by TCW | Feb 4, 2020 | Book review
Entertaining Mr Pepys is the third and, probably final, book in Deborah Swift’s series about Mr Pepys’ women. Although the protagonist, Mrs Knepp is an actual historical character who Pepys knew, the man himself is only incidental to the story. In fact, all the scenes featuring him could be removed without affecting the story arc at all.
In the second in the series, A Plague on Mr Pepys, Swift had moved away from the privileged world of the Pepys household in order to explore the poverty and misery of the artisanal class. This time the focus is on the world of the theatre, but again we see the way in which the mid-17th century trapped and exploited women. Mrs Knepp has been cast adrift by her uncaring father into an unloving marriage. Mr Knepp is a brute, using his wife as an unpaid servant. All that keeps her going is that she has one servant of her own who, being black, is even lower down the pecking order than she is.
Other women have more incidental roles, exchanging sexual favours for better parts in the theatre or driven mad by cruel husbands (in a scene of full-on Dickens-esque madness, she stands in the street as London burns, “her arms waving like a crazy statue”). Even Mrs Pepys complains of the cruelty and meanness of her husband though, by the standards of the time, Pepys seems to have been quite a good husband and her life was comfortable, verging on luxurious.
Samuel Pepys by John Hayls (1666)
If the first three quarters of the book reads, at times, like a feminist tract, does it give a fair picture of the position of women in the world of the period? I’m not sure that it does. We meet an orange girl whose mother was a prostitute and who is, at 14 years old, already little better than a whore herself. Bright and sassy, she still seems doomed to a miserable, and probably short, life, but this is Nell Gwynne, who is to become the King’s mistress. We hear lots about the present hardships of the characters but little about their future success.
We get a rather one-sided version of their married lives, too. We are assured that, though Mrs Knepp spends a lot of time with Pepys, they are not lovers. This is the Pepys who, we know from his diaries, will literally bend a serving girl over in a corridor and have his way with barely a break of step as he passes. But Mrs Knepp is unsullied by Pepys (though an excellent Historical Note suggests at least two lovers). Poor Mr Knepp: brute as he is, he is at least a faithful brute.
The problem that I have is not so much that the women have miserable lives but that Swift clearly believes that they are miserable mainly on account of their being women. You don’t have to be a committed Marxist to interpret the exploitation of women as an example of the general exploitation of the weak by the strong. Mrs Pepys, as we have seen in earlier books in the series, is not above casual cruelty to servants and the book does not dwell on the hardships faced by the labouring man of the period. In fact, Knepp’s business (he hires carriage horses) requires a yard full of lads who, one suspects do hard work fetching and carrying for rather more kicks than ha’pence. Even so, Mrs Knepp is quite happy to see them go without food when she spends the meat money on theatre tickets, demonstrating that the rule that the strong will exploit the weak applies across both genders.
Sadly (and uncharacteristically), Swift allows the requirements of the plot elements to over-ride the characterisation at the beginning of the story. Mrs Knepp has apparently had a very happy childhood with a father whom she loves and who seems to have loved her back. With her mother’s death, her father marries a wicked step-mother and the poor girl is foisted off on a clearly unsuitable husband after which her father cuts off all contact. It doesn’t ring true and sticks out as an obvious plot device in a book in which most of the other relationships are lovingly and credibly delineated. Even the ghastly Mr Knepp is given a back-story that makes him a sympathetic character despite his frequent cruelty.
Even with these reservations, the book demonstrates Swift’s fine grasp of her period. It’s full of convincing detail: the use of limes to avoid pregnancy; the actor-manager’s insistence on women playing roles where they are disguised as men because “Killigrew likes you in breeches so they can see your bum”; the casual prejudice against Catholics. She takes you into that world and makes it real. You hear the noises and smell the smells (and how revolting many of those smells are). If the miserable domestic life of Mrs Knepp sometimes acts as a bit of a drag on the plot we, like her, can at least escape to the theatre and the world of the King’s Players is as lively as the world of Knepp’s stable yard is dull.
The book, like the theatrical performances that are such an important part of the story, is divided into three acts. Act Three sees a dramatic change of pace. Domestic drama and sexual politics give way to the horror that is the Great Fire of London. Here Swift comes into her own. She has a flair for melodrama and, with the fire, melodrama is clearly appropriate. Swift first describes the fire as we see it in Pepys’ diary.
Elisabeth peered over Janey’s shoulder. There was an orange glow a little way off on Marke Lane.
“Fancy you waking us up for that,” Elisabeth said. ”It’s just someone’s bonfire. Someone could piss it out.”
