Why I Love Researching the Victorian Royals of England by Mary Hart Perry

I’m a people person. I’ve always been fascinated with the ways in which individual members of families, throughout history, have interacted, sometimes in healthy and supportive ways…and other times in destructive ways. Why do I love looking back in time at family groups? It struck me, even before I started doing research for my most recent novel, The Wild Princess, that our families today are not so very different from people who were related to each other, often living together, in the past.

While focusing on the royal offspring of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, this tendency to help or hurt those closest to us became shockingly evident. Of the nine children this royal couple produced, five princesses and four princes, there was rich and varied mix of personalities, good and bad. At times they came to each other’s aid and support. More often they seemed to work against each other, and the relationships became painful--much as in our own families in the 21st century. What family can claim that they never experience conflict?

For instance, Louise, the fourth princess, dreamt of becoming a professional artist. However, this was a time when girls simply weren’t educated in the same way as boys. Queen Victoria absolutely refused to allow her daughter to attend art school and mix with commoners. Her refusal to grant permission was shattering to Louise, who happened to be a very promising young artist. However, Louise being a very spirited young woman, persisted in arguing with her mother and pressing her case. She eventually won…but at high emotional cost to both herself and her mother.

Later in the queen’s life, Victoria determined that her youngest child, Princess Beatrice should remain unmarried, living with the queen as her constant companion until her death. That meant Beatrice likely would never have a family of her own. It was a sacrifice that Beatrice at first acquiesced to. Possibly because her mother kept her so much to herself she had become awkward in social situations and felt she was unappealing to men. It wasn’t until she met Henry Battenberg, at her niece’s wedding, that she regained her self-esteem enough to believe she might find a husband and marry. Victoria, however, stuck to her guns and refused to give her blessing. She went a step further, according to several accounts. Apparently she was so angry with her daughter for pressing the issue of the forbidden marriage that she refused to speak to Beatrice for months, insisting upon communicating with her only through written notes. Not only did Beatrice suffer the separation from her beloved Henry, she felt terribly distraught at the way her mother was treating her—after she’d been so loyal to the queen for so many years. Eventually, Beatrice and Henry did marry—but again, the emotional trauma within the family was immense.

I think about my own family and the families of my friends, and then about the people I love to read about from the past. One hundred years ago…three centuries ago…or even in antiquity. How little we’ve changed! We fall in love. We worry about each other. We support or try to interfere with each other’s dreams and destinies. The interactions are so complex; human nature is amazing. And that’s what I love about reading and writing about families throughout history. I feel so very close to these people, and I learn to care so very deeply for them, because they are just like us. My warmest wishes to you and your family…Mary Hart Perry

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The Wild Princess by Mary Hart Perry is out now.

You can find out more about Mary and her book at her website, on Facebook and on Twitter.

The Thread by Victoria Hislop

Thessaloniki, 1917. As Dimitri Komninos is born, a fire sweeps through the thriving multicultural city, where Christians, Jews and Moslems live side by side. It is the first of many catastrophic events that will change for ever this city, as war, fear and persecution begin to divide its people. Five years later, young Katerina escapes to Greece when her home in Asia Minor is destroyed by the Turkish army. Losing her mother in the chaos, she finds herself on a boat to an unknown destination. From that day the lives of Dimitri and Katerina become entwined, with each other and with the story of the city itself.

Thessaloniki, 2007. A young Anglo-Greek hears the life story of his grandparents for the first time and realises he has a decision to make. For many decades, they have looked after the memories and treasures of people who have been forcibly driven from their beloved city. Should he become their new custodian? Should he stay or should he go?

A few months ago I read this author's debut novel, The Island, and really loved it! Like that first book, this one is set in Greece, this time in the coastal city of Thessaloniki. It is a city that I knew very little about. Probably the only thing that came to mind was that there were a couple of letters to the Thessalonians in the New Testament of the Bible. What that tells us is that there is a long and rich history of the city, so it was probably wise of the author to concentrate pretty much on the events of the 20th century.

When the main part of the novel opens, it is 1917 and the city is populated by a roughly equal mix of Muslims, Jews and Greeks and for the most part the different groups living peacefully together. This is especially true on Irini Street where families live together in harmony, children playing together on the street, everyone close to each other.

The book is primarily the story of Dimitri Komninos and his wife Katerina, how they met and came together. It is fitting then that the novel opens on the day of Dimitri's birth, the much longed for son of Olga and Konstantinos. Konstantinos is a successful businessman and Olga his much younger trophy wife. We learn pretty early on what kind of man Konstantinos is and where his priorities lie. The baby's birth is a spot of good news in an otherwise terrible day for the city as this is the same day that most of the old city is destroyed by a devastating fire but rather than giving his family the priority for Konstantinos it is all about his business. With their home destroyed, Olga moves to Irini Street, much to her husband's disgust.

On another devastating day in another city, a young girl finds herself also fleeing from a fire that is destroying lives. In this case, the city is Smyrna in Turkey and the fire is precipitated by the terror of the Greco-Turkey war that was raging (an event that I had previously read about in Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides). As part of the agreements of that war, there was to be a swap of people. All the Muslims who lived in Thessaloniki were ordered to leave the city, and all of the ethnic Greeks who lived in Turkey were relocated back to Greece, with many thousands of them finding their way to Thessaloniki, a city that was ill prepared for such a population explosion.

In the chaos of the people swap, a young girl is separated from her mother who is destined to Athens. Suffering from a large burn on her arm, Katerina is taken care of by Eugenia and finds herself loaded onto a boat to Thessaloniki with Eugenia and her twin daughters, and soon they too live in Irini Street, and so they initial relationship between Dimitri and Katerina begins. As they grow towards adulthood, Dimitri has to fight his domineering father about his future career choice, and then ends up having to fight for his beliefs, and Katerina finds her passion in life - needlework. Soon she is one of the most sought after seamstresses in the city, and there is a lot of page time spent on the various skills she possesses and the garments that she helps to make.

One of the effects of the people swap is that the city goes from being one that was populated by roughly equal mix of religious beliefs to one where the Jewish are the minority and the Muslims are gone. Whilst there is no immediate effect, it is definitely felt as the events in world history march unerringly on towards the Nazi occupation of Greece, with inevitable consequences. Even when the war is over, there is still civil upheaval as the damaged country tries to find its way out of the dark days of World War II and into the future.

It is interesting to follow our main couple through these various upheavals, and see the consequences of their actions and beliefs, especially to see how some of those consequences had life long impacts on the choices that were available to them.

