Dark Water Revisited or How I Rediscovered the Ancient Art of Re-Reading

I don’t normally do this, once I’ve written a review that’s it. But nowadays I don’t normally get to re-read the books I love. I used to re-read, frequently. Sometimes if I loved a book, I’d read it again back to back, wanting the experience to continue. When I was much younger I had this naive dream that when I was retired I would have the opportunity to re-read all my favourite books at my leisure. But that was before the days of computers and the Internet and blogging. Nowadays, with so many books I already own, forlornly waiting on the shelves for me to select them, ( I often wonder if they are inwardly saying “pick me, pick me” as my hand hovers uncertainly and undecidedly over their enticing spines), with various proofs and arcs for blog tours and publishers, with  library books, all clamouring for my reader hands to caress and commit to them re-reading has been a vague dream on the periphery of my reader brain. But in these pandemic, viral, lockdown days when I yo-yo from up to down, from inside to out, I strive for little ways to change the flow. Proofs and arcs have dried up now. Libraries are closed. Publishers are offering offering digital copies, and Reader, I don’t do e-books.

My shelves are shedding dust as I pluck one lucky volume after another. And so, to ring a change and create a new structure to my reading program I decided I would go to my 'forever' shelves and re-read one book a week.

I began with Elizabeth Lowry’s Dark Water. I’ve been wanting to re-read it ever since I read it! I wrote a review at the time of writing. You can find it here:-  

https://bookphace.blogspot.com/2018/09/dark-waters-elizabeth-lowry.html 

and I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to interview the author. You can find that interview here:-

https://bookphace.blogspot.com/2018/09/an-interview-with-elizabeth-lowry.html

But why the need to re-read? Any book, not just this book. I mean we listen to a piece of music more than once. We look at a piece of art more than once. We read a poem more than once. We sometimes see films and plays more than once.So obviously we should read our books more than once. But not every book. By no means. Some books. But which books? 

I’ll confess that by and large I’m generally “looking for literature” when I’m reading. It’s not a conscious decision, it’s just something within me. I don’t always find it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the myriad books I read. But what is literature I hear you ask?  It is something I have thought about and I blogged about it here

https://bookphace.blogspot.com/2019/04/what-is-literature.html

Every so often a book comes along that seems to find its way right to my heart and fills me up to overflowing so that I can barely speak. Dark Water is such a book. And when I began it I had no expectations. I had no prior knowledge of the author. I was tantalised by an endorsement from Hilary Mantell on the cover. Nothing could have prepared me for the explosion of literature that rained down upon me, gloriously and mercilessly. I felt changed forever. 

So I came to reread it. I’ll admit I was nervous. What if the second reading left me underwhelmed? What if I reached that horrible place that would make me wonder what I saw in it in the first instance? What if all I felt after that first reading crumbled away to nothing? Do you have to be brave to re-read a book?

Oh me of little faith! My fears dissolved after the first few sentences. Once more I became utterly immersed in the story of Hiram Carver and William Borden and once more I surrendered myself to the magnificent prose of this gifted writer. I was incredulous at the number of things I had “missed” on my first reading. It wasn’t that I didn’t read everything, dammit I read every last punctuation mark!  But the full import didn’t penetrate me, probably because I was still processing what I read in a previous section. This small example describing the  sun  - a “buxom pumpkin” - how perfect is that? How did I pass it by the first time? 

It’s 18 months since I first read the book. So I also have to bring in a re-reading of myself to the experience. Did I see William Borden more clearly with my older eyes? Do I understand Hiram Carver a little better as I continue to rot?  (As Richard Mansfield accurately puts it, ‘From hour to hour we ripe and ripe -  until at last, from hour to hour we rot and rot, no?’ )

Subliminally, maybe, when you know the story, or think you know the story, does your mind focus more acutely on those deeper matters nestling within the narrative? Those notions of identity and personality, of sanity and insanity, our mental and emotional freedoms. I  was very aware at the time of my first reading how potent these themes are in the book and how eloquently and perceptively they were expressed. How then on the second reading would my response alter or deepen? And I wondered how any of those states can be separated or defined or are they composite, residing within all of us along a sliding scale of some sort? 

I was struck by the early passages of the book on board the Orbis that Hiram’s perspective of William Borden was a classic example of first impressions and how he struggled later on to see a different Borden to the one of his initial imaginings. Poor Hiram. No matter what he did and how he behaved he still breaks my heart. First time I think I skirted around this a bit but Hiram lacks love, particularly from his mother. He remains a paradox, for his treatment of the patients in the asylum contained so much compassion and understanding, qualities which desert him in his dealings with other people. Maybe in treating his patients he is trying to treat himself. Without success ultimately. 

