The Star of Ceylon by Clare Flynn

                                                  

Ebook: 368 pages

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher:  Storm Publishing June 2025

Source:  NetGalley

First Sentence: Norton Baxter stood at the stern of the 'Dambulla' watching the ship's wake plume like a feather below him.

Setting: Ceylon in 1906 (now known as Sri Lanka)

Review Quote: “A wonderfully evocative novel of old colonial Ceylon. Brilliantly written.” Reader Review,

My Opinion: 

A new to me author and a title that drew me in as I love to travel when I read.

Set in the early years of the 20C ' The Star of Ceylon' transported me vividly back to the time and place. The story opens on a ship travelling to Ceylon and it is where the two main protagonists, Stella and Norton first meet.  Stella Polegate, an intelligent young woman, who if allowed in those times would have been staying at university, instead she is fortunate to be travelling with her professor father and brother on an anthropology research trip. Norton Baxter is a young civil servant on his way to a first overseas posting in Ceylon.

I was very much drawn into the narrative, not for the love story aspect but more for the setting.  They were troubled times and the British were trying to fit in somewhere they were really not wanted. Recommended to readers that enjoy historical fiction.

Thanks to NetGalley, Storm Publishing and the author for the opportunity to read and review. 

Précis Courtesy of Goodreads:

Ceylon, 1906: Stella Polegate steps off the ship in Colombo harbour, her heart beating with contradictory emotions. As her father’s unofficial research assistant, she’s thrilled to explore this island of ancient temples and verdant tea plantations—yet painfully aware that her brilliant mind will remain uncredited, her academic ambitions dismissed simply because she is a woman.

When her father’s doctoral student makes unwelcome advances that escalate to violence, Stella’s carefully ordered world shatters. With her reputation and future hanging in the balance, she finds an unexpected ally in Norton Baxter, a principled young civil servant whose growing disillusionment with colonial rule mirrors her own questioning of societal constraints.

As Stella navigates the suffocating expectations of colonial society, she must make an impossible choice. Should she accept the limitations imposed upon her gender or fight for the academic future she deserves? And can she trust Norton with her damaged heart when every man in her life has sought to control her destiny?

From the misty highlands of Kandy to the bustling port of Colombo, Stella’s journey becomes a defiant quest not only for love but for something far more elusive—the freedom to become the author of her own story.

Author Profile:

                                                 

                                          Photo and Bio Courtesy of Goodreads 

Clare Flynn is the author of eighteen historical novels and a collection of short stories. She is the 2020 winner of the UK Selfies Adult Fiction prize for her best-selling novel The Pearl of Penang, was shortlisted for the RNA Industry Awards Indie Champion of the Year for 2021 and won the award in 2022. 

Clare lives in Eastbourne. on the south coast of the UK. She is a fluent Italian speaker and loves spending time in Italy. In her spare time she likes to quilt, paint and travel often and widely as possible.

Clare Flynn is an active member of The Romantic Novelists Association, The Alliance of Independent Authors and The Society of Authors.

You can read her full and interesting biography on her website

Photographs and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites:

Clare Flynn - Author Website.   Goodreads Profile.   Amazon Profile.   Instagram Profile

Storm Publishing - Profile.    Facebook Profile

The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue

                                                                                                                                                                               

Ebook:   288 pages      

Genre: Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Thriller,                                         

Publisher: Pan Macmillan Picador 20th March 2025

Source: NetGalley

First Sentences: Half past eight in the morning, on the twenty-second of October,1895, in Granville, on the Normandy coast. Stocky, plain and twenty-one, in her collar, tie, and boxy skirt, Mado Pelletier stands across the street from the little railway station holding her lidded metal lunch bucket, watching.

Setting: Paris (France, 1895)

Review Quote: Clever, ambitious, and richly researched. A slice of 1890s Paris that makes us see that our modern problems aren’t so modern after all! The Paris Express is a smartly structured novel that ratchets up the pace until it's hurtling along as fast as the doomed train itself. -- Alice Winn, author of In Memoriam

My Opinion:

Emma Donoghue has successfully used real life events as inspiration for some of her novels in the past. So I was not surprised to discover that ‘The Paris Express’ is based on the derailment at Montparnasse Station on October 22nd 1895.

The story begins at the start of the trains journey on that fateful day. We are introduced gradually to the vast cast of characters who were passengers and workers on the Granville to Paris train that morning. The main protagonist is Mado Pelletier a young French anarchist who has boarded the train intent on devastating action. As the journey proceeds we learn something of the social and political atmosphere of the period, through the conversations of the passengers which is very interesting and informative.

As always with this author’s novels the writing is excellent and obviously well researched. The account of the people involved in this tragedy included at the end of the novel enhanced my read immensely. For anyone interested in learning a little social history whilst enjoying a novel, this is a compelling thriller. 

Links to Previous Reviews :       Room  The Wonder  The Pull of the Stars  Haven                                                   Learned By Heart

Précis Courtesy of Goodreads:

Based on an 1895 disaster that went down in history when it was captured in a series of surreal, extraordinary photographs, The Paris Express is a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia. Members of parliament hurry back to Paris to vote; a medical student suspects a girl may be dying; a secretary tries to convince her boss of the potential of moving pictures; two of the train’s crew build a life away from their wives; a young anarchist makes a terrifying plan, and much more.

Author Profile:

                                           
                                                              © Una Roulston 2021. 

Born in Dublin, Ireland, in October 1969, she is the youngest of eight children of Frances and Denis Donoghue (the literary critic). She attended Catholic convent schools in Dublin, apart from one eye-opening year in New York at the age of ten. In 1990 she earned a first-class honours BA in English and French from University College Dublin (unfortunately, without learning to actually speak French). She moved to England, and in 1997 received her PhD (on the concept of friendship between men and women in eighteenth-century English fiction) from the University of Cambridge. From the age of 23, she has earned her living as a writer. After years of commuting between England, Ireland, and Canada, in 1998 she settled in London, Ontario, where she lives with Chris Roulston and their son Finn and daughter Una.


Photograph and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites.

Emma Donoghue - Official Website   Twitter Profile.   Facebook Profile

Goodreads Profile