Kate Forsyth is one of Australia’s most treasured storytellers. On today’s edition of What Katie Read, she gives us the rundown on all of the best books she’s been reading lately …
The Lost Summers of Driftwood
by Vanessa McCausland
An atmospheric and evocative mystery about a young woman whose life has fallen apart after her beloved sister commits suicide, and who returns to the place of her sister’s death to try to make sense of it all.
Phoebe seems as if she has it all–a glamorous job, a good-looking boyfriend, stylish clothes–but since her sister Karin died, she’s been struggling to keep it all together. When her relationship breaks up, she heads to the small country town where she and her family had always spent their holidays to try and heal. Memories of her childhood–and her sister–haunt her, however. She is also unsettled to find her childhood sweetheart is still living there, with his marriage in trouble and their past unresolved.
Slowly Phoebe begins to suspect that Karin’s’ death was not her choice, and as bushfires threaten her town and new home, she uncovers dangerous secrets that will change everything.
The thing I loved most about this novel was the wonderful evocation of the Australian summer–it reminded me of so many of my own family holidays, and the bushfires scenes were particularly tense and compelling, as my own skies were dark with smoke and the smell of burning eucalyptus. The mystery was clever too (though I did guess the identity of the murderer!).
Buy it here
Brimstone (The Fire Watcher Chronicles #1)
by Kelly Gardiner
A boy named Christopher Larkham is living through the Blitz in London in 1940. His father is missing in action, his mother is a fire warden, and his life is ruled by air-raid alarms and the sound of bombers roaring overhead. One day, he finds a mysterious phoenix ring and is suddenly thrown back in time to the Great Fire of London in 1666.
It’s an absolutely fabulous premise, and Kelly Gardiner pulls it off with such panache. The characters are lively and believable, and both historical settings are compelling and action-packed. And there’s plenty of humour to leaven the suspense. This is middle-grade fantasy at its superb best, and I for one cannot wait for the rest of the series.
Buy it here
The Island
by Victoria Hislop
Published in 2005, and selling in the millions, The Island is set on the Greek island of Crete in the ‘40s and 50s, with a modern-day frame story. The British author, Victoria Hislop, had one of those dream runs that other authors try not to be jealous of–The Island was chosen for the Richard & Judy Book Club, spent weeks on the bestseller lists, and has been turned into a TV series.
I bought it because I am also writing a novel set in 1940s and contemporary Crete, and I was curious to see how she did it (both the telling of the story and the selling in the millions).
The book begins with Alexis, a modern British woman whose mother Sofia was Cretan. Her mother never speaks about her past, and so when Alexis goes to Crete on holiday she thinks she might try and find out a little about her mother’s life while she is there. Most of the book then concentrates on the lives of Alexis’s great-grandmother Eleni – who in 1939 is diagnosed with leprosy and sent to the isolated leper colony at Spinalonga – and that of the two daughters she is forced to leave behind.
The eldest girl, Anna, is selfish to an astonishing degree. Her younger sister Maria is her exact opposite, being warm-hearted, hard-working, and self-sacrificing. As their lives unspool, the contrast between the two sisters is heightened. Anna marries well, and has all the riches she ever wished for, but is unfaithful and uncaring. Maria, however, finds she has contracted leprosy herself, just days before her own wedding. She too must leave everything behind and go to Spinalonga, where her own mother had lived until her death from the disease many years before.
It’s a fascinating premise, and Victoria Hislop brings it all vividly to life. Particularly interesting are the scenes set in the leper colony. The book is very plainly and directly told, which means it was an easy read, but I did not feel deeply invested in many of the characters. The book also takes place over many years, in the tradition of family sagas. The whole occupation by the Germans–my key area of interest–is covered in what seemed like just a few pages. So I found that swiftness of pace–years covered in a few paragraphs–a little disconcerting too.
However, the story itself is so powerful and the Cretan setting so vivid and alive that these are small quibbles, easily forgiven.
Buy it here
Star-crossed
by Minnie Darke
This novel is pure delight! I bought it on a sudden whim, feeling in need of something light-hearted and easy to read, and instead find myself reading the cleverest and most engaging contemporary romance I’ve ever encountered. There is so much to love in this book–it’s funny and yet poignant too, making me laugh out loud one moment and dab away a little tear the next. It’s crammed full of dozens and dozens of characters, yet each one is so deftly and vividly drawn that you have no trouble remembering who is who, and you find yourself a little in love with them all. It’s very Australian and yet very universal, and is crying out to be made into a rom-com. Oh, so much to love in this book!
Basically, an aspiring journalist named Justine bumps into her teenage crush one day and her heart gives an almighty bound. Discovering that gorgeous Nick relies on life advice from the horoscope page in the magazine she works for, Justine thinks she might give just a little tweak to his star sign that month. After all, what harm could it do?
I cannot say anymore without completely undoing the magic that is Star-crossed. Read it and be charmed.
