Genre: Historical Fiction

The Yellow Papers by Dominique Wilson

Posted April 10, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Historical Fiction / 0 Comments

Title: The Yellow Papers (Goodreads)
Author: Dominique Wilson
Published: Transit Lounge, 2014
Pages: 348
Genres: Historical Fiction
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

In an effort to learn the secrets of the West, China sent a group of boys to America to be educated. This was following their defeat in the two Opium Wars in 1872. Seven-year-old Chen Mu was one of the boys sent to America; but at nine he fled to Umberumberka, a mining town in outback Australia. The Yellow Papers is a story of love, obsession and friendship set against a backdrop of war and racial prejudice.

The title refers to a Chinese tradition of determining a soul is at rest; this involves a priest determining if the death fell on a lucky day or not as well as performing some rituals. I couldn’t find much information about this process but the book suggests that the family is given yellow papers to indicate the soul is at rest. Also it may be interesting to note that the colour yellow is considered lucky in Chinese culture but Westerners use it as a racial slur. You might think this information would be useful and paid a big part in the novel, especially when it comes to tackling racism, but it doesn’t.

One of my major gripes with the novel is the fact that it attempts to look at a subject but ends up just glossing over it. The Yellow Papers tries to be a big sweeping historical epic but compact into 300 pages. This means that there are huge gaps that we have to fill in for ourselves and while this isn’t necessarily a bad thing it does detach the reader from the novel. The novel could go into detail about racism, culture clashing, even the Opium Wars but this book avoids dealing with these subjects in great detail.

While The Yellow Papers is essentially the story of Chen Mu, this book is broken into three parts that shifts into different focalisation. Chen Mu, Edward and Ming Li are the primary focus on the three parts. While Chen Mu is not a well-developed character by any count, Edward and Ming Li’s development fell flat. Both characters are two dimensional with no real indication on personality or motivation. This causes The Yellow Papers to start off well but plateaued out a third of the way through the novel.

There is some beauty within the text; some of the syntax reviews great imagery. While Dominique Wilson never really gives us much to do with scenery, the discourse is often very revealing. “Since that evening the thought that she could not love him had festered like a cancer in his belly.” This sentence hit me pretty hard; the idea of not being love and cancer being used in the same sentence, an idea that suggests being unloved is both unwanted and weighed heavily on him. Sentences like this are found throughout the novel and what saved this book from abandonment.

I wasn’t happy with The Yellow Papers at all and while I see some beauty in Dominique Wilson’s writing, I think she needed to flesh this one out a lot more. It is her first novel and I’m sure she learnt from writing it; her next novel will really determine my opinion of her style. As I’ve said, I found beauty in the syntax, enough to try her again.

Abandoning The Luminaries

Posted March 15, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Historical Fiction / 13 Comments

Recently The Readers (which is a fantastic podcast) did an episode on when you have to finish a book. This has got me thinking a lot as I was reading a book for book club that I wasn’t enjoying. I feel like I need to finish a book in order to participate in the discussion but this particular book was over 800 pages and after 200 pages I was ready to throw in the towel. The book was The Luminaries and I have now abandoned the book, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to talk about the book, and the need to finish or abandon a book.

By all accounts, I should have loved The Luminaries; it has murder, mystery and it is a detective story cleverly disguised as literary fiction. Eleanor Catton is a talented writer and there is no denying that, the proses in The Luminaries are spectacular but some will argue that the words don’t match the time period. For me the problem with this novel is the believability and the fact that it takes too long to say what it needs to say. For the very start it felt repetitive, Walter Moody was introduced as a person on the run, trying to find his own fortune. Moody had brought shame to his family, but doesn’t want to go into the details; this takes up about 40 pages of the book. I felt like this wasn’t building mystery or developing the character, it just went around and around in circles.