I really enjoyed getting to see this particular glimpse of Greek history, although I did have a couple of reservations. There were a couple of two dimensional characters, especially Konstantinos. I also wasn't sure about the use of the modern framing device. The novel opens with their grandson coming to visit an elderly Dimitri and Katerina, and for the first time hearing their story; how they met, what they went through, how they came together and more. Whilst I do normally like that kind of framework, this time it didn't quite work for me. I did also feel that the story kind of meandered a bit as it got towards the end, but this is really a minor complaint.

I still have Victoria Hislop's second book, The Return, here to read. That one is set in the Spanish Civil War. Whilst I am interested to read that one, it is clear that Hislop has a passionate interest in Greece and its people and history. It is interesting to note that as an author she is hugely popular in Greece. The Island was even made into a 26 part TV series! I hope to hear that her next book is once again set in Greece.

Rating 4/5

M Scott's Books of a Lifetime

Recently a publicist contacted to ask me if I was interested in reading Manda Scott's next book, the third in her Rome series. Of course I was interested. I loved her Boudicea books, but wait.... third book? How on earth had I missed the fact that she had a new series out and that she is up to the third book! One thing led to another, and this Books of a Lifetime post was born. Oh, and Manda Scott is back on my TBR list.

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There is a wonderful space in a writing life when the latest draft of the latest novel has been handed in but there has not yet been any editorial feedback. Often, there's another novel that needs to fill the gap, or a screenplay, or a short story, or, increasingly a blog post or two, but once in a while, there's a day when the 'to-do' list is empty, when all the books on the TBR pile have been read, at least, all the ones that are ever going to be read, and there's time to clear the bookshelves.  

In our household, this point comes round often enough that the two local charity shops close their doors and run in panic when I turn up. No, they don't want half a dozen Czech versions of Dreaming the Hound (why ever not?) but they may be prepared to take something in French and Polish is very popular. They haven't realised there's a market for ARCs even when I read them carefully and don't crease them, but I'm educating them slowly while stripping the bookshelves back to those things that will never leave; the Books of a Lifetime.

They are arranged more or less in the order they came into my life and so very first, always, on the far left of the top shelf, is James Fennimore Cooper's 'The Last of the Mohicans'; the first 'adult' book I was allowed to buy, with my first ever book tokens. It had been on the television with the wonderful Philip Madoc as the Huron warrior with the famous hairstyle that later, in one of those anachronistic ironies, was named 'Mohican' after the tribe he helped to eradicate. I read an article that said he'd learned Huron for the part and while he might have been reciting shopping lists while speaking, every single word was authentic. The BBC version was so many streets ahead of the dreadful Daniel Day Lewis cover made decades later, that it should be made required viewing for film students, and my precious copy has a still from one of the mid-forest scenes on the front cover. I re-read it roughly once every ten years and find new things that I didn't notice in the previous decade. I occasionally wax lyrical and say that my desert island book would be Mary Renault's Alexander, or, more recently, Wolf Hall, but really it would be impossible to leave TLotM behind.



With 'Mohican's, I discovered John Smith's in Glasgow; a beautiful, ageing independent bookstore that thrived in the days when those things were possible. I used to take the train in after school and the assistants knew me well enough to let me stand there and read a book cover to cover before I went home. It was in one of those marathon read-ins that I found the next book along; Alan Garner's 'Weirdstone of Brisingamen' and its sequel, the 'Moon of Gomrath'. What can I say? Alan Garner is one of those publishing geniuses whose books should have been made into film long, long before LOTR or Twilight or anything else full of cliche. His elves are scary. His magic feels utterly real. His 'Wild Hunt' is terrifying. I spent years after, trying to follow the mythic threads he'd woven in his tale of two children who find magic on a cheshire moorland, but it's the prescient environmentalist agenda that makes them truly magical. In among the high magic and the low dwarven magic and the terrifying Morrigan and the pony with the red eyes that haunted my dreams for decades, was the message that the elves were dying out because we were poisoning their world. It was heartbreaking. It still is.

The magical theme held most of my childhood; growing up in a raptor rehab centre where the kestrels were put to bed at dusk and the owls brought out (in the kitchen) and vice versa, might have had something to do with it. Next along is Mary Stewart's 'Crystal Cave' trilogy which, to my mind, is the best Arthurian series ever written and continued my education in how to write magic that feels integral to the world that has been created. Her Merlin - aka Merthyn Emrys - took me out of childhood and into an adolescence where woods and streams and the things that inhabited them were imbued with gods I could almost reach. It was thanks to her I started performing hidden ceremonies to Mithras before hockey matches at school. As far as I can remember, no heavenly bull-god appeared on the hockey pitch to help us defeat the opposing team, but it felt good at the time and it cemented my image of Arthur for years, until someone gave me the Rosemary Sutcliff version, 'A Sword at Sunset' and I saw the foundation on which the Crystal Skull and others had been written. Sutcliff's is the better book, but it should have been given the room to breathe that a series allows, so Mary Stewart just edges up in terms of overall impact.

Last in the books of my childhood, is the Dorothy Dunnett, Lymond series; the books I read and re-read through the quiet tedium of my Highers while I studied to go to Vet School. I read them in English and in the German translation, and for a while, knew the plot points, the development, the characterisation as well as I've ever known any of my own books. They've faded a bit now; they were good books for adolescence: wanting to become Francis Crawford of Lymond pushed me into a neatness of thought that I've never replicated since. For those how haven't read them, he is tall, ice-blond, has eyes of cornflower blue, is super-neat, and highly intelligent. I, by contrast, am small, black-haired, brown eyed, *female* and neither neat nor highly intelligent, though in my quest to turn myself into him, I took more care with exams than I might have done.

And so into vet school. If I read any fiction in those five years, I don't remember it. I was either reading text books, or out discovering life, the universe and the joys of unfettered freedom. I was at college, but spent most of my free time in Edinburgh, with a nascent druidic group, still hunting the truth behind the Hollow Hills, still toasting Mithras at the May dawns on Arthur's seat in Edinburgh. There's nothing quite like the freedom of university, though a writing life comes close, with mortgage payments instead of the threat of exams. On the whole, I think I prefer it that way.

Post qualification, my first job was as a surgical intern at Cambridge, and it didn't start until September, so I had a summer free and made the most of it by reading every single thing Carlos Castenada had written up until then which was an interesting way to step outside reality for a while, and probably made the transition from student life to working life easier. I still have the entire set on my shelf; more, now, to lend to my shamanic students as a warning of how sadly off-beam you can go: for sheer misogyny they take some beating although there are key concepts that are none the less valid. Taking the cubic centimetre of chance when it is offered - and seeing that it is there - is always a wise move, as is living with death as your advisor and ally. 

There's a gap of about ten years now, the shelf is filled mostly with poetry books, that would otherwise be filled with text books on general surgery, anaesthesia, equine neonatal intensive care and general equine reproduction, and finally anaesthesia and intensive care in a great deal more depth. A novel may have the shelf life of a yoghourt, but they don't become obsolete with quite the speed of scientific text books: I've given most of those away, just keeping the 'Five Minute Consult' which is useful when any of the animals goes down with something less than obvious that might require a trip to a referral centre.

