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Stein Riverton – The Iron Chariot + Podcast

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Ghostly goings on?

Publisher: Lightning Books (Eye Books); ebook: Abandoned Bookshop
Pages: 110
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-785-63161-0
First Published: 1909; 18th March 2019 in English
Date Reviewed: 22nd November 2019
Rating: 4/5

Original language: Norwegian
Original title: Jernvognen (The Iron Chariot)
Translated by: Lucy Moffatt

Our narrator is staying at a hotel near the coast, close to both sea and plains. One evening he is out walking and barred entry to the farmhouse he wants to visit – over the course of a few holidays he’s taken a liking to Hilde, who co-owns it – and so he leaves, but not before spotting the departure of the forestry inspector, Blinde, from the company of Hilde. The narrator carries on his walk. As the evening continues towards the time for him to return to the hotel, he hears an eerie sound, iron chains rattling which, says the fisherman he passes on his way, precedes a death.

The Iron Chariot is a classic crime novella by a well-known Norwegian author who was also a journalist. A somewhat cosy mystery, it may not be as frightening as it likely was when it was first published, but it’s still a good read.

The narrator is joined, in terms of main characters, by a detective who is requested by a fellow hotel guest when a body is found. The detective is just the sort of character you both want and somewhat expect in a book of the period, very casual in his manner, not in any hurry, and he studies things in a different way to others. His presence is what makes the book a bit of a cosy mystery because aside from him the thriller/paranormal aspects get the most time. You have then an interesting pair of characters – one pretty upbeat, always raring to go yet not worried about time, and the other always nervous, bordering on paranoid, and worried. As you would expect, there is more to the detective’s demeanor than the narrator realises, which is perhaps more compelling in making you continue read than the mysteries themselves – when is the detective going to solve it all and how will he have done it?

The use of location is great, pathetic fallacy employed often but never too much. You can see where the narrator is headed, mentally, when he can’t. And of course the lack of technology means more thought (for all this was obviously not in Riverton’s mind).

Some may find that it’s best to read this book keeping in mind the context of its time; there are a couple of areas to be aware of and, ultimately, forgive. The drawn-out nature of the detective’s work, his unwillingness to tell the narrator what he knows, is entirely suitable but it does feel at times like a device to keep the book going, particularly when you’ve worked out a fair amount and want it to be dealt with. The other element is the predictability; you’ll probably work out at least half of the mystery fairly early on. This is a drawback due to the drawing-out of the mysteries – in the context of the whodunnit it is, like the detective’s work, also suitable. And of course the revelation of a couple of the plot points would have been more surprising in times past.

The Iron Chariot is a perfect choice if you want a book with a truly spooky element (because it is very eerie) but nonetheless want something more easy – cosy – to read as well. And it’s a great example of older crime fiction that’s perhaps different to what you’ve read so far (supposing you’ve not read Riverton in Norwegian before).

I received this book for review.


Today’s podcast

The podcast is also available on iTunes and Spotify.

Tune in as Naomi Hamill, author of How To Be A Kosovan Bride, and me discuss post-war Kosovo, using a narrative method that divides opinion, and researching Albanian folklore.

If you can’t see the media player above or would like to see the purchase links, click here for the SoundCloud track page (be aware it may autoplay).

 
Nicola Cornick – The Woman In The Lake

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Too beautiful to lose. Too dark to keep.

Publisher: Harlequin
Pages: 324
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-848-45694-5
First Published: 26th February 2019
Date Reviewed: 10th June 2019
Rating: 4/5

Lady Isabella Gerald would like her husband dead. Lord Gerald is a bully, an adulterer, and involved in shady practices; and he is often violent towards her. Meanwhile Isabella’s maid, Constance, isn’t as silly and sweet as Isabella thinks she is – in fact Constance is spying on her Lady for her Lord. One day, Isabella declines to wear the new dress her husband has bought her; after raping her he tells Constance to destroy the dress. But Constance doesn’t destroy it, although its presence seems to cause more trouble than it’s worth. Centuries later, young Fen Brightwell visits Lydiard House, but upon walking into one of the rooms she finds herself alone; there’s an angry man in the next room, who is dressed in historic clothes and screaming at her to take away the dress that is lying there. She does so, and keeps it. Years later, after an abusive marriage and the death of the grandmother she lived with, the dress comes back into her life, together with thoughts and propensities she thought she’d left behind.