As for the believability I first need to talk about my life. I was raised in a small mining town called Charters Towers. In the 1870s, this town was attracting prospectors from all over the world, so much so that it was the second biggest city in Queensland at the time. During the gold rush Charters Towers produced over 200 tonnes of gold from 1871–1917. The history of Charters Towers felt nothing like Hokitika 1866 from the book. The miners in this novel are nothing like my experience of miners (or others involved in the goldrush), the book lacked the drinking to access, over use of swearing, constantly fighting and over playing Cold Chisel. The Gold rush should be a dark and violent time but The Luminaries was based around twelve people that do nothing but talk.

The Luminaries won the Man Booker Prize in 2013 and my experience doesn’t match that of the people that have finished the book. General consensus seems to be that this book gets really good at page 600. I have to wonder if it is worth pushing through 600 pages for 200 pages of greatness. Big books always scare me and I was reading War and Peace at the same time, so I had an amazing book running alongside a book that wasn’t working for me. I wanted to finish this book for book club but in the end, there are too many books to read and left this book with 600 pages to go.

I’ve never really been good at abandoning books and I really felt like I had to finish this book but in the end it wasn’t working and The Dark Path by David Schickler was calling me. Have you ever felt that you had to finish a book? Normally I feel that I have to finish a book club book. This is the first one I abandoned; I love to hate a book but 800 pages is a big investment. Also when it comes to abandoning books, do you have a set page count you give a book to impress you? Have you ever considered writing a review of a book you abandoned? I would love to hear your thoughts on when you have to finish a book or abandon it.

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

Posted February 27, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Book of the Month, Historical Fiction / 0 Comments

Title: And the Mountains Echoed (Goodreads)
Author: Khaled Hosseini
Published: Bloomsbury, 2013
Pages: 404
Genres: Historical Fiction
My Copy: ARC from Publisher

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Abdullah and Pari are close, very close; Pari idolises her older brother and there is nothing he wouldn’t do to keep he safe. But at the age of three Pari is sold to a glamorous young woman who couldn’t have children in Kabul. Without any form of goodbyes Abdullah never forgets his younger sister, but she has forgotten all about her previous life.

Khaled Hosseini sets out to explore the different ways in which families nurture; he begins this novel with a fable about a mythical creature known as the div who comes to the village and takes young children to his fort in the mountains. One day a farmer was so heartbroken of the loss of a child that he climbs the mountain to kill the div. After a brief battle with the creature the div shows him the most beautiful place the farmers ever seen and the children all happy. The div tells the farmer that he has come to test him and he has to choose what is best for his child.

I might lose some fans but I have to say it; people talk about Khaled Hosseini’s literary genius, with so much hype surrounding And the Mountains Echoed but I don’t see it. I will admit that I have not read The Kite Runner or A Thousand Splendid Suns so I’m only judging his literary merits by this alone and I might be wrong. Here is my thoughts based on only this book; he is a great storyteller but he is no writer of literary fiction, in fact I think he still has some work to do, before I would consider him a good writer and I don’t think I would even class this as literary fiction.

Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy reading this novel but I was expecting literary fiction and I was disappointed I didn’t get it. I was also reading the most wonderful novel at the same time, which actually covers similar themes and plot points. So I continually compared this novel with the other and when you are facing off against A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra, it really had no hope in winning. The story was nice and I found myself racing though the book but all the time I wanted to go back to A Constellation of Vital Phenomena.

Well well go and play till the light fades away
And then go home to bed
The little ones leaped and shouted and laugh’d
And all the hills ecchoed.

The title of the book comes from a William Blake poem called Nurse’s Song (I have no idea why Blake spells echoed with a double c but if you have any insights on that I would love to know) which feels fitting to the book. I think of Abdullah as the nurse who wants to protect but Pari is off having a good time (a far better life) and I’m not good at interpreting poetry but I think that’s where the analogy ends. There is the moral and ethical dilemma here about Pari, is she better off with the rich family or with her brother and family struggling.

