The Paris Muse by Louisa Treger

                                          

Hardback: 248 pages                                                                                                

Genre: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, 

Publisher: Bloomsbury 2024

Source: The Author.

First Sentence: Prologue, 1975, But why should one always begin at the beginning? No, I am going to tell you about the end.

Review Quote: This absolute jewel of a novel shines a light on the tumultuous relationship between Picasso and Dora Maar. With profundity, grace and compassion, Treger probes the complexities of love, power and creativity. -- Annabel Abbs, author of the international bestseller The Language of Food

Main Characters: Dora Maar and Pablo Picasso

Setting: Paris

My Opinion: 

Louisa Treger is a favourite author of mine, her novels are always so interesting and I enjoy learning about women that have made their mark in history. She has the knack of turning the stories of such women into exceptional stories that blend fact and fiction.

'The Paris Muse' is the fictionalised story of the greatest love affair in art history. Dora Maar was a talented photographic artist, a strong woman whose downfall was falling in love with Pablo Picasso. Their relationship was extremely toxic and despite knowing his unpleasant flaws she was unable to break away from him. Over the years the relationship had a damaging effect on her mental health. A sad and self destructive love affair with a talented but chauvinistic man.

Based on the previous novels by this author that I have read, I had high expectations for 'The Paris Muse' and WOW it did not disappoint. It is an exhilarating read of love, anguish and longing, that I highly recommend to everyone. I just hope that Louisa Treger has many more, in her own words 'trail blazing women' to bring to life in future novels. 

Précis Courtesy of Goodreads:

Paris, 1936. When Dora Maar, a talented French photographer, painter and poet, is introduced to Pablo Picasso, she is mesmerized by his dark and intense stare. Drawn to his volcanic creativity, it isn't long before she embarks on a passionate relationship with the Spanish artist that sometimes includes sadism and masochism, and ultimately pushes her to the edge.

The Paris Muse is the fictionalized retelling of this disturbing love story, as we follow Dora on her journey of self-discovery and expression. Set in Paris and the French Riviera, where Dora and Pablo spent their holidays with their glamorous artist friends, it provides a fascinating insight into how Picasso was a genius who side-stepped the rules in his human relationships as he did in his art. Much to Dora's torment, he refused to divorce his wife and conducted affairs with Dora's friends. The Spanish Civil War made him depressed and violent, an angst that culminated in his acclaimed painting 'Guernica', which Dora documented as he painted.

As the encroaching darkness suffocates their relationship - a darkness that escalates once the Second World War begins and the Nazis invade the country - Dora has a nervous breakdown and is hospitalized. 

Atmospheric, intense and moving, The Paris Muse is an astonishing read that ensures that this talented, often overlooked woman who gave her life to Picasso is no longer a footnote.

Previous Reviews: The Dragon Lady   Madwoman

Author Profile:

Born in London, Louisa Treger began her career as a classical violinist. She studied at the Royal College of Music and the Guildhall School of Music, and worked as a freelance orchestral player and teacher.

Louisa subsequently turned to literature, gaining a First Class degree and a PhD in English at University College London, where she focused on early twentieth century women’s writing.

Married with three children, she lives in London.



Photographs and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites.

Author's Official Website   Goodreads Author Profile  Amazon Author Page

Twitter Profile.    Instagram Profile  Facebook Profile

A History of Burning by Janika Oza

 

                                    

Hardback:  393 pages      

Genre: Historical Fiction                                   

Publisher: Chatto and Windus 2023

Source: Tywyn Public Library

First Sentences: The last day Pirbhai spent in Gujarat was ignited by a sun that could not last. The heat was a dry beast, scorching the fields yellow as gora hair.

Review Quote: An ambitious, powerful read, it will transport you through time and across the globe, with a story that you won't forget ― Glamour, 

My Opinion: 

 ‘A History of Burning’ is a debut novel taking its inspiration from historical events in India, East Africa, England and Canada between 1898 and 1992. The author has obviously used her imagination, but has also done extensive research. Some events and chronology have been altered or compressed for the sake of the storyline. Wow, what a story!

A multi generational family saga, following Pirbhai and his descendants, from the time Pirbhai, at just thirteen years of age is coerced into labouring on the railway in India. He meets and marries Sonal, and they have three daughters, Latika, Mayuri and Kiya. Parents, children and grandchildren disperse across the world as they flee the brutality of life in Uganda.

A moving story full of trust and determination in the family’s ability to survive all that life throws at them. An ambitious intense novel that I can recommend to anyone that wants to learn more about this period in history from the Indian/Ugandan point of view.

Précis Courtesy of Goodreads: 

Tricked aboard a boat to East Africa, Pirbhai is only thirteen when he is forced by the British into labouring on the railway. Under sweltering heat, hungry and frightened, he commits a terrible act just to survive.

He will never tell a soul, even when he meets Sonal, a fierce, loving woman with whom he starts a family in hope of a better life. But their granddaughters come of age in a divided nation. Latika falls headlong into the student protest movement, Mayuri's ambitions take her far from home, while Kiya's friendship with a Black Ugandan boy threatens them both.

Finally forced to flee, the family scatters across the world. They take with them a favourite rolling pin, a handful of photos, and a secret - that one day, will help them find each other again.

Author Profile:      

                                                           

                                                                                        

Janika Oza is a writer based in Toronto.

 

She was the winner of a 2022 O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction and the 2020 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest. She has received fellowships and support from VONA, Tin House, One Story, the Millay Colony, the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts. 