The Woman In The Lake is an appropriately fast-paced novel full of secrets and crime. Set in two time periods – the 1760s and the present day – it doesn’t use time travel/slip to the same extent as Cornick’s previous two dual-plot novels, instead spending time on both eras equally, the extra time afforded by the relative lack of travel spent on a stunning few ideas that slowly become more complex and exciting.

The story is good but it is specifically Cornick’s construction and execution of the various elements that makes this book what it is. The novel is like a whodunnit doubled, or even tripled; the amount of thought and planning that’s gone into it is obvious and it is as much this easy-to-see display of composition as the actual effect of it that makes the reading experience so vibrant.

This remains true even on those occasions wherein secrets and answers are predictable (sometimes they’re not hidden from you at all). The predictable nature of a fair number of plot and character elements may seem at first a drawback; but it’s not. Cornick has populated her novel with a fairly standard number of main and secondary characters but because she’s brought the use of secrets to them all – some more than others, of course – those secrets that are predictable are often of the sort that you need to know to be able to work out others. And even if you do work out more secrets than you may have been expected to, you’ve still got that complexity of the writing itself to enjoy.

The use of history is brilliant, and where it turns to historical fantasy it’s well thought out. You may need to suspend a bit of belief but that is part and parcel – if you’re happy reading a book where someone slips back in time, you’re going to be okay with the rest of it.

So there is a lot about the process to like about this book, and it could well be the best part, but the rest is right up there. The plot is paramount in general; the characters each in their turn bring the focus to their small section of the world, their individual lives within the whole. Cornick uses some social history here, particularly the alcohol smuggling that went on in Swindon, and then there’s Lydiard House and the parkland; in a break from her work in this genre so far, she populates her locales with fictional characters for both eras, using Lydiard Park and its past inhabitants for inspiration and spinning her own story from there. (A word about Lydiard House: Cornick’s history about the house as its own entity is based in facts – the council owns it now and it’s open to visitors. The council uses the upper floor for meeting rooms and so forth, so the bedroom as a museum piece is downstairs, a recent creation, as are other rooms that may have been upstairs; this is to say that if Fen’s visit confuses you at all, this is the reason. I wrote about the House and Park last year, including photos.)

The characters are good, but considering everything discussed so far, you may not find in them much to take away; they do each propose things to consider and the historical people provide food for historical thought but it is those ‘things’ that will likely stand out to you most, the characters interesting enough but more of a vehicle for the plot. No one is particularly winsome, however this is part of the point of the narratives. The historical characters are mostly loathsome, even those who have been treated badly aren’t very nice, and the present-day characters have many flaws to their traits; Cornick’s tale looks beyond perfections and dreamy heroes, in fact you may not be one hundred percent sure about any of the relationships or friendships. It’s a good reflection of reality and often also a good reflection of humanity in general. (The narrative is written from four points of view as a whole, with three taking the majority of the time.)

Domestic abuse is an important thread in both of the narrative eras with different stories behind them, the differences in society weaving into them in their own ways. In conjunction with this, Fen’s life includes a lot of child neglect, which combines with her married past. Cornick looks at Fen’s experiences as a fact-of-the-matter – Fen’s been hurt, and still is hurt, but it’s been happening for so long that emotions are largely off the table. It’s a hard-hitting tale that Cornick is careful not to tie up too neatly – some people never change.

The Woman In The Lake is a spooky book, a somewhat Gothic tale, that might just keep you up a bit longer than you’d thought, the story taking twists you may not have seen coming in terms of the way the characters deal with them, and Cornick being unapologetic in her writing of it. This is a solid work of fiction, factual when needed and when it works with the fantasy, and fantastical where it fits. It looks a various concepts with care and consideration. But most of all, it’s simply chock full of good literary action.

