A rather epic historical flavoured with fantasy.

Publisher: Picador
Pages: 292
Type: Fiction
Age: Young Adult
ISBN: 0-330-49334-5
First Published: 2002
Date Reviewed: 9th February 2011
Rating: 4/5

Please note that I wrote most of this review over a year ago and that the tone is different due both to the shift in my writing style and the fact that I wanted to make reference to the book being a re-read. I suppose you could call it the ultimate reflective review.

On the day his village was burned to the ground, Tomasu was found by a Lord who named him Takeo and took him under his wing. Now Takeo joins Lord Otori in wanting revenge, and it appears Lord Otori chose well, for when Takeo stops speaking through shock, magical talents begin to show themselves. Takeo’s not sure what’s happening but he knows that with these talents he may be able to defeat the tyrant.

I first read this book around its publication date and absolutely loved it, I remember staying up all night to finish it; through this I came to discover how fantastic February mornings are as the sun rises, something I try to be awake to experience at least once a year to this day. Because of my reading speed at the time, the climax took me 45 minutes to get through and along with the historic subject I was in heaven. But reading it again I can see the flaws I didn’t see then.

The book is a brilliant example of Young Adult Asian historical fiction (albeit written by a white westerner), and it takes the reader to various different locations without any big changes in plot. The main characters are strong, the heroine especially, and the reader is able to get to know them well in a reasonably short period of time. The talents are supernatural, but they aren’t over the top, they are in the main the sorts of talents that we often think might be possible to develop, such as acute hearing.

But something that I didn’t notice the first time I read the book, due to my age, was the main character’s sexual promiscuity. The character actually appears to be a closet bisexual, but this isn’t the point, rather the point is that the romantic storyline revolves around an intensely passionate love and then a moment later the hero will go and sleep with someone else. For this reason I had a lot of trouble accepting the romance in the book whereas the first time I read it I thought it was amazingly romantic. All I felt was that he was disrespecting Kaede and their supposed love.

However apart from this the characters are exceptional. They are very much a product of their writing time, written before Young Adult books became what they are today, and are all the better for it. The plot switches between them, Takeo’s chapters being written in the first person, and Kaede’s in the third.

The book is not for the faint hearted. Hearn never shies away from descriptions of torture and death, and scenes of a sexual nature are relayed in their historical truthfulness. For fantasy this may be, but the Japanese historical aspects are rather factual.

The story has it all, the keen warrior, mystery and magic, adventure, political issues concerning leadership, and a sweeping romance. It shows why political alliances were important, but family more so, and how devastating the wrong choice could be. It displays the extreme prejudice towards women, the strong Kaede struggling to be accepted as her father’s heir and having to pass up being known as the heroine of a part of the plot that cannot be told here if the plot isn’t to be spoiled.

This is not your contemporary Young Adult novel, and should be recommended to young people with care. However that said, for its realism it is nothing more than true to historical life.

Across The Nightingale Floor is fiction for anyone who has seen a wuxia film and fallen in love, for the historian who wants to know more, and for the dreamer who believes. It is not flawless, even if the hero’s movements are, but it is a book that will hopefully stand the test of time.

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When loyalty to the crown isn’t quite straightforward.

Publisher: Sphere (Little Brown)
Pages: 545
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-751-53660-7
First Published: 3rd November 2005
Date Reviewed: 28th May 2012
Rating: 3.5/5

William Marshal began his career in a position of forced service to King Stephen, but as he got older he became a little more in charge of his dealings, albeit that his service continued to pass down to Stephen’s heirs. First William works for Henry II and Eleanor, then their youngest son, before working directly again for the crown, but it’s not all doom and gloom, at least not in the start when he was able to compete in tourneys and live his youth to the full. But when battles begin for the throne upon Henry II’s death, reality will set in.

The Greatest Knight follows, in a balance of fact and fiction, the life of William Marshal from his days as a teenage squire, to the point when King Richard the Lionheart had to fight against his younger brother John for the right to rule. But although this is the first book of two regarding William’s life (first in a series actually, though two is the number that focus solely on William) there is not a lot in this book that recommends its title. Yes William is loyal, at all times, and proves a reliable militant, but it is never apparent from his actions how he could have been the greatest knight. Of course the title was created for the book and not necessarily ever applied to Marshal in his time, but it is still cause for thought because of its usage.

There is a plot, of sorts, but William’s life in this book is more a series of political meetings, the combat mainly left to afterthoughts. William’s life seems to meander along, and while he makes for a very likeable hero, the stories he recounts sometimes give you the feeling that those people ought to be given more time for their stories are more exciting.

