East of The Sun by Julia Gregson

Summer 1928. The Kaiser-i-Hind is en route to Bombay. In Cabin D38, Viva Holloway, an inexperienced chaperone, is worried she's made a terrible mistake. Her advert in The Lady has resulted in three unsettling charges to be escorted to India.

Rose, a beautiful, dangerously naive English girl, is about to be married to the cavalry officer she has met only a handful of times. Victoria, her bridesmaid, is determined to lose her virginity on the journey, before finding a husband of her own in India. And overshadowing all three of them, the malevolent presence of Guy Glover, a strange and disturbed schoolboy.

Three potential Memsahibs with a myriad of reasons for leaving England, but the cargo of hopes and secrets they carry has done little to prepare them for what lies ahead.

From the parties of the wealthy Bombay socialites to the poverty of the orphans on Tamarind Street, East of the Sun is everything a historical novel should be: alive with glorious detail, fascinating characters and masterful storytelling.

This book was recommended to me a while back by both Marg and Alex. When I found a copy I immediately decided I had to take it home with me and so I did. Unfortunately I didn't chose the best of times to read it, this was the last book I read before being admitted to the hospital to have the twins so my mind was frequently elsewhere.

Having said that I have to confess that to me reading this book was not the joyous experience I was expecting after reading Marg's review. It might be my mood at the time or just that the writing didn't move me but I felt no empathy for any of the characters and if I am not interested in the characters I always have to struggle to finish it.

What interested me the most was the image of India, How the end of the British rule was fast coming to an end and not all the characters were aware that their lives would forcibly have to change. It's with a fast changing world that the three female characters - Viva, Rose and Tor - are confronted and each reacts in its own way, considering their own situations. Viva is returning to confront her past, Rose to marry a man she saw just a handful of times and Tor is determined to snatch a husband. They'll come out of the experience changed and stronger. Viva, especially, has a particularly dificult situation has she has to deal with a mentally unstable young man that she is also chaperoning on the way to India.

It left me curious about other books set in India and I'll have to go check my TBR pile and see what's there.

Now for a more appreciative review here's what Marg says:

Normally when I see a book mentioned somewhere and it prompts me to add it to my TBR list, I try to write it down on my list, so that I can thank the person who recommended the read. For some reason, when I added this book to my list I didn't do it, and it's a real shame, because I would love to say a hearty THANK YOU to whoever it was.

The book opens with Viva Holloway. She is a young woman with great spirit, great secrets, but unfortunately not great means. She spent many of her formative years in India before she was sent back to school in the UK, and now she longs to return to India - ostensibly to take ownership of a trunk of her dead parents possessions that is being held in trust for her by an old family friend. It does also give her a chance to run away from a disastrous love affair.

The only way she can get to India though is to act as a chaperone to three young people. Rose is on her way to India to get married to a dashing soldier by the name of Jack. She has only met him a few times, but she is excitedly planning a life with him, having no real idea about life in India or about what to expect from marriage, especially as a soldiers wife. Accompanying her is her friend Victoria, known to everyone as Tor, who is going to be her bridesmaid, and hopefully to find herself a husband whilst she is at it. The third person that Viva has to chaperone is a young man of 16 years age called Guy Glover, who has been dismissed from his English school and is returning back to India to be with his parents.

From the start it is clear that there are going to be issues, and so it proves to be. Whilst it is not all plain sailing (sorry, bad pun!), we are also given a glimpse into the life of board for young ladies of the day as they attend parties, make new friends, stop off in Port Said and do a quick trip to Cairo, as the weather warms up and they all sleep on deck - men on one side and women on the other thank you very much.

The journeys that our characters take are very much individual. Along the way we meet up with the rich and bored memsahibs who are only interested in their own lives, the early days of marriage to a stranger for Rose, the search for a husband for the less than confident Tor, and for Viva, a life where she is struggling to make ends meet and therefore has to take up work in a local orphanage and therefore gets to see first hand the poverty, the joy and the conflicts amongst the locals. For those days in India are leading up to the end of British Colonial rule and therefore it is not all swigging G and T's at the club for those people who have chosen to make their lives in a far off land.