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Rosie Travers – The Theatre Of Dreams

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Lights, camera, and action… are all badly needed by this group of people.

Publisher: Crooked Cat
Pages: 300
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-721-12292-9
First Published: 1st August 2018
Date Reviewed: 21st August 2018
Rating: 4/5

Actress Tara’s director boyfriend becomes interested in a rising reality star and the resulting fallout shatters Tara’s professional image. When she receives a letter from an elderly woman, inviting her to take over a dance school (the real reason is to help save the old pavilion) she decides to go for it, moving from London to the south coast. But there’s more to Kitty’s request than she included in the letter, more than any meetings and debates with councils.

The Theatre Of Dreams is a contemporary story of historical conservation, with a healthy dose of mystery. Told via two characters, one in the first person, the other in the third, it gives a good view of the past and present and ensures all questions, whether explained openly to other characters or not, are answered for the reader.

Travers has constructed a good tale; seemingly nice but ordinary for a while, there comes a point where the first mystery element makes an appearance, and this then runs parallel to the main story, pushing the interest up several levels. It adds a completely new dimension and genres that move the novel, particularly the final third, into page-turner territory, somewhere between a casual whodunnit and a cosy mystery, whilst never losing the easy-going nature of the narrative.

Characterisation is fair, with most time understandably going to Tara, who gets a complete, realistic, life change. She’s as important as the fight to save the pavilion.

The pavilion itself is what the story revolves around but it would be prudent not to expect to see a result here – the book is about the journey to start the restoration rather than about the restoration itself, with Kitty desperate to find a way out of the bind her family have put her in of selling off the pavilion to developers. The fictional history looks at stories from factual places (the building is based on Lee-On-Solent’s old Lee Tower) and calls to mind similar, factual, stories of campaigns to save history.

There’s but one issue and that’s in the book as a product; there are a lot of proofreading errors – spelling, grammar – that, whilst not on every page, are numerous enough to be noticeable and do on occasion mean you have to stop reading to work out the meaning behind the sentence. The language itself is good and Travers’ style confident – the errors are an editing stage problem.

Besides the errors, the book is great. It’s one you can pick up for a chapter or two but quickly find yourself wanting to carve out time for, and the subtle elements of mystery that Travers includes make you want to race through the end to find out what’s happened.

I’ve met the author a couple of times.

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Kirsty Ferry – Watch For Me By Candlelight

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Not only at the first stroke of midnight.

Publisher: Choc Lit
Pages: 302
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 9B079H1LTJB (ASIN)
First Published: 3rd April 2018
Date Reviewed: 8th August 2018
Rating: 4/5

Kate lives in Suffolk where she runs a local history museum, set up in a row of old cottages. Originally from Cambridge, she fell in love with the village she found there, feeling drawn to it. One day a new visitor to the museum, Theo, arrives; Kate begins to slip back in time, into the shoes of someone who looks very similar to herself and who knows someone who looks similar to Theo.

Watch For Me By Candlelight is a time-slip romance with a well-constructed fantasy thread. At first understandably seeming to be an editing error, Ferry’s seamless integration of Kate into her historical past is excellently done, with Kate effectively becoming her historical counterpart whilst remaining herself, able to apply modern concepts to what she is hearing but knowledgeable of what she actually ought to be saying in context. On occasion she does lose herself completely in Cat, Ferry intentionally bringing the history further into the proceedings so that you get to know Cat as well, albeit not as much as Kate.

Partly as a result of all this, the romance is a good one – well plotted and paced. Ferry doesn’t dwell long on minor conflicts, letting the plot go where it will – for example a problematic, more minor, part of life will be solved in good time to aid the path of the main story.

