The Daughter of Time

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey  - first published in 1951

My niece Katharine who lives and works in Paris came down to St Vaast for the weekend bearing books.  Amongst these was a copy of The Daughter of Time.  An introduction to Josephine Tey for me.

Synopsis:
Richard III reigned for only two years, and for centuries he was villified as the hunch-backed wicked uncle, murderer of the princes in the Tower. Josephine Tey's novel The Daughter of Time is an investigation into the real facts behind the last Plantagenet king's reign, and an attempt to right what many believe to be the terrible injustice done to him by the Tudor dynasty.

Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, recuperating from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked Uncle of history. Could such a sensitive, noble face actually belong to one of the world's most heinous villains - a venomous hunchback who may have killed his brother's children to make his crown secure? Or could Richard have been the victim, turned into a monster by the the Tudors?

Grant determines to find out once and for all, with the help of the British Museum and an American scholar, what kind of man Richard III really was and who killed the Princes in the Tower.

There is a very good page in Wikipedia on the subject of this novel.  There is a summary of Grant's case for the innocence of Richard III.  Much has probably been written since Tey published in 1951 on the probability of Richard's guilt.  Winston Churchill evidently did not give much credence to Tey's theories as propounded via her protagonist Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard.

This is the portrait around which the novel is written: 

What I wrote to my niece:

Hi Kat

I thought I'd just drop you a quick line to say that I finished the Tey, a little while back, and I thought it was very cleverly constructed and obviously received many plaudits but I struggled with a detective story approach to the Two Princes. I am sure it was quite something when she published it and I wonder what academic studies have been carried out since to try and solve the mystery.  For example in Tey she seems to refute that Richard III had a deformed back but I thought that this was one of the things that helped solve the mystery of the 'skeleton in the Leicester carpark'.  That and the DNA.   I love the detective genre but here in the Tey I knew there would not be a definitive outcome.  However I would like to read a 'proper' Tey thriller (if you see what I mean) so I have ordered the Franchise Affair to await my return to the UK.  

In summary, I struggled with this book.  By and large I like a crime thriller, a whodunit, but this book somehow did not sit easily in that genre for me, despite the accolades the novel has received over the years.  The novel is listed as number one on the CWA's Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time list and number four on the MWA's Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time list.

  

The Essex Serpent

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

Waterstones Book of the Year 2016

Sunday Times number one bestseller

Shortlisted for Costa Book Award

iTunes Book of the Year 2016

Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas prize 2017

Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize 2017

Longlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2017

Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2017

Shortlisted for the Independent Bookshop Week Book Award 2017

British Book Awards Book of the Year 2017 (Fiction and Overall)

What Amazon says:

An exquisitely talented young British author makes her American debut with this rapturously acclaimed historical novel, set in late nineteenth-century England, about an intellectually minded young widow, a pious vicar, and a rumored mythical serpent that explores questions about science and religion, skepticism, and faith, independence and love.

When Cora Seaborne’s brilliant, domineering husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness: her marriage was not a happy one. Wed at nineteen, this woman of exceptional intelligence and curiosity was ill-suited for the role of society wife. Seeking refuge in fresh air and open space in the wake of the funeral, Cora leaves London for a visit to coastal Essex, accompanied by her inquisitive and obsessive eleven-year old son, Francis, and the boy’s nanny, Martha, her fiercely protective friend.

While admiring the sites, Cora learns of an intriguing rumor that has arisen further up the estuary, of a fearsome creature said to roam the marshes claiming human lives. After nearly 300 years, the mythical Essex Serpent is said to have returned, taking the life of a young man on New Year’s Eve. A keen amateur naturalist with no patience for religion or superstition, Cora is immediately enthralled, and certain that what the local people think is a magical sea beast may be a previously undiscovered species. Eager to investigate, she is introduced to local vicar William Ransome. Will, too, is suspicious of the rumors. But unlike Cora, this man of faith is convinced the rumors are caused by moral panic, a flight from true belief.

These seeming opposites who agree on nothing soon find themselves inexorably drawn together and torn apart—an intense relationship that will change both of their lives in ways entirely unexpected.

Hailed by Sarah Waters as "a work of great intelligence and charm, by a hugely talented author," The Essex Serpent is "irresistible . . . you can feel the influences of Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, and Hilary Mantel channeled by Perry in some sort of Victorian séance. This is the best new novel I’ve read in years" (Daily Telegraph).