There is a great joy in the reading of this book. It's not great literature, but there are times when what you want is an absorbing read that you can get lost in, as opposed to something that you have to think really hard about all the time! There are a few times when the narrative loses a little bit of smoothness, but I was fully invested in the characters, in the setting and in the story and so it didn't really bother me at all.

Reading this book also made me think about my grandmother's life. She made the journey from the UK in the 1930s, not to India, but to Australia. I am pretty sure that she travelled with her family and not as a single woman, but we have talked a bit before about getting off the boat in Egypt. One time when I was at her house, she even got out some things that she had kept from the boat trip over - including a few menus and things. It's fair to say that the food that we eat today has changed a lot from what was served up in those days. If it wasn't for the fact that I live so far away from her, I would have been around to her house to look through all that information again!

This book is apparently one of Richard and Judy's Summer Reads (a big deal in the UK - somewhat similar to getting chosen to be a Oprah book club book) and doesn't seem to have been released in places like the US yet, but I am really glad that my library had it. I have now requested this author's first book, called The Water Horse, and I am very much looking forward to reading it. Another book that I remember reading which featured a similar story about travelling by ship to a different life that I enjoyed was Jojo Moyes' Ship of Brides.

A very interesting read, set in a very interesting location in very interesting times, and a joy to read.

If you are interested in hearing a little more from the author, there is an interview with her posted at The Book Depository. Click here to read it!

Band of Angels winners

Thank you to everyone who entered our giveaway of Band of Angels by Julia Gregson. I am pleased to announce that the winners are:


Michelle from The True Book Addict
Mystica
almybnenr


If all the winners could please email their postal details to us at historical.tapestry@gmail.com we will pass your details on and get your prize on it's way to you.

Thanks also to Simon and Schuster for this giveaway.

Julia Gregson on Why I Love a Bolter! **includes a giveaway**

I’ve always loved a bolter- Nancy Mitford’s perfect description of women who make a dash for it. But strangely enough, until I was asked to write this blog, it had not occurred to me that all of my heroines are, without exception, bolters, or traveling women-- either in the direction of a new job, or a new life, a new country or some unsuitable adventure in a stranger’s arms.

The reasons why I am drawn to such women wouldn’t take long on the analyst’s couch. I was an air force brat.

When I was a child, I changed friends, schools, houses, and often countries every two and a half years. As children do, I accepted this as normal, and if I was emotionally scarred by it, I’m not aware of it, but what it does mean is that certain restlessness is bred in the bone.

Which is why I love writing historical fiction: it gives me a perfect grown up excuse to scratch that itch periodically - roughly every two years come to think of it.

My first book, The Water Horse, published in the U.S. under the title: Band of Angels, is a fictionalized account of the life of a woman called Jane Evans. She lived in a tiny town in Wales called Pumpsaint and, in 1853, ran away from home with some Welsh cattle drovers in order to join Florence Nightingale and her nurses in Scutari.

When I first found Jane Evans- on a small plaque outside a windswept church in Pumpsaint- I felt a tingling in my scalp. I’d found my book and it was a traveling book!

At first I planned a biography, but quickly realized that as most of the nurses were illiterate, that would be next to impossible. This led to what felt like my own leap into the unknown- a novel.

The first part of this journey involved a horse. In Wales, where I live, the mountains and valleys are criss- crossed by wide green grassy tracks which were once the only way to transport, cattle, sheep and even geese (with their feet tarred and shod) to the meat markets of England. Outside our farmhouse, at the end of our path, there are the two huge pine trees that used to signal to drovers that they and their animals were welcome to stay here for the night.

I rode with an amateur historian and passionate horsewoman, Daphne Tilley, who leant me her own retired show jumper, Fred. I wanted to imagine what it would feel like to be Jane Evans and ride for miles and miles across Wales.