The author’s decision to use a pretty ordinary backdrop and characters allows the spotlight to be on the fantasy, and allows the story to feature a strong dose of reality (the time-slip itself being not so unrealistic). Kate is friends with the family who own the local historic estate, and counterpart Cat was a relative of their ancestors – neither are particularly privileged. Theo/Will (it’s not a spoiler to say he has a counterpart) is well placed in an equally ordinary situation, and it’s this that creates the main conflict in the historical sections.

The writing is good – any anachronisms are the result of the time-slipping and thus not an issue, and the grammar on most occasions is refreshingly super.

There are little things at odds, but the main element that invites question is the ending – it’s not at all as the plot leads you to believe; the mystery is not predictable but might have been better if it was predictable, more suitable.

Apart from that, as described, Watch For Me By Candlelight is a good book. It’s understandably an easy read, enjoyable both in terms of its genre and for the cleverness of the construction, putting genre first to great effect. It’s the second in a series but can be read as a standalone, the references to the first book intriguing and informative.

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Claire Fuller – Swimming Lessons

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Only go with the flow to a certain extent.

Publisher: Fig Tree (Penguin)
Pages: 294
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-241-25215-4
First Published: 26th January 2017
Date Reviewed: 1st May 2018
Rating: 5/5

When Gil sees his wife standing outside the bookshop, he runs after her, causing himself a fair injury in the process. Daughter Nan isn’t amused – Ingrid disappeared many years ago when she and her sister were children – and she’s very likely dead. But Flora sides with his father and as Gil returns home from hospital the sisters look after him, together with Richard, the man Flora had been sleeping with but had split up with, in not so many words, before she left to meet Nan. The family house is full of books which are stacked on every surface, a few layers deep – Gil has an obsession with finding secondhand books that hold receipts, letters, and marginalia. Mixed in with this story is that of Ingrid’s version of her marriage to Gil, told in letters, that she had slipped in between the pages of various relevant titles.

Swimming Lessons is an utterly sensational novel of truths and lies, mystery and a spot of magical realism, and regret, all held together by the theme of literature and writing. Ingrid’s tale begins at university where she studied English and met Gil, her lecturer. Their story moves on from there, with Gil’s friends warning Ingrid about Gil’s personality and the university putting its foot down. The chapters set in the present abound with literary ideas, criticism, and general conversation.

“Writing does not exist unless there is someone to read it, and each reader will take something different from a novel, from a chapter, from a line. A book becomes a living thing only when it interacts with a reader.”

“…often the only way to see what a reader thought, how they lived when they were reading, is to examine what they left behind. All these words… are about the reader. The specific individual – man, woman, or child – who left something of themselves behind.”

This means that whilst the subject of the book, or, rather, subjects, can get pretty dark, the wonders of the text keep you in a positive state. The darker side of the novel – Ingrid’s revelations, which are effectively revelations to the reader, and the question as to what happened to Ingrid – are written superbly; Fuller’s writing style, plotting, and subsequent literary execution are absolutely marvelous to the point that the book is just as good to read for its prose as it is for the way it unravels its subjects. A good use of the present day setting and decades past round out the writing.

As for the characters they are very well drawn and feel far from fictional. Fuller references I Capture The Castle, and there are, in Ingrid’s love of the beach and writing of it, potential allusions to The Awakening (‘potential’ due to the book not being referenced). In the idea of Ingrid having been lost to the sea there is a minor reference to Virginia Woolf. The inter-textual nature of the book enhances both the atmosphere and the characterisation and also leading you to think that situations may match those in the older novels (which can be the case but not always). Gil has a writing room to which no one else is allowed entry. Flora is often naked. Ingrid found her changed life difficult. Like Fuller’s previous book, Our Endless Numbered Days, Swimming Lessons looks a little at neglectful parenting and favouritism.

This book pairs joyous reader escapism with some uncomfortable subjects. It is a good idea to go in prepared for a blunt look at what can be hidden under the surface, of parenting, of marriage, and then give your all to it. Because it’s a triumph; not the sort of characters you might want to spend real time with but the book itself, everything about it, oh heck yes.

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