M.M. Bennetts Finalist Review and Interview – 8

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books, Ella March Chase, England, fiction, historical fiction, M.M. Bennetts Award, novels

My next installment in the parade of M.M. Bennetts Award finalists is The Queen’s Dwarf by Ella March Chase. The Queen’s Dwarf takes place in early 17th Century England, in the court of Charles I. The intrigue of the court focuses on Charles’ marriage to Henrietta-Maria of France, and the efforts of George Villiers (the duke of Buckingham) to maintain his power at court. Buckingham employs a dwarf, Jeffrey Hudson, to spy on the queen for him, but Jeffrey quickly becomes sympathetic to the queen instead.

This book was a very enjoyable read, with a large cast of characters from the lowest to the highest ranks of society. The “queen’s dwarf” of the title is based on an actual historical figure, Jeffrey Hudson, who as “Lord Minimus” was considered one of the wonders of the age and engaged in an amazing life of intrigue and adventure. Many of the incidents of the book are likewise based on incidents from the life of the real Jeffrey Hudson.

I was happy to see Hudson portrayed with sympathy and nuance as he deals with the condescension, disregard, and prejudice of those around him and tries to find the right course of action in a world filled with double-dealing. Chase captures the sensibilities of the era well, and there’s lots of action to keep the plot moving. I’ll be the first to admit that the ins and outs of the English court are not a subject that I usually find interesting; I can never keep all those dukes, earls, and whatnot straight. But this book held my interest despite my predilections. And if you are a British royalty buff, this one will fascinate you!

Here’s Ella March Chase’s website, Goodreads page, Facebook page, and a purchase link.

Ella March Chase

SW: First, congratulations on The Queen’s Dwarf! I’m wondering how you became interested in the court intrigues of this era. Have they been an interest of yours for a long time?

EMC: I fell in love with The Three Musketeers as a teenager and my love of that era began then. I also fell in love with The Three Musketeers– in fact, I’ve had King Charles Cavalier Spaniels named Aramis and D’Artagnan.  The Stuart era has always fascinated me.  There is something so romantic about the time period.  The most amazing fact I discovered was that the incident featured in the Dumas tale, in which Queen Anne’s diamond studs are stolen from the duke of Buckingham really happened!  The woman who stole the diamonds from the duke is featured in The Queen’s Dwarf.  Lucy Hay, the Countess of Carlisle was the inspiration for Milady de Winter.

SW: I was surprised to read in your afterword about how many of the characters in the book are actual historical figures. How much is known about the real Jeffrey Hudson?

EMC: A fair amount since he was so beloved by the queen.  His performances in masques and many incidents from his life at court have been recorded.  He was immortalized in poetry, plays and diaries kept during that time.  He was even captured by pirates twice and was exiled for killing a man in a duel.  Quite an amazing life!

SW: To a modern reader, the idea of having a “menagerie” of human beings around for amusement seems quite bizarre. But I gather that this was a fairly common practice. What was the role of this sort of group in a royal household?

EMC: It was common practice to employ dwarves as royal jesters– their role was to entertain their mistresses or masters. As Henrietta Maria’s fool, Jeffrey would have served in that capacity.  He would also perform in the elaborate masques the queen adored.  He once performed as a devil’s imp, driving a chariot drawn by two spaniels.  Jeffrey, and his best friend, giant Will Evans, often played roles opposite each other.  Jeffrey also would have had “the privilege of the coat”, liberties afforded a court fool.  The fool was allowed to speak of things no one else dared to in front of the monarch.  It was a position of rare emotional intimacy, between Jeffrey and the queen.  He would see her in her most vulnerable moments and be her confidant.

SW: Although many of your characters are actual figures, many others are not. How did you balance the need to stick to history with the need to create an original story?

EMC: While I try to stick close to history, and be as true to characters that actually lived as possible, my books are fiction. Creating characters to flesh the story out and move the story forward was great fun. What I found remarkable about The Queen’s Dwarf was that the most fantastical characters in the book were real.  Giant Will Evans, tiny Jeffrey, the duke of Buckingham and Lucy Hay– they seemed far more fictional than the characters I added.  I do try to blend my creations into the story so carefully that they’re hard to detect.

SW: George Villiers, the duke of Buckingham, figures prominently in this novel. What do you find interesting about this character?

EMC: What fascinated me most about Buckingham was his rise from a nobody, on the fringes of court, to the most powerful man in England, save the king. Buckingham fascinates me.  He bewitched two kings.  Rose to unimaginable heights.  Despite some despicable behavior, and acts of incompetence, he inspired great loyalty and love in his wife and King Charles.  History is populated by women who rose to great power because of their physical beauty.  Buckingham is their mirror image.  He was groomed to become King James’s favorite, but those behind his rise expected him to remain their puppet.  Instead, he seized power for himself– all because he had a beautiful face and a well-turned leg.