​

Her debut novel, A History of Burning, was published in May 2023

Photograph and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites:

Goodreads Profile.  Janika Oza - Official Website.   Instagram Profile

Twitter Profile

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

 

                                                          

Hardback: 882 pages

Genre: Literary Fiction

Publisher: Harper Collins 2020

Source: Tywyn Public Library

First Sentence:  Once the queen's head is severed, he walks away. 

Favourite Quote: “We are all dying, just at different speeds.”

Review Quote: ‘It is a book not read, but lived’ Telegraph

Setting: England

Literary Awards: Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 and Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020

My Opinion: 

The much awaited finale to Hilary Mantel's trilogy about the life of Thomas Cromwell. The final years of his life, find his rise to power reaching its peak, but how long can he survive as there are plots of rebellion building at home and abroad as his enemies gather.

This final volume, takes us with the author's great enthusiasm for her subject, obvious on every page, from the death of Anne Boleyn right up to Cromwell's own demise. A brilliantly told engrossing tale as in the earlier volumes. The descriptive style of writing brings the period to life not only with wit but also a tremendous feeling of despair. Maybe this is because having studied this period at school one knows the ending. Despite the fact that Thomas Cromwell was not the most pleasant of men, he was still human and trying to carry out the wishes of the King as well as following his own dreams!

The few hundred pages at either end of the novel were certainly for me the most interesting as I found the parts in the middle where Cromwell was reminiscing distracting. Though not enough to stop this being a five star read I do wonder if it was necessary to include so much about the ghosts of his past. Maybe the idea was so this volume can be read alone, though I urge those that are considering reading to read the earlier volumes in the trilogy first. 

My Reviews For Parts 1 and 2 of Trilogy :  Wolf Hall   Bring Up the Bodies   


Précis Courtesy of Goodreads:

England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, before Jane dies giving birth to the male heir he most craves.

Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him?

With The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.

Author Profile:

Hilary Mantel is the bestselling author of many novels including Wolf Hall, which won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Bring Up the Bodies, Book Two of the Wolf Hall Trilogy, was also awarded the Man Booker Prize and the Costa Book Award. She is also the author of A Change of Climate, A Place of Greater Safety, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, An Experiment in Love, The Giant, O'Brien, Fludd, Beyond Black, Every Day Is Mother's Day, and Vacant Possession. She has also written a memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. Mantel was the winner of the Hawthornden Prize, and her reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times,The New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books. She lives in England with her husband. 

Photograph and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites.

Goodreads Author Profile     Author Website   Amazon Author Page     Hilary Mantel -Wikipedia

Perfect by Rachel Joyce

Hardback: 361 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publisher: Doubleday 2013
Source: Tywyn Public Library
First Sentences: In 1972, two seconds were added to time. Britain agreed to join the Common Market and 'Beg, Steal or Borrow' by the New Seekers was the entry for Eurovision.
Review Quote: "A near-flawless novel of emotional truth. Joyce executes this story with precision and flair... Its unputdownable factor lies in its exploration of so many multilayered emotions... It is her clever did-I-read-that-right twist at the end that really got to me and had me scrabbling back through the chapters, open-mouthed." (Evening Standard)
Favourite Quote: “That's what nobody realizes. Two seconds are huge. It's the difference between something happening and something not happening. You could take one step too many and fall over the edge of a cliff. It's very dangerous.” 
My Opinion: A beguiling read.


Whilst researching for an author profile of  Rachel Joyce recently I discovered that the character of Byron, the protagonist of 'Perfect' has been in her thoughts for much longer than her previous novel 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry' With this information in mind I decided that despite not having read the earlier novel, I know how did I miss out on it,  I would go ahead and read 'Perfect' first.  Rachel Joyce tells us in a letter on her website that  ' The idea about the cost of perfection and an idea that changes everything, as well as the central characters, has been loitering in my head for many years.' 

Perfect scene setting draws one in immediately, a hot English July day in a country garden where the air is heavy with the scent of flowers.  The story revolves around the female protagonist Diana, the fragile middle class wife that is in an unhappy marriage. Her husband is a control freak, even managing to rule her life when he is away in the city working all week. One summer day in 1972 two seconds are added to time and it is this that causes, dramatic life changes for the family 
with poignant consequences. Her son Byron was terrified by the addition of those seconds, thanks to a vivid imagination and what happened that day. With a friend he seeks to try and find out what really happened, but is he successful. 
Jump on forty years to the present day and we meet Jim, a discharged psychiatric patient who finds life out side an institutional setting over whelming. Just how these two stories link up and provide the reader with a beguiling read I leave you to discover for yourself.

Having enjoyed the writing style of this author I will look out for any future novels she writes and have of course added 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry to my wishlist. Do not be misled by the title 'Perfect' which does create in one's mind something completely different to the tragic story that unfolds in this novel which I highly recommend to all lovers of literary fiction.


Author Profile

Rachel Joyce is the author of the Sunday Times and international bestseller The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and Perfect published in July 2013. She was awarded the Specsavers National Book Awards 'New Writer of the Year' in December 2012.

Joyce has also written over 20 original afternoon plays for BBC Radio 4, and major adaptations for both the Classic Series, Woman's Hour and also a TV drama adaptation for BBC 2. In 2007 she won the Tinniswood Award for best radio play.

She moved to writing after a twenty-year career in theatre and television, performing leading roles for the RSC, the Royal National Theatre, The Royal Court, and Cheek by Jowl, winning a Time Out Best Actress award and the Sony Silver.

The biographical information and photo used in this post are with thanks to the following websites, where you can also find more information about the author and her writing.


Goodreads - Author Profile     Amazon Author Profile   Rachel Joyce - Official Website