And unfortunately, it takes until about four fifths of the way into the book for the story to pick up. This comes in the form of William’s marriage, a ceremony and plot point that greatly enhances his ability to intrigue the reader because no longer is it only his thoughts, of a man in relative security, that you can listen to – and this is something that Chadwick does to great effect, her female characters tending to be on the strong side. William’s family make the story much better and it is perhaps a pity that Chadwick decided to include so much of his life before he married. The good thing is that as the first of two books, you can be sure that the next is going to be a lot more involving, and especially as the book ends with a proposed battle, that things are going to pick up in the narrative too.

To be sure The Greatest Knight doesn’t follow the usual path of romance, there are scenes of a romantic and sexual nature dotted here and there, but unlike many of Chadwick’s other books, this one focuses on society, dynastic disputes, and general politics, in a far more detailed way than when the hero or heroine has a partner throughout.

What there is here is a lot of information about England and English France in the 1100s. Yes, a little is fictional when needs must, but the book is incredibly factual, and that it looks at the rivalry between royal members from an outsider angle, brings new life to an old topic. Chadwick presents her royal charges from a generally unbiased viewpoint, and whilst one may surmise that, when it comes to Marshal at least, she favours Richard over John, she nevertheless gives each equal time to pitch their beliefs and reasoning to the reader through William’s thoughts and dialogue.

However whilst reading you can’t help but remember that there’s a second book, and that the promise of a blossoming romance meaning more main characters, and the fact (because it’s historical fact) that the politics is going to get a lot more interesting, means that you want to rush through this first book for the wrong reasons. For now, at least, the knight in question is more “good” than “great”.

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Be watchful of the jealous.

Publisher: Sphere (Little Brown)
Pages: 373
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 9780751541359
First Published: 1991
Date Reviewed: 2nd January 2012
Rating: 3.5/5

Please note that this is a review of the updated version of the book, which, it seems, was published in 2009.

Guyon’s (of The Wild Hunt) daughter Heulwen married Ralf, with whom she was infatuated – missing the affections Adam de Lacey was showing her. Now Ralf is dead, and despite the fact that Heulwen had always seen Adam as her brother since he was her father’s ward, she’s starting to feel differently about him. But Heulwen has all but said “I do” to Warrin de Mortimer, who, regardless of his arrogant nature, she is determined to marry. It will be a tough fight if Adam decides to give gaining Heulwen another shot, and both luckily and unluckily for him, there is more to Warrin than anyone knows.

The Running Vixen is a stand alone story that is relative to The Wild Hunt by way of the elders in the book – Heulwen’s parents are Guyon and Judith of The Wild Hunt, and they feature strongly enough in Heulwen’s story to warrant the reader going through the books in order. That said it is quite possible to read The Running Vixen by itself, as there is no back story prominent enough to be a concern.

The plot is simple and it is Chadwick’s talent for immersing the reader in history that keeps the book interesting. However there does come a point where you wonder what exactly kept Chadwick continuing the story, and while she later gives the reason, it was surely unnecessary draw it out. Sadly part of the interest in the book comes with the expectations given on its cover, which promise a forbidden love – the prospective reader may like to note that the family are quite happy with the match between Adam and Heulwen, as is the king, and this is obvious from the start considering Adam’s prestige.

The book contains many small battles, which make a good read albeit that there are many of them, and Chadwick includes information about why there were issues between the Normans and Welsh (the book’s main characters are entirely fictional, but the general setting is not).

If the story was stronger and had more “episodes” to it, The Running Vixen would be a fine specimen in Chadwick’s stack of books, but it is a little too everyday. The characters are good but similar to others of her creation, and while the main characters love each other they don’t tend to learn much about themselves as a couple when they surely should have.

If you have read some of Chadwick’s other books you will likely enjoy it but a new reader should leave it for a later time, as it is not the best example of what you can expect from the author. In this way, that it is the second in a series is of benefit.

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We all have our idea of perfection, but how many of us achieve it?

Publisher: Seal Books
Pages: 218
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-553-28051-7
First Published: 1926
Date Reviewed: 9th May 2012
Rating: 5/5

Please note that this book is very hard to get hold of in print and your best bet, unless you have a relative who owns a copy, is to find the ebook versions, in plain text and HTML at Project Gutenberg Australia.

Valancy Stirling has led a miserable and depressingly dull life, treated like a bad person when she isn’t, mocked by her family for being a reader, for not being pretty, and for being twenty-nine and not married. On her first day of the last year of her twenties, she starts to really accept just how much control she has let her family exercise over her, and how much that control has in fact stopped her from reading as much as she would like, from being pretty and married, and instead always being ill. Learning from a doctor, of her choosing, that she only has a year left to live, she decides to throw caution to the wind and be who she wants to be and say what she wants to say. It will shock her family, but it is likely to shock Valancy the most.