By the morning more than three hundred houses have been burned down and the Thames is clogged with the boats of refugees fleeing the flames. We see the disaster from the point of view of several of the characters: Pepys burying his parmesan cheese in his garden; a Frenchman returning up the River from a trip across the Channel; Knepp with a stable full of straw and horses terrified by the smell of burning. We move from the detail of horses trapped in their stalls and people staring in dismay at the wreckage of their houses pulled down to make firebreaks, to a broader view of the impact of the fire on the city.
Burning of old St. Paul’s, by Wenceslaus Hollar Engraving (Yale Center for British Art)
The landscape of London was like mouth with missing teeth, full of blackened stumps and gaps. The view was alien; unrecognisable. Half-burned joists and rafters stuck out from church steeples, in the distance something exploded.
By the time the fire is burned out, relationships have been changed for ever. “It’s a purification,” one character says. “London needed it.” There is talk of how the city cannot survive, though we know, of course, that it did. Out of the fire, came a better London and, in this book, better people. Even Knepp is redeemed and, at last, Swift allows that some men do try to be decent people, even prepared to sacrifice themselves for the women they love. (No more details because spoilers!)
In the end, the fire redeems not only the characters but the book. Any criticisms that the reader has in the earlier chapters are likely to be burned away in the flames. If some of the reconciliations seem a little pat, well, it worked for Dickens, so I don’t see why Swift shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it too. She has, once again, produced a gripping and convincing tale of the Restoration. If you enjoy this period (and books like M J Logue’s An Abiding Fire) you should definitely read this one.
[This is an extended version of a review that first appeared in Historia, the on-line magazine of the Historical Writers’ Association: http://www.historiamag.com/ ]
by TCW | Dec 17, 2019 | Book review
Terry Tyler’s latest, Blackthorn, is another dystopian novel set in the world she initially established in the Renova trilogy, but it stands up perfectly without you reading the others.
Blackthorn
explores a Britain (and probably the rest of the world) that has collapsed and
is being rebuilt with England having a tribal structure. A few small towns
dominate the countryside with villages and other communities gradually falling
to bands of travelling outlaws. Blackthorn is one of the most successful of
these towns.
This isn’t a political book and a political theorist would, I suspect, struggle with the economic basis of Blackthorn. It isn’t quite a feudal system, because it’s not based on ownership of the land, but it does reflect the feudal era in that there is a strict hierarchy within the village with a hereditary leader supported by guards (equivalent to nobles) and then skilled workmen working its way down to people who are essentially serfs. There is a lot of exposition of the nature of the society, which made the book hard for me to get into. It also has an enormous cast with lots of minor characters and I initially found it quite difficult to keep track of everybody.
Fortunately, not that many of Terry Tyler’s readers are likely to be political nerds and once the story really gets going we begin to focus on a more manageable number of characters. The characterisation comes alive in a way which seemed unlikely in the opening chapters. I began to wonder if the characters had taken over from the author, because the plot, too, becomes much livelier. We move away from the details of the village economy, with its peculiar currency of chips and crowns (surely eaten away by inflation in any real-world economy expanding at that rate) and its tightly defined social structure and start getting into something more interesting, centred on the strengths and weaknesses of the people living there.
I had started reading almost with a sense of duty, but, as the plot picked up, I was increasingly drawn into it and by the end I was sitting up late to find out what happened next. This is encouraged by Terry Tyler’s prose style which is, as always, fluid and engaging.
I’m not going to say anything about the plot because it’s
almost impossible to do so without spoilers. At first I
thought it was boring and predictable, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
That’s all I’ll say and that’s probably too much.
There are a lot of people who will be put off this book, with its dystopian background, its detailed invented society, and its discussion of religion, but they, like me, will probably find that it draws them in if they stay with it.
Definitely worth the read.
by TCW | Nov 26, 2019 | Book review
I’ve been very enthusiastic about Frank Prem’s first two books of poems, so he kindly sent me a copy of his latest, The New Asylum.