What I thought:
This is my kind of book, before I even comment on the text it is for me a Pandora's Box of mysterious and murky things, of marvels of nature: mosses, fungi, serpents, parasites, tapeworms, fossils, toadstones, amber, blue seaglass and my personal favourites blue wing feathers of Jay and, of course, Leviathan and then a lexicon of brooding terminology:  decay, putrescence, blackness, miasma, mud, tuberculosis and then there are the things that go wrong, the sheep that is stuck on the saltings, the child that is lost, the young man who is stabbed, Luke's loss of manual dexterity even the jam which does not set. There is much that is strange. I try to find some sense of joy in the pages of Perry's book but even the intimate scenes between the characters are recounted in a gladless style.  What is to like then?  Firstly there is such texture in the narrative, in all those objects both natural and artefactual which are referred to time and again.  Visually appealing, curious and also tactile.  And the settings, the east end of London and the flat coastal landscape of Essex where the land grades into the sea over extensive saltmarshes.  I know saltings well and enjoy walking by them, they have an idiosyncratic fauna and flora and are 'dangerous' to encroach on. Made all the more treacherous by the tides - my familiars as they reveal and then hide their natural curiosities in an endless cycle of highs and lows.

And as for the writing even before I read Sarah Perry's Wikipedia profile I knew that I was in the presence of a writer who is very comfortable in Gothic style and a probably a Victorian born out of her time. She says as much on her own profile page, by inclination and upbringing. She has a PhD in creative writing from Royal Holloway University where her supervisor was Sir Andrew Motion. Her doctoral thesis was on the Gothic in the writing of Iris Murdoch. There are several relationships between the characters in the book and they are all uneasy, that between Will and Cora, drawn together by mutual attraction yet differing profoundly in their spiritual beliefs and always the figure of Stella between a symbol of potential guilt. And Cora herself, a contrary and manipulative woman I found her to be, what did others think?. I could write an essay on her alone...... And finally the book is themed by the serpent who threads its way through the book, the ancient legend, the carving on the end of a pew, the optical illusions of some of the characters, the beached corpse, a medical symbol and always the serpent of original sin, temptation. So this was very much a book for me, and thank you for choosing it.

Postscript - all the way through I found myself wondering just what the serpent would prove to be.  When it transpired to be a 20 foot fish with a single fin running along its dorsum I looked up conger eel and moray eel but even the maximum size for the latter would not work for the giant of Perry's imagining.  In the end I found an answer, the oarfish:

This is what I believe the rotting sea serpent to be:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=oarfish&client=safari&hl=en-gb&prmd=ivn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjntbGpkNfZAhUmCcAKHcvbBxoQ_AUIECgB&biw=1024&bih=672

The Invention of Nature

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf

Historian Andrea Wulf documents the life of the Prussian naturalist, explorer and geographer Alexander von Humboldt.

The book follows Humboldt from his early childhood and his travels through Europe as a young man to his journey through Latin America and his return to Europe. Wulf makes the case that Humboldt synthesized knowledge from many different fields to form a vision of nature as one interconnected system, that would go on to influence scientists, activists and the public.   The book is divided into five sections with monochrome figures, maps and coloured plates.

Part 1. Departure: Emerging Ideas

Wulf describes Humboldt's childhood with his emotionally distant mother. As a child his interests in nature and travel were not taken seriously. His mother, on whom he was financially dependent, insisted he become a civil servant. As a young man, Humboldt became friends with Goethe and other German intellectuals. His mother's death allowed him the freedom and financial independence needed to journey to the new world.

Part 2 Arrival: Collecting Ideas

Humboldt arrives in Cuba with his companion Bonpland and begins his journey through Central and South America. He brought with him a plethora of scientific instruments. He chronicles his travels and the measurements he obtained using scientific instruments in his journals. Humboldt climbs the Chimborazo Volcano, which was then believed to be highest mountain in the world. The trip concludes with his visit to the United States where he visited the White House to discuss science and politics with Thomas Jefferson before returning to Europe.

