Review: THE BLOOD DOCTOR, Barbara Vine

• 
  this large print edition published by Chivers Press 2002
  
• ISBN 0-7540-1786-9
• 507 pages

Synopsis (publisher)

Barbara Vine's new novel is about blood - blood in its metaphysical sense as the conductor of an inherited title and blood in its physical sense as the transmitter of disease.

The current Lord Nanther, experiencing the reform of the House of Lords, embarks on a biography of his great-grandfather, the first Lord Nanther, favoured physician to Queen Victoria, expert on blood diseases and particularly the royal disease of haemophilia. What he uncovers begins to horrify him as he realizes that Nanther died a guilty man - carrying a horrific secret to the grave.

The Blood Doctor weaves effortlessly between past and present, public life and private life. The result is a superbly satisfying novel about ambition, obsession and bad blood.

My Take

As she often did, Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell) took circumstances that were prompted by her position and work in the House of Lords as a springboard for this stand-lone novel. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1996 Birthday Honours and a life peer as Baroness Rendell of Babergh, of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk, on 24 October 1997. She sat in the House of Lords for the Labour Party. In 1998 Rendell was named in a list of the party's biggest private financial donors. 

The reform of the House of Lords took place in 1998 just after she had been made a life peer so what is happening to Martin Nanther is essentially what was happening there, although of course she was a life peer, not an hereditary one like Nanther.

By the time of the reform, the House of Lords was being overwhelmed by an excess of hereditary peers and had become unsustainable and unwieldy in its present form. The idea that the blood of the hereditary peers was somehow "special" had lost favour. They wouldn't lose their titles or their estates, simply their right to sit in the House of Lords.

Martin Nanther has begun amassing memorabilia about his great grandfather Henry Nanther, given a hereditary peerage at the end of the nineteenth century by Queen Victoria for his work on diseases of the blood, particularly of haemophilia of which she was a carrier (which she refused to recognise), and which her own sons and grandsons were afflicted by.

Martin is transfixed by a letter written by one of his great-aunts in which she says Henry Nanther had done terrible things. Martin aims to eventually write a biography of his great-grandfather, and his research takes him to meet cousins and distant relatives whom he has never met, and to become aware of the presence of "tainted" blood in his own family.

Running alongside the main plot is the sub-plot of Martin and his second wife Jude attempting to have a baby, and the revelation that it is a genetic problem that is causing her frequent miscarriages.

This wasn't a book I could read quickly. There was quite a lot of history to absorb, and though I read it in large print, or perhaps because I did, it was also quite weighty.

However, a fascinating read.

My rating:  4.7

I've also read 

Vine, Barbara:
THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT
4.8, A DARK ADAPTED EYE
4.3, THE CHILD'S CHILD

Rendell, Ruth:
FROM DOON WITH DEATH - Wexford #1
4.5, A NEW LEASE OF DEATH- Wexford #2
4.6, THE BEST MAN TO DIE - Wexford #4
4.3, A SLEEPING LIFE, Ruth Rendell  - Wexford #10 
4.7, PUT ON BY CUNNING - Wexford #11
4.6, THE VAULT- Wexford #23
4.5, NO MAN'S NIGHTINGALE- Wexford #24
PORTOBELLO
4.7, THE MONSTER IN THE BOX
4.5, A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES
4.5, THE SAINT ZITA SOCIETY
4.6, THE MASTER OF THE MOOR
4.4, DARK CORNERS
4.6, A SPOT OF FOLLY  

Review: THE DROVER'S WIFE, Leah Purcell

• 
  This edition made available by my local library as an e-book through Libby
  
• Published: 3 December 2019
• ISBN: 9780143791478
• Imprint: Hamish Hamilton
• Format: Trade Paperback
• Pages: 288

Synopsis (publisher)

The Drover's Wife is utterly authentic, brilliantly plotted, thoroughly harrowing and entirely of our times exploring race, gender, violence and inheritance.

Deep in the heart of Australia’s high country, along an ancient, hidden track, lives Molly Johnson and her four surviving children, another on the way. Husband Joe is away months at a time droving livestock up north, leaving his family in the bush to fend for itself. Molly’s children are her world, and life is hard and precarious with only their dog, Alligator, and a shotgun for protection – but it can be harder when Joe’s around.

