The House at Sunset, by Norah Lofts. Book review

First published 1963. Edition reviewed: The History Press, 2009. ISBN, 978-0-7524-4870-1. 287 pages.

The House at Sunset is the last in a trilogy of novels telling the story of a Suffolk house and its inhabitants from the fifteenth century to the twentieth. The trilogy began with Martin Reed and his children and grandchildren in the fifteenth century in The Town House (reviewed here earlier), and continued with further generations of Martin Reed’s descendants during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in The House at Old Vine (reviewed here earlier). The House at Sunset covers the period from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. All the main characters are fictional.

Like its predecessors, The House at Sunset is told in a series of independent but interlinked narratives, rather like a collection of short stories.  Each is recounted in first person by a different character, and the narratives are separated by interludes told in third person.  The characters come and go, appearing in the book when they arrive at the house and disappearing again when they are no longer connected with it.

The novel is beautifully written in deceptively simple prose.  The historical background feels very real, capturing changing social attitudes as well as the effects of new technologies, such as the impact of the railway arriving in Baildon.  Some things have surprisingly modern resonances, such as the anxiety of the Victorian shopkeepers when they think a large retail chain is planning to move into the town:

“They sell cheap muck, they give no credit, they’ll undersell for a year to ruin honest traders and then get a monopoly….”

which exactly parallels modern fears when a giant modern supermarket chain announces plans to open a superstore in a market town. 

One of the aspects of the Town House trilogy that I particularly like is its focus on day-to-day life, made compelling by the vivid characterisation.  The main characters are varied individuals, each with their own foibles, fears and hopes, each shaped by their circumstances and experiences, and each with their own dilemmas to face.  Many of the secondary characters are just as vivid, although drawn in less detail, such as the unhappily married Mike and Millie, keeping house (after a fashion) in two rooms and hating every minute of it; or Frances Benyon’s selfish husband; or the mercenary lawyer’s clerk who tries to deceive Felicity Hatton.  In The House at Sunset, the Old Vine starts to change hands by purchase rather than by inheritance, so most of the characters are no longer descended directly from Martin Reed.  Their circumstances vary as social and economic change alters the economy of Baildon and the uses made of the Old Vine. The arrival of the railway changes the street from a residential area to a commercial district and the Old Vine from a private house to a series of thriving shops; two world wars and the Depression reduce it to an overcrowded, overpriced, semi-derelict slum. Similarly, the characters associated with the Old Vine vary from minor gentry to prosperous local business owners – cattle dealers, shopkeepers, restauranteurs – to impoverished tenants and a conscientious environmental health officer.  It’s sad to see Martin Reed’s historic house suffer decline and neglect at the hands of an exploitative property company, though the book ends on a hopeful note with the prospect of a sympathetic owner who may care for the house again.

There is no Author’s Note, perhaps because all the people and events are fictional.

Beautifully written portrayal of the varied people associated with a medieval house in a fictional English market town from the mid-eighteenth to mid-twentieth century.

Ripples in the Sand, by Helen Hollick. Book review

Silverwood Books, 2012. ISBN 978-1-78132-077-8. 310 pages.

Uncorrected advance review copy in PDF format supplied by publisher.

Ripples in the Sand is the fourth in Helen Hollick’s historical fantasy series featuring dashing (ex-)pirate captain Jesamiah Acorne and the white witch Tiola Oldstagh.  The series began with Sea Witch (reviewed here earlier), and continued with Pirate Code and then with Bring It Close (reviewed here earlier).  The historical figures Henry Jennings and James Stuart (father of Bonnie Prince Charlie) appear as secondary characters.  All the main characters are fictional.

Former pirate Jesamiah Acorne and his wife Tiola are on their way to England to sell a cargo of tobacco from Jesamiah’s plantation in Virginia (not to mention some other valuable items that need not trouble the customs officers). Tiola is seriously ill as a result of the hostility of Tethys, the sea goddess; all white witches have difficulty crossing the sea, but Tethys has a particular feud with Tiola because Tethys wants Jesamiah for herself.  Jesamiah is coerced into carrying a passenger, Henry Jennings, ex-pirate and now on a political mission to the English government in which Jesamiah has no interest whatsoever.  All Jesamiah wants is to get Tiola safely ashore and to find a buyer for his tobacco (and the unofficial cargo).  But Jesamiah soon finds himself embroiled in family ties he did not even know he had, and then entangled in a political plot – at risk from an unknown traitor among the plotters, and from the deadly fury of Tethys.