And then we have Mary Renault's 'Fire from Heaven', the book which, more than any other, set me on the writing life. There's a well defined limit to how many horses you can anaesthetise without going quietly mad, and transferring to small animals and presiding over total hip replacements in over-bred labradors doesn't make it a whole lot better. I was teaching at the Vet School in Cambridge when my resident gave me Renault's book - she was tall and blonde and blue-eyed and fantastically bright and about as close as I was ever going to meet to a female version of Francis Crawford and she introduced me to some of the most perfect writing I have ever read. When she left to go to the States, to sit yet more, harder, exams and to teach at institutions that could better harness her intellect and enthusiasm, it seemed like a good time to be looking for another career. I'd always planned to write novels as well as be a vet, it was just that the being-a-vet had rather got in the way. For a while, after I started writing the contemporary thrillers, I thought that I'd be able to fund my own way through a surgical residency: If you spend ten years watching a series of surgeons of varying quality, it's not hard to imagine you could do it better. But there was Mary Renault, and a lyrical, flowing prose that made days spent sorting out bulldogs with inadequate airways seem.... less than perfect.

In any case, life is what happens when I'm busy planning other things. Fay Weldon lead a writing course and told me to write for television, (on the shelf: The Cloning of Joanna May). Terry Pratchett led another and said if I submitted my three chapters and a synopsis to the competition, I would win (on the shelf:Nation; it will stay). He was close: I was shortlisted. Then they cancelled the competition. But I had an agent by then and that novel went on to be short-listed for the Orange Prize that year, an event on which I totally failed to capitalise, largely because, being a vet, surrounded by vets, I'd never heard of the Orange Prize. Nor had they. We all assumed it was something to do with Jeanette Winterson and they rolled their eyes and we got on with another list of hip replacements and cruciate repairs. I headed off to the post mortem room with a notebok and asked the pathologists how they'd kill their mother in law so that no other pathologist would be able to tell that it was murder and took notes while they talked at length and in exquisite detail: research came free in those days. I read Val McDermid and Ian Rankin and discovered the amazing wonder of Andrew Taylor: his novel 'The American Boy' is next along the list; for finer writing, sense of period, achingly clever plot and sheer poetry of style, it is unsurpassed. 

Four years, three more novels and one more shortlist later (The Edgar Award for best crime novel, for No Good Deed), and I was only a vet half time, with less of an inclination to become a surgeon. I'd read Dorothy Dunnett's 'King Hereafter', and I'd spent fifteen years studying shamanic practice and out of those, grew the Boudica: Dreaming series, the ones that let me give up the day job for good, that occupied my entire life for six years, to the exclusion of virtually everything else. I ended up teaching shamanic dreaming as a direct result and that, too, was life changing, even as I stopped writing about dreaming and took to historical espionage thrillers instead. So Kim is there, Kipling's wonder, and 'Quartered Safe out There,' by George MacKay Brown which is one of the best war memoirs I've ever read, and I read a lot before I started writing The Eagle of the Twelfth, latest in the Rome series. Which is why Sutcliff's, 'Eagle of the Ninth' is not on my shelf, but on my desk. Otherwise, it would be way back at the start, the book I took out of the library before I was allowed to buy one of my own, the book that opened the door to who we were before the Romans came, that showed me the Seal People and Esca, but didn't tell me what they had done, who they had been, before Sutcliff's kindly imperialists came and 'civilised' them. But the question was there, and the entire Boudica series was its answer, and then into Rome, to hunt down the origin of Rome's Fire, and then off into reaches of history I had never encountered, but which just had to be written.

We'll leave aside the text books: the shelves are heavy with Rome just now, and beginning to groan under the Hundred Years' War, but there are two new novels on the end of the list: Robert Wilton's, 'The Emperor's Gold' and AL Berridge's 'Into the Valley of Death'. Both are recent publications by new-ish writers, both are books that came to me through the HWA, and which I might well not have read otherwise, but am so very glad I did. Both excel in the hallmarks of greatness: prose that lifts the use of language into poetry, while maintaining a cracking pace of plot and a quality of characterisation that leaves me haunted for days after I read them. 

And so we come to the end. For years, there's been a 'desk-book'; the one novel that sits on my writing desk so that I can dip into it when the well runs dry and remember what truly great writing is about. Dunnett's, 'King Hereafter' shared that place for a long time with Mary Renault's 'Fire from Heaven/Persian Boy'. For sheer quality of prose, for excellence of characterisation, for that frisson that makes the hairs stand on my arms however often I read them, they take some beating. 

But recently they were supplanted, first by Patrician Finney's novel, Gloriana's Torch, which should be required reading for anyone who thinks to write about the Tudor period... and then by it's natural successor, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. For absolute quality of prose, for characters that spring fully-formed from the page, for density - and clarity - of thought, there is nothing to beat it. There is no page I can open at, which isn't magical, which doesn't fill me with awe and wonder and hope and inspiration. I have the sequel. Next week, I'll read it. The week after, I'll edit The Art of War, the last book (for now) in the ROME series, and then head into the wonders of fifteenth century France and Joan of Arc as you have never known her, but as I think she truly was; with luck, one day, it will sit on someone's shelf.

Find out more about Manda Scott at her website, Facebook, and Twitter

Address Unknown by Kressmann Taylor

Originally published in Story Magazine in 1938, this is the fictional account, through letters of an America Jew called Max and his German friend Martin. 

We join the story as Martin and his family relocate from America back to their homeland of Germany. They have been business partners and friends and once the relocation happens Martin and Max continue their business dealings and friendship with Max sending Martin chatty letters which contain brief financial details.

The year is 1932. Germany is not in a good shape, there is poverty. We are at the eve of the rise of Hitler in Germany and he is bring hope to the people....

Over the coming pages we see the once sturdy relationship and friendship of Max and Martin come under strain. Martin is greatly influenced by the political developments in Germany and how those of Jewish descent are being treated. Max continues writing, despite Martin asking that he does not and at once we see the formation of censorship and those who receive certain letters being held to account. We see the division of a nation driven by the policy of Germany at that time. The book concludes in March 1934.

Although a slim volume, just 95 pages this book has left a lasting impression. This is certainly a classic of the 20th Century and this is most definitely a case of less is more.

Reading Chinese historical fiction

Today, I am thrilled to introduce James Lande from Old China Books to give us a fantastically comprehensive list of suggested reading about China!

