HISTORICAL

ELIZABETH BUCHAN ONCE UPON A RIVER by Diane Setterfield

(Doubleday £12.99, 432 pp) auThOr of the much praised The Thirteenth Tale, Diane setterfield has gone even better with this novel.

set in the mid 19th century, it centres around the Thameside swan Inn famous for its storytelling gatherings.

One night, an injured stranger bursts in, carrying a drowned child. Who are they? and what is their connection to the gathering?

Miraculously, the child comes back to life. The individual histories unravelling from this moment of high drama are, at first, seemingly disparate but there is a connection between them, which is gradually, and skilfully, unravelled.

a meditation on our hunger for stories, and how influential they are in our lives, it is a winning fusion of myth, folklore, magic and the new scientific discoveries of the time. I was captivated by it.

A THOUSAND SHIPS by Natalie Haynes

(Mantle £16.99, 368 pp) ThE ten-year Trojan War which ended bloodily with the sack of the city is the stuff of countless myths and retellings.

In a Thousand ships, Natalie haynes’s declared ambition is to pick up on the old legends and ‘shake’ them until the women hidden in them step forward. she succeeds triumphantly.

here are helen, Penelope, Iphigenia, cassandra, hecuba: a procession of Greek and Trojan wives, daughters, sisters and warriors who suffered untold damage as their men were slaughtered, wounded and traumatised.

a multi-perspective narrative, it is clever, fluently written, passionate and a welcome different perspective on a war that took so much from everyone involved.

For me, it was an eye-opener.