The Garnett Girls by Georgina Moore

As a teenager, Margo ran away from home to live with her older boyfriend, Richard. Their love affair continued, they married and had three daughters - Rachel, Imogen, and Sasha. Then one day Richard left, leaving Margo plunged into despair, and the girls having to fend for themselves. When she picked herself up, Margo vowed that her girls would never suffer as she had. So she brings them up to be well-educated, strong career women, to marry safe, dependable men, to create for themselves the life that she would have wanted, but somewhere long the way the girls, trying so hard to live up to Margo's expectations, lose sight of themselves and their own desires. Now young women, each successful in her field, they have to confront the impact of their father's sudden disappearance from their lives before they can find true happiness.

 There's been a lot of hype about The Garnett Girls  - the author is, after all, a publicist - but it's a stunning, captivating debut that definitely lives up to everything I've read about it. A warm, intimate story of the Garnett family - Margo the matriarch, and her girls, Rachel, Imogen, and Sasha - their loves and losses, the secrets they keep, and the younger generation's struggles for independence from their mother's overwhelming influence and expectations. In many ways, living up to Margo's standards has stunted her daughters' emotional development, and I felt it was telling that Rachel, Imogen and Sasha are more often seen as a trio - the Garnett girls - rather than as individuals and as women.

The story is not wholly set on the Isle of Wight but Sandcove, the family home, plays such an important part in the Garnett's lives that it's like a character in itself. It's the place they come to to settle family disagreements, to heal, to find themselves, to party on the beach till dawn. 

I loved every page - and I now want to live by the beach and drink cocktails every night.

Emily Wilde's Encylopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

Emily Wilde is a respected professor of fairy lore, a meticulous cataloger of the ways and tales of the Folk, but so far the much-desired position of tenure-ship continues to elude her. To obtain this she's embarked on a mammoth project - an Encyclopaedia of Fairies, which will collate all the information held on them, their world, and their interactions with humans. One last section is needed - a study of the previously unrecorded fairies of the northern island of Ljosland  - so accompanied only by Shadow, her faithful dog, Emily heads off on an adventure which will change her life.

Her approach on her previous field trips has been one of professional, detached interest, more attuned to the nuances of associating with the Fae Folk than the local villagers or her colleagues. She expects this project to be no different, but there are surprises in store for her - dangers, friendship, and marriage proposals from not one but two fairy kings!

Overall it's a light but enchanting story, with a backdrop of cold, snowy beauty contrasting with warm, cozy interiors, and perilous  encounters with the Folk to give it a little 'edge'.

Emily is one of those heroines - socially awkward, unintentionally rude, determined to keep even those who would help her at arms' length - that you'll either take to instantly, or not get along with at all. Reading between the lines of her field notes, and seeing the real Emily beneath that clumsy exterior, I was definitely on her side. Her colleague, Wendell Bambleby, who turns up uninvited, is the opposite - charming, handsome, making friends wherever he goes, just somehow too perfect - and actually I could see why he would irritate after a while. They don't seem like a well-matched pair but under her gruffness, it's obvious that Emily cares for him more than she'd like to admit.

I'm  delighted to see that there are plans for further Emily Wilde stories, and I'll be looking out for them.

The Witches of Vardø by Anya Bergman

 

Off the northern-most coast of Norway lies the small island of Vardø, site in the mid-seventeenth century of a notorious series of witch trials. Anya Bergman's novel brings us a fictional account of those times, seen from two points of view - that of wealthy Anna Rhodius, imprisoned in this remote fortress by her former lover, the King; and that of sixteen year ago fisherman's daughter, Ingeborg, whose mother is falsely accused of witchcraft. Ingeborg desperately wants to save her mother, and will go to any lengths to do so. Anna meanwhile is interested in protecting herself and negotiating a way to return to her former life. 

The numbers involved in the real trials were horrific (91 people executed over a period of years) but Bergman has reduced them to handful without losing any of the terror and helplessness that these women must have experienced. As is frequently the case, there's a trail of fear and misogyny behind the accusations - women denounced for 'seducing' married men, the local Sami people victimised for being 'different', anyone who vaguely steps beyond the rigid bounds of propriety being considered fair game. And the treatment of women in general, as totally subordinate to men, and threatened for voicing their own opinions, is unthinkable now.

Although I'd heard of many instances of witch-hunts, from Pendle to Salem, Scotland to Essex, I hadn't realised that the fervour for them had spread to Norway, apparently influenced by King James VI (Scotland) and I (England), and his writings on Daemonologie. Reading The Witches of Vardø led me off down a lot of wormholes, finding more about the historical events, and learning more about the remote landscape of its setting.

Manilla Press

The Witch and the Tsar by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore

Half-human, half-immortal, Yaga lives alone in the forest as she has done for centuries, only encountering people when they come seeking her herbal wisdom and magic charms. Then one day her seclusion is broken by the arrival of an old friend, Anastasia, wife of the Tsar Ivan, seeking help for a mysterious illness. To keep her safe, Yaga must return with her to Moscow, and immerse herself in the affairs of men.

In the city, she finds a ruler growing increasingly tyrannical, intent on crushing anyone who speaks against him, in the centre of a court full of rumours and intrigue. Ivan himself though is being manipulated by forces he couldn't begin to understand - immortal powers, treating Russia as a battleground for their own aims.

Set in 16th century Russia during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, this debut is an interesting mix of myth and history, giving a feminist twist to the scary stories of the witch Baba Yaga, creating a very human, relatable woman, and setting her within a firm historical perspective. 