Fans of the previous books in the series will know what to expect.  Despite now being respectably married, a landowner, and (technically at least) no longer a pirate, Jesamiah’s temper, tendency to jump to conclusions and liking for wine and women (not necessarily in that order) still land him in trouble on a regular basis, requiring quick wits, cunning and skill to get himself out again. Tiola’s magical powers and her supernatural conflict with Tethys give the novel a strong fantasy element. The back story of Jesamiah’s complicated family history, Tiola’s supernatural powers and their relationship is explained as required, so although Ripples in the Sand is the fourth in a series, it could be read as a stand-alone.  The scene for Ripples in the Sand has shifted from North America and the Caribbean to the North Devon coast, specifically the estuary of the Rivers Taw and Torridge near the edge of Exmoor. Exmoor is, of course, Lorna Doone territory, and some later generations of the notorious Doone family make an ingenious appearance in Ripples in the Sand. 

Jesamiah’s complicated family history acquires another layer of complexity in Ripples in the Sand – it’s a wise child that knows its own father, as the saying goes – giving Jesamiah a completely unexpected set of new relatives to come to terms with. Members of Tiola’s family also make an appearance, causing conflict in her relationship with Jesamiah.

The political sub-plot involving an attempted Jacobite invasion makes a dramatic background, and the Monmouth Rebellion and its brutal aftermath a generation earlier still cast a long shadow over some of the characters.  There is plenty of action, including sea chases, a naval battle, a shoot-out with the customs men and a jailbreak.

The fantasy plot revolving around the conflict between Tiola and Tethys worked less well for me; I am not well attuned to supernatural powers that actually work (as opposed to beliefs in supernatural powers, a different matter entirely), and I suspect that a lot of it went over my head.  I got rather lost in the time travel sequences, although I did like the cameo appearance by not-yet-King Harold Godwinson, a thoroughly decent man even when raiding and probably my favourite of Helen Hollick’s historical characters (he stars in Harold The King / I Am the Chosen King, reviewed here earlier). If I understood the supernatural plot correctly, I think it resolves a plot strand that has been running since Sea Witch; the question of why Tethys has an obsession with claiming Jesamiah for herself.

The political adventure plot does not so much end as take a brief pause for breath, and Jesamiah’s predicament at the end is clearly a potential springboard to a further adventure (according to the Author’s Note a further instalment is indeed planned soon). Jesamiah’s unexpected new family ties, as well as Tiola’s family, may also offer scope for further development.

Dialect is used to indicate regional origin and social standing, from the French accent of the Breton sailing master Claude de la Rue to the broad Devon dialect of the ferryman and tavern keeper.  It took me a little while to ‘tune in’ to some of the accents, especially the broad Devon dialect, which I found hard to follow at first.  As expected, given the setting, the text is liberally salted with nautical terms, and these are explained in a comprehensive glossary at the back of the book and a plan of a square-rigged ship at the front.

A helpful Author’s Note at the end describes some of the inspiration behind the novel and outlines some of the underlying history. I was interested to see that one of the most attractive characters, a boisterous boy named Thomas Benson, is based on a historical figure and is planned to feature in further instalments.

Historical fantasy set against a background of smuggling and Jacobite rebellion in eighteenth-century Devon.

 

Bring It Close, by Helen Hollick. Book review

Silverwood Books, 2011. ISBN 978-1-906236-62-5. 385 pages. Advance review copy provided as PDF by publisher.

Bring It Close is the third in the Jesamiah Acorne pirate series, following Sea Witch (reviewed here a few years ago) and Pirate Code. Set in October-November 1718, mainly on the coasts of North Carolina and Virginia in what is now the US, Bring It Close features the notorious historical pirate Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard, as a main character. Other secondary characters such as the governors of North Carolina and Virginia, Blackbeard’s crew and the British naval lieutenant Robert Maynard are also historical figures. The two central characters, pirate captain Jesamiah Acorne and white witch Tiola, are fictional.

