Historical fiction – Page 3 – Cristina Sanders' blog

Ingenious Pain – book review

Ingenious Pain, by Andrew Miller

This book was recommended by a good reader to me, one with a shared love of historical fiction. It’s by Andrew Miller, who later wrote the fabulous but misnamed Pure about the stink of a cemetery in Paris in 1785, which I thoroughly recommend for a wallow in atmospheric history. Ingenious Pain not so much. There are flashes of writing that evoke time and place brilliantly, like: “Candlemas, 1767. The streets perfumed with coal smoke and frost, the night sky richly hammered with stars.” Perfect. A whole description in fifteen words. But these word-riches are not as frequently distributed as in Pure, and don’t flow as easily. I will still recommend Ingenious Pain, but if you’re only going to read one Miller, make it Pure, for sure.

English Passengers – book review

English Passengers, by Matthew Kneale

This novel, like most colonial fiction stories told in the last 25 years, looks back at history and describes why the English should feel abhorrence and shame. I found the story interesting – the premise of a group of miss-matched individuals on a voyage to Tasmania and back is a good hook for me – but there was something here I found a bit off, and I’m trying to put my finger on it. I think, to me, it seemed the author, for all he researched events and geography well, was an outsider. He wasn’t wholly present in the period or the location. Perhaps we have woken up since it was published in 2000. I hesitate to use the word ‘flippant’ but it did feel the purpose of the story was to entertain us with the terrible things those crazy colonials did back in the day rather than explore something more nuanced: how these potentially good men could be so blind, perhaps; or what these psychologies meant to the people there, on the ground. The Aboriginal part of the story is told in first person by a boy whose mother is taken, chained and raped by an Englishman and the boy is blond. I’m not sure I trust Kneale’s telling of his voice and culture; I was always aware of the English pen behind the voice as I read, and I cringed, occasionally.

This Other Eden – book review

This Other Eden, by Paul Harding

Such an interesting book, such a dive into the lives of people ostensibly at the very bottom of the pile. The story has its roots at the end of the 1700s, when Apple Island is settled by an escaped slave called Benjamin Honey, and his Irish wife. A hundred years later their descendants and a smattering of other (often a bit too closely) related families still shamble through their lives in this place. They’re a stone’s throw from the coast of Maine, close enough that they can forage on the mainland but, in the eyes of the mainlanders, who consider the islanders an inbred, mixed-race of starving, ignorant, degenerate squatters, they’re too close for comfort. The islanders are an amorphous blight, a problem in need of some kind of resolution. We learn that each islander is, of course, an individual, with different wants and needs and talents.

The Witching Tide – book review

The Witching Tide, by Margaret Meyer

I thought I’d jump in to the controversy about this book. I read it, not because I like books about witches, but because it got so badly trashed on Nine-to Noon (as reported here) in “the meanest book review of all times,” by Sonja de Friez. Wow. Elsewhere, Sue Reidy says: “The Witching Tide combines meticulous research with a dramatic and memorable story. A dazzling debut.”
So, who is right?

By the Green of the Spring – book review

By the Green of the Spring, by Paddy Richardson

A much anticipated sequel to Through the Lonesome Dark, By the Green of the Spring takes our three young people: Otto, Clem and Pansy on with the lives that hung in a troubling denouement at the end of the first book. There is also Lena, Pansy’s daughter, who takes up the story of her parents’ lives through a child’s eyes.

Iris and Me – book review

Iris and Me, by Philippa Werry

This is a terrific story about a tenacious woman who, in the 1930s, leaves New Zealand with no support and very little cash and reports on a war in China. It’s intelligent young adult fiction (though I don’t qualify as either and I loved it). Despite speaking no Chinese language, having no official capacity, being slightly lame and needing a walking stick, Iris gets right to the front-line and writes on the conditions she finds there. This is Iris Wilkinson, pen name Robin Hyde, who was a New Zealand poet, journalist and novelist. I knew her from her books; I read The Godwits Fly recently, but I had no idea she was such an audacious traveller as well.

Ockhams Digital Sampler

The four finalists of the Jan Medlicott Acorn prize for fiction.

It is such a privilege to be on this year’s Ockham shortlist, along with Michael Bennett, Catherine Chidgey and Monty Soutar. It’s a very happy period, these weeks between the shortlist and the announcement of the winner, which will be on May 17th at the Auckland Writers’ Festival. A girl can dream!

Here is the Ockham Sampler, where you get to read an extract from each of the books for free. If you like what you read, please head to your nearest bookshop and buy the book. Not sure about the others, but I’m saving for a gold frock.

Ockhams Digital Sampler Download

Kāwai – book review

Kawai, by Monty Soutar

We seem to have been waiting such a long time for this book. Kāwai is truly groundbreaking and I hope that it clears the way for more stories in this historical and cultural setting. So what’s the big deal with Kāwai and why has it been so phenomenally successful?

Firstly, no one has published such an epic saga of Māori life before, and the timing now is impeccable. It seems Soutar has been coming all his life to be writing this story now (for such a time as this), when not only does he have the necessary contacts and learning and experience, but there is an audience with a huge appetite for stories and discussions of our history and people. Just look at how the bestsellers lists over the past three or four years have been dominated by things Māori. We’re open and primed for a big, readable Māori story that would have been unthinkable twenty, even ten years ago. And here it is and it’s fascinating.

The Marriage Portrait–book review

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

It is Renaissance Florence, and Lucrezia de’ Medici is married off at the age of 13 to Alfonso, 23, the dashing, wealthy Duke of Ferrara. She’d met him once, when he was engaged to her older sister and he passed her on a walk. Their eyes met and they both felt cupid’s arrow. When the sister dies, Lucrezia gets the call.

The plot line and characters sound straight out of some Mills-and-Boon-type romance but the comparison ends there. This is a superbly written novel with gloriously textured descriptions and some pretty luscious history, and the hate him/love him of popular romance is reversed; the sweet romancer turning into a chilling murderer. The child bride can’t make sense of her husband, the dashing Duke Alfonzo who is intuitive and caring to Lucrezia one minute, and brutally cruel the next. The family needs an heir – as they always do, without ever having a plan B – and Alfonzo takes to his task with dedication. Gentle and caring at first, and then not so much. He is fighting to maintain his throne and his family is part of the power play.

Through the Lonesome Dark–book review

Through the Lonseome Dark, by Paddy Richardson

It’s the early 1900s and Pansy is living poor on the West Coast in Blackball, which apparently is a charming town these days. Pansy’s a smart kid. Smarter than her pa. Today you’d hope this would be a positive thing and she would be given every opportunity to make use of her talents, to be educated and offered the chances that would help a small town girl rise to fulfill her potential. You’d hope that someone would notice the bruising on her face and not turn away.

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