SW: Like many American readers, I suspect, my knowledge of British royal history is pretty thin. Do you keep an idea of your envisioned audience’s knowledge level in your mind as you write? And is there a need to “educate” your readers as you go, or do you have to trust them to figure out the history as they read?

EMC: I try to set the stage, build the framework so that people without a wide knowledge of the time period are able to follow the history. I hope to make it intriguing enough that they will want to learn more about the Stuart world. I also want to include tidbits fans of the Stuart-era will find new and exciting.

SW: What’s next for you?

EMC: I’m currently working on getting my backlist titles up as e-books.  I’m also in the middle of a novel set in Paris during World War II.

Thank you so much for this chance to talk about Jeffrey and congratulations on your own work!

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M.M. Bennetts Finalist Review and Interview – 7

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Andalusia, books, creativity, England, Granada, historical fiction, history, M.M. Bennetts, mysteries, novels, reviews, Spain

I was unable to complete the interview for the next book by a finalist for the M.M. Bennetts Award, but here’s the review. The book is The Red Hill, by David Penny. This book was a revelation to me for several reasons.

The setting is fifteenth-century Moorish Spain, in the final years before the fall of the last parcels of Islamic Spain. Thomas Berrington, an Englishman serving as physician to the Sultan of Granada (or Gharnatah as Penny spells it, following the Moorish pronunciations that would have been in use at the time), finds himself with an unexpected task – finding out who has been committing a series of gruesome murders within the walls of the Alhambra itself.

I rarely read mysteries these days, so it was a treat for me to get back into the pleasures of mystery reading – watching for clues, trying to outthink the protagonist, all the while enjoying the benefits of characterization and setting. In this book, the main character is richly characterized, with a range of secondary characters who provide good balance to his strengths and weaknesses. There’s a host of potential suspects, and the setting is rich in detail.

Several things set this book apart for me. One was the variety of characters. I have read that Moorish Spain was a remarkably diverse location, and Penny takes full advantage of that diversity, populating the novel with a wide range of characters. Of particular interest is Thomas’s partner in detection, a palace eunuch named Jorge. Penny avoids the cliché of medieval historical fiction and makes Jorge an interesting, complicated character, rather than a creature defined by his difference. The book also effectively conveys the reality of life in an absolute monarchy, where the whim of the Sultan carries the power of life and death.

The Red Hill takes a few liberties with the actual history of the era, which Penny carefully points out in his afterword. But in terms of capturing the feel of a time and place, the book does a marvelous job of conjuring up the last days of Islamic Spain, with a dandy murder mystery as the driving force of the plot.

You can learn more about David Penny on his website and order the book here.

David Penny

M.M. Bennetts Award Finalist Review and Interview – 1

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blogs, books, editing, England, fiction, historical fiction, history, novels, reviews, war, World War II

My first review and interview of the other M.M. Bennetts Award finalists is of Liverpool Connection by Elisabeth Marrion.

If you’re familiar with John Boorman’s classic film Hope and Glory, you’ll immediately appreciate the social setting of Elisabeth Marrion’s novel Liverpool Connection. The setting is Liverpool, not London, but the theme of finding hope amidst deprivation is the same. Liverpool Connection tells the story of a working-class family before, during, and after the Second World War, and the hardships, love, loss, and far-flung connections they encounter during those years.

I was struck by the realism of this novel. The characters are believable, with their struggles and sufferings portrayed faithfully. These characters lead lives of hardship that to most of us today seem intolerable, but they manage to find love and friendship in the tiny spaces left them by their daily battle to earn enough to feed themselves and their families.

The central character of the novel is Annie, who emigrates from Ireland to Liverpool as a young woman, motivated partly by the need to relieve her family of the burden of another mouth to feed. She trades one hardscrabble life for another, only now as a wife and mother, and there are times when I wondered whether Annie would make it through her troubles, especially once the bombs began to fall. But somehow she does, and the book takes an unexpected turn when the point of view shifts to that of a German family experiencing the same kind of hardships at the same time.

The ground-level view of life during wartime appealed to me. The characters are both acutely aware of the war – it alters everything about their lives – and only dimly aware of the sweep of strategy. Young men sign up for the Africa Corps while barely knowing the location of Africa on the map.

I do have a few complaints about the book. I found it dialogue-heavy and wished for more description at times, and at other times I found the editing less than satisfactory. But overall I admired the grit of these characters as they coped with the many difficulties handed them, and when I learned in the interview below that English is Elisabeth’s second language, some of my complaints about the style lost significance in that context.

You can learn more about Elisabeth Marrion and Liverpool Connection at her website, Facebook page, and blog. Here’s an article by Elisabeth and a purchase link, too!

SW: Elisabeth, thanks for agreeing to be interviewed. Could you start by telling us a little bit about what inspired you to write Liverpool Connection?

Steve, first of all I would like to thank you for asking me to take part with an interview  for your Blog.