Part 3 Return: Sorting Ideas

Humboldt returns to Europe where he is greeted as a celebrity. He lives as an expat in Paris for a seven months as he finds the city and its scientific culture more stimulating than that of Berlin. While in France, he meets a young Simon Bolivar, who is impressed with Humboldt's knowledge and passion for his home country of Venezuela, and they discuss South American politics. Humboldt returns to Prussia, to earn a salary in the King's court before returning to Paris. At this point he begins to work several manuscripts based on his travels. The books are widely read. As Bolivar begins to plan and execute Revolutions in South America, Humboldt publishes a series of books on the politics of Latin America that criticize colonialism.

Part 4 Influence: Spreading Ideas

Wulf discusses Humboldt's personal correspondence and influence on a young Charles Darwin. Darwin attributed the inspiration for his voyage on the Beagle to Humboldt. Humboldt's influence on the American poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau is explored. Humboldt's magnum opus Cosmos, where he talks of the interconnections of the natural world, is discussed

Part 5 New Worlds: Evolving Ideas 
This section deals with the old age and death of Humboldt at the fantastic age of 89.  Chapters outline and discuss Humboldt's legacy viz a viz George Marsh, and Ernest Haeckel (a German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist, and artist who discovered, described and named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, and coined many terms in biology, including anthropogeny, ecology, phylum, phylogeny, stem cell, and Protista. Haeckel promoted and popularised Charles Darwin's work in Germany).  A third chapter deals with John Muir, also known as "John of the Mountains" and "Father of the National Parks".  He was an influential Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, glaciologist and early advocate for the preservation of wilderness in the United States.

Epilogue:  Alexander von Humboldt has been largely forgotten in the English-speaking world.  He was one of the last polymaths and died at a time when scientific disciplines were hardening into tightly fenced and more specialised fields.   As scientists are trying to  understand and predict the global consequences of Climate Change, Humboldt's interdisciplinary approach to science and nature is more relevant than ever.

The Blurb:  Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist - more things are named after him than anyone else. There are towns, rivers, mountain ranges, the ocean current that runs along the South American coast, there's a penguin, a giant squid - even the Mare Humboldtianum on the moon.

His colourful adventures read like something out of a Boy's Own story: Humboldt explored deep into the rainforest, climbed the world's highest volcanoes and inspired princes and presidents, scientists and poets alike. Napoleon was jealous of him; Simon Bolívar's revolution was fuelled by his ideas; Darwin set sail on the Beagle because of Humboldt; and Jules Verne's Captain Nemo owned all his many books. He simply was, as one contemporary put it, 'the greatest man since the Deluge'.

Taking us on a fantastic voyage in his footsteps - racing across anthrax-infected Russia or mapping tropical rivers alive with crocodiles - Andrea Wulf shows why his life and ideas remain so important today. Humboldt predicted human-induced climate change as early as 1800, and The Invention of Nature traces his ideas as they go on to revolutionize and shape science, conservation, nature writing, politics, art and the theory of evolution. He wanted to know and understand everything and his way of thinking was so far ahead of his time that it's only coming into its own now. Alexander von Humboldt really did invent the way we see nature.

What I thought:  a reading of this biography gave me a synthesis of much that I learnt during my three year degree course in Geology and Zoology, which I read in the early 90s.  I loved every minute of study and read as widely as I could around the subject. Coming to university study I was as keen as mustard, I would sit in the lecture theatre like a large sheet of blotting paper.  During that interval I rejected fiction as far being too superficial when there was so much learning I needed to do.  Since I gained that degree (and the PhD after, which frankly was a slog) I have never looked back in terms of my respect for my mother planet Earth and all that lives thereon.  Earth is my goddess, her ways my religion.  Her restlessness brings our planet alive and nowhere has reinforced this more than when I made a trip to Iceland after graduating and saw geological processes in action - vulcanity, tectonic plate spreading and ocean formation, hot springs and the waxing and waning of glacial activity.  During a reading of Wulf's book so many familiar names crop up in the text, Goethe, Schiller, Charles Darwin, Charles Babbage - the polymath and mathematician, another mathematician Carl Gauss, Henry David Thoreau.  Humboldt travelled with explorer and botanist, Aime Bonpland.  He consorted with Simon Bolivar.  As I read Wulf's detailed and thoroughly researched account (with a comprehensive section of notes, by page number,  giving references to quotes in the text) I was reminded from time to time of one of my favourite quotations, this by Isaac Newton: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants".  Humboldt and all those great men who were his associates, his thought-shapers, companions and adherents were giants, taking it in turn to stand on each other's shoulders, the better to consolidate their own discoveries and ideas.