Some characters made a deeper impression on me the second time, especially John Canacka. I always thought the patients at the Charlestown asylum seemed to have “got it right’! This business of living and understanding that we’re never free but Canacka I found even more interesting. For in spite of all he endured he remains stoic, a survivor, probably the only survivor in the whole book?

And throughout there is the extraordinary prose of Elizabeth Lowry. It has me wanting to read great swathes of the book out loud revelling in the imagery and feasting on the vowels and consonants in harmonious fusion.

As ever I could go on and on, this book still has me in its thrall and I don’t suppose I’ll ever let it go. I’d like to think I can continue to revisit it and plunder its depths  to see what it will yield on future occasions. And that is what literature does. A book like this that can offer up continued richness from subsequent readings deserves to be studied and be placed on reading programs and syllabuses. I do believe that this will in time become a classic. Or it damn well should do!! 

But it has reinforced and rekindled in me a strong desire to reread as many of my cherished books as I can. I need to work hard at striking a balance between the old and the new. 

An Interview with Romy Hausmann - Author of Dear Child

After reading Dear Child I couldn't get the story out of my head and questions were buzzing around my brain for days. So I was thrilled to have the opportunity to put some of these questions to Romy. And I'm delighted to share her frank and informative answers with you today on my blog as part of the Social Media Blast for this book. 

My heartfelt thanks go to Romy for taking the time to answer my questions at this busy time. My thanks, too, go to Hannah Robinson at Quercus Books for facilitating the interview.  

 I’ve just finished Dear Child and I read it in almost one go! I couldn’t put it down. I thought it was remarkable. I was wondering where your initial idea for the book came from?

There was actually no particular trigger, rather than a certain point in time when I was writing a new story and many impressions that had accumulated over a longer period suddenly came together. Quite a few years ago there were two very spectacular crime cases in Austria: the one around Natascha Kampusch, who was kidnapped on the way to school as a ten-year-old and then imprisoned until she managed to escape only eight years later, and the case of Josef Fritzl, who had detained his own daughter in an underground apartment for over twenty years and even fathered children with her. Both cases shocked me so much that I couldn't get over them for years. How was it possible that such cruelty could happen in reality without anyone noticing? On top of that, I live on the edge of a forest myself and, when I am out and about, I always see huts like the one in Dear Child. So all of this together gave me, the first rough idea for Dear Child.

 There is no shortage of psychological thrillers and Dear Child drew some parallels with books like Room and Gone Girl. And yet what sets your book apart for me is the fact that is not formulaic. You seem to have defied convention almost! Was that your intention? 

Since I‘ve started writing about ten years ago – until the publication of Dear Child in Germany rather unsuccessfully by the way – somehow I‘ve always been different in my texts. It was never a conscious decision that I made, it‘s simply my way of telling stories. And, of course, it is something that, for a long time, had plunged me into deep self-doubt –

precisely because nobody wanted to read my stories. The only really conscious decision I made at some point was to stick with it and not to let myself be influenced in the way I tell stories. In Germany, I often read things like: "Either you like how Romy Hausmann writes or you hate it." I can live with that very well, as it implies that among a lot of many, even very good authors, I somehow stand out. For me, a thriller is not just popcorn entertainment that you read between washing the dishes and the next episode of a Netflix series with the intent to simply shock you. It may also contain more literary elements, or emotions like the ones we’re more familiar with in love stories or family dramas. Why should a thriller just shock? Why shouldn't it be tragic at the same time, stirring, beautiful, stimulating to think?

 I thought the themes explored in the book were astutely observed. Your expositions of Hannah and Jonathan were heart wrenching. Are these characters based on any real situation? What kind of research did you do in order to create such potent characters, especially Hannah. 

Neither Hannah nor Jonathan are based on real people, but after I wrote the book, I talked to a trauma expert who confirmed to me that the behavior of the two characters could actually occur in real life. When I was writing, it just felt right to let Hannah behave the way she does. I just imagined what it would feel like to have stayed in a hut all my life and to have been conditioned by my father in such a way. One mustn‘t forget: our own understanding of "normality" is based on what we are given as an example. But what if the society that has agreed on certain moral rules ceases to exist? If our entire world view is based on the stories and upbringing of one person?

