Maggie O’ Farrell’s glorious return in this month’s historical fiction: The Queen’s
The Queen’s Painter is available now from the Mail Bookshop
The Queen’s Painter by Wendy Holden (Mountain Leopard Press £20, 320pp)
The ever-fascinating Anne Boleyn flits like a capricious, charismatic ghost through the pages of Holden’s novel as she unspools the story of Hans Holbein’s fraught artistic relationship with the mercurial Henry VIII.
Brimful of sumptuous details of the work of Holbein, Holden weaves a brilliant portrait of the artist as she traces the course of his career from his impoverished beginnings in Basel to the patronage of canny Cromwell (here a much more mendacious figure than Hilary Mantel’s more sympathetic creation).
Her intimate, conversational prose offers a fresh and engaging take on familiar Tudor political shenanigans.
Mrs Dickens is available now from the Mail Bookshop
Mrs Dickens by Emily Howes (Phoenix £20, 448pp)
There’s such tenderness in Howes’ portrayal of Catherine Hogarth, who married the infatuated Charles Dickens when they were both young and smitten.
Kate was clever, clumsy, short-sighted and kind, the mother of ten children and the fulcrum of the Dickens’ household – until Charles fell in love with a young actress.
Heartfelt and heartbreaking, Howes gives voice to Kate’s ‘splintered’ story. Historically sidelined by morally hypocritical Dickens, here she (reluctantly) takes centre-stage, as a loving wife and mother, dauntless friend and superb cook who, in Howes’ convincing story, was manipulated and undermined by the more forceful, ambitious author.
Trusted servant Anne describes her tainted connection with Dickens and friendship with Kate to moving effect.
Land is available now from the Mail Bookshop
Land by Maggie O’Farrell (Tinder Press £25, 448pp)
There’s a slow-burn stateliness to O’Farrell’s novel, which was inspired by her great-grandfather who worked on the Ordnance Survey maps of Ireland in post-Famine times. Her mesmerising story hones in on one family trying to survive on a patch of land in the 1860s.
Bordered by ancient woodland, with a mysterious pool at its heart – a liminal ‘thin place’ – it’s a spot where unaccountable events occur.
Patriarch Tomas, who reluctantly works as a cartographer for the British Redcoats, is changed by one such encounter, altering the lives of his family forever as they leave a Dublin tenement for a tumbledown cottage near the spring.
Rooted in harsh reality, Land is a rewarding read.