This seems to be the era of the rise of the heroine. I’ve commented recently that many of the stories we know with male leads are being retold with women as their main characters. Whilst I’m all for strong female leads, retelling the same story and just making the roles female does little for me. I am however interested in true and original stories where women take the lead part, sometimes these have been forgotten by history. It’s nice to see or read something original and feminist.
This was perhaps why I was attracted to this month’s second book review. Its, ‘Things in Jars’ by Jess Kidd, published by Canongate ( http://www.canongate.co.uk ) in paperback in January. The back-cover blurb starts, ‘London 1863. A strange puzzle has reached Bridie Devine, the finest female detective of her age’ My interest was immediately caught. A Victorian detective mystery and a female detective. What’s not to like?
A fan of historical crime fiction since reading Wilkie Collins, ‘The Woman in White’ for my O levels, I was keen to compare it to the likes of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, the Maisie Dobbs wartime story, The American Agent and to a recent favourite, The way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry which was set in Victorian Edinburgh in the competitive and deadly world of surgical and anaesthesia discoveries.
Our heroine, Bridie is an orphan child, adopted initially by a resurrection man, supplying bodies to the medical schools and private surgeons. She is then ‘purchased’ by Dr Eames a Dr and surgeon, who notices her quick wits, strong stomach and capable hands. She enjoys a happy period in his household, blighted only by the menacing presence of his son Gideon. When it becomes unsafe for her to remain there, Bridie is moved to the care of Mr Prudhoe, an apothecary and pathologist. Now an independent woman, Bridie spends her time investigating curious deaths for her friend, Inspector Valentine Rose. Whilst investigating two bodies found walled in a church crypt, one of whom doesn’t look entirely human, Bridie is called upon to find a missing girl. This child too, is otherworldly. A thing of beauty and terror that attracts the interest of collectors of curiosities. Can Bridie find her and solve the mystery before its too late?
This book has an exceptional cast of characters. Some reviewers compared it to Dickens and I can see the similarity, the strange descriptive names, in the caricatures. However, I was reminded more of Terry Pratchett and his Discworld novels. That’s probably because his characters were a constant revelation of character observation and satirical humour to me until Pratchett’s untimely death in 2015.Whilst this is set in a real place and time, the use of fable, ghosts and the paranormal, made it feel slightly fantastical. Bridie is a real tour de force of a heroine. Clever, witty, attractive, without being too perfect and thus annoying. I loved the addition of Cora, the seven foot tall ex circus exhibit and now housemaid, who acts as Bridie’s stalwart guardian and assistant.
Jess Kidd (Irishtimes.com)
I’ve mentioned in previous reviews the current public appetite for all things fable and folklore. This book has them in spades but sprinkled with Bridie’s medical mind and good sense throughout. It’s a great blend. Sometimes we don’t need everything we read, especially in fiction to be based on established truths. A bit of escapism from this world into another time or dimension is great. You can create very human stories with inhuman characters.
This is English author Jess Kidd’s (www.Jesskidd.com) third novel. She has previously published ‘Himself’ (2018), a story of man searching for the identity of the mother who abandoned him and ‘The Hoarder’(2018) – titled as ‘Mr Flood’s Last Resort’(US) a ghost story, cum thriller, that I had previously read and loved. Jess Kidd is originally from Ireland, which is probably why so many of her characters and stories have Irish origins. Both her previous books were shortlisted for multiple Irish literary awards and were BBC radio 2 book club selections, she currently developing her own tv projects with UK and international production companies and is writing a children’s book.
I’d recommend this book to anyone with interest in history, medicine, crime, things paranormal and scientific and things that are a just little bit quirky. ‘Things in Jars’ is a great addition to anyone’s collection.
Reviewed by
Georgina Murphy
In most countries around the world, democracy or the formation of its power structure revolves in some way around the “Estate System”. Primarily limited to the four estates, those representing the Parliament (Legislature), the Judiciary (legal/ justice system), the military and police, the press, business and finally the consumers or people. But then, in some countries and as the inspiration for quite a few political thrillers, there is the Deep State. Those parts of the government or clandestine powers, working for or against the state, in a covert fashion for their own or others ideals or the ideals. This brings us to this month’s 1st book review, its the aptly named Deep State by Christ Hautry and is published in hardback by Simon & Schuster (www.simonandschuster.com) on the 23rd January.
