HISTORICAL FICTION
JANET SOMERVILLE
Grounded in the mystery of what happened to the York princes in the Tower of London during the reign of Richard III and of an arrowhead that seems to have “miraculous power beyond man’s wildest imaginings,” this dual narrative shifts expertly between Oxfordshire in 2020 and Yorkshire in the late 1400s.
For 11 years Serena Warren has been haunted by the disappearance of her twin sister Caitlin, so when the police identify her remains, she is both relieved and bereaved anew.
Francis Lovell becomes Richard III’s right hand man.
At a 1928 provincial garden party, Minnie Gray meets glamorous Dolly Pyle, an independent woman who enjoys her freedom too much “to give it up for any man.” Dolly tells Minnie that she plans to recommend her to her boss, but it takes another three years before Minnie receives a cryptic letter that leads to her being hired by British Intelligence’s M section.
Her handler, Captain Maxwell King, tasks Minnie with infiltrating Friends of the Soviet Union by volunteering as a typist; all the while she’s investigating their extremist behaviour.
This fictional portrait of Shakespeare and Company’s legendary proprietor Sylvia Beach is wholly immersive, a literary romp through Left Bank Paris from 1919 to 1936, featuring the expat writers whose work she championed including Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and especially James Joyce.
When an excerpt from James Joyce’s “Ulysses” appears in an American magazine and his work is banned, Beach decides to publish it for his 40th birthday in 1922, noting that “censorship is not commensurate with democracy. Or art.”
Out of Shakespearean absence, Thorp has created steely presence in this astonishing debut that is both a poetic paean to grief and the tale of one of the most famous characters written out of literary history: King Lear’s wife who never appears in the play, her story told on her own terms.
A messenger brings word to the convent where the queen has been exiled for an unknown offence for 15 years: King Lear is dead and so are their three daughters Goneril, Regan and Cordelia.
The queen’s grief is rife with rage and “demands space, wilderness. Or else it will crack the earth.” JANET SOMERVILLE IS THE AUTHOR OF “YOURS, FOR PROBABLY ALWAYS: MARTHA GELLHORN’S LETTERS OF LOVE & WAR 1930-1949,” AVAILABLE