 Whilst not obvious maybe I thought love was an important theme in the book too, parental love, sisterly love for example. Was that deliberate or did it evolve organically through exploring human nature?

Essentially, that’s what all of my stories are about: they’re about love and how this feeling can degenerate. Love and fear are the two basic motivations in all of us and they drive us – for good and for bad.

 I also thought survival was an important theme in the book for several of the characters. The psychology of survival is complex.I thought your handling of it in the story was amazing.  What kind of research did you do?

Survival is our basic need – we are ready to do anything for it. I actually didn’t research anything specific on that subject, but relied on the fact that I’m simply quite an empathetic person – or at least I think that I am. I slip into the roles of my characters and try to survive. Whilst I’m doing so, for me it is not just about the physical act of not being killed, but also about a kind of “mental survival”: how do I manage to maintain the worldview that has accompanied me throughout my life and to which I am so attached?

 I found your plotting superb. So often a reader can start to second guess or get an inkling of what has or what might happen. I didn’t here which was joyful! How did you approach the plotting of the novel?

Don't laugh, but I actually plot too little. I have only one basic idea and a few individual key points that I know I want to talk about – the rest is relatively organic if you let yourself be led by your characters. They show you the way, and if they are well laid out and consistent, everything will come together in the end.

 The character of Jasmine, so complex, so believable. You seemed to really get into the head of a victim of abduction. Was that emotionally challenging to write? 

Definitely. I really suffer a lot when I write. This also goes back to the time when I was working in TV where I often came into contact with real victims. Some stories and their faces one never forgets. It was therefore extremely important to me to describe Jasmin as an “authentic victim”. I often find it very difficult how disrespectful the feelings of victime are described in some books and that they‘re often only used for lurid purposes – even if they are fictional characters. But there are real people out there who have really experienced something terrible, and if you write about such stories you shouldn't forget that, I think. Respect is a very important thing, always.

 How do you approach your writing? By that I am wondering if you have a special place, special time, any special routines and rituals?

I just write and I do it every day – but that doesn't mean that always good things come out of it. I sit on the floor of my living room with my back against the old heater, which often gives me bad blisters in the winter, my laptop on my knees. I can't sit at a desk – I think I always need it a little uncomfortable. I also don’t have real rituals, at most a lot of coffee. I admire authors with beautifully arranged, Instagram-ready desks, on which everything is neat, and who may even light a scented candle when writing – but sadly I'm quite different.

 I know that being an avid reader is almost compulsory for a writer so a question I always ask is if you can remember the first book you read that moved you to tears, if any?

Yes! Oh god, yes! It was about a sailor from Germany who brought a snowman to a girl from Africa in the cold room of his ship. She was so happy because she didn't know snow. Of course, the snowman gradually thawed away under the African heat – a fact that broke my heart as a six-year-old. I bought the book again as an adult, after I’d lost it at some point.

 And finally having enjoyed this novel so much I am bound to ask when we can expect another new one! And is there anything you can tell us about it?

My new thriller, Marta Sleeps, has just been released in Germany. It's about guilt and whether you can ever get rid of it. It’s a book that is very different to Dear Child – consciously so, because that is my big mission: As an author, I always want to try out something new and surprise people with it.

Dear Child - Romy Hausmann Translated by Jamie Bulloch - Social Media Blast

Where the hell do I start in reviewing this? What a plot! The press release suggested it was Gone Girl meets Room and I thought, yeah, right, in your dreams. But it damn well IS! I read it in a day. I should have been doing other things but I’m sorry, I could not put it down until I found out what the heck was going on. But a book like this presents such a challenge for a reviewer because the worst, the very worst thing anyone could do is divulge anything that happens in this story. 

Let me start, though by offering you the blurb:-

‘A windowless shack in the woods. Lena’s life and that of her two children follows the rules set by their captor, the father:  merles, bathroom visits, study time are strictly scheduled and meticulously observed. He protects his family from the dangers lurking in then outside world and makes sure that his children will always have a mother to look after them.

One day Lena manages to flee - but the nightmare continues. It seems as if her tormentor wants to get back what belongs to him. And then there is the question whether she really is the woman called ‘Lena’ who disappeared whiteout a trace over thirteen years ago. The police and Lena’s family are all desperately trying to piece together a puzzle which doesn't quite seem to fit.’

