Celia Rees is a popular writer of young adult fiction. Her focus is on history and magic.

Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages: 367
Type: Fiction
Age: Young Adult
ISBN: 0-7475-6469-8
First Published: 2003
Date Reviewed: 6th August 2009
Rating: 3/5

Pirates! isn’t as well known as it’s predecessor, Witch Child, in fact it’s likely that unless one is a dedicated fan of Rees they won’t know of it at all. As for myself I found it at random in a bookstore.

Nancy Kington lives in England in the time that Africans were taken as slaves and whites took over the Caribbean for their own selfish interests. When her father dies she is shipped to Jamaica where her brothers plan to marry her off in order to make money from a good alliance. When Nancy meets the man whom she is to marry she takes an immediate disliking to him, his villainous ways and middle age causing her to fear for her life. Help comes in the form of her befriended slave Minerva who, along with others, ensures Nancy’s safe passage to the outlaw camp. There she and Minerva make the decision to join the pirate ship that is on its way to the harbour. But in her dreams Nancy can see her betrothed on her trail. She must continue onwards while ever widening the gap between her and the young man whose ring she wears about her neck.

The story is told in the first person with Nancy narrating her and Minerva’s lives. This is akin to the method used in Witch Child that Rees is very adept at. Nancy begins by informing us, her readers, that she is writing her memoirs for an author of piratical books and then goes on to give us a history of how she came to be a pirate. This prologue, if you will, is rather long, stretching to about a third of the book, which is a disappointing surprise for a book named “Pirates!” In itself it means that an otherwise interesting story of the life of two women in the new world is a drag to get through as you wade through the pages hoping she’ll hurry up and board a ship.

The romantic sub plot is endearing and one of the major reasons to keep reading when the main narrative runs dry. Nancy promised herself to her childhood sweetheart, William, before her father died, but although they meet again a couple of times in the book it seems their lives will drive ever more apart. The book makes no promises of it’s own, you will not witness their marriage at the end and nor will their story tie up in the way that you’d like it to, but this becomes unimportant; the telling of the story is such that to give it a climatic ending would have cast any previous success out to walk the plank.

In some ways the mundaneness of the story is ripe. It echoes the boredom of endless days at sea. The problem is that you don’t really want that in a story, and in a pirate tale especially you want adventure. The character Rees created has a story to tell, no doubt about it, but it’s in the same category as those who wouldn’t make it into the history books for lack of interesting accounts. The idea of her betrothed pirate following her isn’t given nearly enough excitement and backing as it should and thus becomes just another addition. This means that when the man finally does catch Nancy one could care less, even if it is her fear realised.

The major flaw in this book is Nancy. She’s above most other girls of her status in that she condemns the treatment of the Africans and is more intelligent than most but still she is a weakling when compared to Minerva – who is far more interesting. In truth Minerva is the real heroine and Nancy simply serves as her biographer as without her Nancy would lose her readers within the first quarter of the book. This being her purpose it’s a pity Minerva isn’t given more time and is too often relegated to being Nancy’s saviour.

This brings us to the final flaw. Nancy gets captured, Minerva saves her, Minerva gets captured, Nancy saves her. It’s a poignant display of sisterhood but overkill, to make use of an accidental pun. They live for each other, we know that, it doesn’t need to be repeated in everything that happens. Nor do the situations the girls find themselves in need to be so obviously explained. If sex is too adult to be included then so too should the possibilities of rape be excluded.

Youth fiction should be adventurous, full of excitement, and heavy with adrenalin. Children need to make good use of their imagination; a dull book will count for nothing. This in consideration I cannot recommend Pirates! for young readers but only to those old enough to be prepared to lend their time in finishing it. It’s nice, but truly no match for Rees’s previous efforts.

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Just before the Second World War came the Spanish civil war. Its impact reached the deepest depths of the lives of the people.