At just twelve years of age Molly’s eldest son Danny is the true man of the house, determined to see his mother and siblings safe – from raging floodwaters, hunger and intruders, man and reptile. Danny is mature beyond his years, but there are some things no child should see. He knows more than most just what it takes to be a drover’s wife.

One night under the moon’s watch, Molly has a visitor of a different kind – a black ‘story keeper’, Yadaka. He’s on the run from authorities in the nearby town, and exchanges kindness for shelter. Both know that justice in this nation caught between two worlds can be as brutal as its landscape. But in their short time together, Yadaka shows Molly a secret truth, and the strength to imagine a different path.

Full of fury and power, Leah Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson is a brave reimagining of the Henry Lawson short story that has become an Australian classic. Brilliantly plotted, it is a compelling thriller of our pioneering past that confronts head-on issues of today: race, gender, violence and inheritance. 

My Take

This novel began life as a play, and has apparently been made into a film.

The publisher's blurb does not mention that as well as being the story of Molly Johnson, the drover's wife, it is also the story of Nate and Louisa Clintoff, recently arrived, with their baby son, from London, in the colony of New South Wales, where Nate is to be the policeman in the new town of Everton in the Snowy Mountains.

After a glimpse in to the future, just before World War One, the story proper begins in 1893. Molly Johnson, the drover's wife, heavily pregnant, already has 4 children. Danny is her eldest at 12 years, already taking on the role of the man of the house; his father Joe is away droving, but is expected home soon.

It's a hard life, but Molly prefers it when Joe is away, which he is for nine months of the year.

Nate Clintoff has experienced life in the colonies, having fought in the British Army in the Transvaal in South Africa. He has an idea of what life in the Snowy Mountains will be like for him and his family, but only just a bit more realistic than his wife Louisa is expecting.

Leah Purcell has taken the bones of the Henry Lawson short story The Drover's Wife and given it flesh and background. We eventually learn where Molly came from, and how she came to marry Joe Johnson who is 20 years her senior.

Very good reading.

My rating: 4.6

About the author

Leah Purcell is a multi-award-winning and self-made author, playwright, actor, director, filmmaker, producer, screenwriter and showrunner. At the heart of her work are female and First Nation themes, characters and issues. The Drover’s Wife was first a play written by and starring Purcell, which premiered at Belvoir St Theatre in late 2016 and swept the board during the 2017 awards season, winning the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award for Playwriting and Book of the Year; the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Drama and the Victorian Prize for Literature; the Australian Writers’ Guild Award for Best Stage Work, Major Work and the David Williamson Prize for Excellence in Writing for Australian Theatre; the Helpmann Award for Best Play and Best New Australian Work; and the Sydney–UNESCO City of Film Award. The feature film adaptation of The Drover’s Wife, written, directed and starring Leah Purcell, is slated for a 2020 release. Leah Purcell is a proud Goa, Gunggari, Wakka Wakka Murri woman from Queensland.

Review: BENEVOLENCE, Julie Janson

• 
  this edition available as an e-book from my local library through Libby
  
• Published: 1st May 2020
• ISBN: 9781925936636
• Number Of Pages: 356
• Publisher: Magabala Books

Synopsis (publisher) 

LONGLISTED, 2020 MARK & EVETTE MORAN NIB LITERARY AWARD

For perhaps the first time in novel form, Benevolence presents an important era in Australia’s history from an Aboriginal perspective. Benevolence is told from the perspective of Darug woman, Muraging (Mary James), born around 1813. Mary’s was one of the earliest Darug generations to experience the impact of British colonisation. At an early age Muraging is given over to the Parramatta Native School by her Darug father. From here she embarks on a journey of discovery and a search for a safe place to make her home.

The novel spans the years 1816-35 and is set around the Hawkesbury River area, the home of the Darug people, Parramatta and Sydney. The author interweaves historical events and characters — she shatters stereotypes and puts a human face to this Aboriginal perspective.

My Take

The author tells us at the end of the book(in ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS) that this "is a work of fiction based on historical events of the early years of British invasion and settlement around the Hawkesbury River in Western Sydney, New South Wales.

