Some of the more memorable books I’ve reviewed this year.
A selection of memorable Historical Novel Reviews of the year
As a reviewer for the Historical Novel Society, and a beta reader for the History Quill, this year, I’ve read over thirty historical novels.
There are, of course, many different sorts of historical novels, from cosy stories to read for relaxing escapism, to ambitious literary works that use history as a mirror to explore humanity.
And everything in between.
I do not favour one type of novel over another – I enjoy variety, and each has its merits.
But some novels linger in my memory in ways that others don’t. Here are some of those memorable reviews. All were first published by the Historical Novel Society, where you can read more.
1. SPARROW, by James Hynes, ISBN 978-1529092394
The little boy in this book haunts me like a ghost. Hynes, the author, uses his character to explore what it means to be a slave – and it is brutal.
The book opens somewhere in Britannia, in the dying days of the Roman Empire, with an ageing man recalling his youth. He names himself Jacob, but it is only one of many names. Because the name of a slave, like everything else, belongs to his master.
In his earliest memory, he has no name. Cowering in the shadows of a kitchen, as an angry woman wields a knife, he answers to the name Pusus: boy. It’s all anyone can tell him. He was bought with no name, his parentage unknown.
Jacob takes time to describe his memories. The cluttered kitchen, its doorway ever open to a garden scented of herbs and the latrine. The tavern, also opening onto the garden, where noisy, frightening men drink, sing, argue and fight. And more. Upstairs, ‘wolves’ – enslaved sex workers – labour in their cells. One of them, Euterpe, emerges into the garden to tell the boy stories.
The kitchen, tavern and garden bound the boy’s whole life. On the day he is sent into the street to fetch water, he is terrified. But water carrier becomes his first job.
As Jacob explores further, the city of Carthagena Nova is revealed in dazzling colours, rank smells, and swarming crowds. A city of violence and luxury: of power and repression. Of emerging Christianity, and casual murder.
This book is not for delicate or prudish readers. Like the lives of the enslaved workers, it’s filled with unpleasant bodily fluids. Jacob’s story explores what it is to be a slave: the property of another. A slave has nothing. He feels nothing: he can have no friends. Even his own body is not his own: not even the most intimate, private parts.
Except that, as a living, breathing human, Jacob shows us what made Rome wealthy.
2. COLUMBA’S BONES, by David Greig, ISBN 9781846976261
Despite its Dark Age setting, this characters in this book pop alive as if we met yesterday.
Iona, 825 AD, and a gang of Vikings raids a Celtic Monastery. In one brutal day, a multitude of characters is reduced to three survivors: an ageing Viking, a novice monk, and a peasant woman.
As seasons sweep over the island, the pragmatic, brutal world-view of the Viking clashes against the other-worldliness of the monk. The Viking is baffled by a God who doesn’t defend himself, but entranced by the brilliant, intricate illuminations in the book the monk produces. The monk agonises over his survival, believing his murdered brothers to be martyrs, but is horrified by Viking bloodshed.
The woman, kept busy keeping everyone fed, is untroubled by theology.
Everyone knows that the raiders will return, seeking the reliquary containing St Columba’s bones. But nobody knows its whereabouts, as the Abbot secretly buried it. To Vikings, it’s enough silver bullion to retire. To the monk, it’s miraculous power.
To the woman, it’s irrelevant. The question is, how to survive when the Vikings return?
This is a jewel of a book, sparkling like the seas around the island. Each word vivifies the island, its natural life, and the inner lives of its inhabitants. Greig’s writing is fashionably free of speech marks, speech and thought merging, as the physical and spiritual merge on this Holy Island.
Spiritual angst is well researched but concise, and leavened by humour. The humour renders characters relateable, highlighting issues we all recognise. The ageing Viking, his belly spreading, struggles to run up the sandy beach. His ship-mates’ nicknames, expressed in modern English, are prosaic: Shorty, Bloodnose – although we never learn how Fuck-a-Whale got his name.
Recommended for readers who enjoy seeing recognisable, fictitious humans bringing history to life.
3. THE MISADVENTURES OF MARGARET FINCH by Claire McGlasson, ISBN 9780571363728
This refreshing book is light to read and, at first sight, humourous. But it gradually reveals, not only an authentic historical setting, but a message about the variety of human life.
Blackpool, 1938, and Margaret Finch carefully observes the sideshows on the Golden Mile. Among them is the disgraced Rector of Stiffkey, aka Harold Davidson, attempting to raise money to clear his name.
But Margaret is watching more than the sideshows. She records the people who flock to them, their appearance, behaviour, and conversations. All the while, Margaret herself tries to blend in, to become invisible.