The Blue Castle is a somewhat short, hilarious, and sometimes frustrating book that while not exactly an example of fantastic writing, never fails to delight. It is, it must be said, incredibly predictable, to the point that everything you think will happen, will indeed happen, but for the story it doesn’t matter, and knowing what will happen in advance, coupled with the overall narrative, makes continuing all the more appealing. And while it should be noted that the book is very much set in its era, with all the trappings, the idea is that Valancy gives this up, and whether Montgomery planned for the future or not, Valancy becomes as relevant today as ever.

The plot is good, but it’s the characters that make the book a success. Each is given enough time for you to get to know them and their eccentricities, or lack thereof, and to learn how they would react to the situations Montgomery puts them in. This is perhaps best shown in the differences between the Stirlings – the family as a whole are obsessive about the smallest issues but each have their own quirks. And Montgomery “goes to town” with Roaring Abel, who incidentally doesn’t live in the town, giving him four different stages of drunkenness that really shows off her talent for humour.

“Fear is the original sin,” wrote John Foster. “Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that someone is afraid of something. It is a cold, slimy serpent coiling about you. It is horrible to live with fear; and it is of all things degrading.

As for Valancy she starts the book being an irritation, not helping herself, being passive, and thinking back over and over to the past instead of making new memories – before changing to become her own person, and a person unconcerned with all the issues she had previously. There are definitely limitations placed on her, but the feeling Montgomery gives her readers is one of a person who would do anything.

“Doss, dear,” said Cousin Georgiana mournfully, “some day you will discover that blood is thicker than water.”
“Of course it is. But who wants water to be thick?” parried Valancy. “We want water to be thin – sparkling – crystal-clear.”

The definition of “normal” is one of the ideas explored in the book. The Stirlings are boring and dull and melodramatic, but in their closeted world they are normal and everyone else is not. And in the way that they are completely imperfect, they truly are normal, for as the saying goes, nobody is perfect. Then there is everyone else in the town, or at least those focused on the most. They are the characters that modern society, and indeed Montgomery, would call normal, yet there are of course also imperfections and secrets surrounding them too. It is from the Stirlings to the rest of the town, Deerwood, that Valancy moves to, changing from the perfect imperfect to the imperfect perfect.

And if Valancy’s fantasy of a blue castle is her version of that special place that we each turn to in our heads for peace, then it is as much a mental and emotional concept as it is realistic. Montgomery ensures that both mental and physical worlds meet to blend together but never lets the mental image get too far in the physical world – the concept remains realistic. Of course the castle also represents freedom, whatever that freedom may be.

The romance balances chasteness with forwardness. Montgomery has fun laughing at society’s unnecessary hang-ups whilst guaranteeing that the story will be accessible and appealing to all. Indeed the concepts of difference and balance are the overriding themes of the story throughout.

The tale brings each character to reflect upon who they are, and later who they might want to become. It shows that even when we decide to do something big, we may later realise that it was the wrong decision.

She was so tired she wished she could borrow a pair of legs from the cat.

The Blue Castle is worth a read for anyone who wishes for a comedic classic without all the expectations, old language, academic criticism, and difficulties that come with reading your average older book. It is hardly the best piece of fiction ever written, but it’s worth its weight in the heap of roses that have bloomed because of it.

Bloomed because of it, you say? You’ll have to find that out for yourself.

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You have never known a writer as uniquely talented as this.

Publisher: Virago Modern Classics (Virago)
Pages: 428
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-84408-038-0
First Published: 1938
Date Reviewed: 27th April 2012
Rating: 4.5/5

The heroine meets Maxim de Winter while she is training to be a lady’s companion under the tutorage of an American woman. Bored of her life, and fed up with the snobbery possessed by Mrs Van Hopper, when Maxim makes a surprise proposal of marriage, the heroine accepts. Maxim’s first wife has died, but that does not worry her; however on arriving at Manderley, the de Winter’s home, she finds that Rebecca is very much alive in the constant references and laments of staff and those who knew her. And from being happy, the heroine sinks into a place where she feels as though this haunting atmosphere will always be about her. What does it matter how Maxim tells her it’s fine, when everyone else is living in the past?

Rebecca, the novel with the unnamed heroine, is rather individual. The basic plot itself is far from incredible as it has been done before, indeed comparisons could be made with Jane Eyre in many respects, so what makes the novel spellbinding is Du Maurier herself. The writing in Rebecca – the structure of the book, the characterisation, and the detailing – is exceptional. The words themselves may be usual enough, and it might be a difficult task to identify any short passage of the book as Du Maurier’s without knowing beforehand, but the overall presentation is completely unique. No other author has ever brought such individuality to the table as Du Maurier does.

I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people… Did she know that Beatrice was yawning and glancing at her watch? Did she guess that we had come to visit her because we felt it right, it was a duty, so that when she got home afterwards Beatrice would be able to say, “Well that clears my conscience for three months”?