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Historical Tapestry has invited me to guest post with a discussion of historical novels set in China. This in response to my comment (as Old China Books) on Mary Tod’s blog A Writer of History that I find historical fiction about China to be indifferently represented in forums devoted to the historical genre (HT, however, has a category for Chinese History with five entries).

I assume the principle reason for this scarcity may be that we American readers are not so familiar with Asian history; in our schools Western history generally receives more emphasis – Athens rather the Warring States, Rome instead of the Han Dynasty, the Hanover monarchs and not the Manchu empire. So, the Far East is a longer reach.

Still, the reasons for reading historical novels about China are not unlike those for reading historicals set in the West or near East. The people invoked have similar troubles and triumphs, and the events evoked have similar storm and stress – but in different contexts often fascinating in their contrast. We gain some insight into people of another time, and perhaps into how our time came to be, by sharing in their drama. Adventure, war, hard times, love, understanding – they live in the pages of historical fiction about China just as they do in that about other places.

And what am I calling historical fiction? In addition to novels about events regarded as historical, events older than 50 years according to some forums, there are included here titles that, while not historical when published, are set in places that time has since changed enough to make them quite different now and, as such, have become chronicles of the vanished past (e.g. Hong Kong of the 1950s).

There are original English-language novels about China, and Chinese-language novels widely available in translation. There are older books rarely heard of now (besides Pearl Buck), and more recent novels (besides Lisa See). And there are novels about Chinese-American experience (besides Amy Tan) I’ve left off the list because they are not quite historicals yet. Some of these are about earlier history and others are about more recent events. This list starts with comparatively modern novels about China.

Modern Novels about China

Pearl of China, Anchee Min, 2010. A fictional tale of a Chinese woman and her friendship with novelist Pearl S. Buck, beginning when they meet as children at the end of the nineteenth century. “In the southern town of Chin-kiang 鎮江, in the last days of the nineteenth century, two girls bump heads and become thick as thieves. Willow is the only child of a destitute local family. Pearl, the headstrong daughter of zealous Christian missionaries, will become Pearl S. Buck, Nobel Prize-winning writer and activist. Their friendship will be tested during decades of great tumult, by imprisonment and exile, bloody civil war and Mao’s repressive Communist regime [Anchee Min‘s website].” This book is a pleasant surprise for me, my first exposure to Anchee Min, and an extraordinary subject. See the Pearl of China book trailer on YouTube.

Peony in Love, Lisa See, 2007. In 17th century China, young Peony attends a performance of the opera Peony Pavilion on her 16th birthday and falls in love with a stranger. Already promised in marriage, she can only waste away with lovesickness for her beloved. Just before she dies, she learns that her betrothed and her beloved are the same man.

In any other story, that would be The End, but not in a Chinese story where the unfulfilled can return to the world as hungry ghosts and finish the cycle left incomplete by premature passing. “...spirits in the Chinese afterworld – whether beloved ancestors or ghosts – have the same wants, needs, and desires as living people. They need clothes, food, a place to live. They have emotions. [Peony] …can float, change form, and do many things that living people can’t do, but she is also inhibited – as all Chinese ghosts are – by things like corners, mirrors, and fern fronds [Lisa See website]." Ms See proceeds to create an entire other world where Peony finds her destiny. See Peony’s book trailer. Historical Tapestry also has a post on Peony.

Empress Orchid, Anchee Min, 2004. “…Within the walls of the Forbidden City the consequences of a misstep are deadly. As one of hundreds of women vying for the attention of the Emperor, Orchid soon discovers that she must take matters into her own hands. After training herself in the art of pleasing a man, she bribes her way into the royal bedchamber and seduces the monarch. A grand love affair ensues; the Emperor is a troubled man, but their love is passionate and genuine. Orchid has the great good fortune to bear him a son. Elevated to the rank of Empress, she still must struggle to maintain her position and the right to raise her own child. With the death of the Emperor comes a palace coup that ultimately thrusts Orchid into power, although only as regent until her son's maturity. Now she must rule China as its walls tumble around her, and she alone seems capable of holding the country together…[Amazon book description].”


The Last Empress, Anchee Min, 2008. “The last decades of the nineteenth century were a violent period in China’s history, marked by humiliating foreign incursions and domestic rebellions and ending in the demise of the Ch’ing Dynasty. The only constant during this tumultuous time was the power wielded by one woman, the resilient, ever-resourceful Tsu Hsi -- or Empress Orchid, as readers came to know her in Anchee Min’s critically acclaimed, best-selling novel covering her rise to power.

The Last Empress is the story of Orchid’s dramatic transition from a strong-willed, instinctive young woman to a wise and politically savvy leader who ruled China for more than four decades. In this concluding volume Min gives us a compelling, very human leader who assumed power reluctantly and sacrificed all to protect those she loved and an empire that was doomed to die [Amazon book description].”

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Lisa See, 2005. This is the story of a laotung 老同, a special bond between two women that creates intimacy even greater than that between husband and wife, and of the lifelong laotong between Lily and her friend Snow Flower. At the age of 80, Lily thinks back over the events of their lives they shared in letters written with secret writing called nu shu女書, through the reigns of four emperors, foot binding, betrothal, marriage, childbirth, war, poverty and death. They flee to the mountains to escape the Taiping rebels, and then return through killing fields piled with dead bodies. Misunderstanding leads to betrayal, in anger Lily shames her laotung, and only when Snow Flower lies dying is Lily able to come to Snow Flower’s bedside to ask for forgiveness. “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a story about friendship and what it means to be a woman [Lisa See, On Writing Snow Flower].” Historical Tapestry also has a post on Snow Flower.

The Rice Sprout Song, Eileen Chang, 1955. “The first of Eileen Chang's novels to be written in English, The Rice-Sprout Song portrays the horror and absurdity that the land-reform movement brings to a southern village in China during the early 1950s. Contrary to the hopes of the peasants in this story, the redistribution of land does not mean an end to hunger. Man-made and natural disasters bring about the threat of famine, while China's involvement in the Korean War further deepens the peasants' misery. Chang's chilling depiction of the peasants' desperate attempts to survive both the impending famine and government abuse makes for spellbinding reading. Her critique of communism rewrites the land-reform discourse at the same time it lays bare the volatile relations between politics and literature [Google Books].”

Spring Moon, Bette Bao Lord, 1981. Spring Moon begins in 1892, in the household of Chang, a wealthy Chinese family of Soochow. “At a time of mystery and cruelty...in an ancient land of breathtaking beauty and exotic surprise...a courageous woman triumphs over her world's ultimate tragedy. Behind the garden walls of the House of Chang, pampered daughter Spring Moon is born into luxury and privilege. But the tempests of change sweep her into a new world -- one of hardship, turmoil, and heartbreak, one that threatens to destroy her husband, her family, and her darkest secret love. Through a tumultuous lifetime, Spring Moon must cling to her honor, to the memory of a time gone by, and to a destiny, foretold at her birth, that has yet to be fulfilled [Amazon book description].”

