The Victorians (BBC One)

Is anyone watching The Victorians (BBC One) presented by Jeremy Paxman? The first episode aired February 15th and I really enjoyed it. I know this blog is about a book challenge but I thought it might be interesting to share this information, even if I'm sure most of you already know everything about this series.;-)

For more information you can read this article from BBC News.

Poisoned Season by Tasha Alexander

London’s social season is in full swing, and the Victorian aristocracy can’t stop whispering about a certain gentleman who claims to be the direct descendant of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. But he’s not the only topic of wagging tongues. Drawing rooms, boudoirs, and ballrooms are abuzz with the latest news of an audacious cat burglar who has been making off with precious items that once belonged to the ill-fated queen.

Light gossip turns serious when the owner of one of the pilfered treasures is found murdered, and the mysterious thief develops a twisted obsession with Emily. But the strong-minded and fiercely independent Emily will not be shaken. It will take all of her considerable wit and perseverance to unmask her stalker and ferret out the murderer, even as a brewing scandal threatens both her reputation and her romance with her late husband’s best friend, the dashing Colin Hargreaves.

Those who enjoyed Tasha Alexander previous installment – And Only to Deceive - will certainly like this one as well. I must say that Lady Emily Ashton’s series is getting better and better. I can hardly wait to get my hands in Fatal Waltz.

Emily is an intelligent woman. She loves Greek culture, is interested in antiquities and she spends most of her time learning the most she can about both subjects. If And Only To Deceive is mostly focused in her failed relationship with her deceased husband and the mystery surrounding his death, in The Poisoned Season, she moves on, becomes more independent, more sure of herself. Lady Ashton has a brain and has no problems showing it, even if some society members (including her mother) are scandalized by her reading in a public place.

This time the mystery concerns a descendent of Marie Antoinette, Charles Berry, or so he claims. After his arrival to London, some of his ancestors personal objects are stolen from their owners. Meanwhile David Francis, a ton member, is poisoned and someone steals from his house something belonging to the tragic French queen. The mysterious thief is also sending some strange notes in Greek to Emily…

While I enjoyed the mystery part immensely, sometimes I had to suspend my disbelief about the thief’s antics. It really seemed a bit too much but nothing that makes you less curious about his identity.

Colin Hargraves is also making a patient court to Emily. He doesn’t want to scare her or rush her into anything she would later regret. Her previous disastrous marriage is something she doesn’t want to repeat and it’s obvious Colin understands Emily’s need to make a life of her own and decide when and if she wants to marry again.

Tasha Alexander not only easily creates a Victorian feeling but the historical detail is rich and delightful, even if sometimes too slow paced. Highly recommended for those who want a light and well written story.

Grade: 4/5

The Life and Times of Victoria by Dorothy Marshall

Ever since I wrote my 8th grade research paper on Queen Victoria, I've been a bit obsessed with her life and that time period.

Example One:

Me with Queen V in Windsor, July 2008

Example Two:

Victoria Regina and I- Back of Buckingham Palace, July 2008

I've read several biographies on Queen Victoria, and I really enjoyed Marshall's book. It was descriptive and factual, without being flowery and boring. If you would like to know more about Queen Victoria's reign, Marshall's book is an excellent place to begin.

I also enjoyed these biographies on Queen Victoria:
Queen Victoria by Walter L. Arnstein
Persons of consequence: Queen Victoria and her circle by Louise Auchincloss
Queen Victoria's Daughters by Jerrold M. Packard
Her Little Majesty: The Life of Queen Victoria by Carolly Erickson

This DVD was also good: Victoria and Albert

Happy reading.

The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins (Jackie's Review)

The Moonstone was first published in 1868, and is considered to be the first detective novel ever written. Many people site The Moonstone as the longest piece of detective fiction in existence. I’m not an expert on this, but I do know that it took me a long time to read it! At 464 pages it only just classes as a chunkster, but I feel no guilt in counting it towards the Chunkster Challenge as the type was tiny!

The story takes place in an English country house, in which a rare diamond is stolen over night. The suspects are therefore limited, and a famous London detective is called in to investigate the crime.

The writing was easy to follow, but it was very dense, and so it was a slow read. For the majority of the book this wasn’t a bad thing, as I loved the descriptions, but there was a slow section in the middle, which I found hard to get through. It picked up towards the end though, and the it was very well plotted. I didn’t see any of the twists coming, and I liked the realism of it.

There were also a lot of other issues raised during the book. SPOILER! Highlight text to read. I loved the beginning and ending in India, and the way Wilkie Collins challenged racial stereotypes by portraying the Indians as mysterious thieves, when they were the good ones all along.
I also found the opium factor interesting. I had no idea of it’s affects, and have since learnt that Wilkie Collins was writing from experience, as he had an opium habit.

