Tag: historical fiction
-
Book Review – The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
Set mainly in 1950s rural North Dakota, The Night Watchman is a captivating historical fiction centering around a controversial bill about to be put forward to congress. This bill claims to be about emancipation for Native Americans, but in fact aims to take away what little land they already have. One of our main protagonists,…
-
Book Review – The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See
The Island of Sea Women, set largely on the remote Korean island of Jeju, is a stunning and gripping story centering around two best friends, and spanning decades. Filled with heartache and hardship, with deep friendship, first love and devastating losses, and set across times of national and global upheaval, this was a story I…
-
Book Review – Homeseeking by Karissa Chen
When Suchi meets Haiwen as children in 1930s Shanghai, she is immediately drawn to the small, quietly self-assured boy. Wrapped up in his world of music, he dreams of being a violinist, while she dreams of being a singer. A friendship blossoms and before they know it feelings have grown. But Shanghai is under Japanese…
-
Book Review – The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
It’s the 1960s in a rural part of The Netherlands and Isabel lives alone in a large, rambling house, her mother dead and her brothers Hendrik and Louis off living their own lives. Always a solitary soul and an outsider, she becomes inextricably linked to the house, its walls and contents all tangible links to…
-
Book Review – The Divorcées by Rowan Beaird
It’s 1950s America and Lois, in her 20s, is making her way west. Stuck in a loveless marriage, Nevada’s laws will allow her a quick, clean divorce. All she has to do is be resident there for six weeks. So she spends her weeks at the Golden Yarrow, one of the more upmarket ‘divorce ranches’…
-
Book Review – Stealing by Margaret Verble
9-year-old Kit Crockett lives in rural 1950s America with her father, with whom she is close, but both are dealing with the grief of her mother’s death and somehow unable to comfort each other. Passing her spare time fishing and reading books, Kit lives a quiet life until a mysterious and beautiful woman moves into…
-
Book Review – The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan
In her prologue, Vanessa Chan tells us that The Storm We Made is inspired by her grandparents’ generation’s reluctant stories about the period 1941 – 1945 in Malaya (now Malaysia) known as the Japanese Occupation. Unfolding through four perspectives – that of Cecily and her three children Jujube, Abel and Jasmin – this is a…
-
Book Review – The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff
A strange, strange tale so full of hardship but also balanced by moments of real beauty. There is starvation, disease, punishing cold, desolation, violence and sublime but unforgiving terraines, but also startling moments of clarity, of profound realisation, and deep connection with the natural world. The story opens with our protagonist, known for most of…
-
Book Review – Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood is the story of Elaine, a painter who, on returning to her childhood city of Toronto for her grand retrospective exhibition, finds memories of her past flooding back to her – but happy memories they are not. The novel opens in a really clever and intriguing way – Elaine is…
-
Book Review – Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
Based on historical facts, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent is the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last person to be executed in Iceland in 1830. Condemned to death for her part in the murder of two men, with no prisons in Iceland at the time, Agnes is sent to wait out the time leading to…
The Resting Willow 