The True Story of Ah Q, Lu Hsun (tr. Gladys Yang), 1921. “Considered a masterpiece, this story was written in 1921, and is set in the China of 1911: the period of the old democratic revolution. It concerns the tragedy of Ah Q, a farm laborer who suffers a lifetime of humiliation and persecution, dreams of revolution, and ends up on the execution ground. The story colorfully reflects the rural conditions in semi-feudal and semi-colonial China, and brings to life the time's sharp class contradictions and the peasant masses' demand for revolution. Its simplicity and directness of style, and the beauty of Lu Hsun's language, place The True Story of Ah Q high among literary works of the time for both content and style [Amazon book description].”

Family, Ba Jin (tr. Sidney Shapiro), 1933. The conflicts between young and old in Family mirrored the struggle in China following the May Fourth Movement of 1919. Five generations of the Kao family, upper-class Chinese living under one roof in 1920s Chengdu, are ruled over by autocratic elders who demand absolute obedience of the young brothers. The brothers yearn to break free of their narrow trappings and live lives of their own choosing, to marry as they wish, and to pursue opportunities in the New China. The elders see their family and the nation disintegrating together, youth throwing over the old customs that with the land made family the bedrock of their society, and fear what will happen when their children leave the village. Followed by Spring, and Autumn, in a trilogy called Torrents.

Rickshaw Boy (aka Rickshaw: The Novel Lo-t'o Hsiang Tzu 骆驼祥子, tr. Jean M. James; Camel Xiangzi), Lao She (tr. Evan King), 1937. “After Xiangzi’s parents die, he goes to the city of Beijing, bringing with him a country boy’s sturdiness and simplicity. He rents a rickshaw from Fourth Master Liu, who owns the Harmony Rickshaw-renting Yard, to make a living. Unlike the other rickshaw pullers, who are addicted to smoking, drinking, and visiting prostitutes, Xiangzi leads a decent, frugal life. His only dream is to have a rickshaw of his own. After three or four years of struggle and hardship, he saves enough money to buy a rickshaw, believing that the rickshaw will bring him freedom...[eNotes].”

China from a Western View

My Splendid Concubine, Lloyd Lofthouse, 2009. [Concubine Saga]
From a Far Land, Robert Elegant
Noble House, Clavell
Oil for the Lamps of China, Alice Tisdale Hobart, 1934

The Painted Veil, W. Somerset Maugham, 1925. A romantic period piece by an accomplished writer that tells of the marriage of an English bacteriologist Walter Fane on leave from China and a young and callow socialite Kitty who is completely at loose ends when taken to Hong Kong by her husband. Her affair with a local official revealed, Walter gives her a choice of leaving with him for a cholera district inland, or the scandal of divorce unless her lover will marry her. Heartbroken when her lover refuses her, Kitty accompanies her husband into China. “With beautiful China as a backdrop to this story of growth, The Painted Veil is a classic. It is beautifully written, the writing compact but amazingly detailed. Kitty is finely drawn and fully realized, Walter much more distant but still captivating [Katie Trattner, Blogcritics.com].”


A Single Pebble, John Hersey, 1956. An American engineer travels up the Yangtze River to Chungking in the 1920s. “In a deceptively simple story, Hersey has captured all the magic, the terror and the drama of that extraordinary stretch of water.... Even in Mr. Hersey's hands, the American's discoveries of his own mind and of the Chinese people are dwarfed by the laws, the demands and the ageless vitality of the Yangtze [The New York Times Book Review].”

The Mountain Road, Theodore H. White 1956. Journalist Teddy White's first novel tells of an American demolition unit behind lines in wartime China, charged with destroying bridges and ammunition dumps to delay advancing Japanese. In the midst of the American soldiers' struggle with their Chinese allies, and hoards of refugees crowding along mountain roads, the American major commanding falls in love with a Chinese woman and, through her, begins to learn profound things for which reading Pearl Buck had not prepared him.


A Many-Splendoured Thing, Han Suyin, 1952. “This is a book from a different age, when it was possible to develop a theme more slowly, but it remains a beautifully constructed many-layered novel. On the surface, it is a love story, but there is a fascinating historical perspective that is of particular interest as China's importance grows. Beneath those aspects is the insight into class and race prejudice that is as relevant today as it was in Hong Kong in the fifties. The book is strongly autobiographical yet remains a novel. Any reader would identify with or recognize characters from their own world [Amazon review by P. Inez Erica].”

The Warlord, Malcolm Bosse

World of Suzie Wong, Richard Mason, 1957. Englishman Robert Lomax moves into the Nam Kok Hotel in the Wanchai native quarter of 1950s Hong Kong to paint for a year. The first night, he discovers the hotel is a brothel that caters to foreign sailors, but he stays on anyway because of the picturesque location. As a houseguest, Lomax is treated like an elder brother and soon becomes acquainted with the girls and their problems, in particular Suzie Wong, and learns that most of the girls are ordinary people like anyone else, except for the work they do. Then Suzie decides Robert should be her regular boyfriend. “…a beautifully written book that provides an intimate portrait of post-WWII Hong Kong. For anyone who has lived in the former British colony, I guarantee you will be fascinated by Mason's astute observations of life in the territory [Amazon review by BJanis].”

 Man's Fate, Andre Malraux, 1933 (translated from the French La Condition Humaine), is a suspenseful story of the failure in 1927 of the Communist insurrection in Shanghai, the brutal retaliation of the Nationalists known now as the Shanghai Massacre, and the consequences for the characters involved. A tense dramatization of a watershed incident in the history of Modern China that many of us in the West only learned about and began to understand by reading this novel Man’s Fate.

The Sand Pebbles, Richard McKenna, 1962. An American gunboat, the San Pablo, on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, is caught up in the anti-foreign violence fomented during the Nationalist march north, after the Shanghai Massacre, to purge the warlords and unify China. Woven into the story are romances between a San Pablo machinist and a young American missionary girl, and another San Pablo sailor and a Chinese woman ashore where the ship is stranded when the level of the river falls.

Taipan, James Clavell, 1966. A rousing tale of foreigners in South China at the time of the first Opium War in the early 1840s. Full of adventure and romance, the main characters are based on the British principals of Jardine Matheson, and Dent and Company, who manipulated England into war with the Chinese in order to protect their trade of opium for tea and silk, and to secure a foothold on the China coast where they could establish a trading entrepot.


Mandarin, Robert Elegant, 1983. A saga of extraordinary women of Shanghai Jewish families caught up in the events of the Taiping Rebellion and Second Opium War of 1860, Mandarin also follows the fortunes of the Last Empress, the dowager Ci-xi from her youth as concubine of the emperor to her palace intrigues and the coup that placed her on the imperial throne as regent. The sweep is broad, from 1854 to 1875, and all the principals of the era put in their cameos.


