Ben Macintyre * Tony Tetro * Robert Harris * Hannah Sward * Kaoru Takamura * Stephen King * Cat Rambo * Kerry Dolan * S. A. Chakraborty
Tag: historical fiction
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Began Act of Oblivion a few days ago. It’s her third Robert Harris.
His books are fun, combining history and cat-and-mouse suspense.
At first she found the title a tad melodramatic, but on reading further, she finds it was the name of an actual edict passed by the British Parliament in 1660. She also didn’t know that England sent out ‘hit squads’ to hunt down and punish the 59 men who signed the execution order of Charles I. There is one man who has made it his personal mission to bring two men, in particular, to justice. He assembles his *team*.
- The usual four men attended: his secretary, Mr. Samuel Nokes, a diligent young lawyer trained at Lincoln’s Inn; Dr. John Wallis, the Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford University, the greatest cryptanalyst in England and a supporter of Parliament in the Civil War, who had broken the cipher of the King’s correspondence captured at Naseby and who now, after some persuasion, was making his skills available to the new regime; Colonel Henry Bishop, the Postmaster General, who assumed the committee had prompt access to every letter that passed through the London trading office; and Mr. William Prynne, the MP for Bath, the most fanatical of the anti-regicides in Parliament, who always wore a black leather cowl to conceal the fact that his ears had been cut off in the pillory twenty years before.
Interesting, right?
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Surgeons Stanley, Goodsir, Peddie, and McDonald recommended to Sir John that the men’s diet be changed — fresh food when possible (although there was almost none except polar bear possible in the dark of winter, and they had discovered that eating the liver of that great, ponderous beast could be fatal for some unknown reason) and, failing finding fresh meat and vegetables, cutting back on the men’s preferred salt pork and beef, or salted birds, and relying more on the tinned foods — vegetable soups and the like.
— The Terror, by Dan Simmons, pp. 70 – 71 -
K: A Novel, by Ted O’Connell (Santa Fe Writers Project, 2020)
Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster, 2011)
Like Water and Other Stories, by Olga Zilberbourg (WTAW Press, 2019)
Your Nostalgia is Killing Me, by John Weir (Red Hen Press, 2022)
The Accomplice, by Joseph Kanon (Atria Books, 2019)
How High We Go In the Dark, by Sequoia Nagamatsu (William Morrow, 2022)
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Joseph Kanon channeling Ernest Hemingway:
Aaron got up, passing under the low branches of the tree, and headed down the street, the white basilica gleaming on his right. Café Napoli. If this was the right day. His other lifeline. No Panama hat this time. That had been left behind in the rush out of Ortiz’s office. Clothes rumpled after the safe house. A bandage on his forehead. Not a leisurely meal — impossible when you’re this alert, watching everything. Maybe just a glass of wine, something to hold the table, until somebody turned up with an envelope.
— The Accomplice, p. 247 -
A new character makes an appearance: Lieutenant-Colonel Darensky (also a new setting: the Russian steppe).
Darensky got out of his car and looked at a horseman on top of a small hill. Dressed in a long robe tied by a piece of string, he was sitting on his shaggy pony and surviving the steppe. He was very old; his face looked as hard as stone. Darensky called out to the man and then walked up to him, holding out his cigarette-case. The old man turned in his saddle; his movenent somehow combined the agility of youth with the thoughtful caution of age. He looked in turn at the hand holding out the cigarettes, at Darensky’s face, at the pistol hanging by his side, at the three bars indicating his rank, and at his smart boots. Then he took a cigarette and rolled it between his fine, brown, childlike fingers.
— life and fate, pp. 292 – 293 -
. . . a new decree was being printed: Jews are to be forbidden to walk on the pavements; they are required to wear a yellow patch, a Star of David, on the chest; they no longer have the right to use public transport, baths, parks, or cinemas; they are forbidden to buy butter, eggs, milk, berries, white bread, meat, or any vegetable vegetable other than potatoes; they are only allowed to make purchases in the market after six o’clock, when the peasants are already on their way home. The Old Town will be fenced off with barbed wire and people will only be allowed out under escort — to carry out forced labour. If a Jew is discovered in a Russian home, the owner will be shot . . .
— life and fate, pp. 83 – 84 -
Self picked up a copy of The Mermaid and the Bear when she was in Oxford (UK). She started reading it while visiting friends in Buck’s County, Pennsylvania.
Her progress is rather slow, because — well, because the prose demands close reading. The writing is very evocative.
She knew it was a historical novel so, a few minutes ago, she decided to peruse the Historical Notes at the back of the book. Omg. Gut-wrenching.
If you know nothing about the 16th century witch trials, this is a SPOILER ALERT!
- Isobell Manteith, Bessie Thom and Christen Mitchell were real women, all accused of witchcraft in 1597.
To tell you the truth, her favorite character is the motherly cook, Bessie Thom. Self did hope she would meet a better end than the others.
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from the listing on Duotrope:
- ROSEBUD is one of the most dramatically eclectic literary magazines published in English, designed for the interests of both readers and writers. Our mission is to encourage a higher literacy by publishing a wide range of modern and traditional writing with a great variety of subjects, literary styles, and cultural points of view. While we publish many famous and established writers, most of our content comes from newer or under-appreciated authors.
One of their regular contributors was a man in federal prison in California (since released). Editor’s note: “Throughout his incarceration, he has continued to produce laudable work in circumstances under which most people would not be able to write at all.”
Here’s the cover of self’s contributor copy, Issue 67, dated 2020:
They published self’s story The Vanishing, which had been hard to place because . . . Juan de Salcedo? Who the heck ever heard of Juan de Salcedo! The grandson of Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, who got to the Philippines in 1565 with (she just found out, from reading Conquering the Pacific) an older brother, Felipe. Juan de Salcedo was 17, Felipe was 18.
Felipe became captain of his grandfather’s flagship, the San Pedro, on the vuelta. He succeeded in taking it all the way back to Nueva España (quite a feat for an 18-year-old!). Juan stayed with his grandfather, who died in the Philippines the following year. No one really knows what happened to Juan de Salcedo after, but self found, in a book by the late Filipino journalist Manuel Duldulao, a reference to a group of about 40 “starving Spaniards” who tried to push their way into the Mountain Province. The Spaniards were led by a “boy.” That was a very young and green Juan de Salcedo, trying to survive.
Anyhoo, how can you not become fascinated with that boy? In self’s short story, they call him “Vanquisher.” A fourth of self’s story was written in Spanish, without translation. The conceit was that the Spanish issued from the mouth of the insomniac king, His Royal Catholic Majesty Felipe II, and he really didn’t care if anyone (meaning you, dear reader) understood him or not.
An excerpt from The Vanishing:
His Royal Majesty will grant Legazpi five ships. Two ships more than El Viejo expected. Each ship will be fitted with the usual complement of bronze cannon. And 500 men, he adds, almost as an afterthought. Legazpi thinks how those ships will sit in the water, attracting privateers the way honey does flies. He imagines Portuguese and Dutch sails bearing down swiftly in fresh wind.
Thank you, Rosebud editors, for giving self’s story, as well as that of so many others, a home.
Kanlaon 