I’ve taken a while to read it and I’m finding it quite a difficult book to review. When I was at university I spent one summer vacation working in a psychiatric hospital. It says a lot about the period that the official name of the hospital was the – Hospital for the Mentally Subnormal and Severely Subnormal. I doubt it’s still called that these days, although the cruel bluntness of its name was at least honest, unlike the weaselly ‘learning difficulties’ of today. I was on a ward for ‘psychotic and disturbed’ patients. Daily life could include violent attacks, trying to reassure a paranoid patient that the others didn’t all hate her, and dealing with random chaos. A tutor at university said that I described behaviour that was already unusual as the increased availability of effective drug treatment meant that patients seldom exhibited such florid symptoms. Perhaps part of the problem was that we had only limited access to drugs that could be used for acute interventions because they had to be administered by a qualified doctor and there was only one on duty in the whole hospital. By the time he got round to our ward in response to an urgent phone call we usually had the patient in a straitjacket (yes, we still used them) and the immediate crisis was over. Despite all this, though, it was a happy summer. I won’t say I made firm friends, but I did go back to visit patients I remembered with affection. There was the woman who was being prepared for a half-way hostel. “What do you want to do when you get out?” “I want to rob gas meters, Tom.” I wished her luck. She was a pleasant person and it’s good to have a goal in life. And the lady who thought she was the Pope always tried to be nice. “Do you want to hear a dirty joke, Tom?” “Go on then.” (It was always the same joke.) “A white horse down a coal mine.”
Why am I telling the story of my summer instead of reviewing Prem’s book? Because his poems took me back to that summer, which I haven’t really thought about for decades and it has aroused emotions I had forgotten. The hospital, by today’s standards was (like Prem’s) a dreadful place. And (like Prem) I had no idea what I was doing. The nurses had little formal training and relied on experience and instinct. They were wonderful and, like Prem, I am amazed at how they just kept on dealing with the blood and the mess and the violence and, despite everything, created a safe and, astonishingly, kind place for the people who lived there. The doctors (noticeably absent in Prem’s poems too) were never around, leaving the nurses and the nursing assistants (that would be me) to cope, and we despised them. But we got along and nobody died. (Given that we had actual murderers on the wards, this wasn’t something you could take for granted.)
Take it away, Frank:
today they’re okay
on this day at the start of october
I’m proud
this crew of mine
a random ragtag of workers
has pulled together
to make it through the shift
it wasn’t without drama
sickness left our numbers down
experience was light on the ground
and there was madness in the air
…
but today the shift held up
they worked for each other
for the people they’re here for
and it went okay
I feel proud
A good poem can touch the heart and take you to places you may have lost and it can bring back the sad things and the happy. These are good poems. I found them difficult to read, but I’m glad I did. They may not have as much effect on you as on me, but I hope you read them. Frank has things to say and it would be good to hear them.
in aftermath
it seems so clear
there are few mental-health
happy endings
and there are no
simple cures
there’s just the risk
of cynicism
among repeat offenders
with bad habits
and minds that won’t
take the time
to learn
there’s only so much
before enough
of trying to change worlds
enough of listening
catching flak
and shouldering tears
of bearing
other people’s burdens
there is no room
no role for heroes
there is only mental health
and all it requires is you
and I
to be its creatures
by TCW | Nov 19, 2019 | Book review
Terry Tyler’s move into dystopian novels has led her into
increasingly political territory and Hope
is a straightforwardly political book. It foresees a world where a right-wing
government uses draconian powers to round up the economically inactive and,
effectively, imprison them in camps where they are fed contraceptives with the
intention being that the unemployed will eventually die out. There are
sideswipes at lots of other things as well: the surveillance society; state
initiatives to make people live healthier lives; the ubiquity of social media;
the elimination of independent shops by huge chains; the increasing power
exercised by the USA over Britain’s affairs.
Terry Tyler makes a good case that this could happen here, but whether or not
you are convinced probably depends on your political opinions. It’s not a book
you want to give to that aunt of yours who is a stalwart of the local Conservative
party
Like a lot of agitprop (and that’s a word we’ve heard a lot
less of since the 1990s), characterisation is very definitely in second place
to plot. Reading this has made me revisit 1984
and it’s clear that the slightly sketchy drawing of all but the main character
is in a long tradition of books like this, and if we don’t hold it against
George Orwell, we shouldn’t hold it against Terry Tyler. But is her story up there
with Orwell’s classic?
Probably not. Tyler is a talented writer and her prose kept
me going but her opening (an email providing the background to the plot) is
hardly, “It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking
thirteen.” Orwell captures the misery of life in 1984 with acute observation of
detail. Here he suggests that the food available is inadequate.
By leaving the Ministry at this time of day he had sacrificed his lunch in the canteen, and he was aware that there was no food in the kitchen except a hunk of dark-coloured bread which had got to be saved for tomorrow’s breakfast.
Terry Tyler is more specific but somehow fails to capture
the sheer misery of the situation quite as well.
Our induction means we’re late, and there’s not much left. I eat pasta with a vaguely tomato tasting sauce, with a few things in it that might be courgettes.