What is Margaret’s mission? Is she a spy? A journalist? While Margaret concentrates on her work, the Rector believes she’s a journalist, triggering a series of misunderstandings. These trigger the series of misadventures that are initially comic, but ultimately, touching.
Like Margaret, this book is deceiving. Beneath crisp, entertaining prose, lies strong research and an underlying serious theme.
Mill workers, in Blackpool for the ‘wakes’, surge onto the beach and into Margaret’s life, hungry to be entertained by anything and everything, from a flea circus to the disgraced Rector. Lancashire dialect rings off the page, the sea sparkles, the grubbiness of the pubs hidden beneath glittering mirrors and crowds round the piano belting out popular songs.
But Margaret is not one of them. She has been schooled to be ‘proper’. Margaret is terrified that a misstep, a mis placed word, will expose her. Hence, McGlasson portrays the mulitple, subtle layers of social strata. Strata that will shortly experience the greatest ‘levelling’ of all time: the Second World War.
But here in 1938, a person’s place is of prime importance. Male, female, working class, middle class, ‘respectable’, or ‘disgraced’. Where does Margaret fit? Who is the true Margaret?
This is a beautifully observed tale, of both 1930s Blackpool, and also of a woman who struggles to find her place.
Recommended.
4. JAMIE MACGILLIVRAY by John Sayles, ISBN 978-1-61219-988-7
This long read delivered what first beguiled me into historical fiction: the feeling that I’d entered the real life of a real person – and travelled in both time and space.
Scotland, 1746, and Jamie MacGillivray, shivering in the rain, brings a message from France to Lord Lovat, the Auld Fox, his Hogarth portrait vividly animated by the author.
Jamie, of Clan Chattan, escapes death at the Battle of Culloden. He shelters with crofter Jenny Ferguson, but is captured by the English. Hence, we are thrown into the complex and brutal politics of the 18th century.
Jamie becomes far-traveled – first taken to Inverness, then to Edinburgh, London, Maryland, and onward. Jenny too is captured by the English, her punishment long on revenge and short on truth.
This is a book that rewards the reader for perseverance. Either richly imagined, meticulously researched, or probably both, we are shown everything. Vast numbers of characters come and go, some of them known historical figures, others fictitious. We are mainly with Jamie, or Jenny, but from time to time, the author flits to other people, other places.
Much of the dialogue is written in a rich Scottish brogue, or in French. It took me a while to ‘get my ear in’ to follow the Scots dialect, intended to illustrate Erse, the language of the Scots. That, and French, the language of their allies, reflects the truly multi-cultural world that Jamie inhabits.
Reflecting reality was, I felt, a strength of this book. But, reality is complicated, and, in the context of eighteenth century English expansion, extremely bloody. Squeamish readers might find this reality a step too far.
I felt that Jenny’s story, while interesting to read, could have been cut from the book without losing its main thrust.
It would be a spoiler to reveal the ending, but I thought it was a poignant twist. After living with Jamie for over seven hundred pages, I was sad to part with him.
5 HERC by Phoenicia Rogerson, ISBN 9780008589875
This bittersweet book, horrifying and funny in turn, explored ‘what if then was now’. Friends and family tell of Hercules in modern voices that make the mythical hero sound like the drunken uncle you pray will not attend your wedding.
At first, reading it, I felt a bit lost, as narrators proliferated. It reminded me of a funeral when, juggling a sandwich and a glass of something, everyone begins to talk. Each person relates their experience of the deceased: in this case, ‘Herc’, aka Hercules, or Heracles, of Greek mythology.
But from what initially seemed a random collage of voices, with a non-linear timeline, an order developed. The accounts began with Herc’s birth and (spoiler alert) ended with his epitaph. In between, a multitude of characters – family, friends, enemies, lovers – gradually built a picture of a man struggling with a problem father.
The triumph of this book is to take the bald statements of mythology, and imagine how it would feel if it happened to real people. The voices have a modern sound – I’d place their accents somewhere in present-day south London. When they want to offer informal hospitality, they suggest tea. When the Gods come calling, the culture collision is almost comic.
Setting is barely mentioned: it’s all about feelings.
So, how does it feel when your family is blessed/cursed by a child fathered by a God? Gradually, the voices reveal Herc as a man we know. The kid who everyone talks about, but no-one gets close to. The man who is full of machismo, but not master of his own emotions. The man who lives hard and dies harder.
Recommended for a different take on mythology, and a masterclass in a word portrait of a man.
Further reading
All of these reviews were first published by the Historical Novel Society.
You can read more of my reviews at