The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Step back in time with a great book
Rosemary Goring’s pick of the best historical novels
LONG ISLAND Colm Toibin Picador, £20
The phrase “long-awaited” is overused, but in the case of Long Island, the sequel to Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn, it is justified. On publication in 2009, Brooklyn sealed Toibin’s reputation as one of the UK’s finest novelists, and won the Costa Novel Award. Some years later it was chosen by The Observer as “One of the 10 best historical novels”.
Opening in 1950s Ireland, Brooklyn was the story of Eilis Lacey, a young Irish woman who reluctantly left the country for a job in New York. Once there, Eilis gradually found her feet, despite homesickness, and secretly married an Italian plumber, called Tony Fiorelli, who dreamt of building a home for them on Long Island. The tragic death of her sister Rose took her back to Ireland, where she contemplated never returning to America and making a life with another man. Eventually, however, she sailed back, turning her back on her native land.
Those of us who wondered whether Eilis found happiness or, at least, contentment, need no longer speculate. Long Island picks up her story 20 years later, when she and Tony are settled on Long Island with their two children. Life is good, despite Tony’s parents living rather too close, but everything is about to change. When a man with an Irish accent knocks on Eilis’s door, she is brought face to face with her past. After putting down roots in the USA, she suddenly feels horribly far from home. Toibin is a superbly, sometimes disconcertingly understated writer. His prose is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the often overheated genre of historical fiction. That in part is what made Brooklyn’s atmosphere unforgettable. Long Island promises to be equally powerful.
QUEEN MACBETH Val McDermid Polygon, £12
Few of Shakespeare’s female characters get a worse press than Lady Macbeth, who has become a byword for homicidal ambition. In the play, she is the treacherous wife who urges her husband to murder the king, their guest, as he sleeps. In real life, there is no record of her plotting any outrageous acts. Indeed, there’s hardly any information about her at all. McDermid steps into the breach with a novel that offers a very different interpretation of this medieval queen, attempting to redress centuries of misinformation.
THE HEART IN WINTER Kevin Barry
Canongate, £18.99
A galloping novel from the prizewinning author of Night Boat to Tangier. Described as “savagely funny”, The Heart in Winter is set in the town of Butte in Montana, 1891, a place growing filthy rich on its copper mines. Kevin Barry’s picaresque tale follows the soulful but degenerate balladeer Tom Rourke and Polly Gillespie, wife of the copper mine’s religiously devout captain, who fall for each other and make their escape. As they race on horseback across the wild Montana landscape, their chances of a bright future look slim. Close behind is a posse of furious Cornishmen brandishing guns.
A DIVINE FURY
D V Bishop Pan Macmillan, £16.99
What better backdrop for a murderous tale than
Renaissance
Florence, a city built on power, wealth, skulduggery and deceit? In this, the second of D V Bishop’s Florentine series, his sleuth Cesare Aldo has been demoted to the lowly position of a constable on night duty. While in pursuit of a fugitive, Aldo discovers a corpse, positioned to look as if it has been crucified. When a second body is discovered, the dead hand clutching a page from an exorcist’s manual, the seriousness of the threat the city faces gradually becomes clear.
THE KING’S WITCHES
Kate Foster
Mantle, £18.99
Based on real events, Kate
Foster’s plot revolves around James
VI’s new queen, Anne of Denmark.
As she strives to be the perfect wife she, her lady’s maid and a housemaid find themselves embroiled in the witch craze that is sweeping Scotland. Since the king is a fanatical persecutor of witches, there’s no need to spell out the consequences if they do not manage to evade the taint of sorcery.
WHALE FALL Elizabeth O’Connor Picador, £14.99
In 1938 the inhabitants of a remote island off Wales are unnerved by rumours of circling submarines. 18-year-old Manod is intrigued by two strangers who arrive to study the islanders, seeing in them the chance of getting away. But as world events grow more ominous, so does the atmosphere on the island, and Manod’s dream of escape begins to fade.
Picador, £16.99
In early Victorian London, land for cemeteries fetched a higher price than for building houses. In this macabre setting, a pair of criminal chancers, Bonnie and Crawford, fend for themselves. But when Bonnie is obliged to find gainful work in a household where the master is obsessed with his dead wife, things turn stranger, and darker, by the day.
SALTBLOOD Francesca de Tores THE BURIAL PLOT Elizabeth Macneal
Bloomsbury, £16.99 Born in Plymouth in 1685, Mary was obliged to pass herself off as her dead brother, Mark. After many years in disguise she turned pirate, subverting all the rules of the era. Based on the astonishing life of the real Mary Read, this swashbuckling adventure brings the heyday of British piracy vividly alive.
SMALL MERCIES
Denis Lehane
Little, Brown, £9.99
From the author of Mystic River, a disturbing thriller set in Boston in 1974, when the city was in revolt against the desegregation of schools. An Irish-American mother’s daughter goes missing on the same night as a young black man is found dead on the subway tracks. As she investigates, she runs foul of the police and those who run the city, discovering Boston’s shockingly racist heart.
REDFALCON Robert J Harris
Polygon, £9.99
John Buchan’s intrepid Richard Hannay returns in a Boy’s Own-style thriller. In July 1942, after enlisting the help of the Gorbals Diehards and chasing half way around southern Europe and Morocco, Hannay comes face to face with the arch German spy, Ravelstein.
Needless to say, the outcome of this encounter will shape history.