Top 10 Books 2013

Here's my Top 10 list for the year. It's a mix of fiction & non fiction but it represents all the genres & subjects I'm interested in - history, 19th & 20th century fiction as well as a couple of brand new novels. The books are in no particular order, just as I thought of them or as they leapt out at me as I looked back through my reading list for the year.

I love writing this post every year. It takes me ages as I go back to my reviews & read all your lovely comments & remember the experience of reading the books again. It leaves me feeling happy & excited about the reading year to come. The links are to my original reviews.

The Secret History by Catherine Bailey. A book about family secrets & lies & an absorbing story of literary research & detection.

Fenny by Lettice Cooper. The story of a young woman whose life is changed forever by moving to Italy in the 1930s.

Plotting for Grown-ups by Sue Hepworth. I'm also including Plotting for Beginners (written with Jane Linfoot) here as well as I read both books in about a fortnight. Sally Howe is a writer living in the Peak District, coping with a disintegrating marriage & a new love, wayward children & the trials of self-publishing her new novel. I loved Sally's voice which is funny, witty & so observant about the life of an older woman assailed by family & friends who just wants to be able to watch Neighbours in peace.

Henry Dunbar by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. I didn't read nearly enough sensation fiction this year but this was a book I chose for my 19th century bookgroup & I loved it. A story about betrayal, murder, money & relationships between fathers & daughters. My excellent Victorian Secrets edition included a comprehensive Introduction & some fascinating contemporary reviews.

The Deliverance by Ellen Glasgow. A Gothic family saga with overtones of Wuthering Heights, set in the American South after the Civil War. Another excellent choice from my 19th century bookgroup.

Wounded by Emily Mayhew. There will be many books published over the next few years about WWI as the anniversaries of that conflict begin. I don't think there will be many that are as moving as this one. It's the personal stories of the wounded & those who care for them, from the front line to the hospitals back home in Britain.

The Ashgrove by Diney Costeloe. A beautifully written novel about remembrance & a shocking story of injustice set in the present & during WWI. I still have the sequel, Death's Dark Vale, to look forward to.

The Firebird by Susanna Kearsley. I love Kearsley's novels but this one was completely involving. A sequel of sorts to my two favourite books of hers - The Shadowy Horses & The Winter Sea, the story moves from the present to the past, from Scotland to Russia & I was completely absorbed in the story & the characters.

Heat Lightning by Helen Hull is my Persephone of the year. The story of a woman who returns to her family home in Michigan during a hot summer to work out what she wants from her life & her marriage. A completely absorbing family saga, reminiscent of Dorothy Whipple.

Tudor by Leanda de Lisle. I've read many books about the Tudors but in this excellent account, Leanda de Lisle focuses on some of the forgotten people in the story, often women. Most interestingly, Lady Margaret Douglas, daughter of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots & potential heiress to the throne at different times of the life. A perfect introduction to the Tudor story but also a book with lots to interest those who have read hundreds of books on the period.

I'd also like to mention two audiobooks that I loved this year. I don't usually review audiobooks because I listen in the car & I can't take notes or refer easily back to check names & details. However, there were two standouts for me this year. Clarissa Dickson Wright read her own book, A History of English Food. This was so involving & Clarissa was a perfect traveling companion as she guided me through English food over the centuries with a good bit of history thrown in. Witty & opinionated, I could hardly wait for the next instalment. Bertie by Jane Ridley is the biography of Edward VII. This is a sympathetic but honest book about a man who survived a dreadful childhood & an aimless life as an unemployed prince to become a respected monarch in the final years of his life. Lots of lovely gossip as well & a well-rounded portrait of an interesting man.

Well, there it is. I'll be back tomorrow with a New Year's resolution & I'll look forward to touring the blogs & reading everyone else's Top 10 lists. Happy New Year!

The Secret Rooms - Catherine Bailey

This is a wonderful book but I don't want to tell you anything about it! This could be my shortest ever review. The Secret Rooms is the non-fiction equivalent of A S Byatt's Possession. If you've read Possession you'll know how exciting it was to follow Maud & Roland's research as they pieced together the Victorian love story at the heart of the book. The Secret Rooms has the same feeling of excitement & anticipation as Catherine Bailey researches the mysteries at the heart of her research into a book she had no idea that she would write.

Catherine Bailey received permission to work in the archives at Belvoir Castle, the ancestral home of the Dukes of Rutland. The archives were kept in a series of rooms in the servant's quarters, known as the Muniment Rooms. The ninth duke, John Manners, who died in 1940, had dedicated himself to cataloguing & collecting the records, accounts, letters & diaries of his ancestors & his more immediate family. Bailey planned to write a book about the effect of WWI on the families who worked on the estates of the Duke of Rutland. The eighth Duke, Henry, had been instrumental in encouraging the men from his estates to join the battalions he raised & his son, John, had served with the North Midlands.

