Neo-Victorian Voices: The Good Lord Bird, James McBride (2013)

The latest title I’m reviewing as part of Neo-Victorian Voices series, covering novels set in the nineteenth century, but written in the twenty-first, is James McBride’s 2013, National Book Award winner, The Good Lord Bird.

Our memorable protagonist is Henry Shackleford, who’s been born into slavery in the Kansas Territory. In 1857, aged around 12, he is “freed” (read: “kidnapped”) by abolitionist James Brown, who mistakes him for a girl and gives him the nickname, Onion. In the years that follow, Henry/Onion has a front row seat to a violent, dangerous, and pivotal period of American history, which he narrates vividly, and, bizarrely enough, with delicious humor. 

Of the many historical novels I’ve read centering on the institution of American slavery, The Good Lord Bird is the most entertaining. McBride brilliantly dramatizes how Onion is misunderstood, overlooked, and underestimated by the (mainly white) characters around him, in a way that provokes laughter while dealing with the difficult issue of racial prejudice.

I also enjoyed his exploration of the character of James Brown. While I’m not an expert on Brown’s life and crusade, it’s clear that McBride has tried to unpack the complex mix of emotions he might provoke in modern readers by pairing research with imagination in his depiction of this fascinating personality.

I was a little surprised that Onion, who’s dressed as a girl for much of the novel, didn’t experience more harassment and other downsides to living as a woman, but, in some ways, this was a welcome break for me as a reader—many novels depicting black women’s experiences in the era have a heavy emphasis on sexual violence.

Part satire, part military historical, part coming of age narrative, with shades of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), I highly recommend The Good Lord Bird to other readers interested in nineteenth-century America.

What novel should I review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist! Want monthly updates from this blog? Sign up to my email newsletter here.

Neo-Victorian Voices: The Champagne Letters, Kate MacIntosh (2024)

Welcome back to my Neo-Victorian Voices series, where I review books set in the nineteenth century but written in the twenty-first!

Today’s novel is a dual timeline historical that alternates between the perspectives of a present-day American divorcee, who finds herself in Paris after unexpectedly becoming single in her fifties, and the widow behind the Veuve Clicquot champagne house, who writes letters to her great-granddaughter about how she navigated the Napoleonic era as a businesswoman, in a time when the wine industry was almost entirely controlled by men.

MacIntosh’s research into the fascinating life of Barbe Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot is clear. She does a great job fictionalizing Clicquot’s biography and turning it into a digestible story that maintains human interest, even as it covers complex swathes of French history. 

The modern-day storyline, following Natalie, is lighter and even easier to read. Natalie is the quintessential American in Paris, charmed by French fashion, food, and wine, and stumbling through the capital asking everyone she encounters if they speak English. She’s swept up in a romance with a dashing man named Gabriel and connecting with the famous champagne widow, via a book of her letters, within what seems like seconds of stepping off her plane from Chicago, but some fun plot twists keep the story fresh and entertaining. 

Overall, the book left me with the impression that MacIntosh wrote it for readers like Natalie–those in love with the idea of Paris and excited by the effervescence of champagne, even if their grasp of French history and wine is a little loose. We often talk about beach reads, but this is a city break read: I’d recommend it if you’re dreaming of a trip to Paris…or if you’re looking for a summer book club pick that gives you the excuse to break open the bubbles.

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Neo-Victorian Voices: Booth, Karen Joy Fowler (2022)

I imagine that many American readers will come to Karen Joy Fowler’s 2022 novel, Booth, with preconceptions about John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865), the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). However, having grown up outside the US, my knowledge of the killer and the theatrical family he was part of was essentially nonexistent before I sat down to read this latest book in my Neo-Victorian Voices series, about novels set in the nineteenth century but penned in the twenty-first.

Booth is one of those novels where we know what the climax will be—Lincoln will die. Suspense comes instead from anticipating the emotional and practical responses of the rest of the Booth family to John’s actions. We move between three of his nine siblings’ points of view in the novel, jumping from the mind of invalid and put-upon Rosalie to famous actor Edwin to beautiful and fiery Asia. This isn’t a book about a murderer—it’s a book about how a murderer’s actions affect those who love him most, so I was unsurprised to read in Fowler’s author’s note that she was partially inspired to write the book by considering the position of modern mass shooters’ families. 