... Muraging is based on my [the author's] great-great-grandmother, Mary Ann Thomas, who was a servant on colonial estates in the Hawkesbury area. The other characters in the novel are inspired by historical figures and [my] imagination, except for the governors who are based on historical documents."

BENEVOLENCE relies heavily on research and the author's family history, and there is no denying the value of the perspective it gives us. The British invasion had a huge impact on the local Aboriginal tribes, not only with the declaration of the policy of "terra nullius" which gave white settlers the right to claim the land, but also with their so-called "benevolent' practices which put aboriginal babies into orphanages where they died, took children away from their families and put them into schools, brought with them diseases like measles, small pox, and the common cold which decimated the populations, and carried out war against those who resisted.

The novel is very graphic in the story that it tells, and will stay with readers well after reading it.

My rating: 4.4

About the author

Julie Janson's career as a playwright began when she wrote and directed plays in remote Australian Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. She is now a novelist and award-winning poet. Julie is a Burruberongal woman of Darug Aboriginal Nation. She is co-recipient of the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize, 2016 and winner of the Judith Wright Poetry Prize, 2019.

Her novels include, The Crocodile Hotel, Cyclops Press 2015 and The Light Horse Ghost, Nibago 2018. Julie has written and produced plays, including two at Belvoir St Theatre – Black Mary and Gunjies and Two Plays, published by Aboriginal Studies Press 1996.

Janson blends reality with fiction in a number of ways. She credits her own history as inspiration for the story, citing her great-great grandmother, Mary Ann Thomas, as the basis for Muraging. She has said that Benevolence was written as an Aboriginal response to Kate Grenville's The Secret River.

Review: 1979, Val McDermid

• 
  this edition published by Little, Brown 2021
  
• ISBN 9-780751-583083
• length: 418 pages
• Allie Burns, book 1

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

The shadows hide a deadly story . . .

1979. It is the winter of discontent, and reporter Allie Burns is chasing her first big scoop. There are few women in the newsroom and she needs something explosive for the boys' club to take her seriously.

Soon Allie and fellow journalist Danny Sullivan are exposing the criminal underbelly of respectable Scotland. They risk making powerful enemies - and Allie won't stop there.

When she discovers a home-grown terrorist threat, Allie comes up with a plan to infiltrate the group and make her name. But she's a woman in a man's world . . . and putting a foot wrong could be fatal.

My Take

Allie Burns and Daniel Sullivan are colleagues at the Clarion, in Glasgow. Their first collaborative effort comes as the result of Danny delivering a baby on the Glasgow train. Allie writes the story up.

Their next story results from Danny realising that his own brother is working as a courier for a company which has put some tax evasion schemes in place. Joseph is obviously getting a kickback from the scheme. Eventually Danny and Allie investigate the scheme and their exposure results in a much higher profile for both of them at the Clarion.

But their next investigation is much more dangerous.

A very good read, as one would expect from a writer of McDermid's standing.

My rating: 4.7 

I've also read

BENEATH THE BLEEDING
4.8, THE SKELETON ROAD
4.8, OUT OF BOUNDS

Review: THE SILENCE OF THE GIRLS, Pat Barker

• 
   this edition in large print published in 2019 by Doubleday
  
• ISBN 978-1-64358-109-5
• 430 pages
  

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award
Finalist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction

Here is the story of the Iliad as we’ve never heard it before: in the words of Briseis, Trojan queen and captive of Achilles. Given only a few words in Homer’s epic and largely erased by history, she is nonetheless a pivotal figure in the Trojan War. In these pages she comes fully to life: wry, watchful, forging connections among her fellow female prisoners even as she is caught between Greece’s two most powerful warriors. Her story pulls back the veil on the thousands of women who lived behind the scenes of the Greek army camp—concubines, nurses, prostitutes, the women who lay out the dead—as gods and mortals spar, and as a legendary war hurtles toward its inevitable conclusion. Brilliantly written, filled with moments of terror and beauty, The Silence of the Girls gives voice to an extraordinary woman—and makes an ancient story new again. 