Publisher: Headline Review
Pages: 574
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-00-718036-3
First Published: 2008
Date Reviewed: 5th April 2010
Rating: 4/5

Sonia likes to dance, but she didn’t realise this until she started Salsa lessons on impulse after finding a shabby-looking studio. It stood beside the boring old cinema she visited with her boring old and ever-so-slightly alcoholic husband. When she invites her friend Maggie to join her lessons Maggie becomes even more passionate than she and books them plane tickets to Spain for an authentic experience. But what awaits Sonia in Spain is more than dance lessons. Woven into the fabric of cheery, tourist-attracting Granada is a whole history seeped in conflict, one that draws Sonia into the heart of a world she never thought to explore and which seems to relate to her rather personally.

The Return begins as though a modern woman’s novel, a Chick-Lit if you will. Both Sonia and Maggie are likeable and the temptation to put your feet up and prepare yourself for a journey with them is hard to resist. What stops you is the blurb and it’s just as well because Sonia’s story is but one part in a saga of love and loss.

For a long time dancing is the focus. It offers a firm grounding in the traditional culture of Spain, and more authentically than any tourist package holidays. Rather than learn the steps you’re taught about the reasons for them and the history behind it. Accompanying this is a brief introduction into the discipline required in the bullring and the stages from assistant to matador. These stereotypes of Spain are engaged to help you submerse yourself in the setting while being valid as common occupations of the era.

The narrative of the friends learning Salsa comes to a pause when Sonia meets Miguel. From this encounter comes page upon page of information about the war told through the lives of the Ramirez family. Their function is exquisite – rather than tell the story of the war through the usage of a famous person or one with a unique account, Hislop has opted to manage her own creations. She has constructed a family akin to millions of others in Spain at the time, people with little claim to fame and with no influence, to illustrate the plight of the ordinary person in the street. It is very easy to become indifferent to something when you hear it from a second-hand source, a summary of lots of things put together, so by means of putting a bog-standard group of people in the spotlight Hislop forces the reader to take note and experience the feelings and fears of the people who suffered most. While it’s likely she interviewed many survivors and compiled their accounts into one it never comes across as forced or weighed down with different elements.

Laced into Mercedes Ramirez’s journey is a tale of love torn apart. While the cover of the book makes much of this romantic aspect the element is mostly confined to requited but unrealised love. It doesn’t lie at the heart of the book but rather to the side, as it’s not as important perhaps as the factual information but a defining part of the latter of the story. The character of Sonia is merely a vehicle until the end, where she holds the power to tie up the loose threads, more involved in this facet than your average character.

The book is very long and because of its nature one can at times sense a slowing down in the storytelling on the horizon. This does happen, but it’s not a burden on the reader because there are so many things you want to find out about that you’ll keep reading regardless – and sure enough, within the subsequent few pages you see the focus of the story change to another character. The different characters’ stories are provided for fairly and sections are split up allowing the book to move back and forth between them. The characters are as ordinary in themselves as the collective family, they each have varying interests and dreams but in war they are nothing special. Because of this you hear from the opposing side, the soldier, the traveller into exile, and the prisoner.

Hislop’s disclosure of the events that took place has been watered down enough for the disposition of readers easily affected by distressing descriptions, but only to an extent. Aeroplanes from both sides of the conflict rained down bombs, indiscriminate of the support of their victims for their parties. The aftermath of this was catastrophic but their further pursuit of the innocent when they fled their homes is incomprehensible. Hislop describes the gaping holes in massive crowds of exiled people as the planes followed their slow progress away from their native lands: the women burying their children and the suicides of those who could go no further. Being on the front line with the soldiers is only easier because of the greater publicity given to warfare. The novel also deals with the part religion played in the war. When the Nationalists took over they did so with the blessings of the Church, despite that fact that by taking over they had killed and continued to kill afterwards so many innocent people and ironically people of faith.

Without a doubt Hislop’s endeavour was to provide details of the Spanish civil war to a readership little informed, and a reminder for those who may have let it fade away. The Return will give you an insight into a long-spanning event left out of most basic curriculum. It will encourage you to see the atrocities committed, however for that you will also be welcomed into the world of Flamenco and be lead towards the beat of the music where the here and now are unwittingly left outside the confines of the bound and printed wad of paper in your hand.

Let yourself be entranced and educated, no matter how much you already know. The Return won’t let you down and yes, you will be rewarded with a happy ending. It may just be the one you’re guessing.