The real-life Booths are wonderful fodder for a novel. In addition to John’s assassination of Lincoln, parental bigamy, alcoholism, daring and dangerous journeys across the United States, theatrical productions galore, and a stock of other juicy rumors were all at Fowler’s disposal when she sat down to write this book. If she’d made all this up some reviewers would have called Fowler’s novel farfetched but all the craziest details about the Booths are true, meaning, especially later in the book, there is, at times, too much incident. I would have liked some breathing room to give the characters even more page space to react and reflect.

Lovers of Shakespeare will enjoy how much Fowler makes of the importance of the bard to the Booth family culture and may also be intrigued by the altered versions of his famous plays most performed during the nineteenth-century. I also liked learning about other popular plays from the time period, and the history of costuming (the fact that actors owned their own expensive costumes for different roles was fascinating!). 

Coming back to the preconceived ideas readers may have about the Booths, Fowler handles the topic of slavery very deftly. Without lecturing, the novel explores how and why the siblings ended up with opposing ideas about abolition, and the divisions created by birth order, age gaps, and very different childhood experiences in a large family rang particularly true. This is the story of the Booth siblings, but secondary characters, including the family’s Black servants who are trying to buy the freedom of their children still trapped in slavery, give us an even broader perspective on the macro-forces at work in the country during this era. 

What novel would you like to see my review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Like what you read? Sign up to my email newsletter for monthly updates on my writing and blogging. 

Neo-Victorian Voices: Hester, Laurie Lico Albanese (2022)

Welcome back to the Neo-Victorian Voices series, where I review books written in the twenty-first century, but set in the nineteenth. Today it’s the turn of Laurie Lico Albanese’s 2022 novel, Hester, which was inspired by one of the great American nineteenth-century novels—Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850).

The title of the novel may be Hester, but our protagonist is the fictional Isobel, a young Scottish wife to an opium addict husband who immigrates to Salem, Massachusetts. There she encounters aspiring writer Nat Hathorne (who hasn’t yet altered the spelling of his name) and becomes a model for the character of Hester Prynne in his most famous novel.

Nat and Isobel’s emotional and romantic connection is at the core of the story, but the book isn’t just about Isobel as a muse—she is also an artist. A talented seamstress and embroider, just like Hester, Isobel has synesthesia. She sees letters in color, including, you guessed it, a scarlet “A,” but the condition isn’t one that’s talked about or understood. Isobel fears her ability may be magic passed down to her from an ancestor once accused of being a witch, a concern that dogs her when she learns the history of the 1692-1693 Salem witch trials, and the Hathorne family’s role in them. 

Familiarity with The Scarlet Letter is a plus, but not a prerequisite, for enjoying this historical novel, which errs on the side of realism over high drama. I most enjoyed the point of view of a character with synesthesia, the detailed descriptions of needlework, and the picture built up of nineteenth-century Salem. Short episodes detailing the exploits of Isobel's and Nat’s ancestors provided atmospheric background but didn’t add much to the overall plot. And the secrets harbored by Isobel’s Black neighbors were a little predictable, even though they were a welcome reminder of a broader historical context to the novel.

Overall, I’d recommend the book to lovers of nineteenth-century America settings and those who like their #histfic with just a hint of supernatural spice.

What novels would you like to see me review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

Neo-Victorian Voices: Yellow Wife, Sadeqa Johnson (2021)

It’s hard to read historical fiction set in the American South in the nineteenth century, especially if the novel’s protagonist begins life enslaved and faces a series of horrific trials, as she struggles to win her own freedom and the freedom of her children. 

Sadeqa Johnson’s Yellow Wife (2021) doesn’t shy away from the horrors of existence on a plantation and then in a jail in Virginia, as she tells the story of the fictional Pheby Delores Brown. Pheby may be a work of Johnson’s imagination, but her experiences mirror many real histories. Her mother is an enslaved Black woman, and her father a white slave owner. Her “yellow” skin is a curse more than it’s a blessing, as she’s repeatedly objectified and abused. 