As far as I can see this was a great story and I would read Khaled Hosseini again; I am curious to compare this to his other two books. I just think this is just great storytelling with a moral but there is nothing to make this stand out and think this is literature. In fact none of the characters or plot was so memorable, so when it came to talking about this book in book club I struggled to remember the plot and characters and I only finished it the day before.

At times I felt this book was a little staged and forced and I finished the book not learning anything about Afghanistan and the life of the people living there, so I felt disappointed. I know of offended people on the Khaled Hosseini bandwagon but sadly I just didn’t get into it. I liked the book but there is no lasting impression left on me and since I was reading a book that will easily be in my top five books of 2013 at the same time, I think that really gave me a negative opinion towards And the Mountains Echoed. This is the type of book you take to the beach or on holidays for a mindless but enjoyable story, there is nothing really else there.

All That Is by James Salter

Posted February 22, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction / 0 Comments

Title: All That Is (Goodreads)
Author: James Salter
Published: Picador, 2013
Pages: 304
Genres: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

After 30 years James Slater returns to the literary world with a new novel, All That Is. With 88 years of life experience under his belt, Salter offers a unique perspective of life, passion and regret. All That Is explores fragment of Philip Bowman’s life, as a naval officer in World War II, attending Harvard University and going on to be an editor of a small publishing house. While this doesn’t cover Bowman’s life in the way a memoir would, we get little snippets of his life and what is important to him.

James Salter has been often dubbed as a writer’s writer, a title he wished to shed when writing All That Is, but does he pull that off? For me, this title means that he is a writer than other writers and serious readers love, but that the casual reader often won’t enjoy. The reasoning is that the beauty in Salter’s books is in the proses and not the plot. He feels like an old fashion writer; he writes proses so elegant that it is often intimidating. He doesn’t try to write the perfect sentence that will blow the reader away every time; he does not want to lavish the reader, but you’ll still find a style that I think is graceful from page to page.

Something that I think goes against what is often taught to writers is that Salter is really good at ‘telling not showing’. He knows what he is doing and he executes this method in a precise way that just works for him. There are times when his similes and metaphors do come across as weird but for the most part everything flows and I found myself being swept away in the cleverness of his writing.

When exploring Philip Bowman’s life, we really get a sense of him as a person and the people he meets along the way. Some people we only meet for a few paragraphs but the style of Salter is enough to give the reader a good sense of who they are in such a short amount of time. This is a real talent and I really loved the little snap shots of people along the way. He manages to explore the little details and while we don’t know everything, he has painted a magnificent portrait of Bowman’s life.

As if it was a refrain to the novel we are often taken to a cocktail party and often we read about Philip Bowman making a move on a woman (often a married one) and inviting them to lunch. This often leads to sex and I think we are constantly reading about these conquests because they are important to Bowman. While this does feel a little repetitive at times, I think it is interesting to show the behavioural pattern of Bowman and his tried and true method of picking up woman.

I want to talk about the sex within All That Is (and Salter novels in general), while there isn’t as much as there was in A Sport and a Pastime (which I consider an erotic novel) there was still a lot in this one. The sex scenes in his novels might be considered crude and offensive to some, but they do play an important part, in All That Is we explore the passion and regrets of Philip Bowman’s life, a man that likes sex and though he can be a bit of a dick at times when trying to get laid, it felt honest and real. Salter doesn’t play around with euphemisms when he writes sex scenes, they are non-ludicrous and sometimes over descriptive. The thing I like about his sex scenes is that he doesn’t always try to be erotic, sometimes they are awkward or unintentionally funny, this just makes it feel more real; sometimes there is passion and it’s erotic, sometimes things go wrong. Often better than the sex itself is the events that follow, they may just be lying in bed making small talk, but it is here we get some real unseen insights into these characters.

I think I’m becoming a fan of James Salter, while I would recommend A Sport and a Pastime over this novel, there is a real joy in reading proses like this. James Salter does give a huge nod to the book industry and his love of books, but for me this was about life, love, passion and regret. Exploring the life of Philip Bowman was an interesting endeavour; sure, he is fictional but the book says a lot about life in general. Salter is not for everyone but if you like beautiful language and not afraid of some graphic depictions of sex then he is an author worth checking out.