The period of Russian history is a compete blank to me, so I found the depictions of Ivan's court and the wars which ravaged Eastern Europe fascinating (and found myself falling down a rabbit-hole of fact checking and discovering more via Google). Somehow though the whole meshing of historical and fantasy elements didn't quite work for me and the later part of the book failed to hold my attention as the earlier part had.

 

My Life in France by Julia Child

 Shortly before Christmas I decided it was a good idea to try to clear some of my personal (as opposed to book review) TBR pile, especially any that could have been last year's Christmas presents. Hence the seemingly random 'My Life In France' by Julia Child. 

Despite her celebrity status in the US, I wasn't aware of Julia Child before watching the film Julie and Julia which follows a cookery blogger Julie Powell in her attempts to work her way through Child' s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, interspersed with excerpts from Child's life in France and her rise as an early TV cook.

This book is, as it says, primarily about Julia Child's years spent in France - though it follows her and her diplomat husband in the years after. 

Arriving in France in 1948 as a young woman with no culinary skills, Julia Child immersed herself in  French culture and cookery, exploring the fresh food markets, dining out on traditional French food, and enrolling at the famous Cordon Bleu cookery school. Although food was undoubtedly her passion there's more to her story than that; her relationships with friends and family, the troubles of relocating due to her husband's diplomatic career, and his growing disillusionment with it.

It's very readable; a story of enthusiasm and new experiences; full of life and, of course, food (though this isn't a recipe book).

My Picks of 2022

 Usually I come to do my best of the year list and struggle to keep it down to ten, or a dozen, but  I seem to have read fewer books last year and so the 'best of' list is correspondingly short. I decided that I couldn't actually 'order' them into a ranking of first, second, third, and so on so they appear here in the order I read them

Top of the list then is Devotion by Hannah Kent from back in February. The story follows the growing, forbidden relationship between Hanne and Thea, moving from an Old Lutheran community in 19th century Prussia to the wildness of Australia's colonies. It's raw and warm, and filled with both love and loss, with Kent's poetic prose bringing the natural world of Germany forests and Australian outback vividly to life.

March brought two, very different, additions to the list. First, When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo. Darwin works in Fidelis cemetery in the fictional Trinidadian city of Port Angeles; he tends neglected grave plots, and comforts the bereaved. Above the city lives Yejide who has inheritated a strange responsibility - to comfort the dead themselves; to calm their spirits in transition from one life to another. Unsurprisingly they're drawn together. A wonderful mix of the mundane and fantastical, filled with the sights and sounds of its setting. An astounding debut.

Wild And Wicked Things by Francesca May. Coming into an inheritance from her estranged father, Annie Mason travels to mysterious Crow Island, the last refuge of magic in a world from which it's been banned. Here in this strange community, 'nice girl' Annie finds herself tempted by decadent parties, magic, and Emmeline Delacroix, the focal point of them both. Described by the author as a witchy, lesbian take on The Great Gatsby, it has that same moral ambivalence, and spell of glamour hiding darkness.

April brought another stunning debut - Trespasses by Louise Kennedy. Set in 1970s Belfast , this is a Romeo and Juliet style tale of a young, single Catholic teacher, and an older, married Protestant barrister drawn to each other despite everything that stands in their way. Set against a backdrop of sectarian violence, with a feeling of inescapable tragedy hanging over the couple,  it's both wonderful and heart-breaking.

My last choice will come as no surprise as I'm always a fan of Donal Ryan's work, and his latest novel, The Queen of Dirt Island,  is as heart-warming and moving as I've come to expect. In a bungalow in a small village in Co Tipperary live three generations of women, Eileen, her mother in law Mary, and daughter Saoirse. Their story begins with a death  but is a celebration of life. Their home not one of peace and harmony, but of arguments and fallings-out, yet still a haven, a place of belonging and nurture. It's too easy, I feel, to just dismiss a new novel by an admired author as what you'd expect from them but Ryan always delivers, and this is no exception.

The Weather Woman by Sally Gardner

 Neva is born with an unusual ability - to predict the weather. At first she assumes everyone can do this, but as the frozen Thames ice starts to break under the frost fair of 1789, even little Neva can see that she's the only one to have foreseen the event. As she grows, she comes to understand how strange and unique her talent is. Using a mechanical figure made by her adoptive father, she disguises her abilities as being those of the automaton, the Weather Woman, and becomes a success in London's salons and soirees. 

But  Neva is frustrated that as a woman, she isn't taken seriously by the scientific experts of the day, and creates herself a male alias, Eugene Jonas, who can go where she can't. However, when Henri Denoue, an exiled French count, meets first Neva, then Eugene, he falls in love - perhaps with them both.

This is a lovely, fairly lightweight, but eminently readable, historical novel with a thread of fantasy or magic running through it. Neva's ability is never quite pinned down, but, as one of my daughters has a synaesthetic condition whereby she sees music as colours, that's rather how I understood Neva's visualising of clouds and colours. It doesn't quite matter to the plot which is one of thwarted romance, and adversaries who want to get hold of the Weather Woman for their own use. 

As with Gardner's teen/YA books, there's a fantastic capturing of the period. Neva is very different to Austen's heroines, or the marriageable daughters of Bridgerton, not wanting to settle quietly into marriage and child-bearing, but to further her scientific curiosity, and her story explores the difficulties facing her.

Contrasting with the quiet domestic setting of Neva's adoptive family, are the grand houses of the 'bon ton', dingy lawyers' offices, seedy boarding houses, with characters to match - in fact a whole slice of Regency London from the high to the low.