Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2009)

This book won the 2009 Man Booker Prize and when I saw it in paperback in our local bookstore that carries English books, I was intrigued. It was nice and thick (652 pages) and caught my interest because it was a historical novel about Thomas Cromwell, who was the most powerful of Henry the 8th's courtiers. I recently read a historical novel about Katherine of Aragon, Henry's first wife, so I decided that I would read this one as well - one of these days I am going to have those historical figures straight in my head!

The novel follows Thomas Cromwell from the time he is a boy, skims over his career abroad as a mercenary, and picks up when he returns to England as the right hand man of the Archbishop of York. The book is extremely well written and gives great insight into the intrigues, politics and brutal ugliness of life at court. But it also shows the main characters as human beings, people we could imagine in our society today. Anne Bolyen, in particular, and especially Henry the 8th himself stand out. But Thomas Cromwell is our hero, and however brutal he must be to defend his King's interests, he also is the beloved patriarch of his family, a loving husband and father, taking in young men as his apprentices and raising then as members of his extended family, making sure the young girls in his care marry well, and creating a very successful law practice and a warm home base.

This is a book to read slowly and savor. It does not always read easily, some passages are dense or cryptical, but it is worth it to experience the unfolding of the story.

The Photograph by Penelope Lively (2002)

I was out with my kids yesterday and we made a stop at our main library downtown where they have a huge selection of English books. I picked out four to take home and I started on this one first. It was not very long and once I got into it, I couldn't put it down, just kept reading and reading until I was finished. It was a very compelling book.

The story starts out as Glyn, a 60 year old professor, is looking for a document in a cupboard and unexpectedly comes across a picture of his wife, Kath, holding hands with another man. As he looks closer, he sees that the other man is Nick, Kath's sister's husband. Glyn is in shock - what does this mean? He decides to find out and goes straight to Elaine, the sister, to find out if she knew about this. The book is about the consequences of him finding the picture but also about what happened to Kath, which we only find out little by little.

The book also examines two marriages, and the theme of paying attention to those closest to us, and how important this is. Glyn realizes, through his search for information, that there was a lot about his wife he simply didn't know, and this turns out to be tragic.

Recent reading

I've been reading (as always!) but been too lazy to sit down and write a respectable post about some of the books I've been enjoying. So here is a quick review of two books I got from the library:

Gilgamesh by Joan London (2001)
I loved this book! It was a bestseller in Australia and is a well written first novel about three generations of a family of outsiders in search of a place to call home. From London to the Australian wilderness, back to pre-war London, to Armenia, Persia, and back to Australia again... It was a quick read and I got completely caught up in it and finished it in one day. The characters came to life, as did the landscapes they travelled through. I highly recommend it - look for it at your library!

The Unredeemed Captive by John Demos (1994)
If you like history you will enjoy this. Based on original documents (diairies, letters, sermons) which are extensively quoted in the book, the author tells the story of Eunice Williams, a young girl who was captured from the town of Deerfield, Massachusetts in 1704 by a French and Indian war party, and adopted by an Indian family at a settlement in Canada. The rest of her family, along with many others in the town, are also captured or killed, some manage to escape. Her father, the prominent Puritan minister John Williams, is captured but released after a few years. He mananges to get the rest of his family back - all except for Eunice. And as they discover, after many years of negotiation with the French and the Indians, she doesn't want to come back. Fascinating story, very detailed and gives the reader a good idea of what life was really like for early Americans.

Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon (1992)

I loved the first installment of this series (see my post on it below), but I have to say I was a bit disappointed by the second book, "Dragonfly in Amber". Of course I wanted to find out what happened to Claire after she returned back to modern times and her first husband, of course I was dying to find out what happened to Jamie, her hot Scottish Highlander second husband...but the second book, once you got back to following Claire and Jamie's adventures in medieval France, began to drag on and on. I kept thinking Claire's pregnancy was taking forever and the same about Jamie's involvment in the spying and intrigues around Charles Edward Stuart and the plotting of his uprising in Scotland.

Perhaps this is the disadvantage to reading a series of books after they have all been published - you can hop right to the next one without having to wait a year or two in anticipation and forgetting some of the finer aspects of the plot and characters. Then it doesn't seem so dull when the second book rehashes some of these items to remind you.

In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed the originality of the first book, but I think I will be moving on to other things - especially since our library only had books 1, 2, 5 and 6.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon (1991)

I heard about this series from my mom and was intrigued - apparently this book and the six that follow it in the series have a big fan base. So what I always do when my mom mentions an interesting book is go check the online catalog of our public library to see if they have it. They did so I picked it up and read it over Christmas....

...or should I say I got swept away by it over Christmas?! I can certainly understand the fans - this is a story that sucks you in and keeps you hooked because you want to know more. And it includes elements of the historical novel (Scotland in the 1700's and post WW2), romance novels (steamy sex), science fiction (time travel), action and adventure (clan warfare, intrigues, spies looting and plundering, wild rescues), social history (daily life in the 1700's) - so there is really something to appeal to everyone. It's also a satisfyingly thick book, great for a long trip.