A Rogue by Any Other Name by Sarah MacLean

Posted February 8, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Historical Fiction, Romance / 10 Comments

Title: A Rogue by Any Other Name (Goodreads)
Author: Sarah MacLean
Series: The Rules of Scoundrels #1
Published: Avon, 2012
Pages: 386
Genres: Historical Fiction, Romance
My Copy: Audiobook

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

After a broken engagement and years of disappointing courtships, Lady Penelope Marbury has all but given up on finding love. That was until she married the Marquess of Bourne, a prince of London’s underworld, a man cast from society into nothingness who is out for revenge. This wasn’t a marriage of love but convenience, Bourne married for the dowry and Penelope to avoid scandal and to ensure her sisters wouldn’t suffer the same fate.

You can guess how the story goes. He wants to keep Penelope away from his world and his underground gambolling house. She is bored, he is a prick. She wants adventure, hot sex and happily ever after. That is how regency romances work, right? Well, it does in this case with Sarah MacLean’s A Rogue by Any Other Name. I feel like I need to go back to my review of Outlander and pretty much cover the same issues again. The whole fantasy verse reality issue; my wife loves Outlander but I know her well enough to know she doesn’t really want someone like Jamie. In reality, if you were in a relationship with Jamie (from Outlander) or Michael Lawler (the Marquess of Bourne) you would be in an abusive one.

People are probably wondering why I decided to read A Rogue by Any Other Name; it wasn’t because it won the RITA Award for Best Historical Romance in 2013 because I don’t care about awards. There are a few reasons. Obviously I needed a romance novel for the Literary Exploration Reading Challenge. I know I could have gone with a literary romance novel but I was curious about Sarah MacLean mainly because she often talks about the intersection of feminism and the romance genre but also because the sex scenes are hot. Why not find out for myself?

Interestingly enough there was a very feminist vibe in this novel along with the whole cliché romance story arc. Penelope is portrayed as a very strong willed woman, willing to stand up to Michael’s stupid behaviour. She was in a situation where she had to think about her family and to avoid the scandals she made the choice to marry. The novel has a lot of other examples of feminism but what I liked about this book was the fact that most of the women were feisty and strong minded; they didn’t let the men control them. At times the men may think they are in control but they had no idea what they had gotten themselves into.

When it came to the sex scenes, yes they were hot and steamy but the fact that MacLean avoided most of those flowery euphemisms was what stood out to me. There were some cringe worthy phrases but as a whole the words seemed fitting. I know sex scenes are an important factor in deciding on which romance novels to read so I will say they were erotic, but there weren’t enough of them. Most of the time Penelope was the lonely wife and Michael didn’t want to corrupt her innocence, even if she was begging to be corrupted. However this is book one in The Rules of Scoundrels series so I’m assuming sex will be a more common thread in the next two books.

I’m not sure what the appeal is with romance novels but I will continue to try them. Personally I’m not that interested in reading more from The Rules of Scoundrels series but maybe I’ll try book one of her other series, Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake (just because I like the name). Sarah MacLean’s written style is pretty good, the plots are pretty basic but she makes up for that with strong women and steamy sex. There is a black strip along the right hand side of the book cover; does anyone know what that means? If you are a fan of romance then I’m sure Sarah MacLean is someone you should be reading; it is better than the Outlander series.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

Posted January 23, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Historical Fiction / 0 Comments

Title: The Paris Wife (Goodreads)
Author: Paula McLain
Published: Virago, 2011
Pages: 392
Genres: Historical Fiction
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Forget everything you know about Ernest Hemingway because Paula McLain has set out to change that in The Paris Wife. This stunning novel follows a fictionalised account of Ernest Hemingway and his first wife Hadley Richardson. McLain’s version of Hemingway starts off as a tender man, with a crush on an older woman; he is persistent and full of love; nothing like what I know of the man.

