published in 2003 and this, the final one so far in the series, in 2014. But it was about two years ago that I finally caved in and started listening to friends who were praising them to the skies. I was interested to see, re-reading the review of the first one I picked up, that my reaction was slightly mixed. But I liked it enough to pursue the series and ended up a huge fan, with only Lamentation, the sixth novel, put on hold for a rainy day. Not sure what the nature of that rainy day was supposed to be, but I've been off on my travels recently and wanted something really substantial in the way of an audiobook to take with me. And Lamentation, at over 25 hours of listening, was the obvious choice.

 So, the books in the Shardlake series are in fact crime novels, of a very classy kind. For Shardlake, a man of great intelligence as well as tremendous humanity, is as close as you could get to being a detective in those far off days. Shardlake's investigations have taken him into some dark and dangerous places, from a monastery in the grip of dissolution to a terrifying naval battle in Portsmouth and many more besides. In Lamentation he has been employed by Henry VIII's final wife, Queen Catherine Parr,  who Shardlake has worked for before and with whom he is not a little in love. Henry is dying, but trying to keep a grip on his kingdom, which is violently divided between religious factions. The novel actually begins with a highly distressing scene in which Shardlake is obliged to go and watch the burning of a woman convicted of heresy (here this means radical protestantism). Catherine has definite leanings that way, and has written a book on the subject, Lamentations of a Sinner. She has kept this from Henry, afraid she might be tortured and executed if he found out, but it has been stolen from its hiding place and it's up to Shardlake to find it before the king does. This leads Shardlake, his assistant Jack Barak, and one of their young clerks, into terrifying and life-threatening situations. 

This is an extremely exciting and action-packed novel. At one point I nearly gave up listening because I was so upset by something that had just happened to a central character, though of course I couldn't. But action alone is not what gives these novels such a tremendous appeal. Sansom, who started his own career in the law, is also a trained historian, and much original research has gone into each of them. I read an interesting interview with him in a Guardian article from 2010 in which he explains why he is so drawn to the Tudor period:

because it's the moment at which the medieval certainties that had endured for centuries were turned upside down. It was a time of extraordinary ferment: in the space of a few years, the state took on a completely different meaning. And the more I read about it, the more I realised how like the 20th century it was in its anxiety and uncertainty, even though people thought so differently then.

It's exactly these uncertainties and ferments that in their different ways lie at the heart of all these novels. In Lamentation there is a tremendous sense of the fear that invades every level of society even up to the Queen herself, the political machinations that feed on that fear, the power and the jostling for power in court circles, the powerful, divisive beliefs of the religious fanatics who are willing to face torture and death rather than abjure their faith. And through it all we have Matthew Shardlake, very much in some ways a modern man, not at all sure which, if any, side of the religious divide he falls on. For this very reason, he's able to stand apart from it all, applying his objective reason and clear head to the pursuit of justice and the solution of crimes. 

As you can tell, I absolutely loved this novel. I'm tempted to say it's the best so far, but they are all really really good. The Audible narrator, as of all the novels, is Stephen Crossley, and he makes a fantastic job of reproducing Shardlake and all his many friends and enemies. I really hope Sansom is writing another one, but meanwhile this was a great treat and I'm grateful to Audible for the credit that enabled me to download it. Listen or read - you won't regret it.

Girl Reading

This is Girl Reading in an Interior by the Spanish artist Francesc Serra Castellet (1912-1976). His Wikipedia page is in German but I persuaded Google to translate it for me. He admired Degas, painted mainly female figures, and was fairly celebrated in Spain. I like this one, and enjoy the fact that she's reading rather than tidying up her room.

 

Sarah Dunant Giveaway - the Winners!

Names have gone in the hat, and the winners are:

Lizzy Siddal

Kamala

Diana

Congratulations! Please email me at drharrietd [at] gmail [dot] com to give me full names and postal addresses so I can pass them on to the publisher.