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Lesley Downer is a British-Chinese historian in love with all things Japanese. She has written many books on the subject but The Last Concubine is her first work of fiction.

Publisher: Corgi (Random House)
Pages: 596
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-552-15520-5
First Published: 2008
Date Reviewed: 20th June 2009
Rating: 2.5/5

The Last Concubine has been on the recommended list of Amazon’s Japanese fiction for some time. If you go in to look at another book of the genre it often pops up. As well as this, Waterstones bookstore has had it as part of its 3 for 2 offer for months.

Sachi is the adopted daughter of country Samurai. When the procession baring the country’s princess stops in her village the Princess whisks her away with her to the palace of the Shogun, the ruler of the land. There she becomes his concubine for the briefest of periods before he dies. Soon after the armies in the south rise up against those who support the new Shogun, wanting to reclaim the land for the emperor. Sachi is forced to flee under the guise of princess but her journey turns out to be far longer than planned as she meets significant people and learns more about her mysterious heritage.

The book is split into parts that are in turn split into chapters before once again being split into parts. Although this can make it confusing it allows the book to be read in bite-sized chunks, which is perfect when you don’t have much time. The locations are breath-taking and so well described that it’s easy to find yourself absorbed in the book from the first couple of pages; a mean feat that most authors don’t manage. It’s obvious that Downer has spent plenty of time researching 1800’s Japan; one of the many pieces of evidence lies in her elaborate paragraphs on kimonos.

On the face of it the storyline, until the end perhaps (which is one of the biggest cop-outs you could come across), is sturdy: a woman trapped by a life of ritual is given a second chance with the valuable insight that comes with having lived to the extremes. The main female characters are strong and likeable. They fight like men and know intricate tricks of the trade. The main male characters are happy enough to leave the spotlight to the women, the English character being particularly welcome as he arrives and shakes up the other’s beliefs on life.

But there are many flaws in this book. Downer’s plot descriptions are poor. The reason is this: she repeats herself. It’s as simple as that, and as it’s so simple one cannot understand why it wasn’t addressed during editing. Practically every time Sachi encounters something that sparks her memory into motion we are given a full run down of everything she remembers. Each time she remembers a particular place we are given the exact same structure of memories and as Sachi does a lot of remembering, far more than your average person, it becomes very wearing. In fact it’s rather surprising that Sachi never has a mental breakdown with all the remembering she does.

This takes us straight to the next big faux pas. The latter part of the book reads like a cheesy romance movie script that no director worth their salt would take on. From being a likeable and strong character Sachi turns into a drama queen, a fragile little darling who believes that the person trying to kill her should do it (the person in question thinks she is someone else and Sachi is happy for them to think that because she thinks she should bare the brunt of it). This is completed by a corny interlude where her friend rushes to take a bullet that was meant for another major character. All of the above happens within four or so continuing pages and if you weren’t already rolling your eyes and wanting to throw the book across the room you will be at this point.

Most of the book, the middle, is given to a journey, while the first part is wholly about the palace and the last about the war and then the war’s aftermath. This means that it has a tendency to drag; aptly like Sachi’s feet after all the walking Downer forces her to do. The beginning may have caught you and coerced you to enter into the palace with it, but the length of the journey will mean you lose your way. There are just far too many times where the characters are walking and looking at mountains. The only thing one learns is that Downer can fit the word “walking” in a paragraph several times over by using a thesaurus.

Downer makes Sachi remember time after time – is this to distract the reader from the fact that she cannot remember herself? Downer keeps reminding us that Sachi knows she can’t do what she wants as she is a woman – and then has Sachi think about the idea that if it weren’t for the war taking her mind away from her personal feelings she might have cherished her meeting with a foreigner so that she could tell her grandchildren about the event. As the late shogun’s concubine, we are told, Sachi must remain celibate for the rest of her life – and Sachi knows that, accepting it as her duty. Why then would she dream of having grandchildren to tell in the first place?

The saving grace of the book as a whole is the romance. The word of choice here is “you” which Sachi’s hero utters twice with no good reason and thus all the good reason in the world. You hope it will soar to dizzy heights but it doesn’t really go anywhere in style which is a shame as it was otherwise well handled.