This is a best seller in Germany and I’m pretty sure it will be here too. It’s one of those thrillers that you can’t second guess even when the details are fed to you slowly, like a drip feed, as the novel progresses. The facts turn around in your head, pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but they never quite fit until the final denouement  when all is revealed and you’re left hollowly clutching at the words in disbelief almost as the full import hits you. 

Romy Hausmann seems to have defied convention in the writing of this book, I can’t think of another suitable way to describe it. It isn’t formulaic as so many psychological thrillers are. They are no less enjoyable because of that but this almost maverick approach is what will possibly set this book apart from others of its genre. 

The complexity of its themes; the psychology of trauma in both children and adults is heart wrenching on both counts. The nature of both paternal and maternal love is chillingly explored on several levels. But above all it’s a story of survival, raw and uncompromising and again on more than one level. It’s extraordinary. There is a precision to the writing; descriptions and details. Palpable. Believable. There is an understanding of the flawed human, an idealistic parent and the innocent, trusting child. There is an acknowledgement of the dark, base nature that can reside in the seemingly unlikeliest of individuals. And the police, desperate, clutching, thwarted. The media, desperate, clutching, thwarted.  If this was on the Great British Bake Off it would be a showstopper and Ms. Hausmann would be Star Baker. It's that unusual thing  - a thriller that actually makes you think AFTER you've finished reading it. 

Lovers of psycho thrillers will see the parallels with Emma Donoghue's Room and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl but hopefully they will also see how this writer seems to have taken one giant step further in the development of the genre.

My thanks to Katya Ellis at Quercus Books who sent me a copy and to Ella Patel who invited me to the Social Media Blast. Checkout what other bloggers have to say about this story. And stay tuned to my blog for I have an interview with the author, Romy Hausmann, coming up!

Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami translated by Philip Gabriel

I will confess that I bought this book purely because of its title. If they say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover then what do they say about judging a book by its title? What was it about the title that attracted me? Why, Kafka, to be sure. One of my all-time favourite writers. But in truth what was I expecting? A book about Kafka? Well, in truth I don’t know! A Japanese author? I love iIshiguro, maybe that played a part. No matter in the end. For once you embark upon a journey with a book all the reasons that you chose it in the first place almost cease to be relevant. And so it was that I became totally, utterly, completely immersed and absorbed in this incredible story. It will find its place on my TBRA shelf. (To Be Read Again). 

There is something dreamlike and surreal about the novel. The tale of Kafka Tamura, running away from home at the age of 15, escaping a prophecy that he feels will engulf him. The parallel story of the elderly Nakata who can talk to cats and has such an endearing simplicity about him. His sense of mission and dogged, unquestioning  purpose render him one of the most dignified characters in contemporary literature. The stories are linked obliquely and subtly. It’s like two halves of one world, yin and yang, an eternal paradox of the conscious and the subconscious. 

Whilst questioning the Kafka of the title I could see the allusion. The dreamlike narrative, the parable like sequences from characters like Oshima. The absurdity at times, the perplexing characters like Colonel Sanders. But it’s a joyous thing! Whilst I admit that I so often look for literature when I read. And I so rarely find it. What I perceive to be true literature that is. But here in this wonderful book I have found it. And there is that wonderfully satisfying feeling. A richness of narrative. An abundance of evocative prose and some characters like you’ve never met before. The story is etched into my memory and I keep thinking about it.

Something else for me that defines literature as opposed to merely fiction. Is the books quotability. The more quotes the more I think it is literature!  

‘Perhaps most people in the world aren’t trying to be free, Kafka. They just think they are. It’s all an illusion. If they really were set free, most people would be in a real pickle. You’d better remember that. People actually prefer not being free.’

I love that quote. It reminds me of a similar sentiment from Elizabeth Lowry’s  2018 novel Dark Water,

‘Ma’am, I sense terror in the everyday. And I don’t believe we’ve solved the problem of how to live.We’ve made that terror safe, merely by going along with the old ways and the old forms. We should be free to question, we should be free to reinvent, we should be free to feel that terror, the terrible freedom of being uncertain - but we aren’t; we cling to our false certainty and call it freedom and we can’t see what we’ve really created out of freedom is a prison.’ 

And as an habitual will scribbler myself where writing is a reflex, it’s something I simply have to do, I found this quote particularly meaningful,

‘The process of writing was important. Even though the finished product is meaningless.’

And on the subject of life itself this seems particularly pertinent in this beleaguered time we are living through,

’…..in everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.’

