The Language of Food (US title: Miss Eliza’s English Kitchen)

The Language of Food
by Annabel Abbs
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9781398502239
Publication Date: March 2, 2022
Pages: 399
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

England 1835. Eliza Acton is a poet who dreams of seeing her words in print. But when she takes her new manuscript to a publisher, she’s told that ‘poetry is not the business of a lady’. Instead, they want her to write a cookery book. That’s what readers really want from women. England is awash with exciting new ingredients, from spices to exotic fruits. But no one knows how to use them

Eliza leaves the offices appalled. But when her father is forced to flee the country for bankruptcy, she has no choice but to consider the proposal. Never having cooked before, she is determined to learn and to discover, if she can, the poetry in recipe writing. To assist her, she hires seventeen-year-old Ann Kirby, the impoverished daughter of a war-crippled father and a mother with dementia.

Over the course of ten years, Eliza and Ann developed an unusual friendship – one that crossed social classes and divides – and, together, they broke the mould of traditional cookbooks and changed the course of cookery writing forever.

Not quite as good as I’d hoped it would be, but maybe that’s because it also felt a bit different that I expected. This is a fictional work based on the real life of Elizabeth Acton, author of what is considered to be one of the world’s most successful cookery writers, with Modern Cookery for Private Families first published in 1845 and was a best seller internationally for the next 90 years.

Abbs, condensed the 10 years Acton worked on the cookbook, along with her assistant/servant Ann Kirby, and imagined how the partnership might have worked. I think she did a great job, and I was enjoying it right up until the end, where it did so rather abruptly. Acton returns home from a visit to her sister’s, full of enthusiasm, energy, and plans to add a chapter on bread, enters the kitchen to hear Ann humming, and BAM! The next page is the Epilogue. It was disorienting, to say the least.

Otherwise, it was an enjoyable, if not exactly riveting, read. I knew nothing about Acton (as I try never to cook), but by the time I finished this book, I planning on trawling the used book sites for a copy of Modern Cookery for Private Families, even though I have no plans to start cooking. I think it was the scene involving quince paste. I’m intrigued by quinces and would be willing to try my hand at paste. Anyway, a good read, with some great author notes at the end about what’s accurate and what’s story-telling. It’s always a bonus when fiction can be educational too.

The House Between the Tides

The House Between the Tides
by Sarah Maine
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9781760297046
Publication Date: April 26, 2017
Pages: 385
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Following the deaths of her last living relatives, Hetty Deveraux leaves her strained marriage behind in London and journeys to Scotland to inspect her inheritance: her ancestral home, now in ruins. As Hetty dives headfirst into the repairs, she discovers a shocking secret protected by the house for a hundred years.

With only whispered rumours circulating among the local villagers and a handful of leads to guide her, Hetty finds the power of the past is still affecting her present in startling ways.

Another LT recommendation, and to use my father’s phrase, it was fair to middlin’.

The book is well written and the plots (dual time lines) were well constructed. The story just didn’t do it for me. My cockles weren’t warmed and my attention wasn’t hooked. The present day POV kept me reading far longer than I should have, while the past POV had me bored and the trope had me rolling my eyes.

Just really not my jam.

I would, however, totally live somewhere that’s only accessible during low tides.

Bloomsbury Girls

Bloomsbury Girls
by Natalie Jenner
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780749028046
Publication Date: January 1, 2022
Pages: 411
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Publisher: Allison & Busby

One bookshop. Fifty-one rules. Three women who break them all.

1950, London. Bloomsbury Books on Lamb’s Conduit Street has resisted change for a hundred years, run by men and guided by the manager’s unbreakable rules. But after the turmoil of war in Europe, the world is changing and the women in the shop have plans.

As the paths of stylish Vivien, loyal Grace and brilliant Evie cross with literary figures such as Daphne Du Maurier, Samuel Beckett and Peggy Guggenheim, these Bloomsbury girls are working together to plot out a richer and more rewarding future.

Straight up general fiction, with a strong ‘female power’ theme, Bloomsbury Girls feels a wee bit modern-day-feminist in a few places, but it really isn’t (or else I’d have DNF’d it). This is, however, an accurate enough portrayal of the emerging shift in gender dynamics that took place after WWII, when women were less inclined to give up their jobs or their independence, and the painful adjustment this meant for so many men raised in one world-view and then thrust into another.