Kolymsky Heights

Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson - 

Recommendation of Paul Light

Review from Amazon customer:  This is not my normal fare. It is a spy novel with some very interesting biotech and anthropological themes nicely embedded into a plot that spans about fifty years. It is a tribute to the author's cunning skill at how he succeeds in holding the reader spellbound across three continents in a massive (long) page turning epic. The characters are vivid, unusual and maybe even challenging. The research behind this book is tremendous and I have now learned so much more about Russia, the arctic, and most of all about Siberia. It certainly isn't dull and i was a pleasure to read a novel that had some running jumping and shooting, it wasn't overdone. There was very well written descriptive detail without it being too complex r prosaic. A fabulous read.

Of this novel Philip Pullman wrote that it was the best thriller he had read, four times.  And since Lionel Davidson has since died, Pullman is unlikely to read a better one.  "The best thriller I've ever read, and I've read plenty. A solidly researched and bone-chilling adventure in a savage setting, with a superb hero." 

Blurb:  A frozen Siberian hell lost in endless night. The perfect location for an underground Russian research station. It's a place so secret it doesn't officially exist; once there, the scientists are forbidden to leave. But one scientist is desperate to get a message to the outside world. So desperate, he sends a plea across the wilderness to the West in order to summon the one man alive who can achieve the impossible...

Plot summary:  A coded message is smuggled out of Russia, a plea for help from a super-secret laboratory deep in the frozen wastes of Siberia. The note is addressed to Johnny Porter, a Canadian Indian of the Gitxsan tribe with a genius for languages and disguises, and reluctantly he is forced to slip across the border on a rescue mission, the consequences of which he little imagines. The detailed picture of life in the Kolyma region and of the native peoples of the Russian Far East (such as the Evenks) and British Columbia (such as the Tsimshian) is impressive.

Like the Amazon review says:  "A fabulous read".

The Temporary Gentleman

The Temporary Gentleman by Sebastian Barry

Oh, Mr Barry, you can do no wrong!

I have read most of Barry's novels as the story of the Dunnes and the McNultys unfolds.  He singles out various members of  the family and documents chapters in their lives, the series being a patchwork of narratives about the lives of the various family members.  After reading Days Without End I checked the Wiki entry on Barry and found that there were two titles that I had not read, and The Temporary Gentleman is one such.

As usual you can count on getting a good review from the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/29/temporary-gentleman-review-sebastian-barry-novel

Here is a review from an Amazon customer, modified where my opinion differed and which wasn't by very much, which nevertheless pretty much sums up how I felt about the book:

Sebastian Barry, as often he does, brings a lyrical sadness to this tale. I was knocked out by the opening sequence, it had something of the impact that the opening chapter of Enduring Love had.  The events described in that chapter constitute a forerunner to a number of nearly fatal disasters that befall Jack McNulty. But the main theme, the slow deterioration of a marriage and Jack's inability to face the degree to which he is destroying Mai, in spite of his constant protestations of love, is written in Barry's entirely engaging style. It is the voice of the story teller, the weaver of yarns. I love that style when his text flows over the page in one paragraph, seemingly seamlessly; if there is punctuation you do not notice it, and his powers of description, the words he finds are so far beyond the commonplace.  I picked up this book after I dropped my current read in the bath, just long enough to require a dry on the Aga and an iron, so not wishing to be without a bedtime comforter I chose that close to hand.  I read The Temporary Gentleman through two or three days, wanting to turn the pages....... and not really wanting to resume afterwards Knowledge of Angels which, being a 'set book', must be finished.   There are a number of sub-themes running through Barry's novel. One of these is the nature and impact of colonialism on both the colonised, and the coloniser. All of that is handled very well. The reader also meets Roseanne whose story will be told in Secret Scripture. Barry is a first class craftsman, ans this work confirms once more that he is a writer of real seriousness, but with that a master of story making.

To recap, here is a list of Barry's series:

The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998)

Annie Dunne (2002)

A Long Long Way (2005)

The Secret Scripture (2008)

On Canaan's Side (2011)

The Temporary Gentleman (2014)

Days Without End (2016)

Knowledge of Angels

Knowledge of Angels by Jill Paton Walsh.