Don’t we all love a mystery? There’s a huge public fascination with unsolved disappearances and crimes such as the disappearance of murder suspect, Lord Lucan, and the racehorse, Shergar. Every notable anniversary the stories are rehashed with new theories. There’s also a large cohort of conspiracy theorists out there contesting historical events like the moon landing, the assassination of John F Kennedy, with outlandish ideas and what ifs.
There’s a great public interest currently, in true crime and in the psychology of the serial killer, with a proliferation in TV programmes such as Mindhunter, the Smiley Face killers, Catching a killer and podcasts like Serial. Sky have recently launched a True Crime specific channel so they must anticipate this is a fascination that’s not going to go away anytime soon. There’s also a greater awareness of mental health issues. This was highlighted at my workplace recently and in a series of posters, my favourite was a thought provoking straight line with a line intersecting it about a quarter of the way long. It read ‘people’s lives’ along the whole line and ‘what you know about them ‘ along the quarter section.
I was only reading yesterday about the plight of American author Jeanine Cummins, whose new book American Dirt has been nominated as an Oprah’s Book Club choice. As a result, it has brought her to the attention of far right ill-educated armchair activists, who threatened to disrupt a proposed American book tour and thus forced its cancellation. Because they say the author is “Too White” to be able to write a book about south American emigrants trying to get into the United States. In a tweet to Jeanine, I gave her my support and pointed that out if these bigots had put any thought into their arguments they’d realise some of the most successful writers have very little experience of their subject matter and stated that Lee Child was never a military policeman and that Hannah Kent is Australian, but that it never stopped her from writing a successful book on an old Icelandic murder and followed it up with a book on an Irish murder, both decades old. Did the Irish and Icelandic diaspora rise up in arms and protest, no!
I’m a great fan of TV detective drama. The longer, two-hour episodic versions please me most. Currently I’m loving ‘Endeavour’, an ITV production, which is a prequel to the much loved ‘Inspector Morse’. I much prefer them to one-hour series, where everything is neatly wrapped up in a short time. You can very rarely guess ‘whodunnit’ in the longer dramas but in the one-hour stories, things sometimes seem a little contrived or you can guess at the start. It’s a pet hate of mine that I don’t like detective stories where we hear the murderer’s thoughts or worse, are introduced to them at the beginning. I love the reveal, the twist and the wow factor of the final denouement, especially where the odd subtle clue has been there all along!
The Italic typeface is a cursive font used to denote someone speaking or highlight a foreign word or phrase. It takes its name from the fact that calligraphy inspired typefaces were first designed in Italy and were invented to replace the old Chancery style of writing. Nowadays we all usually use the default of Calibri or san Serif, when writing an email or composing a word document, as I do with the drafts of these reviews. It may look nice for presentation purposes to intersperse a piece with Italics, but you can have too much of a good thing, as it seems in this months second book review, which is The Home by Sarah Stovell and published by Orenda Books (www.orendabooks.co.uk).
In my twenties and thirties, I spent pretty much every free moment in Scotland. I was a bit of a Scotland-ophile. I think I knew more about the history and folklore of Scotland than of England. I was therefore surprised not to recognise I was in Scotland during the opening pages of this months second book review, but instead thought the book was set in some remote American state.The book is Pine by Francine Toon and is published by Doubleday (
Over the past few weeks Australians have been praying for rain in their fire ravaged continent, while in the northern hemisphere, we’ve been praying for a white Christmas for the past four weeks or more. Neither party got much of what they wanted. Although I did find myself wading through snow over Christmas and it was all down to the first book review of the new decade. Its Shamus Dust – Hard Winter, Cold war, Cool Murder by Janet Roger and Published by Matador (
Beverly Hills Book Award, as well as Fully Booked’s Book of the Year and made NB magazine’s top ten. She trained in Archaeology, History and Eng. Lit. and has a special interest in the early Cold War. She currently leads a nomadic existence, admitting to never staying in one place for a minimum of six weeks and at most three months on the rare occasion.
the library door 