Our Hart, Elegy for a Concubine, Lloyd Lofthouse, 2010. [Concubine Saga] The subject of this novel is the British official Sir Robert Hart, known for his long service in China. The most balanced proponent of Lofthouse's treatment is, perhaps, one “Thomas Carter” who gives this in summary of Our Hart, Eulogy for a Concubine. “Robert Hart, as sketched by Lofthouse, was never, in fact, meant to be a hero. He is an admittedly flawed man with weaknesses.... But Hart's coming-of-age during his riotous first years in China, underscored by the tragic loss of one of his concubines, has now turned the boy into a man, and a bitter one at that, since ‘replacing the pain with anger made him feel like a thief and a liar.’ ...Just as our protagonist has matured, complete with a receding hairline, Our Hart… the novel is also a more mature read than its predecessor [see Carter's complete review].” See also the Historical Tapestry reviews of Lofthouse books.

Old Chinese Novels in Translation

Monkey, tr. Arthur Waley, 1942. The Chinese novel Journey to the West 西游记by Wu Ch’eng-en tells a picaresque tale of Sun Wu-k’ung, the mischievous Monkey King with magical powers, who is tasked by the Goddess of Mercy Kuan Yin to accompany a Buddhist priest and his friends on a legendary pilgrimage to India to bring back copies of the sacred scriptures. An adventure of the first water, the pilgrims are beset by all manner of fantastic challenges to their magical skills. Based on actual events of the early Tang Dynasty.

The Golden Lotus (aka The Plum in the Golden Vase), tr. David Tod Roy, 2006. Chin Ping Mei金瓶梅by Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng蘭陵笑笑生 is an erotic novel set in the Sung Dynasty that relates the decline of the family of Hsi Men Ch’ing, a pawnshop owner and minor government official, due to his profligate ways. A procession of domestic and public life of the Sung period is depicted in detail – weddings, childbirth, funerals, birthdays, festivals, business deals, bribes to officials, brothel parties, songs and poetry. So is the procession of the great many women in Hsi-men Ch’ing’s life, lewd ladies who bring him to ruin. “…the greatest novel of physical love China has ever produced” – Pearl S. Buck.

The Water Margin (aka Outlaws of the Marsh, tr. Sidney Shapiro, 2002; All Men Are Brothers, tr. Pearl S. Buck, 1937). Shui Hu Chuan 水滸傳by Shih Nai-an. “…This 600 year-old epic tale of a band of patriots in the latter part of the Sung Dynasty is the story of a band of 108 outlaws (105 men and 3 women) who struggle to help the emperor rid himself of a despotic prime minister. Also involved in this work of classical Chinese fiction are ghosts, innkeepers who augment their groceries with the bodies of their guests, giants with superhuman strength, lovely ladies in distress, wily intellectuals, crafty merchants, and more! A sage replete with sorcery, action, beats, demons and heroes. All Men Are Brothers is a terrific read from beginning to end…. [Moyer Bell at The Free Library]….”

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, tr. Moss Roberts, 2000. San Guo Yen Yi 三國演義, Luo Kuan-chung, Ming Dynasty. An epic historical novel with many episodes and characters that enjoys a stature in the East like that of Shakespeare in the West, Three Kingdoms tells of the struggle of three heroes to support the Han Dynasty emperor against rebels and warlords. Beginning with their oath of brotherhood in the Peach Garden, the three set forth to help put down the Yellow Turbans, then defend the throne against the ambitious prime minister Cao Cao. As events progress, first one of the sworn brothers falls, then another, leaving the third to pursue vengeance for their deaths. Ultimately, the kingdoms fall, the dynasty disintegrates, and the first sentence of the novel is borne out: The novels begins 话说天下大势，分久必合，合久必分It is said that in this world what is long divided will unite, and that what is united most certainly will break apart.

The Dream of the red Chamber (Hung Lou Meng 紅樓夢), tr. Chi Chen Wang (abridged), 1927, 1958; aka The Story of the Stone, tr. David Hawkes, John Mitford, 1982-2006. Hung Lou Meng, widely regarded as a book for the mellenia, is an episodic tale of two branches of the wealthy and influential Chia clan, who live in adjacent compounds in the capital and have enjoyed imperial favor for generations. The narrative centers on the dissolute youth Pao-yu and the captivating women of the household. The jealousies between them bring grief to the family and eventual downfall. “The novel is remarkable not only for its huge cast of characters and psychological scope, but also for its precise and detailed observation of the life and social structures typical of 18th-century Chinese aristocracy [Wikipedia].”

 

The Chinese-American Experience

The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston, 1975. Maxine Hong Kingston looks at Chinese history from the perspective of a Chinese girl growing up in America among ghosts of the past. It may be thin to regard this chimera as historical fiction, but the book begins in 1924 and, together with the vital spirit of Hua Mu-lan – the woman warrior who took her father's place in battle – gives the book its toehold on the genre. Maxine's mother told her the story of Mu-lan, in Chinese talk-story style, to encourage her daughter to grow up into a woman warrior, with courage and initiative, rather than as wife and a slave. Many other voices contribute to this talk-story, placing the anomalies of modern American life encountered by many of Chinese descent who grow up in America into the context of the old ways.

1000 Pieces of Gold, Ruthanne Lum McCunn, 1981. A true story of triumph over extraordinary hardship suffered by a young girl sold into sexual slavery in 19th century China, to a gang of Chinese bandits, then into a brothel. Transported into the American wild west by a slave merchant, she is auctioned to a saloonkeeper, and antied up in a poker game won by Charley Bemis. The irony of the title is bitter - 1000 pieces of gold, ch'ien-chin hsiao-chieh 千金小姐, was originally a Chinese endearment for the unmarried daughters of the rich that came to mean any unmarried girl, who in practice were maimed, sold into marriage, concubinage, or slavery, or drowned. “Granted, the writing is simple and spare, but it does not purport to be a work of great literature. Instead, it is a simple re-telling (if fictionalized) of a brave Chinese/Mongolian woman, a stranger in a strange land [comment by wild-one on Amazon review].”

 Transcendent Western Writers about China

House of Earth, Pearl S. Buck. House of Earth is the title of Buck’s trilogy of life in rural China: The Good Earth, Sons, and A House Divided. Her style is simple and straightforward, almost biblical in places, which works well enough for stories set on farms and in the countryside, and her characters are individuals and the China around them is viewed through their eyes. Buck's portrayal of Chinese, and especially Chinese women, was regarded as a significant departure from the way they were depicted by American writers up to that time. This is less surprising considering that she grew up in China, spoke the language and, when she returned to China after graduating from college, and married agricultural expert John Lossing Buck, she spent the next five years traipsing about the countryside meeting Chinese farm families. She won the Pulitzer in 1932, and the Nobel for Literature in 1938.