It was one of the best weeks of my life. It was tiring, yes, occasionally scary- at one point, crossing the Snowdon Mountains, Fred and I nearly fell off the side of a cliff when an electrical cable collapsed onto him and scared him half to death. But mostly it was heaven- perfect summer weather, agreeable companions, picnics in the wild with horses cropping grass nearby, and constant changes of scenery: wild mountains, green tracks, the sea.

There is something incredibly soothing too about the rocking rhythm of a horse, which takes you out of ordinary time, gives you space to dream and think.

The next trip for the same book was to Istanbul, this time with my 81-year-old mother, another one with itchy feet. There, we took a ferry across the Bosporus, to explore the gaunt looking naval barracks that was once the hospital where Florence Nightingale and her nurses lived.

An armed guard agreed to take me up to what was once Nightingale’s bedroom. This room with its green velvet chaise longue, its desk neatly arranged with bottle of ink, note book, dip pens, felt almost spookily alive for me- she might almost have nipped out in a hurry to supervise the making of beef jelly, or some fortifying tea.

That night, to check out another scene in the book, my mother and I left our modest hotel for drinks at what was once considered the poshest hotel in Istanbul – The Pera Palace.

This was the hotel where passengers off the Orient Express used to sip champagne, where Mata Hari and Rita Hayworth stayed, and where Agatha Christie went to lick her wounds after hearing of her husband’s infidelity. For reasons I can’t remember now, we ended up at a Turkish wedding in the main ballroom, where there was a riotous band and we were taught to dance Turkish style and drank raki the local tipple.

My second book, East of the Sun, was another good excuse for bolting, now officially called research. This time my husband and I went north to Rajasthan, where we took the tiny little Noddy and Big Ears train up the foothills of the Himalayas to Simla. The second time, I went on my own to Mumbai (Bombay), and then to an ashram near Poona. In Poona, I went to see the hospital where my husband was born. (His father was in the Indian cavalry).

In Delhi, I explored the old cantonments where the British lived; I went to a shabby shop to talk to a beaming old man called Tailor Ram. When I asked him if he remembered his British clients, he produced for me in a cloud of cloud of dust an old pattern book full of measurements and orders for jodhpurs and shark skin dinner jackets, and morning suits, made for the British Sahibs. These are the moments that give you the kind of tingle you’ll never get in a library. You have to go, or at least I do- the travel is the treat, the carrot and the perfect excuse for catching a bolting heroine.

Julia Gregson’s BAND OF ANGELS (Touchstone / Simon & Schuster)
is available May 18, 2010

You can find out more about Julia at her website, read her blog, or follow her on Twitter.

****************

Giveaway Details

Thanks to the author and Touchstone/Fireside (part of Simon and Schuster), we are very pleased to have 3 copies of Band of Angels to give away to our US based readers.

- the giveaway is open to US residents only
- only one entry per person
- please leave us a valid email adress
- open until the 28th May 2010 midnight GMT


Three winners will be choosed randomly using random.org and their names and addresses will be sent to the publisher who will ship the books directly to them. Good luck to everyone!

HT News

I've been a bit busy this week, but there has been some news! I'm just late posting it!

Julia Gregson's East of the Sun has won the Romantic Novel of the Year award. This award is hosted by the Romantic Novelists Associatioin, and was announced in London this week.

I have read this book and really enjoyed it. I have subsequently read the authors first book, which was called The Water Horse and really enjoyed that one as well!

It's fair to say that I will definitely be watching out for Ms Gregson's next book!

East of the Sun by Julia Gregson

Summer 1928. The Kaiser-i-Hind is en route to Bombay. In Cabin D38, Viva Holloway, an inexperienced chaperone, is worried she's made a terrible mistake. Her advert in The Lady has resulted in three unsettling charges to be escorted to India.