The Paris Wife begins in the Chicago in 1920; it is here we meet Hadley and Ernest. Slowly we watch the two fell in love and get married. Soon after they have relocated to Paris where they meet other expatriate authors, such as James Joyce, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The love shared between Hadley and Ernest is nothing short of beautiful, while it lasted.

If you know much about Ernest Hemingway, you know this whirlwind romance wasn’t going to last, I’m not spoiling anything by mentioning this. In fact it is mentioned on the back of the book. What I found most interesting about The Paris Wife is the way it is written in a first person perspective. My calculations from the clues in the book, is that Hadley was narrating this account at least thirty-four years after her divorce from Hemingway.

This presents a unique perspective of Ernest Hemingway, the pain and suffering would have been mostly gone and we get a distorted opinion of this famous author. Paula McLain’s masterfully presented Hemingway in such a way that I began to re-evaluate my personal opinion of the man. He was depicted as loving and caring, a struggling author with big dreams but also suffering from the torments of war. This eventually all came crashing down and my opinions where back to how I originally felt about this author; it takes some talent to be able to pull that kind of writing off.

This is the kind of novel you take to Paris. The atmosphere of 1920’s Paris was stunning, I could picture it and I wanted to go back to France and enjoy this city all over again. Unfortunately I don’t live in the world of Midnight in Paris, so I will have to stick with the modern city. Mentions of Shakespeare and Company were particularly special for me as I have very fond memoirs of that wonderful bookstore.

Fictionalised accounts are tricky and should always be taken with a giant grain of salt but I was happy to see Ms McLain ended this book with a note about her research including sources for her research. While this doesn’t mean I’m going to take the entire story as true, it does provide me with some reassurances that the author intended to keep as close to the facts as possible. This meant that at times the novel did feel more like a biography but the story was compelling enough to keep the book enjoyable.

One thing that bothered me after reading some reviews about this book is the people who hated this book because of the ‘unlikeable character’ when referring to Hemingway. I’ve always thought of the author as an unlikeable person (the man was a dick). What I was impressed with is the fact that Paula McLain managed to alter my opinion and try to look at things from another perspective. He was self-destructive and often came across as a man with no remorse but seeing his downward spiral on the page is what made this journey interesting.

I read this book for Jazz Age January; it was a good excuse to pick up The Paris Wife. I did in fact enjoy the novel but not in the sense that I would recommend it, I just think it was an interesting journey and look at Ernest Hemingway. There were flaws in the novel but you have to respect the way McLean worked the reader. I knew the Fitzgeralds and Hemingway had a falling out but now I suspect it was a case of them siding with Hadley during the break up. I will have to research some more to know for sure.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

Posted December 14, 2013 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Historical Fiction / 0 Comments

Title: The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Goodreads)
Author: Richard Flanagan
Published: Vintage, 2013
Pages: 467
Genres: Historical Fiction
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

The Narrow Road to the Deep North follows the story of Dorrigo Evans, an Australian doctor haunted by his past; life in Tasmania, a love affair with his uncle’s wife, World War 2 and so on. At the heart of the story is his horrific time in a Japanese slave labour camp as a prisoner of war working on the Burma death railway. Taking its title from 17th-century haiku poet Basho’s travel journal, The Narrow Road to the Deep North is about the impossibility of love.

I started reading this book at the beginning of my recent reading slump, I felt so much pressure to try and get it read before my local book club. As a result, I wasn’t able to finish it in time and I ended up putting this aside half read. I obviously went back to the book and finished it, but I think it did play a big role in my enjoyment of the novel.

This is my first Richard Flanagan novel; I have heard a lot about him, but never had a chance to try him out before. The Narrow Road to the Deep North is about the harshness of war, not just the struggle of trying to survive the battlefield, or being a prisoner of war. This goes further and looks at trying to survive post war. I’ve read some great novels similar to this; Catch 22, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Yellow Bird, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and The Machine come to mind. So I felt that I ended up using these novels as the measuring stick and The Narrow Road to the Deep North just didn’t feel like it covered the topic properly.