Maybe I have to tell you the story from the beginning. I started the ‘Unbroken Bonds’ Series with my mother’s story. As soon as I wrote it, I knew it had to be a trilogy, but in a way that the books can be read as a series, or as stand alone books. Whereas the first book tells us about Hilde’s life before and during WW II in Germany, Liverpool Connection looks at the life of Annie, her friends and her family in England covering the same timespan. Amazingly family life on both sides of the War was very similar. My mother was German and lost her officer husband on the Russian Front. My father, from Liverpool, was in the Royal Air Force, later stationed in Germany where he met my mother. Both sides of this conflict share similar experiences and this I needed to tell in Liverpool Connection.

SW: One thing I found striking about the book was its depiction of the poverty that the main characters endured, not just before and during the war, but after it as well. Do you think contemporary audiences grasp just how hard conditions were during that time?

I believe that because of media, books, television and movies, Audiences now have a much better understanding about the hardships and poverty before, during and after WWII. Readers are eager to learn what life was like in Europe at the time.

SW: What was the most difficult part for you in writing this book?

The most difficult part of writing books about WWII, is that I am German! German people do not speak about the War. That is still the case today, 70 years after it ended. My German family was very much against me writing  the story, And not only did I write about them, now Liverpool Connection views the War from the other site. The German version will only be released in Germany Autumn 2015. Oh dear.

SW: The term “war novel” tends to summon up certain associations in people’s minds – great feats of courage in crisis, battlefield confrontations, and so forth. Are you comfortable with referring to Liverpool Connection as a “war novel”?

I can not see any problem with the definition of ‘War Novel’ for  Liverpool Connection. I believe the publisher has expressed in the book cover the spirit of the book wonderfully. The reader is drawn to the book by its cover and realises, this is about family life and not only about horrors on the battlefield. Maybe on this occasion it is a case of ‘judge the book by its cover’.

SW: Did you need to conduct a lot of research for this book, or was most of the material already known to you through personal sources?

I knew my mother’s and my father’s story. It is true that the generation who lived through the war speak about it very little. But since the father of my German brothers and sisters did not return to see his children grow up, my mother made true on his wish in the last letter she received from the front. ‘Tell the children about their father, live your life and through you and the children I will also live,’ he said.  I listened carefully to everything my mother told us. Later she came to spend many months with me in England and together we started the project. My father’s story was not that dissimilar. He however did not want to go into too many details. What I did not learn from my family I researched, especially times, dates, speeches, I really did learn a lot and I enjoyed the research very much.

SW: My readers are mostly American, and of course they have an American picture of the Second World War, based on what they have read and learned from family members who went through it. What do you think American readers will find most surprising about the war from the perspective they would get from Liverpool Connection?

I receive a lot of comments from American readers. Most of the readers enjoyed reading about the war viewed from a family life. You are right when you say hardly anybody realised the poverty before, during but especially after the war. Ration coupons were issued until the early 50’s, something which is hard to believe now. Sweets were the last items to be rationed and ended on February 5th 1953. Immediately the shops had plenty of stock and children queued for hours. Toffee apples were the most popular sweet on that day.

SW: I see from the Epilogue that this novel has considerable basis in your own family history. Was that an asset to you in the writing of the book, or an obstacle? I’m thinking about how much freedom you felt in shaping the plot, creating characters, and so forth.

My family history was certainly an asset and an inspiration to the story. I was concerned at the beginning how my family would react and worried about the characters and their names. At the end I decided, that this is my family history and I have all right to talk about it. Mind you I did change some of the names. I really enjoyed shaping the plot and developing the characters. I hear from readers who tell me who are their favourites in Liverpool Connection and for whom they have no sympathy at all. It is really nice that the reader takes it on board.

SW: I see that Liverpool Connection is part of a trilogy, with the third book scheduled for release this spring. Can you give us some more information about that book?

‘Cuckoo Clock – New York’ is Esther’s story. Esther and Ibrahim are separated after the Burning of the Synagogues in Germany in November 1938. Ibrahim is taken to Dachau. Esther tries to keep her promise to him and flee to England and later to New York. In England she meets Anna Essinger, who is instrumental in saving German Jewish children by arranging, what is now referred to, as ‘The Kinder Transport’. Again there is a connection between the first and second book.

SW: Thanks so much for your time! Best wishes on your next book!

Misty, Moisty Morning

Tags

ballad, England, history, poetry, rural

One misty, moisty morning, when cloudy was the weather….

That’s a nursery rhyme my mother would repeat on mornings like this….overcast and foggy, rainwater dripping off trees.

The first verse is all I ever knew, but it turns out that there’s a whole series of verses. The old man that the narrator meets in the first verse disappears, and the rest of the poem deals with the narrator meeting a milkmaid named Dolly a little farther down the road.

The narrator immediately sets to courting Dolly, and “with many kind embraces, I stroked her double chin.” And for once the ballad is not about seduction and abandonment: “Her parents then consented, all parties were agreed, her portion thirty shillings, we married were with speed.”

How do you do, and how do you do, and how do you do again!