The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather

Some years ago, in the relatively early days of this blog, I had a splurge of reading Willa Cather, and reviewed three of her novels: A Lost Lady, O Pioneers, and My Antonia. I absolutely loved them all, and was determined to explore her work further - but you  know how it is, other things intervened and I never did get around to it. She came back on the radar recently when someone lent me a copy of The Song of the Lark to take on my travels.

The novel starts in a small town in rural Colorado. Here live a family of Swedish immigrants, the Kronbergs. The second youngest of the seven children is Thea, who is eight when the novel begins. This will be the story of her life - a bildungsroman, if you like, but one with important things to say.

Thea is different. She doesn't know exactly how or in what way, but from a very young age she has been filled with a feeling of unnameable desire for something she cannot begin to identify. Here she is in her teens:

Many a night that summer she left Dr. Archie’s office with a desire to run and run about those quiet streets until she wore out her shoes, or wore out the streets themselves; when her chest ached and it seemed as if her heart were spreading all over the desert. When she went home, it was not to go to sleep. She used to drag her mattress beside her low window and lie awake for a long while, vibrating with excitement, as a machine vibrates from speed. Life rushed in upon her through that window — or so it seemed. In reality, of course, life rushes from within, not from without. There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that it was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation.

Meanwhile, she shows a talent for the piano, and starts to give lessons. Most of her family don't understand her, though her strong, calm mother is supportive. Luckily she has two friends, Dr Archie and Ray, the railman. Both are many years older, but they really appreciate her for what she is. Ray, indeed, hopes she will marry him when she is older. 

Eventually a tragedy fortuitously leaves her with enough money to spend a winter in Chicago, studying the piano. When she gets there, though, it turns out that her real talent is for singing and eventually she will become a celebrated opera singer.

So much for the plot, and a lot more happens than I've told you about here. It's told beautifully, and often obliquely, with events taking place of which we only discover the details later, or not at all. Thea works hard, gets worn out, learns and develops. She's not soft and loveable  - she's too driven to be those things - but those men who appreciate her really see who she is and are overwhelmed by her power and talent. Essentially, though, she is an artist, and everything else has to be secondary:

 Your work becomes your personal life.  You are not much good until it does.  It’s like being woven into a big web.  You can’t pull away, because all your little tendrils are woven into the picture.  It takes you up, and uses you, and spins you out; and that is your life.  Not much else can happen to you. 

Cather is a writer of great subtlety and perceptiveness, and I wish I knew how to convey to you what a wonderful novel this is. It does so many things. It conveys the beauty and strangeness of the Colorado landscapes in Cather's beautiful prose. It gives a fascinating glimpse of the lives of those courageous pioneers who moved to America at the end of the nineteenth century (it forms a trilogy with O Pioneers and My Antonia). It deals in a really interesting way with social and racial divides - Thea is castigated by the 'respectable' inhabitants of the town for her friendship with Mexican Jonny and his wife, who live in the wrong part of town. Above all, perhaps, it deals with the importance of art, and on the strangeness of an artistic gift being unsought, but just as it were bestowed - from where, or by what, it's up to us to decide. 

Woman Reading

This is Reclining Nude in an Interior, painted in 1929 by the American artist Leon Kroll (1884-1974), who was referred to in Life Magazine as 'the dean of U.S. nude painters', though apparently he was a whizz at landscapes too.

Family Matters by Anthony Rolls

I always look forward to a new batch of British Library Crime Classics. This one arrived recently and has just come out (10 March). First published in 1933, it turns out to be one of the most lively and entertaining vintage crime novels it's ever been my privilege to read. 

The novel centres on the marriage of Roger and Bertha Kewdingham. Roger has completely failed to make a success of his life - he's out of work, and spends his time amassing what has become a huge collection of generally worthless bits of archaeological junk and reading books about occult belief systems. Bertha, his half-French wife, is a lively and attractive young woman who is utterly miserable with her useless husband. She and Roger quarrel incessantly and even when they are not fighting and arguing they have absolutely nothing to say to each other. 