Sold as a punishment for her true love’s escape, plantation-born Pheby finds herself at the Devil’s Half Acre, a jail and trading post in Richmond, and soon draws the attention of the jail master—i.e. the “devil” himself. Selected for her looks, Pheby is in a morally difficult position. She has more creature comforts than the many enslaved people who pass through the door and some modicum of power, but her rapist “husband” still holds her life, and the lives of her increasing number of children, including her Black son, in his hands. Johnson does a good job of giving Pheby agency throughout the novel, despite the difficulties of her position, crafting a character we can root for and believe in.

The novel began for me on familiar ground—the plantation setting reminiscent of other novels I’ve reviewed here, for instance Sue Monk Kidd’s The Invention of Wings (2014). But the descriptions of the Richmond jail, which is based closely on historical record, were fascinating and uncovered a new chapter of American history for me. No spoilers here, but I also enjoyed the realism of the ending and the different relationships Pheby’s “white” children have with their mixed heritage—this struck the right chord and felt like the perfect note to end on. I wish Johnson had dived even more into Pheby’s relationship with her own Blackness. Has she internalized any colorism? How does she relate differently to each of her children?

Overall, this is a fast read, which manages to entertain, while dealing deftly with horrific topics and pulling us into America’s divided past. I’d recommend it. 

Which nineteenth-century set, twenty-first century written novel would you like me to review next in my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Leave suggestions here, on Facebook, on Instagram or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Have you read my novel, Bronte’s Mistress, yet? It’s available in hardcover, paperback, audiobook, and e-book. And make sure you subscribe to my writerly newsletter below.

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Neo-Victorian Voices: Simon the Fiddler, Paulette Jiles (2020)

What makes the main character of a novel likable? Two key strategies are to establish early something/someone your protagonist loves and something that they want. In Paulette Jiles’s 2020 novel, Simon the Fiddler (the latest book I’m reviewing as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series), she gives us both. 

We meet Simon in Texas in 1865. He’s a talented musician, seeking to avoid conscription into the Confederate Army. Soon though his luck runs out and he finds himself embroiled in the final days of the American Civil War. The majority of the novel is set following the South’s surrender as Simon navigates the complex, and often dangerous, world of the Reconstruction period. 

What does Simon love? Music. His fiddle is the talisman for his skill but also for his emotional connection with the art form, and Jiles puts the instrument in peril from early in the book to cement our connection with her main character.

What does Simon want? Stability. He yearns to be a landowner with a wife and children, and to create the family he, as an illegitimate orphan, never had. In short, this is an American Dream story. The modesty of Simon’s wants makes him instantly relatable, and how he hard he has to work to achieve them gives us the meat of this by turns dramatic and violent, and melancholy and sensitive novel. 

Simon and the band of fellow musicians he falls in with have to grapple with the natural landscape of Texas, their lack of money and the logistical challenges of making more. They wear shirts riddled with bullet holes, wrestle with an alligator, and engage in regular drink-fueled brawls. We’re told: they always go for the fiddler. 

Despite these regular moments of high drama, I’d say the book is a slow burn, with the most plot-driven chapters clustered towards the end, as Simon seeks to rescue Irish immigrant governess Doris from her unscrupulous employer (an officer in the Union Army).

I’d recommend the book to all readers of historical fiction. There’s enough Civil War commentary here to engage readers of military historicals, but this is a novel that moves seamlessly between the battlefield, the drawing room, the tavern, and the great outdoors. I found myself rooting for Simon from the first few pages to the very end—a testament to Jiles’s prowess as a writer. 

What nineteenth-century set, twenty-first century written novel would you like me to review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Have you read my nineteenth-century set novel, Bronte’s Mistress, yet? It’s available wherever books are sold, in hardcover, paperback, e-book, and audiobook. For regular updates from this blog and on my writing, subscribe to my email newsletter below.

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Neo-Victorian Voices: The Invention of Wings, Sue Monk Kidd (2014)

In my Neo-Victorian Voices series, I review novels set in the nineteenth-century, but written in the twenty-first. This week, it’s the turn of Sue Monk Kidd’s 2014 novel, The Invention of Wings.

The book tells the story of Sarah Grimké, based on a real abolitionist from Charleston, and Handful, a fictional character born into slavery in the Grimkés’ household. On her eleventh birthday, Sarah’s parents “gift” her the ten-year-old Handful. Already disgusted by slavery, Sarah tries to reject her “present”, marking the start of a long and complex relationship between the enslaved Handful and her reluctant “mistress”.