The world Terry Tyler describes is not quite as grim as in 1984. The possibility of escape exists
and the ending (slight spoiler) is not as remorselessly negative, although I
was pleased that Tyler had resisted the temptation to provide a
straightforwardly happy ending either.
Hope has a lot to say and it says it well. I’ve found myself reviewing it by comparing it with what must surely be one of the most influential novels of the 20th century and that suggests that Tyler must be doing something right. Hope is not 1984, but it is worth reading and thinking about. It ends with the country waiting for the results of a general election. Try to finish it before 12 December.
Hope is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hope-Terry-Tyler-ebook/dp/B07S89DK54
by TCW | Nov 12, 2019 | Book review
Lynn Bryant writes stories of war and love in the Napoleonic
era. One day I may make her hero, Paul Van Daan meet my James Burke just as,
with a sort of inevitability, Lynn and I met up at various conferences about
Napoleonic military history.
Lynn has written several stories about Van Daan’s adventures
in the Peninsular War, but she has now branched out into another series
featuring the exploits of Captain Hugh Kelly, one of the stalwart sailors who
kept Britain safe from Boney. It should be an interesting series. It’s
important to remember that, at the time, the Navy was much more highly regarded
than the army and the war in the peninsula was seen as a bit of a sideshow. The
real land fighting was being done by other countries further north in Europe while
the Navy was engaging French vessels on a regular basis. In fact, our land
offensive in Spain was possible only because of British control of the western
coast of Iberia, maintaining our lines of supply and, in the early days of the
war at least, constantly harassing French positions near the coast.
An Unwilling Alliance
is set in the year before the start of the Peninsular War and centres on the
British attack on Copenhagen in 1807. This is one of those military engagements
that the British prefer to forget all about. British ships bombarded the Danish
capital when Denmark was a neutral country. The aim of the exercise was to make
the Danish fleet unavailable to Napoleon if, as expected, he invaded Denmark.
However, there were inevitably considerable civilian casualties and nowadays
the attack would almost certainly be seen as a war crime. Even at the time (as
reflected in Lynn’s book) there was considerable disquiet about the action.
Unlike me, Lynn is a “proper historian”
(shortlisted for the first Society for Army Historical Research fiction award,
no less) and she provides more military detail than I do, with a lot of very
precise factual information about the deployment of particular regiments and
brigades. I remember reading her fictional account of an action in the
Peninsular War and then later coming across a contemporary description of it in
my own research and realising how well I understood the situation from Lynn’s
story. She really is very good and weaves the detail into her fictional
narrative. But An Unwilling Alliance is not just a convincing war
story. It is also a romance. In fact the opening chapters are almost entirely
devoted to Hugh Kelly’s pursuit of the girl who is clearly destined to become
the love of his life, Roseen Crellin.
I can get very irritated by Georgian romances. A
particularly annoying example was the recent TV adaptation of Sanditon. Young ladies meet unsuitable
men in the peculiar absence of chaperones. Introductions are sloppily informal.
Any real Georgian woman behaving in this way would promptly be labelled a tramp
and unfit for decent society. So I could easily have given up by the end of Chapter
1 as Roseen Crellin wanders unescorted across the hills of the Isle of Man in
contravention of every rule of decent behaviour. However, Lynn gives Roseen a
convincing back-story to explain her behaviour and, more importantly, the poor
girl is shunned by decent society and
we see the social cost of breaking with convention.
When Roseen’s ill-considered behaviour destroys her budding
romance with Hugh Kelly and threatens to ruin her life, the story catches
something of the reality of the limitations that the world placed on young
women back then. And because the social environment and the character of Roseen
have been so well established, when an even more outrageous breach of decent
behaviour results in a near miraculous reuniting of the lovers, I was perfectly
prepared to accept it. This is, after all, as much a romance as a war story
and, though I won’t give the game away with the details, as soon as Roseen sets
out on a particularly inappropriate venture we all have a pretty clear idea of
where it will end up.
Lynn writes in fluid prose. The exciting bits are exciting,
the romantic bits are romantic and the whole thing has a wonderful sense of
place. Lynn is a proud resident of the Isle of Man and her love of the island
comes through. It made me want to visit, and what better recommendation can you
have for a writer’s descriptive powers?
All in all, I found this a book that is difficult to fault.
If you like Georgian romances, Napoleonic war stories, or just a dashed good
read, I do strongly recommend it.
(Some people will think that I’m only saying this because I know Lynn. Any writer friends who’ve been on the wrong end of a criticism of a book that I didn’t like will be happy to disabuse them.)
An Unwilling Alliance is available from Amazon: mybook.to/UnwillingAlliance
