Recent reading
Jan. 14th, 2022 04:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeThe first reading post of 2022, and it's been a good, interesting and varied start to the reading year. :)
Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden by G. A. Henty (1887). Aha, thought I, another classic Jacobite book that I haven't read yet, I shall try it! This is an exciting Victorian historical adventure story following Ronald Leslie, the son of a Scottish Jacobite who went into exile after the '15, married a Frenchwoman for love against the wishes of her family and was immediately put in prison for twenty years (she was put in a convent) because the French are evil autocrats who hate love and liberty. Ronald is brought back to Scotland by Malcolm, a friend of his father's, and raised by Malcolm's brother and his wife. As a young man he gets into trouble over helping a Jacobite agent in Glasgow; accompanied by Malcolm, he runs off to France, joins the army, finds and frees his father and mother, witnesses some historically memorable battles in Flanders and then meets Charles Edward Stuart and gets involved in the '45, amongst other things. It's certainly an exciting adventure story, and the one thing I would say in its favour in comparison with the other Jacobite novels I've read is that the plot is more like the plot of an actual eighteenth-century novel than later fiction often is, complete with long-lost parents and morals about love. However, apart from that Henty is very much writing about the Jacobites from the perspective of the future, and won't let you forget it. His writing is didactic, self-important, determinedly Whiggish (in the 'interpreting history as inevitable and desirable progress towards the present' sense) and largely uninterested in letting characters have thoughts and perspectives grounded in their own time. It's also clunky, poorly put together and generally overly simplistic—the characters aren't very interesting and there are no really compelling emotions anywhere. Overall, an interesting look at one set of historical views of the Jacobites (and it might make an interesting comparison with Kidnapped, published just a year earlier and a much better novel), but not really worth reading for its own sake.
Men of War by Lou Faulkner (2019). Another foray into modern historical romance novels! Disclaimer that I know the author of this one—and perhaps I was biased in the book's favour by already knowing I like Faulkner's writing, but really I think I'm being as effusive as it deserves. Anyway—the book is set during the Seven Years' War of the 1750s-60s, and follows the romance between Henry Noble, a British naval captain, and Christophe, Comte de St-Denys, a French hydrographer and astronomer. Henry takes Christophe prisoner in a raid made on the French coast after the notorious Battle of Quiberon Bay; later, they go together on an expedition to observe the 1761 transit of Venus from Ascension Island in the South Atlantic, in an optimistic, forward-looking spirit of international scientific collaboration based on real expeditions actually made at the time. The book is full of highly specific historical detail—especially on the nautical side of things, and I did get slightly lost in all the sailing jargon, but Faulkner clearly knows their stuff and it did give a very vivid picture of the setting. There's also a lot about contemporary science—both the science itself and its social context; the description of the transit itself and what it means for the characters is utterly lovely, and I appreciated all the botany—and all sorts of other historical details, all of which give a great sense of assurance in the setting and a detailed picture of the story's context.