The story is about Claire, a young woman who was a nurse in military hospitals in World War II. She is on a holiday with her husband, Frank, in Scotland, a sort of second honeymoon since they had been separated so long because of the war. Visiting an ancient mystical stone circle, she is somehow transported to 1743 and thrown at the mercy of a clan of Scottish warriors who, suspicious of a lone English woman in strange clothes, take her with them to determine whether she is an English spy. One thing leads to another and she is forced for her own safety to wed Jamie Fraser, a Scottish outlaw. The marriage of convenience quickly turns into a passionate union and while events take Claire and Jamie all over Scotland and even to northern France, they become a real team, intensely loyal and devoted to each other in the face of any obstacle. At its core this book is a love story in "Gone with the Wind" style!

I am now busy with book two in the series, "Dragonfly in Amber". More soon!

Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill (2007)

This book was a gift to me from Mary, my sister’s mother-in-law – I had recently given her one of the Penguin Great Journey series which told the true story of Olaudah Equiano, a man born in Africa and taken as a slave to the Americas in the late 1700’s. Coincidentally, Mary’s reading group was reading “Someone Knows My Name” this fall, which not only tells the story of Aminata, a young girl trapped as a slave and also taken to the Americas, but also mentions Equiano in the later parts of the book. There are many similarities between the life journeys of Aminata and Equiano, a major difference being that Aminata is a fictional character and Equiano a real person of flesh and blood, who published his own autobiography in London in 1789.

This does not at all diminish the power of Aminata’s story or the feelings you have as a reader accompanying her on her brutal journeys. Told in the first person, based on the actual history of that time and sparing no details, we first see Aminata in her near idyllic life in Africa, a beloved only child of her Muslim father and midwife mother. She learns much from both her parents, important things which will serve her well: the basics of the Koran and the desire to read and write, and gynecology and obstetrics skills paired with a knowledge of herbal medicine.

She is ripped from her family in the most brutal way imaginable and is forced to make the harsh journey to the Americas, first on foot and later by ship. It is a miracle that she arrives in the Carolinas still alive, just barely hanging on to her humanity and her physical health. She ends up being sold to an indigo plantation where the second phase of her life takes place, but always in the back of her mind the desire to return home to Africa one day.

Through Aminata, we are privy to many aspects of the slave’s experience: daily life and tremendous hardships, the different relationships between fellow slaves as well as slaves and owners, the possibilities and limitations to a person who was held as a slave, the historical context and the role of black slaves and freemen in the Revolutionary War, and what happened to them after the defeat of the British. We are also a witness to the creation of the “Book of Negroes”, a real genealogical document created to register all the free black persons who emigrated to Nova Scotia after the war. Aminata was one of these who regained her freedom through service to the British, but heartbreak and hardship continued in her life, in spite of her new situation in Canada.

Her greatest wish remained: to return to Africa. After years of struggle she finally gets her wish, through the colonization of Freetown by black people from Nova Scotia. But all is not what it seems and the Africa of her youth is difficult to find, so towards the end of her life, the abolitionists convince her to join their struggle as a witness for the British parliament, and she travels to London, where she finally finds a kind of peace.

This is an incredibly moving tale, at times impossible to get out of your mind, or to put down. Also when you consider the conditions that she traveled and lived in, and still managed to survive, it is truly mind boggling. I can’t even imagine as a young teenager, having to go through the indignities and suffering that she bore. How lucky I am for the place and time I was born. But finally the most important aspect of all – at our very heart we are all the same, and want the same things – to be with our parents and family, to live in a safe community, to be able to provide for our children and see them grow up, to learn and to be free to come and go where we will. Today still there are so many of us in this world who do not possess these basic rights, and Aminata’s story is a witness to the tragedy of slavery, the dark side of the human condition, and the beauty and strength of the human spirit. A moving story, a well-written book, and a powerful reminder of things we must never forget.

Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer (2002)

I think I have already mentioned that I have a thing for first novels - I am already impressed before even opening the book at the tenacity and talent it takes to get a first book published! I bought this because it was included in a special Penguin collection of important books put out in 2007 called “Penguin Celebrations” – all the books had a cool retro cover and they were really cute. I bought a few of them, and this was one that appealed to me.

The novel is about a young American writer who travels to Ukraine to search for the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazi’s. He is assisted by two Ukrainians: a young man who is a translator and his “blind” grandfather, who serves as their driver. The book is unusual in that half the chapters are actually written by the young Ukrainian translator – and let’s just say his English isn’t that great! It sounds as though the author spent a lot of time listening to Ukrainians speak English because once you get used to reading it, you can really hear Sasha speaking.

The story alternates between the three men’s journey as described by Sasha, letters from Sasha to the American discussing the writing of story and his own life, and then the novel itself, which starts with the history of the village they are searching for and the writer’s great-great-great-great-grandmother and builds up slowly to the grandfather.


Some parts of this novel made me laugh out loud – especially the scene where the American tries to tell the two Ukrainians he is a vegetarian and that this means no meat, “not even sausage” – it was so funny I read it out loud to my husband and then to my one of my kids. But much of the novel is heart wrenchingly sad and deals with extreme cruelty, intolerance, hatred and tragedy.


An excellent, creative and courageous book. One of my favorite lines in the book:

...once you hear something, you can never return to the time before you
heard it.