The characters in Rebecca are rather abrupt, almost in your face. There is no added lingering emotion, and Du Maurier never starts from the shallows – she throws you in the deep end. There is no time for the reader to become acquainted slowly with Max, for example – you either become acquainted instantly or you shy away.

And no matter how far into the book you are, these characters, despite being personalities confined to fictional history and therefore of a different nature to readers further on in the world’s years, continue to shock. They are the sorts that waste no time, don’t bother with pleasantries, and have no time for dreamers.

Maxim is, by himself, a fantastic creation. He never shows emotion whilst at the same time practically oozing it. He is completely obvious whilst being totally obscure. Yet he is utterly likeable for the way he has been written. Rather like Jane Eyre’s Mr Rochester, he defies the usual limitations of books, and comes out as one of the best heroes in literature in terms of being memorable.

I wanted to go back again, to recapture the moment that had gone, and then it came to me that if we did it would not be the same, even the sun would be changed in the sky, casting another shadow, and the peasant girl would trudge past us along the road in a different way, not waving this time, perhaps not even seeing us.

The heroine, who can never be named, is the opposite. She is emotional, she is an analyst, and she is a compulsive dreamer. A great deal of the book is taken up by her daydreams and worrying, her “what if”, her dissection of her relationship, her craving to relieve the past, and her function in a home wherein the dead wife is still the queen. Her role at Manderley she doesn’t actually realise because she spends so much time daydreaming. That Du Maurier was a daydreamer herself is obvious. She writes so knowingly, expressing how easy it can be to look to a future that may or may not be, how easy it is to think over and over of the past. Her writing here is most universal and eternal, and Du Maurier aptly portrays the plight of a woman who feels she cannot bring up in conversation the woman who came before her.

Not surprisingly, the majority of the book’s themes arise from, and orbit around, the heroine’s story and her development. The reader can see in her thoughts where she is thinking the wrong things, how she has come to believe that she is secondary to Rebecca despite never asking if she is so, and how she has come to be confused as to who she should be. From being a little interested, the heroine becomes obsessed by the idea of Rebecca, so much so that the amount of her (artificial) memories of Rebecca eclipse those of any other character, perhaps of all the other characters combined. She is the reason the reader can sit back and think that yes, this book does indeed deserve to be called after a dead and never fully introduced person, because the heroine always puts Rebecca before herself.

Because that’s the nub of the book, one of the elements of it that leaves you amazed. There is this sense throughout that somehow, some when, you as the reader are going to meet Rebecca. You are going to be able to see her away from biased thoughts, and hear her speak for herself. But Rebecca has gone, and Du Maurier never suggests otherwise. Yet so crafty is the author, so clever are her dialogues and scenes, that just like the heroine, you can never fully believe that Rebecca is dead. The phrase “Rebecca has won” crosses over into reality. The fictional never-actually-there woman does win, because despite never being fully realised she is likely to be the “character” that remains in your mind. And the fact that we can only call the heroine “the heroine” is surely further testament to this.

Perhaps the most apparent quality to the book is the way that the reader is obliged to read it. The pages don’t often beg to be turned, in fact for the most part, if not all, of the book, there is no pressing reason to finish it quickly. Each section is long, and the climax itself is drawn out, but the pace is never fast. In any other situation, that would be a bad thing. The genius of the narrative lies in the way that once you do pick it up it’s incredibly easy to get carried away and lose track of time. Chapters go by without notice. Du Maurier’s writing is so effortless to read – whilst being far from dull – that although she favours descriptions often, it’s difficult to really comprehend that that’s the case until you have moved on to dialogue. She employs an intriguing balance, while her descriptions are detailed and run on for pages at a time, the dialogue is edited to perfection, there are no superfluous words and every response to a question has a ton of subtext and meaning to it. A simple seeming “yes” is never that, but instead holds in three letters an entire story all of its own. The book is a glorious example of showing rather than telling.

Regarding the detailed descriptions, the way Du Maurier includes so much of the goings on in the day is refreshing. The mundane she makes interesting and of those days during which she chooses to spend hours with the characters, you feel as though you have indeed spent the entire day with them. The mixture of these detailed days and the ones she leaves in the dark make for a shock when you discover, for example, that far from being a few months down the line, the characters are still leaving in the same week.

Just as Rebecca herself is stunningly beautiful, so is the book that Du Maurier has written. The plot may be straightforward given the heroine’s analysing nature that takes time, and Du Maurier’s almost carefree attitude to events that other authors would turn into thrillers, but there is a splendour to the complete creation that defies any notion of the glory bestowed upon other stories. The heroine may be alive and Rebecca dead, the heroine may have gained our admiration whilst Rebecca is in no position to speak, but it is Rebecca we will remember evermore. And so we should, as it is a book that surely heralds an addition to our lists of eternal classics.

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