Then the characters are charming! I loved both Henry and Christophe, and especially liked the emphasis on characters being good at what they do, taking pride in their own work and admiring the other's. There are also some great side characters—Henry's spirited younger sister, the lieutenant of his ship, the member of the Hervey family with whom Henry has an affair... (I feel I should count the ships as characters, too; they are lovely, especially the Swan). And, of course, the development of Henry and Christophe's relationship is absolutely lovely—beautifully written and perfectly aligned with the tastes of my id, which is what we want from this sort of thing. It's at the 'soft' end of 'enemies to friends to lovers'—the emphasis throughout is on mutual liking and respect as well as attraction, with less tension than e.g. Flight of the Heron but still with a keen sense of the characters' countries being at war and what that means for them. Things develop through the early stages of realising feelings and playing a mutual game of 'is he or isn't he...?', then slowly growing closer and coming to understand and trust each other... by the time they make an actual confession they understand each other very well, so that the whole thing feels like a comfortable, happily inevitable homecoming (and is very romantic!). Awww. One does appreciate a happy ending occasionally. :)
The Brontës Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson (1931). (Hey, I remember Woolworths...!) This is a deeply strange book. Part of it is a story about the power of imagination, as conveyed through the Carne family, three sisters and their widowed mother who inhabit a shared world of 'Sagas', making up elaborate stories about people they barely know and make-believing all sorts of details about their subjects' lives as well as their relationships with the Carnes. Rather like Barbara Pym did! Things threaten to get complicated when, through narrator Deirdre's day job as a journalist, the Carnes actually meet and begin a friendship with two of the subjects of their Saga, the judge Sir Herbert "Toddy" Toddington and his wife Mildred. Fantasy and reality collide, with hilarious consequences. However, this story is interspersed with sections from the point of view of the youngest Carne sister's governess, Miss Martin, a distressed gentlewoman driven to governessing out of economic necessity—very much like Grace in Alas, Poor Lady. She, and her eventual successor, are excluded from the Carnes' happy shared world of Saga-making through a sort of bewildered inability to understand what they're doing; this feels as though it ought to read as a moral lesson about People With No Imagination who Don't Get It, who are to be roundly mocked and despised, except it doesn't feel like we're meant to mock and despise the governesses quite as the Carnes themselves do. The portrayal of their precarious economic and personal situation is too detailed and sympathetic for that (never mind the knowledge that this is the author of Alas, Poor Lady, a book all about sympathy for women in their position). But neither does the intent seem to be really to criticise the Carnes for their callous social exclusion; and so the two parts of the book are left sitting oddly and uncomfortably alongside each other. Also, the ghosts of Charlotte and Emily Brontë are there. (Ferguson doesn't seem to think Anne counts, and I have to admit this lowered my opinion of her considerably). This has something to do with the world of imagination becoming real through the actual existence of ghosts, or something, and perhaps Ferguson, certainly aware of what the Brontës wrote about governesses, is trying to unite the other two strands of the book through them, but if so I didn't quite get it. A strange book, but I'm sure it's a very good one. The actual prose is as lively, brilliantly detailed and generally enjoyable as Alas, Poor Lady, and it is very funny.
Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden by G. A. Henty (1887). Aha, thought I, another classic Jacobite book that I haven't read yet, I shall try it! This is an exciting Victorian historical adventure story following Ronald Leslie, the son of a Scottish Jacobite who went into exile after the '15, married a Frenchwoman for love against the wishes of her family and was immediately put in prison for twenty years (she was put in a convent) because the French are evil autocrats who hate love and liberty. Ronald is brought back to Scotland by Malcolm, a friend of his father's, and raised by Malcolm's brother and his wife. As a young man he gets into trouble over helping a Jacobite agent in Glasgow; accompanied by Malcolm, he runs off to France, joins the army, finds and frees his father and mother, witnesses some historically memorable battles in Flanders and then meets Charles Edward Stuart and gets involved in the '45, amongst other things. It's certainly an exciting adventure story, and the one thing I would say in its favour in comparison with the other Jacobite novels I've read is that the plot is more like the plot of an actual eighteenth-century novel than later fiction often is, complete with long-lost parents and morals about love. However, apart from that Henty is very much writing about the Jacobites from the perspective of the future, and won't let you forget it. His writing is didactic, self-important, determinedly Whiggish (in the 'interpreting history as inevitable and desirable progress towards the present' sense) and largely uninterested in letting characters have thoughts and perspectives grounded in their own time. It's also clunky, poorly put together and generally overly simplistic—the characters aren't very interesting and there are no really compelling emotions anywhere. Overall, an interesting look at one set of historical views of the Jacobites (and it might make an interesting comparison with Kidnapped, published just a year earlier and a much better novel), but not really worth reading for its own sake.