Buy it here
The Little Grey Girl
by Celine Kiernan
The Little Grey Girl is the second book in a charming fantasy series for younger readers, written by Irish author Celine Kiernan. It starts where book 1, Begone the Raggedy Witches, ends, and so must be read in the right order.
Basically, the series tells the story of an ordinary girl named Mup whose mother is the heir to a magical realm that had been for decades ruled by her cold and ruthless mother, the queen. In the first book, the queen is defeated and driven away, but now Mup’s mother is queen in her place and must find some way to make reparations and build a lasting peace. The books are deftly written, with some gorgeous lyrical writing and enough warmth and humour to balance out the darkness and fear. And, like the best children’s fantasy, they contain important lessons about kindness and forgiveness. A truly magical fantasy for readers 8+.
Buy it here
Mermaid Singing
by Charmian Clift
This book was given to me by my aunt when I was in my twenties, as I had always wanted to go to Greece. I have read it a few times, and it never fails to delight me.
Charmian Clift was an Australian journalist and novelist who moved to Greece with her husband and two young children in the 1950s. They find themselves on Kalymnos, as they are interested in the island’s age-old tradition of sponge-diving and are thinking of writing a novel inspired by the lives they encounter. Life there is simple but intense; the sponge-divers are often crippled by their work and everyone is poor. There is a lot to be learned on this tiny Greek island, however, about living joyously and intensely, and Charmian Clift charts a year in their life there with considerable lyricism and charm.
She should be much more widely celebrated.
Buy it here
Whose Body? and Clouds of Witness
by Dorothy L. Sayers
Every year I set myself some kind of reading challenge, and this year I’ve decided to re-read as many Golden Age detective novels as I can. This is partly because I’m writing a novel set during the 1940s, and so I want to immerse myself in the language and attitudes of the times. And it’s partly because I’ve not read them for absolute ages, and I want to treat myself.
I’ve decided to begin with the work of Dorothy L. Sayers. She was born in Oxford and studied there just before the First World War, and her detective-hero Lord Peter Wimsey is known both for his cleverness and his insouciance. I am reading the books in order of publication, and so began with Whose Body?–first published in 1923.
Lord Peter Wimsey is called to view the body of an unknown dead man found in the bathtub of–in his mother, the Duchess’s words–‘the little architect man who is doing the church roof.’ The body is wearing nothing but a pair of gold pince-nez, which is a type of spectacles popular in the early 20th century.
The murder case then intersects with the case of the disappearance of a wealthy Jewish financier. With the help of Bunter, his valet, Wimsey sets out to solve the interlocked puzzles with a great deal of humour and panache. Whose Body? is quite slight in comparison with some of the later books in the series, but nonetheless a very clever and readable mystery.
Clouds of Witness was published three years later, in 1926, and shows her style developing. The puzzle is again quite masterful–I didn’t guess a thing–and Lord Peter Wimsey’s clever, whimsical personality shines through even more brightly. The story follows his desperate attempts to save his stodgy and very proper brother, the Duke of Denver, from the hangman’s noose after he is accused of murdering his brother-in-law-to-be. Most of the action takes place on the atmospheric Yorkshire moors, and there’s a tragic beauty, a French temptress, a brutal husband, and many other fascinating characters. I’m going to enjoy reading the rest in the series, methinks!
Buy Whose Body? here and Clouds of Witness here
Kate Forsyth
Kate Forsyth wrote her first novel aged seven and has now sold more than a million books worldwide. Her new novel, The Blue Rose, is inspired by the true story of the quest for a blood-red rose, moving between Imperial China and France during the ‘Terror’ of the French Revolution. Other novels for adults include Beauty in Thorns, a Pre-Raphaelite reimagining of Sleeping Beauty, Bitter Greens, which won the 2015 American Library Association award for Best Historical Fiction; and The Beast’s Garden, a stunning retelling of the Grimms’ Beauty and The Beast set in Nazi Germany.
Kate’s books for children include the collection of feminist fairy-tale retellings, Vasilisa the Wise & Other Tales of Brave Young Women, illustrated by Lorena Carrington, and the fantasy series The Impossible Quest. Named one of Australia’s Favourite 15 Novelists, Kate has a BA in literature, a MA in creative writing and a doctorate in fairy tale studies, and is also an accredited master storyteller with the Australian Guild of Storytellers. She is a direct descendant of Charlotte Waring Atkinson, the author of the first book for children ever published in Australia.
Find out more about Kate Forsyth here
The Blue Rose
Moving between Imperial China and France during the ‘Terror’ of the French Revolution and inspired by the true story of the quest for a blood-red rose.
Viviane de Faitaud has grown up alone at the Chateau de Belisama-sur-le-Lac in Brittany, for her father, the Marquis de Ravoisier, lives at the court of Louis XVI in Versailles. After a hailstorm destroys the chateau’s orchards, gardens and fields an ambitious young Welshman, David Stronach, accepts the commission to plan the chateau’s new gardens in the hope of making his name as a landscape designer...
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