I felt like this book also tried to be an epic novel, following the exquisite pain of Dorrigo Evans’s life. Then I got halfway through the novel and wasn’t sure how it could cover the entire life in so little pages. I normally associate epics with great big books and if this book covered more of Dorrigo’s life then it could have fit this genre.

Flanagan focuses on not just the cruelty of war and it’s after effects but the impossibility of love, especially when so damaged. I think this was the major theme Flanagan wanted to explore, more than war and the Burma death railway. The relationship between his uncle’s wife Amy and then his girlfriend Ella play a big role in exploring Dorrigo’s life and the pain he suffers. Forbidden love and the relationship everyone expects from him; this is what I think the author wanted to explore.

I really enjoyed the style of Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North, so much so that I think it could have been a future Australian classic. The main problem was some parts go on for pages in great detail and then others were just glossed over. There was no consistency and in a great epic novel, you expect the same amount of detail in everything happening. Sure some parts deserve more time but I think there were something interesting points that needed to be focused on a lot more. This is a good novel that could have been great; I think that is what frustrated me the most about The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

Harvest by Jim Crave

Posted November 20, 2013 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Historical Fiction / 0 Comments

Title: Harvest (Goodreads)
Author: Jim Crave
Published: Picador, 2013
Pages: 272
Genres: Historical Fiction
My Copy: Library Book

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

A group of strangers arrive in the woodland borders and put up a make-shift camp. That same night a manor house is set on fire. Following that the harvest is blackened by smoke, the strangers are cruelly punished and there is suspicion of witchcraft afoot. Harvest tells the story of the economic progress following the Enclosure Acts that disrupted the pastoral paradise of a small remote English village.

Jim Crave uses the tragedies, pillaging and other disruptions in an effort to evoke the effects of England’s fields being irrevocably enclosed. I never really knew when this book was set but upon researching the Enclosure Acts I’ve since found that this novel is most likely set sometime between 1750 and 1860. This Act basically removed the existing rights the locals had to carry out activities like cultivation, cutting hay, grazing animals, using other resources such as small timber, fish, and turf.

While some people saw these acts as the building blocks to a capitalist future, others thought of this as an attack on the peasantry. You know the old complaint, parliament are only looking after the major landowners; the rich get richer. Sometimes the enclosures were carried out with force and extreme measures were used.

In Harvest we read about a pastoral idyll as it starts to unravel with the major changes in land rights. Jim Crave’s look on the subject is done in an interesting way; I didn’t read this book as a depiction of changes in land rights. I read this as a community so cut off from the rest of the world that it started imploding as soon as outsiders were introduced. Sure, the whole point of the book was the Enclosure Acts; my brain just took a different direction.

While this book felt a little dark, like life was harsh and cruel; all the things I enjoy in a novel, it just didn’t feel right. I felt the grittiness and yet I felt a little bored and disappointed by Harvest. I’m not sure if it was a problem with the novel, I felt like I was in a reading slump and I was forcing myself to complete the book before I needed to return it to the library.

Then again, the first impression is often the correct one. I spent a lot of time thinking if this was a problem with the novel or a problem with me at the time. In any case, it doesn’t matter, I didn’t enjoy it and I’m not sure revisiting it later will change my mind. Well written with the normal historical fiction tropes, but I felt like the novel dragged on. This should have been catnip for me but I just couldn’t find a connection.

Guest Review: Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures

Posted November 14, 2013 by jus_de_fruit in Guest Posts, Historical Fiction / 2 Comments

Title: Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures (Goodreads)
Author: Emma Straub
Published: Pan Macmillan, 2012
Pages: 256
Genres: Historical Fiction
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

I haven’t found much time to read in recent times. This book has been with me for a while, but I’ve now finished reading it. I never felt like this book was a compulsive page-turner, but it was something enjoyable and familiar that I could easily pick up and return to in the rare times of quiet that I can spend reading.