The Good Earth, 1931. “It was Wang Lung’s marriage day.” Thus begins a classic novel of China revered for generations that tells of an honest farmer Wang Lung and his patient wife Olan and their life on the land. They raise sons and daughters, but drought and famine force them to sell everything except the land and their house and move to the city. Wang Lung pulls a rickshaw while Olan and the children beg in the streets. Riots break out and a mob sweeps Wang Lung into a rich man's house where he robs the owner of all his money. Wang Lung takes his family back home and they resume farming and even hire hands to work the land. Wang Lung prospers, sends his sons to school, and buys a concubine. Still, there is no peace for the old man, when Olan dies and his sons argue about selling the land.

Sons, 1932. The Wang Lung family saga continues after his death with the fate of his three sons, Wang the Landlord, Wang the Merchant, and Wang the Tiger, who has returned a soldier in a warlord army. Rather than pass on the land to the eldest son and keep it together, the land is divided between the three sons, which begins the dissipation of their inheritance. After selling his portion, Wang the Tiger goes off to war, builds his own army, and fights against other warlords for local control. As his own son Wang Yuan grows, Wang the Tiger prepares him to take command of the warlord army despite the son’s preference for farming the land. The son goes off for military training, but returns a soldier of a revolutionary army determined to wipe out all the warlords.

A House Divided, 1935. Wang Yuan, son of Wang the Tiger, returns to his grandfather’s old house of earth, t’u-fang 土房 , however the local farmers are afraid to allow him hide there. He returns home, then flees to his sister on the coast to avoid an arranged marriage. Wang Yuan settles down and starts classes in agriculture, which ironically take him out into the fields to learn from farmers what his grandfather could of taught him – and comes full circle. Revolution interferes, however, and Wang Yuan is arrested, his family pays to get him released, and he leaves for America. He continues his studies, flirts with romance, and six years later returns to a China still embroiled civil war. Through the many difficulties that follow, Wang Yuan’s longing to return to the old house of earth never wanes.

Imperial Woman, Pearl S. Buck, 1956. “The Empress Dowager…is the central figure of this enthralling biographical novel…. China, knew her as a figure of awe, virtually a goddess, and [Buck] has here told the story-book tale of her life, from concubine to one of the world’s most powerful and terrifying figures. …Tzu Hsi, concubine of the third rank, ambitious, beautiful, intelligent far beyond her time. She loved one man only, Jung Lu, a cousin to whom she was plighted at the time she was chosen for the weakling emperor. But once within the palace, the lust for power became her controlling guide, and nothing was allowed to divert her. Pearl Buck has embroidered her story with glamorous details of the aspects of the life of the fabulous court. She has drawn a wholly credible picture of the rivalries, and the plots that constantly threatened the Dragon Throne. …she never loses sight of Tzu Hsi in all her moods, in her brilliance and cruelty and ruthlessness, in her growing hate for the foreigners…[Kirkus Reviews].”

Some other titles by Pearl S. Buck

Peony
Kinfolk
The Mother
Dragon Seed
Pavilion of Women
East Wing, West Wind
The Three Daughters of Madame Liangs

The Judge Dee mysteries, Robert van Gulik. These novels are a subcategory of historical fiction – “historical whodunits.” Van Gulik was a Dutch orientalist and diplomat who, during WWII, served with the Dutch mission to the Nationalist government in Chungking, where he began translating the 18th-century Chinese novel Dee Goong An狄公案, about a T'ang Dynasty detective Ti Ren-chieh. Van Gulik married a Chinese of the imperial line, had four children, and after the war lived four years in Japan, where he started writing tales about Judge Dee. The fictional Judge Dee was based on the historical figure Ti Ren-chieh of the novel Dee Gong An, and van Gulik developed a mystery formula in which the judge solved several cases in one novel and generally avoided supernatural features common in novels of the period that the author thought might confuse Western readers. The judge’s clerk Sergeant Hoong originally assisted the judge in Holmes-Watson fashion, but as the novels progressed, the judge converted various criminals who became his followers and brought their nefarious skills to bear on solving cases.

The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, 1948. There are three cases in this book. The first might be called The Double Murder at Dawn. The case describes the hazardous life of the traveling silk merchant and the murder, which is committed to gain wealth. The second is The Strange Corpse, which takes place in a small village, a crime of passion, which proves hard to solve. The criminal is a very determined woman. The third case The Poisoned Bride contains the murder of the daughter of a local scholar who marries the son of the former administrator of the district. This case contains a surprising twist in its solution. All three cases are solved by Judge Dee, the district magistrate - detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury all wrapped up into one person [Wikipedia].

The Chinese Bell Murders, 1958. Judge Dee is a newly appointed magistrate to the town of Poo-yang. He has one case left over from the previous judge, a brutal rape-murder of a woman called Pure Jade. She was the daughter of a local butcher named Hsai who lived on Half Moon Street. The girl's lover stands accused but Judge Dee senses something in the case is not right, so he sets out, with his aids, to find the real murderer. He also has to wrestle with the problem of Buddhist Temple of Boundless Mercy, run by the abbot called "Spiritual Virtue." Rumor has it that the monks, who can cure barren women, are not as virtuous as they seem [Wikipedia].

Some other titles by Robert van Gulik

The Chinese Lake Murders
The Chinese Nail Murders
The Haunted Monastery
The Chinese Gold Murders
The Red Pavilion
Poets and Murder
Murder in Canton
Judge Dee at Work
The Willow Pattern
The Lacquer Screen
The Emperor’s pearl
Necklace and Calabash
The Monkey and the Tiger
The Chinese Maze Murders
The Phantom of the Temple

About the author of this post, James Lande

Marg suggested I post in the “Why do I love…” section. So, why do I love historical fiction about China? Well, first of all, because that’s what I write and publish – let’s get that out of the way now. Sometime in the long lost past I decided “okay, let’s write about China,” and my first real effort was in 1970 when, at the age of 25, I returned to China to write The Cinnabar Phoenix (stop googling – it was never finished). I had a decent command of Chinese and some time on station in China, and still accepted with little qualification the imperative of my high school English teacher Mrs Jane Roy that I should be a writer. Since then I’ve been hacking away at it, for longer than I should have to admit, and have never got the Monkey off my back (Monkey is the title of a classic Chinese novel). Ultimately, my own experience led me to choose writing about the encounter, sometimes the clash, between Americans and Chinese.

Along the way, I have read quite a few novels about China and, as I believe them to be underrepresented in American forums of historical fiction, I’ve wriggled into Historical Tapestry on the pretext that I can introduce some interesting titles to this readership.