Handful is a compelling character and her relationship with her mother, Charlotte, was my favourite part of the novel. Charlotte, a skilled seamstress, creates story quilts telling the history of her life and those of her African ancestors and repeats fables to Handful passed down by her own mother—among them the idea that they once had wings. Handful, despite her captivity and the horrific experiences she goes through, is active in her own story. She’s more decisive than Sarah and I found myself looking forward to returning to her point of view.

Sarah, as a child, is a driven character too, longing to become a lawyer and certain in her opinions. But she spends much of the novel knocked back and unsure how to act. For me, her eventual triumph, as she and her sister tour the North lecturing in support of abolition, was a little rushed. I would have liked to see more of her coming into her own. I also wondered about her struggles with her cultural inheritance. While I know there were those born into white, slave owning families, who abhorred the “institution”, it was harder to believe that Sarah wouldn’t have internalised any of the racism around her.

Kidd’s prose is beautiful and her research shines in all the best ways as she tackles a terrible period of American history. As a writer of historical fiction, I particularly enjoyed her author’s note detailing the decisions she made and the true stories that inspired her creation of Handful. 

Overall, as with other novels about American slavery I’ve read, like Valerie Martin’s wonderful Property (2003) and Dolen Perkins-Valdez's heartbreaking Wench (2010), The Invention of Wings at times makes for painful reading, but I think fiction like this still plays a powerful role in bringing a human voice to the facts we read about in history books.

Which novel would you like to see me review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Instagram, on Facebook, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Have you read my novel, Bronte’s Mistress, yet? It’s available in hardcover, e-book, and audiobook now, and the paperback will be published next month! For monthly updates on my writing and blog, sign up for my email newsletter below.

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Neo-Victorian Voices: Westering Women, Sandra Dallas (2020)

In the last three posts in my Neo-Victorian Voices series, on novels set in the nineteenth century, but written in the twenty-first, we’ve returned to Jane Austen’s English countryside, entered the cellar of a depraved London taxidermist, and revisited Charles Dickens’s ever-popular A Christmas Carol.

This week, we’re in 1850s America, as, in Westering Women (2020), Sandra Dallas imagines the journey of forty women “of high moral character”, who set out on a journey from Chicago to California in search of a better life. All are ostensibly risking the perilous Overland Trail to find husbands among the gold seekers, but many are running away from the past—abusive men, prostitution, even possible murder convictions.

Westering Women (2020)

The main character Maggie is a mother, who’s been battered by her husband and needs to get as far from Chicago as she can. She is also a dressmaker and I enjoyed how her sewing skills contributed to the story and how her eye for clothing and materials gave us a specific lens on the cities and settlements the women pass through.

Dallas’s research shines through in her depiction of the trail, the physical toll it takes on the women and the changing landscapes and climates they travel through. With a large cast and epic journey to cover, she does a great job in showing the transformative effect of this adventure on the women, in terms of their sense of self worth, the physical objects they value and their relationships with each other. This is a novel about womanhood, sisterhood, motherhood and friendship, where men act at worst as the agents of evil and at best as slightly weak supporting characters.

Sandra Dallas (1939- )

Dallas kept me guessing about who would make it to the journey’s end (spoiler alert: it’s not all of them) and ratcheted up the tension, as the weather, Native American warriors, pursuing forces from back home and men in the wagon train’s midst threaten the group’s safety.

I’d recommend the novel to anyone interested in learning about this period of American history and the mass migration of many (including women and families) under such trying circumstances. The book is focused on the journey itself rather than on California and those panning for gold there, which makes the ending feel a little rushed, but it’s nice to be given space to imagine the surviving women’s lives there.

The novel also walks an interesting line, in being at times heart-warming with a strong sense of inclusive and forgiving Christian morality, while at others dealing with brutal sexual and physical violence. The treatment of, and attitudes towards, black and Native American characters is in line with historical realities, which can also make for emotionally difficult reading. This isn’t escapist historical fiction that will leave you longing for a romantic past. I for one will feel pretty grateful the next time I hop on a quick six-hour flight to California!