When a book ‘speaks’ to you it ends up not mattering whether it is a ‘good’ book. For what is a good book? Who decides whether a book is good or not? I’m sure you’ve been in that position where you get hold of the book everybody seems to be raving about. You read it and you are completely underwhelmed. If you’re anything like me you believe it’s your own inadequacy and you have seriously missed the point of something. Your lack of belief causes you to feel you have no right to call yourself a reader. But then you lose yourself in a book where you do connect and it doesn’t matter if nobody else in the world reads the book. Or nobody else in the world likes the book. If your life is the richer for having read it then isn’t that what makes a good book?

I found this to be a book of substance. There was a cultural richness to it in terms of music and art. But it is one of those books that fills you with emotion. Emotion that you can’t actually put into words. There is a beauty in the narrative, even the most gruesome, violent parts and there’s some pretty nasty bits here and I speak from the point of view of a cat lover. It’s that rare book where the book Cupid has fired his arrow this book  has a forever place in my heart.

When We Fall - Carolyn Kirby

I often find with historical novelists that they favour one particular period in history. Maybe that is because it is their favourite period or maybe it is because they don't want all that research to go to waste!?! But occasionally you find a writer who is bold enough to chase the centuries and dig through the decades. Carolyn Kirby is one of those writers. The Conviction of Cora Burns, which I had the pleasure of reading and reviewing about a year ago, was very much the Victorian novel. But her latest book couldn’t be further from those gothic prisons and asylums of nineteenth century Birmingham.  

Like ‘Cora…’ the title is one of those clever, camouflage titles that can present with more than one meaning. Here it is the literal and the metaphoric. Publication of When We Fall is to coincide with the 75th anniversary of VE day and has at its base the, perhaps, lesser known WWII atrocity, the Katyn massacre. 

Several years ago I stayed in Krakow and spent many an hour wandering the city. There is a wooden cross erected in one of the many squares, simple, with one word on it - Katyn. On the day I walked past a Polish lady was standing in front of the monument, her head bowed in silent prayer. In my ignorance I thought it might be St. Katyn, a feast day perhaps. How wrong could I be? Fortunately curiosity got the better of me and I did some cursory research. What I read shocked me, of course. 

So I came to this book with a little prior knowledge, of what to expect maybe? What I actually got exceeded expectations……..

‘England, 1943. Lost in fog, pilot Vee Katchatourian is forced to make an emergency landing where she meets enigmatic RAF airman Stefan Bergel, and then can't get him out of her mind.

In occupied Poland, Ewa Hartman hosts German officers in her father's guest house, while secretly gathering intelligence for the Polish resistance. Mourning her lover, Stefan, who was captured by the Soviets at the start of the war, Ewa is shocked to him on the street one day.

Haunted by a terrible choice he made in captivity, Stefan asks Vee and Ewa to help him expose one of the darkest secrets of the war. But it is not clear where everyone's loyalties lie until they are tested...

Published to coincide with the 75th anniversary of VE Day and based on WWII war atrocity the Katyn massacre, When We Fall is a moving story of three lives forever altered by one fatal choice.’

What that fatal choice is I refuse to divulge as I don’t do spoilers, you’re going to have to read the book for yourself. But it is an absorbing read. Not only are we are treated to a swashbuckling world war two story that is gripping and exciting but it also highlights one of those chilling events of war that can go under the radar unless writers like Ms. Kirby draws our attention to them.  

The research, as ever, is impeccable. You feel as if you’re in the cockpit with Vee . I can only presume that Carolyn Kirby actually flew a plane to achieve this level of palpability. You can hear the throb of the propellors and the stuttering reluctance of the engines. You can smell the oily engineery odours of old aircraft. You can smell the sweat of the officer’s mess. The reading becomes a sensory experience almost. 

The triad of characters is complex. I found myself sceptical and mistrusting of Stefan. It was as if Vee and Ewa were pawns. They are well defined characters in a tightly woven plot. Great to have two strong female characters in a war story. But none of these components have any worth unless thery are embedded in an effective narrative.  

Trust me they are. 

My thanks to Paru of No Exit Press and Oldcastle Books for a proof. 

  

The Silence of the Girls - Pat Barker

The trend for the retelling of the Greek legends from the female perspective is sustained in this engrossing novel from the masterful pen of Pat Barker. 

‘There was a woman at the heart of the Trojan war whose voice has been silent - till now. Discover the greatest Greek myth of all - retold by the witness that history forgot . . .