I don’t feel this book ever had any form of climax; as the title suggests, this book is about life. Laura Lamont, originally Elsa Emerson, grows up in Wisconsin, but eventually finds her way to Hollywood and becomes an actress, wins an Oscar, falls in love, has some children. It could be the story of any woman, although most of us probably lack an Oscar. Beyond the backdrop of Hollywood, this story is pretty ordinary. I found it easily to relate to Laura at different stages in her life.

I think this story is really about the roles we play in our lives. Daughter, Sister, Friend, Lover, Wife, Mother, Grandmother. Life constantly changes us. I think that the acting aspects may have just highlighted these changes more. Laura becomes quite famous, and struggles when she starts to disappear from the public eye. We are constantly changing, becoming different versions of ourselves, to fit the life that happens around us. Sometimes we yearn for the past, other times we look to the future, and there are even moments of contentment where we are happy just where we are in this moment.

I imagine this book would make a great holiday read, or like me, something that is easy to return to when other things are overtaking your life.

This is a guest post by Mary; not only is she my wonderful wife, she is also my editor and helps moderate the Literary Exploration group on Goodreads. Big thanks to her for this post and everything she does to help me with this blog.

Longbourn by Jo Baker

Posted October 2, 2013 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Historical Fiction / 0 Comments

Title: Longbourn (Goodreads)
Author: Jo Baker
Published: Knopf Doubleday, 2013
Pages: 368
Genres: Historical Fiction
My Copy: ARC from Netgalley

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Longbourn follows the daily lives of the servants of the Bennet house. Sarah is an orphaned housemaid who spends her day doing laundry, polishing the floor and emptying chamber pots. The house is blooming with romance and heartbreak, not just for the Bennet sisters. One day a mysterious new footman arrives and the servants’ hall is under threat of been completely upended.

A unique reimagining, this novel tells the story of Pride and Prejudice told from the people serving the Bennet’s. I get the sense that this book was inspired more by Downton Abbey more than Jane Austen but never really seems to live up to either. All the drama of Bingley, Wickham, Mr Collins and Mr Darcy play out as a background characters for the drama that is happening with the servants.

I only read Pride and Prejudice earlier this year and absolutely loved it so I was a little wary of trying a spin off novel. The idea of a novel in the style of Downton Abbey did interest me but I felt let down. I got nether Austen’s wit and humour nor the drama for Downton. Some of Austen’s memorable characters didn’t seem to line up too well in this novel either; Mr Bennet comes to mind, his sarcastic humour appears completely absent in this novel. This could be written off as the servant’s perception of the Bennets and other characters.

There are some redeeming qualities in Longbourn; the novel seemed historically accurate, and while I don’t know for sure if this is correct, it did felt like this novel aligns with what I’ve read in Pride and Prejudice. Also I have to admire the way Jo Baker wrote; she is no Jane Austen but the prose was still elegant and I found myself continuously being impressed with her style while always looking for ways she may have ruined Austen’s masterpiece.

I always felt like the Bennets were wealthy enough to allow Mr Bennet to be a man of leisure but not enough to stop Mrs Bennet from worrying. So when servant hall in Longbourn seem smaller than what you would normally expect, it didn’t come as a surprise to me. The arrival of a new footman means that Mr Bennet has finally given into the demands of his wife and in comes the mysterious James. While the servant’s seem pleased with the new addition, Sarah doesn’t and soon she becomes aware of his interests towards her. You can probably guess where this is going and I won’t spoil it for you.

I spent most of the book worried that Baker will do damage to a true classic and I think this did detract from my enjoyment but for the most of it I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome. I did how ever feel as if this novel dragged on in parts and the fact that this was marked as a book for Downton Abbey fans seemed completely wrong. If you are a Downton fan I would recommend The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro well before I recommend Longbourn.