I loved reading it so soon after The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher as I noticed all the similarities between the real murder at Road Hill and the theft of the moonstone. If you’ve read The Moonstone then it is worth having a look at this analysis - I found it very insightful. It contains lots of spoilers, so don’t click through if you’re interested in reading the book soon.

Overall, I enjoyed reading The Moonstone. It was hard work at times, but well worth the effort. As it’s the first ever detective novel I can’t not recommend it, everyone should read it at some point!

Originally reviewed here.

Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K Jerome (Jackie's Review)

Three Men in a Boat is a light read, about a journey along the River Thames during Victorian times. It is full of humor, but most of the time I found myself smiling at them, rather than with them, as the puns are just too obvious:

Then we discussed the food question. George said:
‘Begin with breakfast.’ (George is so practical.) ‘Now for breakfast we shall want a frying pan’ - Harris said it was indigestible; but we merely urged him not to be an ass, and George went on - ‘a teapot and a kettle, and a methylated spirit stove.’

I live just two miles from the River Thames, and know it very well. I loved learning about what it was like over a hundred years ago. It was really nice to see places I visit regularly described in the book:

You pass Oatlands Park on the right bank here. It is a famous old place. Henry VIII stole it from someone or other, I forget whom now, and lived in it. There is a grotto in the park which you can see for a fee, and is supposed to be very wonderful.

I have taken my boys to play in Oatlands Park many times, and have never seen a grotto, so I looked it up on the Internet. I was amazed to find out how beautiful it was. There’s a photo here. Unfortunately it was dynamited in 1948, as people were trespassing on it, and the owners thought this was unsafe. I can’t believe such a special place has been destroyed.

Many other places I recognised were described, and I recommend this book to anyone who knows the Thames well. I can’t see much attraction to other people, as it is just a bit silly.



Originally reviewed here.

Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson

Written in the 1940s, this semi-fictional account of the Oxfordshire villages Lark Rise and Candleford looks back at the 1880s, a time of transition in the English countryside. Work, social relationships, home life, schooling- all of these things changed in the last years of the 19th c. Thompson examines these changes through the story of Laura, a girl who comes of age in the 1880s and 90s. But truly, in this work Laura's story takes a back seat to description. Thompson is clearly using this book to capture a lost world, and the book includes whole chapters describing the countryside and the traditions of its people. The writing is almost anthropological. While the description is interesting, and it is a very easy read, I found myself longing for more plot, more discussion of what happened to Laura. I also found that the book seemed to romanticize what must have been, by all accounts, grinding poverty. That said, the descriptions Thompson offers are engaging and vibrant, and the book is a quick, and dare I say, relaxing, read.

Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford (Crown, 1984) ISBN: 0140074546

The Rose of Sebastopol - Katherine McMahon

I’m going to say upfront that I was more than a little disappointed by ‘The Rose of Sebastopol’ by Katherine McMahon. When I began the book it was enjoyable, if a little tiresome in places (as I mentioned earlier there are tons of heavy handed allusions to what Rosa hopes to get from her relationship with Mariella). In the later stages the book became rather frustrating, so I burnt through the last hundred pages because I wanted the book to be over. It’s not all bad, but it was often uninspired.

Mariella lives a happy, ineffectual life with her parents, waiting for family friend, and celebrated surgeon Henry to propose. Then her distant uncle dies, throwing her aunt and cousin onto the charity of her parents. Mariella’s world is broadened by her cousin Rosa, who is consumed with attempting to get an education and do something to help the world. When the opportunity arises for Rosa to help the troops by nursing in the Crimea she leaves. Henry also leaves to tend to the troops but falls sick, meaning that Mariella must journey to him. On arriving she finds a changed man, consumed with finding Rosa who has recently gone missing.

My edition of The Rose of Sebastopol by Katherine McMahon came with questions for reading groups, helpfully supplied by the Richard and Judy consortium. I’m going to use a selection of them to flesh in the rest of my review.

How traditional a romantic tale is The Rose of Sebastopol?

It’s pretty traditional, but there are some areas where it breaks from traditional romance. There’s the first romantic hero, Henry who seems like a good bet but in the end turns out to be a cad. However he’s also the quiet lad from Mariella’s childhood and in a traditional romantic tale that sort of character often turns out to be the undiscovered love. Mariella has already decided that she loves him in early childhood so it’s a pretty safe bet that that will not work out. Henry is also a ‘cold fish’ when it comes to Mariella, and expects her to remain the same as he has always know her. Any kind of repression around the future missus generally means caddish behaviour will follow in traditional romances.