Briseis was a queen until her city was destroyed. Now she is slave to Achilles, the man who butchered her husband and brothers. Trapped in a world defined by men, can she survive to become the author of her own story?’

Like Circe, the novel concentrates on one woman’s story, Briseis. That is not to say that we are not privy to the fates, the feelings of the other women but the main thrust of the story is the Achilles/Briseis one. Much of the narrative is given to Achilles and the Achilles/Patroclus dynamic but I feel it is to offer us the opportunity to understand Briseis better and get some kind of angle on the situation as a whole. The Iliad is an ancient work and to read it today it has to be placed in context. That is never easy when you’re bringing contemporary thinking with you. That’s why stories such as these are so fascinating. We can question why these woman seemed to be so accepting of their fate but they were behaving within the social framework of the time.  What modern fiction is doing is offering the women a voice from a more contemporary frame of reference. It makes for some compelling stories.

But I think you have to add to that mix the fact that, as an author, Pat Barker is continuing to write about war albeit a very different one from those of the Regeneration trilogy and the Life Class trilogy. But again it’s young people living in a war situation. The brutality and its after effects resurfaces in all the books whether graphic or oblique. So it becomes interesting to compare war though the centuries. As Kim Sherwood observed in Testament, ‘‘We are here because history doesn’t happen in the past tense.’ History is now and that's how we make sense of it. It was the same for the women living through the Trojan war. Their pasts and their futures were inconsequential compared to their present and ultimately their survival.

But it's one thing to have a ready-made story plotted for you. It's how you deal with it, how you take that story and create a narrative that gives it an alternate substance and a texture that will determine whether your readers want to go with it. After all anyone can  pick up a copy of the Iliad. So why would you want to read The Silence of the Girls? Because it's beautifully written. Brutal in its descriptions. Expansive in its emotion. Eloquent in its exposition. And haunting in its after effects. 

The Girl in the Glass Tower - Elizabeth Fremantle

I’ve now read all of Elizabeth’s Fremantle’s books. That is until she publishes another. Then I will read that. She is one of those authors whose books I will buy on blind faith. In my opinion she is one of the best historical novelists out there. It’s possibly something to do with the fact that she writes about my favourite periods in history. More than that though she strikes a balance between producing an historical novel, resplendent with copious research and convincing detail, and a fiction featuring historical characters again, meticulously researched, but with a twist or a plot that seems to encompass contemporary themes and trends in fiction, psychological thrillers for example, women in society for another example but places those themes within an historic context. It’s very clever. 

I remember receiving a proof of Queen’s Gambit early in my reviewing “career”. And for the first time ever Catherine Parr came to life for me in a way that no author had attempted or achieved before. It was a wonderful experience. And that was what put this author firmly on my radar.

The Girl in the Glass Tower tells the story of Arbella Stuart, the great, great granddaughter of Henry VII and a niece of Mary, Queen of Scots. No, I’d not heard of her before either. But having read this book, now I will never forget her. I think that’s another thing Ms. Fremantle does. She takes a lesser-known figure from history and brings them to life. Not only that but when you finish the book you can’t leave the character. I go scuttling off googling everything I can find out about them wondering why I’ve never come across them before. 

The story is told from two perspectives, Arbella’s own and that of a court poet, Aemilia Lanyer, a poetess fallen from grace, who acquires some papers of Lady Arbella from a man charged with clearing her effects. Both women have their stories to tell. Arbella dominates, as the titular ‘girl’. With a tenuous claim to the throne her life is seldom her own. ‘Protected’ or imprisoned and manipulated she is victim to the politics and intrigues of the Elizabethan and Stuart courts but underneath all of that she strives to be her own person regardless of the restrictions imposed upon her gender by the male dominated ethos of the age. The two women are not so dissimilar despite their different backgrounds. Aemilia, or Ami’s story is told alongside Arbella’s and the part she plays unfolds alongside Arbella’s. It’s all tied up at the end with a satisfactory outcome. But that’s after we learn of Arbella. 

It’s a slow paced story that mirrors Arbella’s life which seems to be in some kind of limbo for much for the time as we all wait to see if Elizabeth I names Arbella as her successor or not. It’s no spoiler to say she doesn’t. Queen Arbella doesn’t ring any bells!? But as Arbella’s life becomes more exciting the pace of the narrative speeds up to a nail biting conclusion the details of which I refuse to divulge as that would be a spoiler. 

Chronologically this novel occurs before The Poison Bed. It’s my bad for reading out of order. It won’t happen again. 😉