My Take

Briseis knows what will happen to her if she is still alive when Achilles and the Greek army reach her palace. She can hear him coming. Her husband, father and her brothers are already dead, and she has the option to throw herself from the ramparts, but she chooses to wait and become a captive. She is assigned to Achilles as part of his prize for what he has achieved in battle.

Her life radically changes as she becomes concubine and house servant.

The story explores what happens to women as they become trophies of war, at the same as combining Briseis' story with the legends of Achilles as we know them from Homer's Iliad.

My rating: 4.4

I have previously read

4.4, DOUBLE VISION

Review: THE SATAPUR MOONSTONE, Sujata Massey

• 
  This edition an e-book from Libby through my local library
  
• ISBN: 9781760529420
• Publisher: Allen & Unwin, May 2020
• Page Extent: 384
• #2 in the Perveen Mistry series
• Winner of the Lefty Award for Best Historical Mystery!
• Nominated for the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction!
• Nominated for the The G.P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award and the Macavity Award for Best Historical Mystery! 
• author website
  

Synopsis (publisher) 

The delightfully clever Perveen Mistry, Bombay's first female lawyer, returns in an adventure of treacherous intrigues and suspicious deaths.

India, 1922: It is rainy season in the lush, remote Sahyadri Mountains southeast of Bombay, where the kingdom of Satapur is tucked away. A curse has fallen upon Satapur's royal family, whose maharaja and his teenage son are both dead. The kingdom is now ruled by an agent of the British Raj on behalf of Satapur's two maharanis, the dowager queen and the maharaja's widow.

The royal ladies are in dispute over the education of the young crown prince, and a lawyer's council is required - but the maharanis live in purdah and do not speak to men. Just one woman can help them: Perveen Mistry.

Perveen is determined to bring peace to the royal house, but when she arrives she finds that the Satapur palace is full of cold-blooded power plays and ancient vendettas. Too late, she realises she has walked into a trap. But whose? And how can she protect the royal children from the deadly curse on the palace?

My Take

Perveen Mistry is commissioned to visit the small kingdom of Satapur to talk to its two maharanis about what needs to be done about the education of its young maharajah. His father and older brother have both died in the past year, and the kingdom currently comes under the agency of the British Raj. The local agent has been unable to talk to the maharanis because they observe strict purdah and his visits have been rejected.

They will not have the same objection to Perveen Mistry because she is female and she is a lawyer. Perveen's father, head of their legal firm in Bombay, thinks the journey to Satapur will be dangerous, and he is not keen for her to take the task on. Perveen on the other hand sees the commission as a great opportunity to branch out on her own. She is to travel to the British circuit house to meet the local agent by palanquin, and then go on to the Satapur palace to meet with the maharanis.

I was impressed by the evident research undertaken by the author, and feeling of authenticity and depth of historical background to the story. The characters are well fleshed out, and it is apparent that Perveen is not going to find her task an easy one. Here is India 100 years ago, Gandhiji is a young man and is admired by Perveen, and independence is a long way off.

Well worth reading.

My rating: 4.5

I've also read

• 4.5, THE KIZUNA COAST
• 4.6, A MURDER AT MALABAR HILL 

Review: A MURDER AT MALABAR HILL, Sujata Massey

• 
  this edition on Kindle (Amazon)
  
• ASIN : B07YTGHYT7 (Amazon)
• Publisher : Allen & Unwin (January 7, 2020)
• Publication date : January 7, 2020
• Language : English
• File size : 5731 KB
• Print length : 390 pages
• Page numbers source ISBN : 0143428233
• author website 
• multiple award winning author
• aka WIDOWS OF MALABAR HILL
  

Synopsis (Amazon)

Introducing Miss Perveen Mistry, the star of an outstanding new crime series. This courageous, likeable and determined young lawyer-turned-sleuth will appeal to readers of Phryne Fisher and Precious Ramotswe in a stunning combination of crime and mystery set in 1920s Bombay.

Armed with a legal education from Oxford, Perveen Mistry has joined her father's law firm, becoming one of the first female lawyers in India.

Mistry Law has been appointed to execute the will of Mr Omar Farid, a wealthy mill owner who has left three widows behind. But as Perveen examines the paperwork, she notices something strange: all three wives have signed over their full inheritance to a charity. What future will they have?