The first mystery that Bailey came across was the attitude of the guides & staff to the fact that she was in the Muniment Rooms at all. No one ever went in there, she was told. The ninth Duke died in those rooms in 1940 & they'd been shut up ever since. This was intriguing. Why had John Manners died in the cold, cramped conditions of the Muniment Rooms when he had a whole castle with his own suite of rooms to lie in? John had refused all medical advice, even from the King's own doctor, to leave. He had something he must finish.

Then, Bailey discovered that there were inexplicable gaps in the meticulously kept records. The most unexpected & devastating gap, from the point of view of her book, was that many of the family letters from the First World War were missing. Could they have been misfiled? No, after checking through hundreds of boxes & thousands of letters, the gap was still there. The lack of documentary evidence meant that Bailey was forced to reluctantly give up the book she had planned to write. However, she became fascinated with the life & death of John Manners, the ninth Duke, & this fascination led to the uncovering of family secrets that had lain dormant for over a century.

Bailey discovered two more gaps in the records of the family of Henry, the eighth Duke & his wife, Violet. Something had happened in 1894 & then again, there was a gap in 1909, when John was in Rome in the diplomatic service. The removal of material relating to these three gaps was meticulously done & Bailey comes to the inevitable conclusion that it was John who had removed the letters. Was this what he was doing in the final weeks of his life? Was he desperately trying to ensure that nothing remained to be found?

The Secret Rooms is as unputdownable as any mystery novel. I was enthralled from the very beginning & read 200 pages in a day. Bailey describes the steps of her research, the dead ends & the other archives & libraries she visits to try to fill in the gaps. Her research is frustrating but also immensely rewarding when she finds out another piece of the elaborate jigsaw. At the same time, she paints a fascinating picture of the privileged life of the aristocracy in the late Victorian & Edwardian period. The extreme wealth of the Rutlands couldn't make them a happy family but I can't say any more! You only have to look at the photos in the book to realise that there is some fundamental grief or unhappiness there. John never looks at the camera, always away to the side or down to the ground. All you need to know is that this is a beautifully written & researched book that will have you propping your eyes open so that you can read just one more chapter before you fall asleep. It's a desperately sad story, compellingly told.

Something to look forward to

I've had a very disjointed reading week. After reading three books last week, I haven't finished anything this week at all. I've read five archaeology magazines & this week's instalment of Martin Chuzzlewit. My online reading group is reading Martin in celebration of the Dickens Bicentenary. It took me a while to hit my stride  because the opening chapters are quite verbose, full of characters & none of them very nice. However, the last two weeks have been much more enjoyable. Martin has gone to America with Mark Tapley (this was a ploy by Dickens to increase sagging circulation for the book's magazine publication & I must say it needed something to get things moving!) & back in London, we have met Mrs Gamp at the deathbed of old Anthony Chuzzlewit. I've been longing to meet Mrs Gamp ever since reading Miriam Margolyes's Dickens's Women a couple of months ago. I'm also about to start reading Zola's Germinal with my 19th century book group & I'm looking forward to that.

Then, I started reading Riceyman Steps by Arnold Bennett on my e-reader. I keep reading recently that Arnold Bennett is a much underrated writer. Then, I read Harriet Devine's review of Clayhanger & I remembered that Riceyman Steps had been recommended to me as well so I already had it downloaded & ready to go. Well, it turned out to be a frustrating experience. I was enjoying the book when suddenly the pages started skipping forward at a great rate & then the reader froze. I eventually unfroze it by plugging it in to my PC & I thought all would be well, just a glitch. But, it happened again the next time I sat down to read & only resetting the reader would get it working again. At this stage I was hunting out the receipt for the reader & muttering that this sort of thing never happened with a REAL book. Then, I thought it might have just been that file so I've started reading another book on the reader, Emergency in the Pyrenees, by Ann Bridge & so far, all is well.

I was about to reach for one of my favourite comfort reads, Excellent Women, by Barbara Pym when the new Joanna Trollope novel, The Soldier's Wife, came in at work. I had to move this to the top of the pile because there's a long line of reservations on it so I started reading last night & I'm half way through. I love Joanna Trollope's books & this one is fascinating, about the stresses on an Army family when the man comes back from Afghanistan. I hope to finish it this afternoon.