I thought Jenner created a realistic cast of characters for such a time; the women came from different backgrounds – one aimed for a traditional family, another embraced her independence, and the third a former servant trying to find her footing in a culture that would have been out of her grasp only a decade previously. The men, too, were a mixed lot, and with not a little irony folded in. Some of them found women’s new roles refreshing and empowering to everyone, while others were ambivalent, and yet others fought against it with everything they had. I like this much better than the recently popular trend of making all men evil and all women down-trodden and oppressed, which is so unrealistic it drives me more than a little nuts.

Overall, I found this to be a gentle read, with likeable, well fleshed out characters. The cameos by real historical characters added a bit of flair here and there, and nicely highlighted that in the 50’s there were more than a few powerful women around, willing to offer friendship and mentoring to others. Of course, their actions here are fictitious, so perhaps they weren’t as altruistic in real life, but nevertheless, it makes the story work.

I enjoyed this and would recommend it to anyone looking for a palette cleanser between reads, or an amuse bouche between favourite genre reads. It’s not going to change your life, or keep you on the edge of your seat, but it did keep me turning the pages, interested in what was going to happen and how it was all going to work out.

(Note: this is the author’s second book, and is apparently in the same world as her first The Jane Austen Society with character overlap. It reads as a stand alone, but there are enough references to said previous book that the connection is obvious. I might have to give that one a go soon.)

A Spear Of Summer Grass

A Spear Of Summer Grass
by Deanna Raybourn
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9780778314394
Publication Date: May 1, 2013
Pages: 373
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Publisher: Harlequin

Paris, 1923

The daughter of a scandalous mother, Delilah Drummond is already notorious, even amongst Paris society. But her latest scandal is big enough to make even her oft-married mother blanch. Delilah is exiled to Kenya and her favorite stepfather’s savannah manor house until gossip subsides.

Fairlight is the crumbling, sun-bleached skeleton of a faded African dream, a world where dissolute expats are bolstered by gin and jazz records, cigarettes and safaris. As mistress of this wasted estate, Delilah falls into the decadent pleasures of society.

Against the frivolity of her peers, Ryder White stands in sharp contrast. As foreign to Delilah as Africa, Ryder becomes her guide to the complex beauty of this unknown world. Giraffes, buffalo, lions and elephants roam the shores of Lake Wanyama amid swirls of red dust. Here, life is lush and teeming—yet fleeting and often cheap.

Amidst the wonders—and dangers—of Africa, Delilah awakes to a land out of all proportion: extremes of heat, darkness, beauty and joy that cut to her very heart. Only when this sacred place is profaned by bloodshed does Delilah discover what is truly worth fighting for—and what she can no longer live without.

Don’t believe the stories you have heard about me.

I have never killed anyone, and I have never stolen another woman’s husband. Oh, if I find one lying around unattended, I might climb on, but I never took one that didn’t want taking.

And I never meant to go to Africa.

So many random thoughts; I picked this up at the library purely on the strength of Deanna Raybourn and my enjoyment of her other novels. I knew it wasn’t a mystery, but I grabbed it anyway because it was set in Africa, and I really enjoy Raybourn’s writing; the dry wit, the sass.

The only thing this novel had in common with her Julia Grey / Veronica Speedwell novels is the male love interest; it’s safe to say Raybourn has a type, and she sticks with it. Brisbane, Stoker and Ryder could all be the same character with different hair styles. As for the rest of the story, it’s utterly different from anything else of hers I’ve read.

A Spear Of Summer Grass starts off slowly – so very slowly – and its plot is tenuous, at best, for the first … 70% of the book? For that first 2/3, it was a 3 star read and that was because Raybourn captured the romance of interwar Africa (Kenya, specifically) perfectly for a reader whose chance at experiencing it herself has been postponed. The main character, Delilah, is not a typical Raybourn heroine. She looks like it on the outside, as she does what she pleases and apologises to no one, but it’s not coming from a core of strength; Delilah’s core is pretty amoral when it comes to sex. She’s Phryne Fisher without a purpose. Eventually, the reader learns where this comes from, but Raybourn makes the reader work for it.