Perveen is suspicious, especially since one of the widows has signed her form with an X-could she even read the document? The Farid widows live in strict seclusion, never leaving the women's quarters or speaking to any men. With her own tragic history close to her heart, Perveen worries that the women are vulnerable to injustice.

As Perveen comes closer to the truth, tensions escalate to murder, the widows fall under suspicion and Perveen must figure out what's really happening on Malabar Hill. 

My Take

It is always nice to start at the beginning of a new series, with a new sleuth, set in a different culture, especially when the author is as talented as Sujata Massey.

The story has a ring of authenticity about it, taking readers into a world we will know very little about. Perveen is a recently qualified solicitor, in fact the only female solicitor in Bombay, Parsi background, in British India. The story gives considerable background to her own failed marriage, which gives her some understanding of the position of the three widows in the household of Mr Omar Fareed, deceased. Perveen is determined that these women who are living in purdah, and their children, will not be duped out of their inheritances by an unscrupulous house manager. Things get complicated when he is murdered.

Highly recommended.

My rating: 4.6

I've also read 

4.5, THE KIZUNA COAST

About this author:

• Winner and Top Pick of the 2019 American Library Association Reading List for Mystery
• Winner of the 2019 Mary Higgins Clark Award
• Winner of the 2019 Lefty Award for Best Historical Novel
• Winner of the the 2018 Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel
• Finalist for the 2019 Shamus Award
• Finalist for the 2019 Harper Lee Legal Fiction Prize
  

Review: THE BURNING ISLAND, Jock Serong

• 
  this edition from The Text Publishing Company 2020
  
  
• ISBN 9-781922-330086
• 350 pages
• Shortlisted, Staunch Prize, United Kingdom, 2020
  

Synopsis (publisher)

A father’s obsession. A daughter’s quest.

Eliza Grayling, born in Sydney when the colony itself was still an infant, has lived there all her thirty-two years. Too tall, too stern—too old, now—for marriage, she looks out for her reclusive father, Joshua, and wonders about his past. There is a shadow there: an old enmity.

When Joshua Grayling is offered the chance for a reckoning with his nemesis, Eliza is horrified. It involves a sea voyage with an uncertain, probably violent, outcome. Insanity for an elderly blind man, let alone a drunkard.

Unable to dissuade her father from his mad fixation, Eliza begins to understand she may be forced to go with him. Then she sees the vessel they will be sailing on. And in that instant, the voyage of the Moonbird becomes Eliza’s mission too.

Irresistible prose, unforgettable characters and magnificent, epic storytelling: The Burning Island delivers everything readers have come to expect from Jock Serong. It may be his most moving, compelling novel yet.

My Take

In a sense this is a sequel to an earlier novel PRESERVATION in which Joshua Grayling was a key character. It involves the same geographic and historical setting - the Furneaux Islands in Bass Strait, the wreck of a ship and the disappearance of its passengers and cargo, but it is 30 years on, and Joshua Grayling, once assistant to Governor Hunter in the Sydney colony, is no longer the man he was. Now old, blind, and an alcoholic, he has been haunted for over 30 years by the thought of catching up with Master Figge, one of the survivors of the earlier wreck and the author of so much death.

Grayling is asked to undertake a private expedition to Bass Strait to discover what has happened to the Howrah, its passengers and its cargo. Some debris has been found that indicates that it has been wrecked. It is unthinkable that he take this voyage on his own, and so his daughter accompanies him. They arrive at the boat the Moonbird to discover that there is a paying passenger, doctor/scientist who will be studying birds and fish.

The Furneaux group in Bass Strait is largely populated by sealers who have taken Aboriginal wives, sometimes originally against their wills, and there are half-caste children. And the mad governor of Van Diemen's Land, Governor Arthur, is attempting to purge the main island and the Furneaux group of their Aboriginal population.

The story line didn't hold my interest as much as I would have liked, but that was certainly overlaid with a heap of interesting historical detail and and a wealth of very interesting characters, not the least the master of the Moonbird.

My rating: 4.4 

I've also read

5.0, THE RULES OF BACKYARD CRICKET
5.0, ON THE JAVA RIDGE
4.8, PRESERVATION
4.6, QUOTA