THE BLURB:
It is, perhaps, the fifteenth century and the ordered tranquillity of a Mediterranean island is about to be shattered by the appearance of two outsiders: one, a castaway, plucked from the sea by fishermen, whose beliefs represent a challenge to the established order; the other, a child abandoned by her mother and suckled by wolves, who knows nothing of the precarious relationship between Church and State but whose innocence will become the subject of a dangerous experiment.

But the arrival of the Inquisition on the island creates a darker, more threatening force which will transform what has been a philosophical game of chess into a matter of life and death...

To read a success story in terms of self-publishing against the odd, do read the Review in the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/oct/24/jill-paton-walsh-a-life

And here is good review from the Independent.
The prince, the wolf-girl and the Inquisitor
WOLF-CHILDREN have always haunted human imagination, even though there is precious little evidence that any ever existed. In her novel Knowledge of Angels, Jill Paton Walsh explores this myth as a way of wondering what any of us might be like if left to grow up without human influence.

The urge to find answers to this question has also been a feature of history. In the 13th century Emperor Frederick II instructed a group of wet nurses to remain silent at their job in order to discover whether the babies in their charge would first speak Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic or their mother tongue. (In fact, under so odd a regime they all soon died.) In 1940 a psychologist husband-and-wife team kept a pair of twins - not their own - in isolation for their first 18 months to see how they would develop without any stimulation.

But in this novel, the author is interested in the symbolic rather than the developmental aspects of rearing an infant on its own. For as things turn out, waiting to discover whether the wolf- child Amara has an inherent knowledge (or ignorance) of the idea of God once she has acquired language is the pivotal point of the story.

To get to this position some good storytelling is needed, and Walsh is well qualified here. A skilled and prolific writer mostly of children's books, she brings a firm narrative hand to some otherwise unlikely events. The adventures of Amara, once separated from her wolves, are told in tandem with the story of Palinor. He is a glamorous middle-aged prince washed up on the 15th-century fantasy island where all these events take place. He comes from an advanced, equally mythological country where all or no faiths enjoy the same respect. As a gifted engineer and uninhibited sensualist, he has much to offer and soon makes friends. But under the island's laws, he is a unapologetic heretic and must therefore be put to death.

His only hope is last- minute conversion, and this task is given to the saintly Beneditx, a monk previously devoted to writing about angels. But Palinor makes short work of all his standard Roman Catholic proofs of faith, and it is Beneditx himself who finally comes to disbelieve. At this moment, enter the sinister figure of the Inquisitor from overseas - a thankless role in any work of the imagination long before Monty Python finally took them all on and won.

Palinor's last chance is with Amara, now more human than wolf. If she too shows no knowledge of God, then Palinor can be excused on the grounds that mere ignorance as a result of one's upbringing is not in itself heretical. But Amara, carefully coached by the nuns who guard her, answers pietistically and Palinor is doomed.

This story is half fable, half parable. It enters into dialogues about the nature of faith with wit and passion. Coming across it now is like going back 60 years to a time when such 'novels of ideas' might once receive good notices from T S Eliot in the Criterion, only then to fall foul of Orwell reviewing in Tribune. Often hypnotically readable, it engages in debates of more historical than contemporary interest. Principal characters move fluidly between ancient ignorance and Victorian rationalism while the surrounding proles remain happy with their lot and content to leave every decision to their betters. It is all rather like looking at a medieval illustrated manuscript recreated by a clever modern artist. Contrived, often describing an idealised world but with luminous moments quite outside the normal run of contemporary fiction, this is a serious children's book for adult readers, and none the worse for that

What I thought:
Until I read the Independent review it did not occur to me that this was a serious children's book.  I would hesitate to give it to either of my granddaughters, aged 10 and 12, who are committed and intelligent readers, who read beyond their age.  It is dark and disturbing and ultimately agonising when Palinor meets his fate.  I learnt stuff about the Inquisition, about the horrors, really, of  religious dogma and the cruel lengths to which men of God will go to force their belief on others or exact a dreadful penance.  I also discovered that the way a human brain and intellect receives something such as a novel is, certainly in my case, very much governed by the one's disposition and mental outlook at the time of reading.  What I am say is, don't read this book if you are feeling at all anxious or low.