Bertha's life would be even more intolerable than it is were it not for a couple of ardent admirers. Actually that's not strictly true, though. She's well aware of the attentions of Roger's cousin, young John Havergall, a successful novelist who frequently visits and takes her out when he can for intimate little afternoons. Her second admirer, the very creepy Doctor Wilson Bragge, keeps his feelings under wraps, though they are no less intense for that. A good doctor, much admired in the community, he is secretly scheming to make Brenda a free woman and thus available to him. Of course his knowledge of medicines and drugs is of great use to him here. What he doesn't know, though, is that Brenda is doing some scheming of her own - she too wants to be free, though not of course to marry Doctor Bragge. This leads to a hilarious situation in which neither of the schemers is aware of the activities of the other one, and cannot understand why they are having no success, not realising that the methods each is using effectively cancels the other one out. Will it all end in tears?

As you can probably see, Family Matters is not a whodunnit - I guess you'd call it a psychological thriller. In any case we are never in any doubt about who is at least trying to do it -- it's just if and how either of them is going to succeed that hangs in the balance. Meanwhile we can take pleasure in the wonderfully vivid cast of characters involved. Of course there's lovely, ruthless Bertha and poor, miserable, deluded Roger, losing himself in his drawers and boxes full of worthless finds and his mystical beliefs about being the incarnation of an ancient priest, Athu-na-Shulah. But a number of other visitors appear at the house from time to time, despite the fact that it's hard to get into the living-room because of all the boxes. There are the neighbours, Mr and Mrs Chaddlewick, she of the 'soft, luminous face...usually as blank as the painted wooden mask in a milliner's window'. Mrs Chaddlewick believes herself to be psychic and thus has tremendous sympathy for Roger, egging on his strange beliefs and fluttering her foolish eyes at him. Then there's Roger's sister Phoebe, a writer of light verse, who dresses in black and gold to match the covers of her books.  Phoebe 'acknowledged the sovereignty of the passions, and for that reason had abstained from marriage'. Of course there's Dr Bragge, who is rarely mention without reference to his sinister, glittering blue eyes. And then there's Mrs Bella Poundle-Quainton and her spinster daughter Ethel - but you get the general idea.

Anthony Rolls was the nom-de-plume of one Colwyn Vulliamy, a retired soldier and writer of numerous serious non-fiction books. In the 1930s he wrote four successful crime novels, another of which, the excellent Scarweather, has also just been published in the Crime Classics series. He was obviously a man of keen observation of human foibles and psychological oddities, and possessed of tremendous satirical wit. If you fancy a fast-paced, exciting and very funny read, this is the one for you.

 

Blossoming Time in Normandy

I live in Normandy, and I'm afraid it isn't blossoming time quite yet. Here's hoping it looks like this soon. Painted in 1901 by the celebrated American artist Mary Fairchild Low, who lived and worked in France,

Sarah Dunant In the Name of the Family Giveaway!

Tomorrow is the final day of the blog tour for this much anticipated book. Have you been reading the reviews? My ShinyNewBooks colleague Annabel loved it - this is what she said about it here yesterday: 

In the Name of the Family is a novel to really get stuck into – the 444 pages raced by as I immersed myself in ambition, political intrigue and the trials of Renaissance marriage of this fascinating family.

Here's a quote from Bookandbrew.net

It takes place in Renaissance Italy, is packed with intrigue and deception, and has a cracking cast of familiar but reimagined characters. What’s not to love?

There's a splendidly detailed review on girlwithherheadinabook, which ends:

it was wonderful to be reminded of all those other families in history whose lives were truly stranger than fiction and who, through the pen of an adept author, are ready to capture our imaginations all over again.

Check out the blog tour poster below for some more!

And now here's a great offer. Virago has kindly offered to send three free books out to interested readers. All you have to do is put your name in the comments, plus a way you can be privately contacted, and you'll be entered in the draw. 

So, if you love Sarah Dunant, are fascinated by Renaissance Italy and the goings on of the Borgias, or just fancy immersing yourself in a fascinating and absorbing read, please have a go!