Round about that 70% mark it’s clear that this story comes closest to a coming of age story mixed with a romance, whose chemistry is also every bit like the chemistry between the characters in her other books. There are also some developments that really work towards ratcheting up the pace – and the reader’s interest. Some of the secondary bits and characters were clunky, but for that last third of the book, I was hooked; I was invested, and I was sorry to see it come to an end.

Would I recommend it? I don’t know. I’m glad I read it – it was beautifully written, well researched (even if some of her research came from funny sources), and ultimately it was a good story – but I think it’s one the reader has to be in the mood for more so than for most books.

I did NOT read this for Halloween Bingo, and it doesn’t fit any of the squares.

The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir

The Chilbury Ladies' Choir
by Jennifer Ryan
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780008163716
Publication Date: February 20, 2017
Pages: 453
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Publisher: Borough Press

Kent, 1940. The women of Chilbury village have taken umbrage at the Vicar's closure of the choir now that its male singers are at war. But when spirited music professor Primrose Trent arrives, it prompts the creation of an all-female singing group. Resurrecting themselves as The Chilbury Ladies' Choir, the women use their song and unity to embolden the community as the war tears through their lives. Dependable Mrs Tilling sees the choir as a chance to finally put herself first, and a welcome distraction from thoughts of her son fighting on the front line.

For Kitty Winthrop, the precocious youngest daughter of Chilbury Manor, singing is the only way to outshine her glamorous sister Venetia, who isn't letting the war ruin her plan to make every bachelor in the county fall in love with her. Meanwhile, when midwife Edwina Paltry is presented with a dastardly job which she's convinced will make her rich, she will have to misuse more than the trust of the choir's women to carry out her scheme – and nothing is going to stop her.

This book starts with the About the Author and includes this bit:

Many of the characters’ stories in the book are based on real life, discovered through [the author’s] extensive research and her grandmother’s experiences.

and I have to say, it made the read somehow more enjoyable. As a book of pure fiction, I think I would still have enjoyed it, but might have felt less satisfied with the characters’ stories; as a work of fiction based on read people and events, the loose ends and un-satisfactory resolutions for some of them felt authentic and more tolerable.

In structure, this is an epistolary novel told from multiple POVs that come from letters and diary entries written in 1940 England, just as the war really begins to hit the home front. I’d argue it’s not a truly epistolary structure though; while I’m sure some people wrote very detailed letters and diary entires, I can’t imagine very many would go so far as to write long narratives that include setting a scene and transcribing exact dialog. It works, but those who don’t care for epistolary structures might find this more tolerable.

Told from 6 POVs, which sounds like a lot, but works really well, this is the story of a small village near Dover whose vicar disbands their choir because there are no men left. The women and children in the choir find strength, comfort and an outlet for their anxiety in their choir performances – a good thing because lots of terrible things happen in the course of 1940, both war related and not.

There’s an obvious love story, a sneaky love story and many non-romantic mini-plots. The ending of a few are satisfying, the ending of a few others are realistic and left open, and a few – at least 1 – left me thinking there wasn’t enough information given for me to believe in their finality. Overall though, it was a book that started slow, but efficiently pulled me in until I didn’t care to put it down again. An enjoyable read.

Evil in Emerald (Harriet Gordon Mystery, #3)

Evil in Emerald
by A.M. Stuart
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780593335482
Series: Harriet Gordon #3
Publication Date: April 5, 2022
Pages: 347
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Mystery
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime

Craving a change of pace, Harriet Gordon, joins a local musical theatre production but when a fellow cast member is brutally killed, Harriet and Inspector Curran must turn the spotlight on murder in this all-new mystery from the author of Revenge in Rubies.

Between working at her brother’s school and typing up Inspector Robert Curran’s police reports, Harriet Gordon has little time for personal pursuits and she has been enjoying the rehearsals for her role in the Singapore Amateur Dramatic and Musical Society’s latest production – Pirates of Penzance. But Harriet quickly discovers tensions run deep within the theatre company and when the leading man is found murdered, suspicions abound, exposing scandalous behavior as well as some insidious crimes.

Inspector Curran once again turns to Harriet for help with this difficult case, but his own life begins to unravel as a mysterious man turns up on his doorstep claiming to know more about Curran’s painful past than he himself does. And after the one person he has always counted on delivers him some devastating news, the line between his personal and professional life begins to blur. Now, more than ever, Curran needs Harriet’s steadfast assistance, and when another cast member meets a violent end, Curran and Harriet will have to close in on a killer determined to make this case their final curtain call.

