Carnegie's Maid by Marie Benedict
Historical fiction at its best. This text takes us to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1867. The time period is well-presented and the protagonist Clara Kelley has arrived in the US, leaving her Irish Catholic family behind in Galway, so that she can make a living and return her earnings to support her family's impending poverty. She arrived in circumstances that favour her situation, since a girl of the same name has died in 2nd class on the ship and so she takes on her position as lady's maid to Mrs Carnegie. The relationship between Andrew Carnegie and Clara is interesting, if fictionally explored, and offers readers an insight into the true character of Carnegie, his business sense, the American Dream and his true emotional character alongside his mother and family, immigrants themselves from Scotland to the States.
This fiction gives insight to the Industrial
Age in America and its challenges. I learnt a lot about the mindsets of people of this time.
Age in America and its challenges. I learnt a lot about the mindsets of people of this time.
I will take a look at Marie Benedict's fiction The Other Einstein sometime next year. Take a look at this one if you enjoy a mix of American history and imagined emotionality.
review by Christina Francis-Gilbert
A Storm of Ice and Stars by Lisa Lueddecke
A Storm of Ice and Stars by Lisa Lueddecke
“My veins ran with moonlight and my heart beat for the stars…”
I enjoyed this atmospheric YA fantasy story and though it’s not one of my favourite genres, I did connect with Lueddecke’s smooth fantastical prose. She writes of a village in Skane, off the coast of Oska and south of the Or Isles, “a silent land,” a cold, cave-ridden snowy land that has a Scandinavian echo to it. This is where the protagonist Janna, grieving for her lost love Solvi is faced with the accusations that she is a witch and to blame for deaths of fellow villagers. In fact there is a far greater threat signaled to the townsfolk by the red burning sky.
“…Skane had a secret. Its sky held a power, and when it flushed a burning red, when it engulfed our island in a fist of blood that lasted only minutes, it meant that for many, death was certain. Imminent.”
Packed full with myths, legends, suspicious hauntings and references to a different world and its people, this novel is great! I’ll be recommending this one to fantasy lovers, my children’s school librarian and children❄️🗻💙.
#fantasybooks #astormoficeandstars #lisalueddecke #yafantasyfiction
“My veins ran with moonlight and my heart beat for the stars…”
I enjoyed this atmospheric YA fantasy story and though it’s not one of my favourite genres, I did connect with Lueddecke’s smooth fantastical prose. She writes of a village in Skane, off the coast of Oska and south of the Or Isles, “a silent land,” a cold, cave-ridden snowy land that has a Scandinavian echo to it. This is where the protagonist Janna, grieving for her lost love Solvi is faced with the accusations that she is a witch and to blame for deaths of fellow villagers. In fact there is a far greater threat signaled to the townsfolk by the red burning sky.
“…Skane had a secret. Its sky held a power, and when it flushed a burning red, when it engulfed our island in a fist of blood that lasted only minutes, it meant that for many, death was certain. Imminent.”
Packed full with myths, legends, suspicious hauntings and references to a different world and its people, this novel is great! I’ll be recommending this one to fantasy lovers, my children’s school librarian and children❄️🗻💙.
#fantasybooks #astormoficeandstars #lisalueddecke #yafantasyfiction
review by Christina Francis-Gilbert
Five Winters by Kitty Johnson
Take a read of this charming novel before 2023 ends! This has vibes of Love Actually and Bridget Jones and it's set at this time of year so a good one for reading around the Christmas season. A structure that draws you in and as you can imagine the story is divided into Winter One, Two, Three, Four and Five. I loved the characters in Winters Three, Four and Five the best, though you need the early winter narratives to get their niggles and understand many of the characters' sore points and relationships. I loved the setting with familiar details like the annual visit to Regent Street in London to see the lights, Ely and suburban life in England, as well as the home of the central family home of Sylvia and Richard in Enfield (that's where my dad grew up!). Some wonderful references to animals, traditions of the season, family networks, young love and older love, parenting and motherhood plus lots more.
review by Christina Francis-Gilbert
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
I'm pleased to have found another favourite author. Claire Keegan's prose is exactly the writing style I value. This is a short novella that spans October through to Christmas time in Northern Ireland and depicts raw images and emotions of the season, the people, the time and place.
Bill Furlong is the coal and timber merchant in a small town called New Ross in Northern Ireland. He is married with five daughters though we also learn that his mother was a teen when she became pregnant with him, and they were looked after by the kindly Wilson family. There is a bitter undertone to the story as we learn of the nearby Magdalen Laundry where local girls are sent to work and hide their teenage pregnancies. Throughout the novel, in the lead up to Christmas, Furlong travels to places around the town but has time to ponder how uncomfortable he is with his identity. We see some reasons why when we learn that even his wife brings up his mother's pregnancy out of wedlock, whenever she wants to berate him. He arrives at Church and the local laundry and comes across a young girl who has been trapped in the coalshed. He takes on a heroic role and seeks to protect her.