Downer is a non-fiction author and undoubtedly this means that she spends a lot of time reminding her readers of facts they may have forgotten about in the mists of a book bogged down with dates and names. This has rubbed off on her work of fiction to bad effect. She is quite possibly a brilliant historian but that doesn’t equate to being a good novelist. She must learn how to convert her knowledge into a work of fiction that readers not acquainted with non-fiction will be able to relate to. She must also learn to use the English language correctly and wisely and keep track of her characters.

For a book that held so much promise, The Last Concubine fails in all aspects. As my boyfriend said on witnessing my frustration of the last chapter, at least the character is the last concubine so there won’t be any more.

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Sadie Jones is a new novelist from London. Before she turned her hands to books she was a screenwriter.

Publisher: Vintage
Pages: 441
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-099-51342-1
First Published: 2007
Date Reviewed: 2nd June 2009
Rating: 5/5

The Outcast has done very well. It garnered rave reviews and Jones herself a lot of respect and an expected glittering future as a successful novelist. Signalled as a great summer read (often one to be wary of) and with a cover that, although attractive, glazes the eye with low expectations, the book is a shocking tale of domestic violence and unnecessary discipline hidden behind a veil of flowers, forests, and the beautiful English countryside.

Lewis has been in jail the last two years for reasons unexplained. He is neither joyful nor unhappy to be back; to him life is exactly how he left it. When he was ten years old his mother drowned and he was the only one there. There was little comfort to be found amongst family and friends, everyone expected him to pull his socks up and be a man. Kit has lived for years in love with Lewis and in hate of her family. She has been broken down just like him. The book takes the reader through their past in order to discover the reason for their turmoil and continues until a couple of months after Lewis’s arrival back home from prison where the two finally find their solace.

The book begins quite abstractly, as Lewis comes home, and we don’t know anything about him. But just when you’ve started to accept the idea that you’ve been thrown into his life at random, Jones takes us back on the journey where we meet Kit and, as much as one can through a book, live their childhood alongside them. We learn a lot about them, their family, and their surroundings – every detail that is needed in order to feel a part of their world is included.

Detail is something that Jones does to perfection. It may be in part due to her choice of period and setting and the pure bliss that radiates often when readers in this modern society encounter them, but mostly it’s down to her passion. She doesn’t use “big words” yet promotes a picture so strong that creating the backdrop in your mind of her story is easy and not the difficult and time consuming task it can often be with other authors’ work. Everything you need to paint your landscape has been put out already on the palette ahead of your arrival; all you need to do as a reader is fill the canvas with the colours provided. My own creation was very clear and I basked in it; the little things I did create from scratch matched Jones’s text completely as she had given me enough of a foundation to work with – and that’s a mark of a good writer.

Still in the realms of detail, the information Jones presents regarding day-to-day life can be quite subtle but again it assists greatly in helping to get the story moving. The more detail, the more one is pulled in, the quicker they read the book, and the more satisfied they feel.

For the first several chapters the reader may find themselves wondering where all the darkness referred to on the back cover of the book is. The story is for sometime dreamy and idyllic, dull even, and it’s hard to see why it’s so loved. But when the darkness comes, while it certainly isn’t the most horrific darkness out there, it never lets up, always hanging over the characters like a strong black cloud about to release it’s wears. Jones never makes excuses for the pain and violence and thrusts everything out in the open, like her main character does at the end of the book. We read about the self-harming in all its bloody pain, and the scars, and the bruises from domestic violence, and it makes for difficult reading – but it makes you think.

The ending is exceptional and has all the makings of a high-grossing film. One aspect of the book that Jones makes obvious is the way Lewis sits on the train and while reading it can seem an irritation. At the end she explains herself by having Lewis sit the opposite way. It’s fantastic imagery; where once he watched the train pull away from the station, leaving him separated and alone, now at last he watches it move along it faster and faster, towards happiness.

Perhaps the real reason why this book is so difficult to read, again something subtle that takes until after you’ve finished it to realise, is the lack of parental care towards the children. One reviewer remarked that Jones had shown the careless nature of a typical middle-class fifties parent flawlessly, and a quick browse through the book reveals this to be true. It’s difficult to read because Lewis needs love and love only to get over his pain, he can’t simply pull his socks up, and we know this from the beginning and that’s what’s so frustrating because in our world today parents are much more in tune with their children.