In a lot of ways, this series feels like a direct reaction to Little, Brown’s Su Lin series, written by Ovidia Yu: it’s set in British Colonial Singapore (albeit pre WWI as opposed to Yu’s interwar setting); Harriet Gordon, the female lead, though white and British, has a scandalous background and earns a meagre salary by typing reports for the police; Robert Curren is the detective – also with a scandalous past, a shady history, and a very private man with unconventional habits. The two series are so similar, in fact, that I was prepared to swear that a character in this series – Curran’s love interest – was actually the love interest of the detective in the Su Lin series. Both series have a Singh on the police force.

There’s a lot of similarities between the two series, but there are also a lot of fundamental differences. Yu’s Su Lin series feels authentic from the viewpoint of the different Asian citizens of Singapore and Yu’s Singapore feels like the hot, humid, barely tamed jungle it surely was; reading her books is to put yourself in a very exotic setting. Stuart’s pre-WWI Singapore is undoubtedly authentic too, but it’s definitely from the viewpoint of the colonisers. Every bit of the story bleeds British, right down to the setting of Evil in Emerald, an amateur production of Pirates of Penzance. All the primary characters are white (British, Aussie, Kiwi), and Singapore is sanitised.

I was just a touch more than indifferent after reading the first two books, but bought this one last week because I was in the mood for an historical mystery, and I have to say, the author convinced me with this one. This time around, the characters gelled with me and I was far more interested in them than I was previously. There’s a more pronounced element of romance in this series and I admit I like the dynamic developing between Gordon and Curran.

The mystery plotting was still average, though Stuart masked what would have felt to me to be a transparent crime by mixing in at least two other crimes involving the mix of the same suspects. It worked, for the most part. I wasn’t at all surprised by the murderer, but I wasn’t ever bored with the waiting to find out if I was right or not.

Unfortunately, the author uses this book as a springboard to complications for Curran, and uses the last chapters to setup the direction of the next book. I wouldn’t find this so irritating if I hadn’t bought the book on publication. As it is, I’m finally interested and now have to wait who-knows-how-long before the next one comes out.

All in all, a developing series with promise if you’re looking for an historical mystery series, and enjoy the British variety – but for an historical mystery series that’s dripping with exotic, authentic Singaporean atmosphere, stick with Ovidia Yu’s Su Lin series. Me? I like both – double the reading pleasure! I just have to remember who belongs in where.

Behold Here’s Poison

Behold, Here's Poison
by Georgette Heyer
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 0434328448
Publication Date: January 1, 1972
Pages: 320
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Mystery
Publisher: Heinemann

This is a book I should have enjoyed more than I did. The dialog between characters is scathing, often hilarious in a ‘I can’t believe he/she said that out loud’ kind of way, and the murder was clever and the karma both just and tragic. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, so much as I think I might have been better off choosing something else at that moment, with the result that I was impatient with the reading of it. It’s a weird place to be when you’re reading thinking this is good and are we done yet? at the same time.

Heyer’s strong point in writing wasn’t her detectives; Hannasyde is flat and Hemingway needs to switch to decaf, but the rest of the cast of characters are all vividly written, and as I said, the dialog scorching. Mrs. Lupton came on the scene with a speech that had me laughing and wanting to stand and applaud and the rest of the case all have a shot at each other at least once or twice.

The romance, arguably Heyer’s raison d’être, just … failed. To put those two together with so little development or subtlety makes me wonder if Heyer hated these characters and wanted them so suffer. I mean, there’s playful verbal sparring, and there’s what these two were doing. Me? I don’t find anything romantic about being called a little idiot.

The Corinthian

The Corinthian
by Georgette Heyer
Rating: ★★★★
Publication Date: January 1, 1950
Pages: 256
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Publisher: Heinemann

An amusing, highly improbable adventure with a tolerable touch of silliness. Heyer’s romances are always entertaining (unless they’re the badly written ones) because she writes romance with her tongue firmly in her cheek, and this one was truly tongue in cheek. A nice in-between read that was easily finished in a day.

