First published 1885. Penguin paperback, 1977, translated by Leonard Tancock, pp 499, c.175,000 words (main text). Hell is an appropriate description for the working condition of miners in late nineteenth century France – toiling deep underground with little light, dust, damp, too hot or too cold, the ever-present risk of explosion, flood, or roof collapse. […]
Germinal — Emile Zola Read More »
First published 1976. Pan paperback, 1998, pp 471, c.150,000 words. One might expect a book with this title to somehow reference the moral fable from which the phrase is best known, but it doesn’t. Rather the reverse in that the world ignored the Italian atrocities in Ethiopia in the 1930s from before their colonising campaign
Cry Wolf — Wilbur Smith Read More »
First published 1860. Wordsworth paperback, 1995, pp 459, c.215,000 words. Very much a Victorian novel, this is full of authorial moralising and has a ridiculously melodramatic ending. The authorial voice slows the narrative pace, something that would be unacceptable to today’s publishers. Victorian society had its strict codes of writing that seeped in from the
Mill on the Floss, The — George Eliot Read More »
First published 1990. Translated by Edith Grossman. Penguin paperback, 1991, pp285, c.75,000 words. This is a fictional account of the last days of Simón Bolívar, the man who did much to drive the Spanish out of South America. For those of us who know little of the history of that part of the world it
General in His Labyrinth, The — Gabriel Garcia Marquez Read More »
First published 2023. Bygone Age Press paperback, 2023, pp 240, c.66,000 words. This novel is based on what very little is known about the Viking, Ulf of Borresta. Or as we are told, the Norseman: apparently ‘viking’ is an activity, and the Norsemen, as they called themselves, went ‘a viking’, i.e. on raids into other’s
For the Want of Silver — Michael Wills Read More »
First published 1978. Pan paperback, 1996, pp 307, c.70,000 words. This is not the usual Innes thriller. It is an imaginary diary of Captain James Cook’s third and last voyage of discovery. Cook, and others, kept logs of their activities during the journey, and these were intended to be handed to the authorities who had
Last Voyage, The — Hammond Innes Read More »
First published 2018. Harvill Secker paperback, 2018, pp 480, c.156,000 words. Set in late-eighteenth century Georgian London, this is a world of vice and virtue, and not the delicacy and decorum of Jane Austen. The protagonist, Angelica Neal, is high-end prostitute who is struggling to survive after her protector has died without securing her future,
Mermaid and Mrs Hancock, The — Imogen Hermes Gowar Read More »
First published 1880. Macmillan paperback, 1974, pp 365 (pp 306, main text), c.120,000 words (main text). Hardy is an anti-Dickens in that he is unsentimental. The good don’t naturally prevail, humans make poor choices. On the other hand Hardy is, like Dickens, a Victorian in his attitudes. Society’s social structure is all pervading. People generally
Trumpet Major, The — Thomas Hardy Read More »
First published 1930. The Hogarth Press paperback, 1985, pp 355, c.110,000 words. The cover of this edition shows a cartoon of Benson’s parents and siblings, so it was not unreasonable to expect something like a biography of his family, and indeed there is a little here. But the subtitle, ‘A Victorian Peep-Show’, gives a greater
As We Were — E F Benson Read More »
First published 1993. Coronet paperback, 1994, pp 383, c.130,000 words. Gavin Lyall wrote a series of successful thrillers from the 1940s through to the 1990s. Initially they were in the in the Alistair McLean and Hammond Innes mould of ordinary people sucked in to some extraordinary situation. A number were set in the world of
Spy’s Honour — Gavin Lyall Read More »