Men of War by Lou Faulkner (2019). Another foray into modern historical romance novels! Disclaimer that I know the author of this one—and perhaps I was biased in the book's favour by already knowing I like Faulkner's writing, but really I think I'm being as effusive as it deserves. Anyway—the book is set during the Seven Years' War of the 1750s-60s, and follows the romance between Henry Noble, a British naval captain, and Christophe, Comte de St-Denys, a French hydrographer and astronomer. Henry takes Christophe prisoner in a raid made on the French coast after the notorious Battle of Quiberon Bay; later, they go together on an expedition to observe the 1761 transit of Venus from Ascension Island in the South Atlantic, in an optimistic, forward-looking spirit of international scientific collaboration based on real expeditions actually made at the time. The book is full of highly specific historical detail—especially on the nautical side of things, and I did get slightly lost in all the sailing jargon, but Faulkner clearly knows their stuff and it did give a very vivid picture of the setting. There's also a lot about contemporary science—both the science itself and its social context; the description of the transit itself and what it means for the characters is utterly lovely, and I appreciated all the botany—and all sorts of other historical details, all of which give a great sense of assurance in the setting and a detailed picture of the story's context.
Then the characters are charming! I loved both Henry and Christophe, and especially liked the emphasis on characters being good at what they do, taking pride in their own work and admiring the other's. There are also some great side characters—Henry's spirited younger sister, the lieutenant of his ship, the member of the Hervey family with whom Henry has an affair... (I feel I should count the ships as characters, too; they are lovely, especially the Swan). And, of course, the development of Henry and Christophe's relationship is absolutely lovely—beautifully written and perfectly aligned with the tastes of my id, which is what we want from this sort of thing. It's at the 'soft' end of 'enemies to friends to lovers'—the emphasis throughout is on mutual liking and respect as well as attraction, with less tension than e.g. Flight of the Heron but still with a keen sense of the characters' countries being at war and what that means for them. Things develop through the early stages of realising feelings and playing a mutual game of 'is he or isn't he...?', then slowly growing closer and coming to understand and trust each other... by the time they make an actual confession they understand each other very well, so that the whole thing feels like a comfortable, happily inevitable homecoming (and is very romantic!). Awww. One does appreciate a happy ending occasionally. :)
The Brontës Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson (1931). (Hey, I remember Woolworths...!) This is a deeply strange book. Part of it is a story about the power of imagination, as conveyed through the Carne family, three sisters and their widowed mother who inhabit a shared world of 'Sagas', making up elaborate stories about people they barely know and make-believing all sorts of details about their subjects' lives as well as their relationships with the Carnes. Rather like Barbara Pym did! Things threaten to get complicated when, through narrator Deirdre's day job as a journalist, the Carnes actually meet and begin a friendship with two of the subjects of their Saga, the judge Sir Herbert "Toddy" Toddington and his wife Mildred. Fantasy and reality collide, with hilarious consequences. However, this story is interspersed with sections from the point of view of the youngest Carne sister's governess, Miss Martin, a distressed gentlewoman driven to governessing out of economic necessity—very much like Grace in Alas, Poor Lady. She, and her eventual successor, are excluded from the Carnes' happy shared world of Saga-making through a sort of bewildered inability to understand what they're doing; this feels as though it ought to read as a moral lesson about People With No Imagination who Don't Get It, who are to be roundly mocked and despised, except it doesn't feel like we're meant to mock and despise the governesses quite as the Carnes themselves do. The portrayal of their precarious economic and personal situation is too detailed and sympathetic for that (never mind the knowledge that this is the author of Alas, Poor Lady, a book all about sympathy for women in their position). But neither does the intent seem to be really to criticise the Carnes for their callous social exclusion; and so the two parts of the book are left sitting oddly and uncomfortably alongside each other. Also, the ghosts of Charlotte and Emily Brontë are there. (Ferguson doesn't seem to think Anne counts, and I have to admit this lowered my opinion of her considerably). This has something to do with the world of imagination becoming real through the actual existence of ghosts, or something, and perhaps Ferguson, certainly aware of what the Brontës wrote about governesses, is trying to unite the other two strands of the book through them, but if so I didn't quite get it. A strange book, but I'm sure it's a very good one. The actual prose is as lively, brilliantly detailed and generally enjoyable as Alas, Poor Lady, and it is very funny.