I've been on the lookout for novels with male protagonists and Keegan's narrative gives us Furlong, who I wanted to know immediately. The contextual specifics and details of the writing set in the 198os is cleverly done and apt for all that the story conveys. This is an emotionally powerful yet quiet novel and I very much enjoyed it.
I will certainly be looking to read more of Claire Keegan's writing.
review by Christina Francis-Gilbert
Fast Girls by Elise Hooper
This a great historical fiction with effective fictional narrative to build an interesting insight into the build up and events of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. It is written with a laid-back, romantic style and so easy-to-read.
The central female characters who are the running athletes of the story are based on real members of the first integrated women's Olympic team: Betty Robinson, Helen Stephens, Louise Stokes, Tidye Pickett, Stella Walsh, Caroline Hale Woodson, Dee Broeckmann, Olive Hasenfus and Babe Didrikson. Each chapter follows intermittently each of these characters' differing experiences and thoughts on their chances to represent the USA and during the already-emerging horrific injustice and discrimination of the Hitler's Nazi regime.
Themes including racism, homophobia and sexism are addressed. I can see this novel being well received by Young Adult readers as well as book club adult readers. For me, it was a little cliched and simple in its narration. In addition, novels like this which are so close to real history yet offer dialogue and even made-up source texts surrounding the time period and the real events of the period don't sit well with me. Nevertheless, I mostly enjoyed reading this for an upcoming bookclub meeting for my running group! We had done a random search for a novel that might have relevance to our running interests. Anyone read The Other Alcott by Elise Hooper? Apparently Hooper's previous novels worked better since they focused on one central voice, rather than multiple narratives.
review by Christina Francis-Gilbert
The Giver by Lois Lowry
I thought I'd read this novel before, but found out I hadn't, so I've returned to this YA classic. It's worth a read! Many know this novel since it's been a set text and often studied in middle school (grades 5-7?), but if you don't, here's the info.
It does have some dark details and sad references to reality. For information, it is apparently still a banned book for some violence and references to war and death. The novel also reminds me a little of 'Brave New World'
It's a YA dystopian novel set in a society that appears to be utopian in many ways. There is a young protagonist called Jonas and his family including parents and sister Lily. I found Lois Lowry's Afterword in this edition to be incredibly interesting. She explains her childhood as part of a relocated military family. The routines and familiarity of compound housing bases abroad was mentioned as her inspiration for describing the calm, safe and secure community that we first see in the novel.
References to dreams, memories, assignments or roles in life, your contribution to society, shared collective thoughts about the past, individuality and the pain, as well as pleasure of memories.
Jonas learns that power lies in feelings. Ultimately Jonas makes independent choices and through his enlightened observations about what is really happening in his safe society, he saves himself and another, breaking away from the conformity of a community that has become dangerous for many of its members.
review by Christina Francis-Gilbert
Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue
Emma Donoghue chooses fascinating issues for her stories. Her writing is incredibly well-researched and in this novel, readers are introduced to the 'long -buried' story of first love experienced by two girls in a British boarding house during the 19th century.
One of the girls is Anne Lister, described as a brilliant, troublesome tomboy, who has become iconic through what she wrote in her extensive five-million-word secret diary and recently her representation on screen as HBO's 'Gentleman Jack'. She is not particularly likable though. My impression of her character is that she presumes her own privilege and showers Eliza with affection, making her fall in love with her only to then disregard her easily. Worth remembering that their behaviour is that of teenagers though.
In contrast to Anne Lister's playful exuberance and laissez-faire approach to all about her boarding school life, Eliza Raine's existence and her life choices are heartbreaking. She was an orphaned heiress banished from India to England at the age of six and Donoghue's narrative explains her mixed-race Anglo-Indian background, her disconnect with India and her mother, her inability to connect fully with her new surroundings and ultimately the futility of her life once she is disregarded by Lister following their young teenage same-sex love experiences. The later chapters in the novel document her final years in a mental institution during which she desperately wrote to Anne Lister recounting all they had promised each other during their first love experiences.
Eliza is the character who holds the reader's empathy most since she is deemed to have been Lister's first love at the age of fifteen. Her vulnerability and complete abandon to these emotions is likely to be sensitive for most readers.
I've read 'Room', 'Pull of the Stars', 'The Wonder', 'Haven' and now 'Learned by Heart' and I have to say Donoghue knows how to hook you with her words. The voices of her characters are allowed to speak so close to their emotions and so hauntingly of the truths they experience in their respective worlds that Donoghue's messages leave strong indents in her reader's minds.
Emma Donoghue's writing has a didactic but eerily penetrative style and resonance.
review by Christina Francis-Gilbert