Then there’s the dashing secondary hero, Max who is the traditional rash, intense soldier character. But the dashing young captain always adds to the romantic excitement so I was happy to see him take a bigger part towards the end of the book. He is of course, a man of action. Henry may be a surgeon, so he’s not quite the traditional dreary, paper bureaucrat readers know will get the boot, but he’s still not in the same league as a soldier.

Mariella is the good little virgin, inexperienced in the ways of the world. Quite in keeping with the historical times, and also quite traditional.

Obviously having a lesbian character like Rosa breaks with old romantic traditions (depending on what books you read) but the way the author just drops clanging hints to her sexuality into the story, instead of dragging her feelings into the open is typical of some older style romances. We can also compare her attitude to Mariella, to Henry’s attitude: both want her to remain ‘a constant’, both like to be a little patronising, both like to control her a little. Is Rosa the lesbian version of the unsuitable male suitor, presented in the book?

‘The result of this behaviour was that all eyes were upon her.’ Is this Rosa’s intention in life, or just a by-product of her transparency?

I mentioned before that in my opinion Rosa seems to ‘cry prettily’ and always get her way. Her behaviour often seems suspect, and I came to find her quite a controlling character. However I don’t think it is her intention to have all eyes on her, it is just the fact that she feels and embraces life to an extent that other people in society do not.

Then again it’s hard to get a grip on Rosa. The only information we have about her is provided by Mariella, who is clearly blind when it comes to even the basics about her cousin. So, despite all the details we’re given about her life, and her personality, we never see beneath the surface or discover her true motives. That is why I think the book began to drag, for me, because it clearly wanted to be a book that examines character in depth, but it never penetrates Rosa’s character because all the information comes from unknowing, second hand sources. Perhaps the author is going for an air of unsolveable mystery, all that how much can we ever really know a person stuff, but I found it frustrating to be given a character so full of promise, but then to never be allowed to engage with her.

‘What an odd, turbulent period of history we live in, a clash of conflicting ambitions, great and small.’ How well does The Rose of Sebastopol portray the 1850s?

I have no idea how well the novel portrays this time; I did not study the Victorians or the Crimean war. I do think the book provided an interesting alternative view of the medical set up to that shown in ‘The Great Stink’, but without further reading I couldn’t say which book had the more accurate depiction. I did enjoy the descriptions of the locations Mariella travelled to, they were vivid and drew me in. The development of the different settings and Mariella’s reactions to them was probably my favourite element of the book. It made me want to read No Place for Ladies right away.

BIG SPOILERS COMING UP NOW!

The Rose of Sebastopol deals with desire in many forms – some of them secret and forbidden. How far do you see Rosa as a doomed heroine from the beginning?

A really annoying feature of the book was the constant hinting at an extra layer to the relationship between the young women. So many chapters ended with breathy, enigmatic hints at the clearly obvious, if forbidden, love that I think I actually started sighing audibly. How many times have I mentioned that already? It did bother me a lot, I needed maybe two hints to know that there was going to be a lesbian plotline, and after that I would have just assumed it and waited for it to develop.

I wish that a modern novelist hadn’t felt the need to kill off the inconvenient character, just to simplify the romantic ending. It’s to be expected from novelists writing in the Victorian era who would have been able to see no other future for a character like Rosa, once Mariella decides on Max, and who liked to kill of inconvenient females in general (Dickens I’m looking at you). I would have expected more from a modern novelist. It’s true that Rosa and Mariella could never openly have been a couple (in the context of the book, and the context of the historical period) but it seemed like a girl with as much drive as Rosa would have been able to forge a different version of the happy ending. So, yes she’s a doomed heroine as soon as the author decided on dooming her I suppouse.

How satisfied were you with the ending of The Rose of Sebastopol?

Not satisfied at all, not one bit. The entire book is focused on finding Rosa, all action is driven by this search, then at the end she’s found dead and the book abruptly cuts out. Mariella falls for Max but throughout the early parts of the book there’s definite evidence that she reciprocates Rosa’s feelings, or has sexual curiosity about women. Is it just Rosa she feels this way about, or is she interested in women as well as men?

Henry’s crazy mania for Rosa, which is the author’s way of freeing up Mariella for Max, seems to come form nowhere. His obsession is never explained, even in his own illogical terms and what happens to him after she dies?

Oh and I wanted the full story on Nora, as she had clearly had a tragic life, worthy of a plot line.

Finally, I promise, what is the point of the plotline about the sexually abusive uncle? Is it meant to be important in understanding the girl’s characters, or was it just thrown in there as an extra? It’s never dealt with properly, and if it’s meant to be another surprising twist it doesn’t work, as it’s also signalled heavily throughout the book.