Captain Jesamiah Acorne has inherited his family’s tobacco plantation, accepted a government amnesty and, in theory, retired from piracy. Bored and still troubled by questions about his father and his family’s past, he has a one-night stand with an old flame, causing his lover, the midwife and white witch Tiola Oldstagh, to quarrel with him and depart to attend a difficult birth. The plantation turns out to be run down to the point of bankruptcy, his half-brother’s widow is disputing the inheritance, the fearsome pirate Blackbeard still wants revenge on Jesamiah for sinking his ship, and Jesamiah’s dead father is trying to contact him from the world of the dead. Jesamiah finds himself arrested for piracy – ironically, this time he is innocent of the charge – and sentenced to hang. If he is to save his life, clear his name and be reunited with his beloved Tiola, he will have to hunt down and kill Blackbeard. But, unknown to Jesamiah, Blackbeard has sold his soul to the Dark Power, the implacable enemy of Tiola and the power she represents, and cannot be killed …

Bring It Close is a fantasy set against the swashbuckling historical background of piracy in the Caribbean and along the east coast of North America. Central to the novel is a supernatural struggle between the powers of Good (the Immortals of Light, the Old Ones of Wisdom), represented by Tiola, and Evil (the Dark Power, the Malevolence), represented by Blackbeard. Attempts by governments to stamp out piracy, and the antagonism between Jesamiah and Blackbeard, are components of this larger conflict. The magic forces are real within the world of the novel, not beliefs held by the characters. Here Blackbeard is, or was, a human who has sold his soul to the devil and is now possessed by the Dark Power. Tiola is a non-human immortal being, one of the Immortals of Light, who has taken human shape. Having fallen in love with a human, Jesamiah Acorne, she can communicate with him by telepathy and has supernatural powers over earth, air, fire and water (but not salt water). However, Immortals of Light are forbidden to kill, and so Tiola cannot use her power to destroy Blackbeard. Indeed, she has to take great care to keep her identity secret from the Dark Power inhabiting Blackbeard’s body, since the Dark Power could harm her and those she cares for. As Blackbeard is protected from death by the Dark Power, and as Tiola is not permitted to use her opposing power to kill, the supernatural battle is at something of an impasse, and is maintained as a conflict throughout the book.

As well as the magical conflict, there is no shortage of earthly action, from tavern brawls to naval battles, blackmail, political double-dealing and a harrowing childbirth scene. Blackbeard is the major historical figure, and according to the author’s note, “many of Blackbeard’s scenes happened – but without Jesamiah and Tiola of course”. The historical Blackbeard came to fame as an adult and not much is known of his early life, giving the author scope to weave him into the lives of the fictional characters and to develop unexpected connections between them.

As a character, Blackbeard in the novel is pure evil, as one might expect from a pirate who has literally sold his soul to the devil. Jesamiah is still much as I remember him from Sea Witch - his liking for drink and women, not to mention his complete lack of tact and his talent for making enemies, get him into trouble on a regular basis, and he has to rely on his resourcefulness, quick wits and ability to lie through his teeth to get himself out of it again. Fans of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow will probably also take a liking to Jesamiah Acorne. Jesamiah’s painful childhood, stormy family history and troubled relationship with his dead father thread through the narrative, as do the dark memories borne by his father’s ghost. Some of this complicated family history seems to have featured in the second book in the series, Pirate Code, but I had no difficulty following the narrative even though I haven’t read Pirate Code. So although Bring It Close is the third in a series, it can be read as a stand-alone.

A useful Author’s Note explains some of the historical events underlying the novel, and sets out the reasoning behind some of the fictional additions. There is also a glossary of nautical terms and a diagram of a ship to help readers unfamiliar with seafaring terminology.

Swashbuckling fantasy set on the coasts of colonial Virginia and North Carolina, featuring the dashing fictional pirate Jesamiah Acorne and the historical pirate Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard.

The Blackstone Key, by Rose Melikan. Book review

Touchstone, 2008. ISBN 978-1-1465-6080-7. 435 pages.

The Blackstone Key is a light espionage mystery with a touch of gothic romance, set in England in 1795 during the war with Revolutionary France. All the characters are fictional.

Mary Finch is living in genteel poverty as a teacher at a minor school for young ladies when she receives a letter from her wealthy uncle inviting her to visit him at his home on the Suffolk coast. Mary jumps at the chance, but when she arrives she finds her uncle has died and the house is being used for smuggling – or something worse. England is at war with the Revolutionary government in France, and there are fears of an imminent French invasion. When Mary discovers coded documents in her uncle’s study, she finds herself drawn into a deadly web of ruthless spies. Was her uncle part of the plot? Why is the artillery officer Captain Holland, whom Mary met by chance on her journey, so eager to be helpful? Can Mary break the code to help the charming and handsome Paul Deprez track down the spies before they betray England’s most important secrets to the enemy? Mary has to choose who to trust, knowing that a wrong choice might threaten not only her own life but the security of her country.