The Last Bookshop in London

The Last Bookshop in London
by Madeline Martin
Rating: ★★½
isbn: 9781867231912
Publication Date: June 2, 2021
Pages: 300
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Publisher: Harlequin

Inspired by the true World War II history of the few bookshops to survive the Blitz, The Last Bookshop in London is a timeless story of wartime loss, love and the enduring power of literature.

August 1939: London is dismal under the weight of impending war with Germany as Hitler’s forces continue to sweep across Europe. Into this uncertain maelstrom steps Grace Bennett, young and ready for a fresh start in the bustling city streets she’s always dreamed of — and miles away from her troubled past in the countryside.

With aspirations of working at a department store, Grace never imagined she’d wind up employed at Primrose Hill, an offbeat bookshop nestled in the heart of the city — after all, she’s never been much of a reader. Overwhelmed with organizing the cluttered store, she doesn’t have time to read the books she sells. But when one is gifted to her, what starts as an obligation becomes a passion that draws her into the incredible world of literature.

As the Blitz rains down bombs on the city night after night, a devastating attack leaves the libraries and shops of London’s literary center in ruins. Miraculously, Grace’s bookshop survives the firestorm. Through blackouts and air raids, Grace continues running the shop, discovering a newfound comfort in the power of words and storytelling that unites her community in ways she never imagined — a force that triumphs over even the darkest nights of war-torn London.

(I read this last year, but somehow missed copying over the review to my blog.)

This is what my brain looks like on sleeping meds, and why it’s never a good idea to book shop under the influence.

To be fair, this looked like it should have been a good book for me. It’s about a bookshop, it’s an historical WWII setting, and it’s not a romance, though I did pause when I saw that it’s published by Harlequin. And the story does have its compelling moments; enough of them that I didn’t DNF it.

Unfortunately, the writing is not sophisticated and the whole tone of the book could best be summed up as the print version of a Hallmark Movie. That’s not me dissing Hallmark Movies – they’re just not my personal jam. Too emotional, too sweet, too earnest, too …too for my overly analytical preferences.

Full credit, however, for the vivid descriptions of the bombing raids on London. They were almost, though not quite, visceral. And I throughly enjoyed most of the bookshop scenes as Grace rehabbed a stuffy, dusty bookshop into a social hub for the neighborhood.

The Toll-Gate

The Toll-Gate
by Georgette Heyer
Rating: ★★★
Publication Date: January 1, 1954
Pages: 283
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Suspense
Publisher: Heinemann

Well, that was a fun, funny, and tedious read. I was both entertained and exasperated, and not a little impatient, the entire time I read it. I’m not quite sure how that works; it’s a first for me.

The book starts off at a house party to celebrate the 6th Earl of Saltash’s engagement. Other than the fact that Captain Staple is at the party, it and all the details and characters involved have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the book and never again come into play. So the first chapter and half of the second are entirely irrelevant. It’s only once Captain Staple leaves the house party that the story really begins.

Staple gets a late start, and gets caught in a storm that leaves him lost in the moors, until he finds himself at a toll-gate, late at night, being run by a terrified 10 year old boy. Looking for a place to shelter, Staple stops, and learns that the boy’s father, the real toll-keeper, was only supposed to be gone an hour but never came back. The next morning, Staple experiences love at first sight when he lays eyes on a woman, the squire’s daughter, passing through the gate on her way to church. Needing an excuse to stay, Staple tells the boy he’ll stick around to figure out what happened to his father, intending to woo the squire’s daughter at the same time.

What unfolds is a bit of a rollicking adventure that was almost entirely ruined by Heyer’s heavy use of obscure British slang and vernacular.

“Prigged his tattler, too, but I sold that. I’m a great one for a pinch o’ merry-go-up, and this little box just happened to take my fancy, and I’ve kept it. I daresay I’d get a double finnup for it, too,” he added.”

In context, I can ascertain the speaker is referencing a theft, but the entire book is written like this, which is what makes this well-plotted adventure so damn tedious. By midway through the book, I got the impression that Heyer was purposefully laying it on as thickly as possible, either to prove something to herself, or torture her editors and readers. Perhaps at the time of publication, readers wouldn’t have struggled with the senseless dialog, but I’d have appreciated a glossary – or perhaps just a great deal less verisimilitude.