Rose, a beautiful, dangerously naive English girl, is about to be married to the cavalry officer she has met only a handful of times. Victoria, her bridesmaid, is determined to lose her virginity on the journey, before finding a husband of her own in India. And overshadowing all three of them, the malevolent presence of Guy Glover, a strange and disturbed schoolboy.

Three potential Memsahibs with a myriad of reasons for leaving England, but the cargo of hopes and secrets they carry has done little to prepare them for what lies ahead.

From the parties of the wealthy Bombay socialites to the poverty of the orphans on Tamarind Street, East of the Sun is everything a historical novel should be: alive with glorious detail, fascinating characters and masterful storytelling.

Normally when I see a book mentioned somewhere and it prompts me to add it to my TBR list, I try to write it down on my list, so that I can thank the person who recommended the read. For some reason, when I added this book to my list I didn't do it, and it's a real shame, because I would love to say a hearty THANK YOU to whoever it was.

The book opens with Viva Holloway. She is a young woman with great spirit, great secrets, but unfortunately not great means. She spent many of her formative years in India before she was sent back to school in the UK, and now she longs to return to India - ostensibly to take ownership of a trunk of her dead parents possessions that is being held in trust for her by an old family friend. It does also give her a chance to run away from a disastrous love affair.

The only way she can get to India though is to act as a chaperone to three young people. Rose is on her way to India to get married to a dashing soldier by the name of Jack. She has only met him a few times, but she is excitedly planning a life with him, having no real idea about life in India or about what to expect from marriage, especially as a soldiers wife. Accompanying her is her friend Victoria, known to everyone as Tor, who is going to be her bridesmaid, and hopefully to find herself a husband whilst she is at it. The third person that Viva has to chaperone is a young man of 16 years age called Guy Glover, who has been dismissed from his English school and is returning back to India to be with his parents.

From the start it is clear that there are going to be issues, and so it proves to be. Whilst it is not all plain sailing (sorry, bad pun!), we are also given a glimpse into the life of board for young ladies of the day as they attend parties, make new friends, stop off in Port Said and do a quick trip to Cairo, as the weather warms up and they all sleep on deck - men on one side and women on the other thank you very much.

The journeys that our characters take are very much individual. Along the way we meet up with the rich and bored memsahibs who are only interested in their own lives, the early days of marriage to a stranger for Rose, the search for a husband for the less than confident Tor, and for Viva, a life where she is struggling to make ends meet and therefore has to take up work in a local orphanage and therefore gets to see first hand the poverty, the joy and the conflicts amongst the locals. For those days in India are leading up to the end of British Colonial rule and therefore it is not all swigging G and T's at the club for those people who have chosen to make their lives in a far off land.

There is a great joy in the reading of this book. It's not great literature, but there are times when what you want is an absorbing read that you can get lost in, as opposed to something that you have to think really hard about all the time! There are a few times when the narrative loses a little bit of smoothness, but I was fully invested in the characters, in the setting and in the story and so it didn't really bother me at all.

Reading this book also made me think about my grandmother's life. She made the journey from the UK in the 1930s, not to India, but to Australia. I am pretty sure that she travelled with her family and not as a single woman, but we have talked a bit before about getting off the boat in Egypt. One time when I was at her house, she even got out some things that she had kept from the boat trip over - including a few menus and things. It's fair to say that the food that we eat today has changed a lot from what was served up in those days. If it wasn't for the fact that I live so far away from her, I would have been around to her house to look through all that information again!

This book is apparently one of Richard and Judy's Summer Reads (a big deal in the UK - somewhat similar to getting chosen to be a Oprah book club book) and doesn't seem to have been released in places like the US yet, but I am really glad that my library had it. I have now requested this author's first book, called The Water Horse, and I am very much looking forward to reading it. Another book that I remember reading which featured a similar story about travelling by ship to a different life that I enjoyed was Jojo Moyes' Ship of Brides.

A very interesting read, set in a very interesting location in very interesting times, and a joy to read.


If you are interested in hearing a little more from the author, there is an interview with her posted at The Book Depository. Click here to read it!