My own novel about China I call Yankee Mandarin and I blog at the Writer’s Corner of the Old China Books book blog.

Thursday Threads - Reading in Translation

Today I thought I would ask questions about historical fiction in translation. There are two reasons for this. One is that I went to see an exhibition about Napoleon a couple of weeks ago and that had me wondering how Napoleon would be being portrayed in French historical fiction, and that then lead me to wondering about other important historical figures and how they might be being presented in fiction in their own countries. The other reason I ask is that I am pre-empting a guest post that is coming up at HT in a couple of days.

Do you read historical fiction in translation from another language? If yes, do you have favourites that you could recommend? Is there a particular figure in history that you would like to read about from different nationalities perspectives?

Lets talk historical fiction in translation!


Marg: I have a couple of books here that I want to read, most notably The Time in Between by Maria Duenas. One series that I have read and enjoyed, and really need to get back to is the Angelique series by Sergeanne Golon. I think I am up to book 5 or 6 but it has been a little while since I last read one! I am a bit concerned that I am going to get to the last book that has been translated into English and know that there are still a few books that haven't yet been translated.

Kelly: I was thinking I didn't have an answer to this question, but then it dawned on me: Isabel Allende. Her books are not all historical fiction, but she has a few and I really enjoy her. I get on these kicks where I read a historical fiction book and then I want to read everything I can on the subject. Unfortunately, I never seem to find the time for it!

That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott

Bobby Wabalanginy never learned fear, not until he was pretty well a grown man. Sure, he grew up doing the Dead Man Dance, but with him it was a dance of life, a lively dance for people to do together...


Told through the eyes of black and white, young and old, this is a story about a fledgling Western Australian community in the early 1800s known as the 'friendly frontier'.


Poetic, warm-hearted and bold, it is a story which shows that first contact did not have to lead to war.


It is a story for our times.

Some times, as a reader, I need a bit of a push to read a specific book. Usually, this happens with books that I wanted enough to buy but then I struggle to fit it in between library reads and review copies.

So it was with this book.  I bought it last year when I attended a Melbourne Writers Festival session which featured the author, Kim Scott, along with a couple of other authors talking about writing books from the indigenous perspective. In this case, Kim Scott is an indigenous Australian, a member of the Noongar tribe which originates in the far south western corner of Western Australia.

As soon as Lisa from ANZ Litlovers announced that she was going to run the Indigenous Literature Week this week (to coincide with NAIDOC week) I knew that this was the book that I was finally going to read! (NAIDOC originally stood for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee although now it is more the name of the week than an acronym for something else).

Was the wait to read it worth it? I would have to say yes, but there is a bit of a disclaimer, but I will get to that in due course.

This novel asks a very simple question. What if, at first contact between native Australians and the British colonisers, things were different? What if the two groups worked together with mutual benefit, rather than be a story of domination and destruction? What if true friendship could be formed between the two groups, and by extension what lessons could we possibly take from this example today?

Of course, all those what ifs are coloured by the truth of what was, and that truth is not denied in any way, but for a while there it seems as though the colonisers and the representatives of the Noongar people might have been able to find a way.

The pivotal character of the book is Bobby Wabalanginy and he in effect performs the role of guide to the reader. At various times throughout the novel he is equally at home with his tribe and also within the homes of the British who have come to colonise the area around King George Sound, which is near  current day Albany. Bobby has a special affinity with the whales that follow their migration through the sees nearby, and also a special ability as a storyteller and to mimic those around them, both in voice and in dance. We see Bobby as both a young boy telling of his life now, but also as an old man looking back through time. Far from being a conduit between the two cultures, as an old man Bobby is something of an oddity, telling his fascinating story to anyone who would listen - in effect he was a tourist attraction.

Whilst Bobby is our guide, he is not the only voice that we get to here in the pages of this book. We meet Dr Cross, one of the first men to make the trek to the area with the hope of starting a new settlement. The good doctor is keen to foster good relationship with the locals and initially it seems that will be possible. He takes Bobby under his wing, but he is not a well man.

Following in his footsteps are the ambitious Mr Chaine  (and his family) who has high hopes of making his fortune by catering to the needs of the American whaling ships that flock to the area for the annual harvest of whale oil, Mr Skelly the soon to be ex convict, Sargeant Killam, Jak Tar the sailor who escapes from one of the ships, and the Governor who comes with very set ideas on how the native issues should be resolved.

It may sound as though the focus is purely on the Aboriginal experience, but Scott doesn't back away from the hardships that the white settlers face

The narrative is both straight forward and yet somewhat convoluted thanks to the way that the book is structured. Part 1 is set in 1833 to 1835 whereas part 2 tells of the events that occurred in 1826 to 1830 but this section is told to us by old man Bobby looking back through the years. We are then back in 1836 to 1838 for Part 3 and 1841 to 1844 in Part 4. Even within those parts there are flashbacks and past questions answered. And yet, overall, at the end of the book, the story felt quite straight forward and linear. That doesn't always happen when an author plays with the concepts of time in their storytelling.

One of the things about this book is that it did challenge me, it did make me work for the pay off. There are lots of sections where the language is beautiful and yet other sections where there was repetition of phrases which becomes very obvious as I was reading. There was also a lot of information in the book about the process of whaling as it was performed in the 1800s. Not something that modern readers would necessary be comfortable with, but certainly that aspect fitted within the historical context of the time.

One of the most poignant passages in the book is one that I shared in my Tuesday Teaser post recently:

Me and my people... My people and I (he winked) are not so good traders as we thought. We thought making friends was the best thing, and never knew that when we took your flour and sugar and tea and blankets that we'd lose everything of ours.. We learned your words and songs and stories, and never knew you didn't want to hear ours....

Later in the book as the narrative wends it's way to the inevitable truths that we know of the relationship between the two groups, the observation is made about how the white man has taken everything from the Noongar: their food, the watering holes have been destroyed by introduced stock, their freedom. And yet the whites punish the natives if they try to take the food etc that they so badly need. Even though it is the story that we know, it was a very powerful section to read.

Whilst Scott makes it clear in his notes that this story is fiction, he does acknowledge that there is evidence to suggest that this idea of cooperation between the Noongar people and the white settlers did happen.

This book won the prestigious Miles Franklin Award in 2011 amongst many other prizes, and without having read the other shortlisted books, it does seem like a worthy winner to me. By focusing on the indigenous experience, Kim Scott gave me a fresh perspective on a story that seems so familiar to most Australians. It is a story that needed to be told.

I am glad that participating in ANZLitlovers Indigenous Literature Week has finally given me the nudge that I needed to actually read this book! I definitely intend to read more from Mr Scott in the future.

Rating 4/5