Don't worry, this post isn't just a moan about all the reading I haven't done this week. When I look at what I've written, I have actually read quite a bit, it just hasn't resulted in finishing any one particular book. I have discovered that there are several exciting books to look forward to in the coming months. Mostly reprints but also a new book from Catherine Bailey who wrote Black Diamonds, a fascinating book about the coal mine owning Fitzwilliam family of Wentworth House. Bailey's new book, which is not out until November, is called Secret Rooms. It's about the Rutland family of Belvoir Castle. Sounds like another investigation of family secrets in a grand house. I can't wait!

Elizabeth Taylor has been growing in popularity & critical esteem in recent years, mostly thanks to Virago's reprints of her novels & Nicola Beauman's biography, The Other Elizabeth Taylor. There have also been movies made of two of her books, Angel & Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont. It's the centenary of Taylor's birth this year & there are celebrations happening all over the blogosphere. Virago are publishing the Complete Short Stories in June & New York Review Books have just published stylish editions of A Game of Hide & Seek & Angel.

New reprints of three of Dodie Smith's adult novels are coming soon from Corsair, an imprint of Constable & Robinson. The Town in Bloom, It Ends with Revelations & The New Moon with the Old are out in March. I love the covers. I've only read I Capture the Castle, although I have the recent Slightly Foxed edition of her memoir, Look Back with Love, enthusiastically reviewed by Elaine, on the tbr pile.

I've wanted to read Betty Miller's WWII novel, On the Side of the Angels, ever since I read Persephone's reprint of her Farewell, Leicester Square. Published in 1945, this is an exploration of the psychological damage of war. Capuchin are reprinting it in May. If you pop over to Capuchin's website, you can also have a look at the brand new cover design they will be unveiling with their July titles.

Nicholas Blake was the pseudonym used by the poet Cecil Day-Lewis for his detective novels. I remember reading some of these as a teenager so I'm very pleased that Vintage are reprinting lots of them in May. Four titles will have striking new covers (you can have a look at them here) & the rest will be in their plain generic POD covers. They will also be available as e-books.

So, lots of good things to look forward to. I've kept to my usual New Year resolution of not buying any books so far this year but I know I'm going to be buying some of these. I'm strong but not that strong! If I hold out until May, I'll be pleased & surprised.

Black diamonds - Catherine Bailey

The black diamond of the title is coal. This is the story of the Fitzwilliam family of Wentworth House in Yorkshire, one of the wealthiest aristocratic families in England in the early 20th century. It’s the story of how the family’s lives were intimately connected with the coal mines they owned & the miners they employed. It’s also the story of the family’s spectacular fall from grace so that by the 1950s, the last two male heirs were in the courts disputing the legitimacy of one of them. The book opens with the funeral of the 6th Earl Fitzwilliam in 1902. He was one of the richest men in the country, but the pomp & ritual of his funeral was marred by the fact that virtually none of the family were speaking to his grandson, Billy, the new Earl, because they believed him to be an imposter. Billy’s father, Lord Milton, son of the 6th Earl was epileptic. This carried a terrible stigma of mental instability in the 19th century. Milton was sent out to the United States as he was seen as an embarrassment to the family. He took his young family with him & while they were in Canada, his son & heir, Billy, was born. Milton’s parents had done everything they could to prevent him marrying, even to the extent of telling potential brides of the “taint” of his epilepsy. When he did marry & have a family, his father was horrified &, after Milton’s early death, rumours spread that, in the wilds of North America, a boy had been substituted for the female child actually born. In 1902, the family decided not to go to court to settle the question. They were far more frightened of scandal than the thought of an illegitimate Earl. The story of the Fitzwilliams is full of stories like this. It’s also a story of contrasts. George V paid a visit to Wentworth House in 1912 when discontent in the North was worsening. He wanted to see the conditions of the mines for himself & even took a tour underground. At the time the royal party was at Wentworth, two explosions ripped through the Cadeby Main colliery, not far away. The first explosion killed dozens of men. The second explosion killed many of the rescuers who had volunteered to try to reach the trapped men. This is the most effective part of the book. The story alternates between the eyewitness accounts of the disaster & the reactions of the King & Queen, the local community & the whole country. The contrast between the party at Wentworth House, where there were eight sittings of dinner for the servants according to their rank in the household, & the poverty of the miners & their families is compelling. The Fitzwilliams were one of the more enlightened mine owners. They hadn’t employed a company to run their mines, they oversaw them closely & their employees were well looked after by the standards of the time. Safety was paramount, unlike most other mines which were run for profit & the miners were expendable. This is not just another story of aristocratic goings-on. The servants, miners & their families are just as much a part of the story as the aristocrats. Catherine Bailey has done a remarkable job of piecing together the story of the Fitzwilliams, especially as they destroyed practically all their personal papers. Often only one stray letter or piece of evidence remains for her to reveal the truth of the many scandals in the family’s past. It’s an impressive work of detection.