The Blackstone Key features plenty of period detail. If you want to imagine what it was like to travel in the days of the mail coaches, watch the workings of social hierarchy among the minor gentry, or understand the intricacies of eighteenth-century inheritance law, this novel is for you. I was particularly interested in the portrayal of the City Police in Bow Street, recognisably the forerunners of a regular police service. The prose has a rather formal style with few modern phrases, which I guess is intended to achieve a period feel, though I felt it sounded a little stilted at times. The dialogue of the upper- and middle-class characters (most of the cast) felt reasonably plausible, though I did wonder whether an army officer from a gentry family would really have used quite so much bad language in the presence of a lady, and whether a nicely brought up young lady would not have been much more offended than Mary Finch apparently was. The lower-class characters were less convincing, and some of the thieves’ cant (“Say, mister”, or “I ain’t holding out on you, gov”) sounded to me more Sam Spade than 1795. I also admit to being surprised that the pistol was the clandestine weapon of choice among the spies, even being used for assassinations. I had the impression that the typical pistol of the Napoleonic period was big, cumbersome, noisy, slow to load, prone to misfire and not very accurate, so I was expecting the cloak-and-dagger agents to use, well, daggers. However, I’m not an expert on the late eighteenth century.

The main characters are mixed, with good and not-so-good qualities. Mary Finch is lively, brave, intelligent and sweet-natured, but she is also inexperienced, naïve and rather prone to let her imagination run away with her. Most of the story is told from Mary’s point of view, so she is the character we get to know best. Captain Holland is a professional with an important job, but he is insecure about his lack of educational polish and his awkward social position as the poor relation of a rich family. I’d have liked to see more of Holland’s point of view. The secondary characters, such as the inept parson, the interfering matriarch, the snobbish society ladies, the slow-witted magistrate and the talkative coach passengers, are drawn in almost as much detail as the main characters. Which is quite attractive in its way, but it does make it tricky to keep track of who is important and who is incidental.

The romantic sub-plot is attractively low-key. Mary attracts the interest of two contrasting men, the rough and ready artillery officer Captain Holland and the charming, urbane and wealthy Paul Deprez. Both attract her in their different ways and she cannot help comparing the two. Her feelings develop gradually over the course of the novel as she gets to know more about each man, which I always find more satisfying than a love-at-first-sight romance.

The espionage plot is interesting, if a bit slight. I spotted the villain and the hero immediately, but that might just have been luck, and there is enough bluff, double-bluff, agents and double-agents to keep the reader guessing about the exact details of the plot. There are a few turns that rely either on coincidence (Mary happening to be travelling in search of her long-lost uncle at just that time and place) or on the villains’ carelessness, but coincidence does happen in the real world.

I found the pace of the novel uneven, and this made it hard for me to get really engaged with the book or the characters. Not very much happens for the first 100 pages, as Mary journeys to Suffolk in the company of a cast of gossipy minor characters most of whom never reappear. Things briefly pick up with an incident of excitement, action and mystery – but then the novel goes back to chattering in drawing rooms for another 100+ pages. By the time I had plodded through lengthy details about Captain Holland’s romantic aspirations and equivocal social position, and the legal niceties of Mary’s inheritance and her introduction into polite local society, all in the company of yet another new cast of talkative and mostly incidental characters, I had completely lost track of the espionage plot and its dramatis personae. When the suggestion of spies and codes popped up again halfway through the novel I had to flick back to try to remind myself what might be going on, who might be involved and why it would even matter. The cosy drawing-room world is so wrapped up in its trivial concerns about who is going to marry whom and the correct frock to wear for a tea party that the espionage plot loses any sense of real menace. Only in about the last third of the novel does the mystery start to find its stride, and by then it’s getting rather squashed for space and is resolved in something of a rush.

I would have preferred more of the mystery and less of the mild social comedy, or at the very least closer intercutting between the two so that I didn’t lose sight of the mystery for 100 pages at a time. I think this disjointed plot is a major reason why I felt the book overall felt rather “flat”.

Mix of lightweight mystery, slightly gothic romance and mild social comedy in genteel eighteenth-century England.