The one and only kink in this otherwise smoothly written novel is the language. There are times when Jones displays a distinct lack of the articulation generally expected from one such storyteller as herself. Phrases like “he played that there were lions” rather than the usual “he pretended that there were lions” and “speeded up” instead of “sped up” grate against the otherwise finely-tuned composition. Fortunately these occasions are few and far between.

The Outcast is a beautiful yet haunting novel of two broken lives that has at its heart long-lasting love and redemption. It would appeal to anyone seeking something historical and engrossing yet lighter than most. Not quite the regular summer read advertised it is a book that will remain with you long after reading without leaving you wanting. Sheer excellence.

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Simon Montefiore is a scholar of Russian history and has written on the subject previously. His first novel, based on that history, was published recently and was pictured on banners in the entrance to Waterstones bookshops.

Publisher: Corgi (Random House)
Pages: 591
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-552-15457-4
First Published: 2008
Date Reviewed: 29th May 2009
Rating: 2.5/5

Picking up a copy of Sashenka is an easy task at the moment with it being readily available and highly thought of. The quotes of critics line the covers and the blurb promises a wondrous tale. Using an illustration that is almost photographic for it’s cover, the publishers have given it a bonus first impression: we already know what the main character looks like and thus, they hope, we’ll feel a sense of intimacy even before we peruse the summary.

Sashenka, born to Jewish parents of new money, was recruited by her uncle as a Bolshevik. In joining the party she had to lie to her family and put them to the back of her mind while going about political business in secret. Her choices as a young girl ultimately decides her fate as does an affair she has during her thirties. Her actions cast a dark light on her family until a historian in the 90’s is employed to track down the details of her last days.

The story is split into three parts, the first two revolving around Sashenka and her immediate family and the last on the historian’s search, years later, to uncover the truth about the heroine. Each part is split again into bite-sized chapters making it deliciously easy to keep up with as part of a varied and busy life-style and aids it’s speed in some way. The downside to the sectioning is that the first is focused purely on a winter in St. Petersburg, a particularly dreary one which casts a certain dullness over it, making it seem practically endless.

The first thing that’s striking about Sashenka, is the myriad of details the reader is given early on. Something that isn’t apparent in the blurb is that the book requires a good working knowledge of the period. This sets it apart from many historical novels that give the audience a hearty back-story before raining down on them with cultural references. As such it may just cause the book to be unappealing to anyone wishing to learn about Russian history and chosen Sashenka as their introduction, so a quick bit of research into the era is recommended.

The writing itself is mixed in standard. Mostly it is average but there are times when the imagination can go into overdrive over its beautifully described backdrops. St. Petersburg in winter and Moscow in summer, in spite of the heavy political story, give the book the luscious landscapes one needs in order to get through the taxing chapters.

One of the biggest problems of the book is its choppy structure. It darts to different situations too quickly and Montefiore shies away from providing the physical details of characters until long after they’ve been introduced. This is a problem due to the severe lack of details given in the first sense – it’s fine at the time because one can be creative but when more details filter through it can be quite a shock to the imagination.

Above all is the sex of the author. There are few male writers who have captured both the emotions and sexuality of women well, one being Philip Pullman, and Montefiore isn’t one of them. Some of Sashenka’s sexual discoveries are portrayed in a strange light, she says the kind of things that men want to hear but women would never utter. Montefiore does not understand women to the extent that he should as a writer of them, he would’ve done better had he made his hero a man.

In conclusion, Sashenka is an easy to put down, mostly dull, and slow moving book that would have faired better as Montefiore’s second or third novel at which time he might have improved his skills in the genre. The fact that he has written only non-fiction before is obvious as the narrative is too bogged down in factual details. His characters are not fully realised and one feels little reason to really care for them as they’re given to us at face value – a great pity as the history behind it all is very real and terrible.

As an add-on to studies in Russian history it may prove valuable, otherwise it’s not worth the large number of pennies for its purchase.

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