Do you have any recommendations for novels I should read next in my Neo-Victorian Voices series? If so, let me know—here, on Facebook, via Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

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Neo-Victorian Voices: Wench, Dolen Perkins-Valdez (2010)

Content warning: sexual assault; abortion

Reading novels about slavery in the nineteenth-century American South can be a gruelling experience, but Dolen Perkins-Valdez hits all the right notes in her 2010 Wench—the story of four enslaved black women who accompany their Southern masters to an Ohio vacation resort in the 1850s.

Lizzie, our protagonist, feels she loves her master, Drayle. He’s the father of her two children and he’s taught her to read and write, as well as giving her a better quality of life than that of the field slaves. But it seems unlikely that he’ll free her, or his children, and Lizzie is struggling with her own desire for independence and autonomy.

The other three women have their own battles to contend with. Mawu wants her master dead. Sweet’s pregnant—again. And Reenie’s master (who’s also her half-brother) is ‘sharing’ her with the owner of the Tawawa House resort.

With whispers of the abolition movement reaching the women, and salvation tantalisingly close in free Ohio, all four must decide whether and how to take control of their lives and what they’d risk or give up to taste freedom.

Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Perkins-Valdez does a wonderful job of teasing out the nuanced reactions to slavery from all her characters—free and enslaved, white and black. Drayle’s wife Fran is a particularly complex supporting character, reminding me of Valerie Martin’s 2003 Property, which I reviewed previously. But the four women described as their masters’ ‘wenches’ are the focus, with Lizzie’s personal emotional arc at the heart of the novel.

Some moments are difficult to read. There are descriptions of multiple sexual assaults, including one instance of rape while a character is still bleeding from terminating a pregnancy. And, while the physical violence isn’t as constant as in some depictions of slavery based largely on plantations (e.g. Twelve Years a Slave), there are several scenes of corporal punishment that aren’t for the faint-hearted.

The relationships between the women—tender and multi-faceted—though are what kept me reading (at speed). They’re believable and oh so human, even providing moments of levity and joy in this unflinching depiction of a dark and dangerous time.

What novel would you like to see the Secret Victorianist review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

Neo-Victorian Voices: A Lady of Good Family, Jeanne Mackin (2015)

There are many historical novels that focus on artists—painters, musicians, sculptors. Jeanne Mackin’s A Lady of Good Family (2015) is the first I’ve read about a landscape gardener.

The novel tells the story of the real-life Beatrix Jones Farrand, an American pioneer in the field, who defied the conventions of Gilded Age New York to pursue her own career. It’s 1895 and a 23-year-old Beatrix is in Rome, taking inspiration from Old World gardens, when she meets impoverished Italian gentleman, Amerigo Massimo. Their relationship, set against the backdrop of a changing world for women and shifting European/American power dynamics, forms the heart of the story.

Reading A Lady of Good Family in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn last week

Mackin makes the (initially surprising) choice of framing the novel with a narrative set in 1920 Massachusetts and of employing a Nick Carraway-style narrator. Daisy Winters (a fictional character, said here to be the inspiration behind Henry James’s eponymous Daisy Miller) is an unobtrusive presence at first, but we get to know her even more deeply than we do Beatrix. Her troubled but loving marriage acts as a much-needed counterpoint to the novel’s other ill-fated couplings.

Mackin’s prose is wonderful, her plot is surprising and she succeeds in capturing the colours and feelings of a garden in the pages of her novel, without relying on readers having too much botanical or practical knowledge. The cover of my copy read as women’s fiction, but in some ways the novel defies categorisation—it’s romantic without being a romance, a ghost story sadder than it is scary.

Writers Henry James and Edith Wharton (the latter was Beatrix’s aunt) are members of the supporting cast, there’s a great scheming villain in the form of the nouveau riche Mrs Haskett, and Beatrix’s relationship with her mother, Minnie, is particularly well-drawn. A few lines were a little too on the nose for me about women’s changing place in society but this is a minor quibble and a matter of personal taste.

The novel left me feeling refreshed just like taking a walk in a well-designed garden. I’d highly recommend it.

Have you read A Lady of Good Family? What did you think of it? And which twenty-first century written, nineteenth-century set, novel would you like the Secret Victorianist to review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.