Happy New Year! After tracking my progress via Goodreads, today, for the fifth year in a row, I’m sharing a retrospect on the books I read in the last year. (Here are the links to check out the 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2020 editions if you’d like to travel back in time!)
In 2024, as in 2023, I read 50 books, an average pace of approximately 50 pages a day.
My preference for fiction over non-fiction remains clear, with 41 vs. 9 books read. But my non-fiction reading covered topics of particular interest to me, such as art (All the Beauty in the World, Patrick Bringley, and The Art Thief, Michael Finkel), ballet (Turning Pointe, Chloe Angyal), and the nineteenth century (Stranger in the Shogun’s City, Amy Stanley, reviewed here, and The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum, Margalit Fox), and expanded into less expected areas (e.g., memoirs by Flea, Esmeralda Santiago, and Patricia E. Beattie, and the story of an eighteenth-century naval mutiny, in David Grann’s The Wager).
When it comes to fiction, for the first time in one of these reviews, one contemporary author dominates—I read six (!) novels by Tana French in 2024 and continue to love her work.
My interest in my own genre, historical fiction, remains strong, accounting for 20% of books I read last year. Other strong themes for the year in fiction included witches (The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch, Melinda Taub, The Manningtree Witches, A.K. Blakemore, The Witches of New York, Ami McKay, and Weyward, Emilia Hart), ballet (Tiny Pretty Things, Dhonielle Clayton and Sona Charaipotra, and The Dance of the Dolls, Lucy Ashe), and, as ever, books by friends/acquaintances (Marvelous, Molly Greeley, The Last Star Standing, C.G. Twiles, and What's Eating Jackie Oh?, Patricia Park).
Thirty-five books I read this year were by women, and 15 by men, which is slightly more gender-balanced than in 2023.
In 2025, I’ll again be aiming to read 50 books. My reading resolutions? Continue to embrace the unexpected (one of my favorite 2024 reads was Chelsea G. Summers’s A Certain Hunger, a book about a female cannibal!), prioritize joy in reading, and continue to support writer friends.
What books did you enjoy reading in 2024 that I should continue adding to my list? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want to stay in touch? Sign up to my monthly email newsletter here.
Welcome back to the Secret Victorianist and my Neo-Victorian Voices series, where I write about books published in the twenty-first century but set in the nineteenth. Today, I’m breaking my own rules by reviewing a novel set in 1901, but, since that was the year of Queen Victoria’s death and this is mentioned in the opening pages of the book, I’m going to give myself an exception.
Our main character, Edith Holler, is a 12-year-old girl who lives in a theater in Norwich in the East of England. In fact, she has never left the Holler Theater due to a curse cast upon her as an infant. Carey’s love for the theatrical world is apparent on every page. I particularly enjoyed how he compares backstage to the different decks of a ship, the strong contrasts he draws between the front and back of the house, and the inclusion of actorly superstitions, such as referring to fire in the theater as “Mr. Jet.”
But as much as this is a book about the stage play world, it is also a book about Norwich. The character of Edith is an expert on the city she has only seen from the roof or through the windows of her theater, and Carey draws on a wealth of Norfolk history about and myth while embellishing upon it too with his vivid imagination.
I didn’t realize when I first picked up the book how much it would veer into the territory of historical fantasy, but I was delighted as the chapters became more and more unsettling and surreal. The Norwich of Edith Holler is overrun by deathwatch beetles, which locals make into an (apparently) appetizing paste. The problem? Edith suspects that murdered children are the secret ingredient in the city’s famous Beetle Spread, and her father is planning to marry into the family of (cannibal?) entrepreneurs behind the historic recipe.
You’ll love this book, like I did, if you’re a fan of the bizarre and the macabre. I wrote before about Edward Carey’s 2018 Little. In both novels, Carey includes his own illustrations, bringing his creations to life. In Edith Holler, many of these illustrations are the pieces of a toy theater, which transported me back to the world of Pollock’s Toy Museum, a nineteenth-century gem I reviewed for the blog a decade ago. You can even download the pieces of the theater from Carey’s website if you fancy recreating the Gothic delights of the novel for yourself. I don’t know personally if I’d want to bring Edith and her dark world into my apartment, but I’ll undoubtedly be reading whatever Carey writes next.
Which novel would you like me to review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want more blog posts like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for my monthly email newsletter here.
“Read!” is the number one tip I give aspiring writers, and, in 2020, I managed to follow my own advice. With our social lives non-existent, this year was a good year to escape into a great book, and I hit my goal of reading 50.
For the full list, check out my Goodreads profile. I read 43 novels to seven works of non-fiction and 42 books by women to eight books by men. And 11 of the books were by authors of colour.
In this post, I’m not going to summarise everything, but to highlight some of the best—the books that have stood out most to me from the year.
Favourite Fiction
It was so tough to choose my favourite reads of 2020, as different books are great for different moods. But there were three that I’ve been raving about to anyone who will listen.
Mary Toft; Or, The Rabbit Queen, by Dexter Palmer is the novel I would recommend to everyone, despite its slightly strange synopsis. The book is based on the true story of an eighteenth-century Englishwoman who claimed to be giving birth to butchered rabbits. But it’s so much more than that. A book about fake news, the nature of truth, and the dangers of partisan hysteria, this piece of historical fiction couldn’t have felt more 2020.
I also couldn’t go without mentioning The Mirror and the Light, the third novel in Hilary Mantel’s trilogy on Thomas Cromwell. Mantel is probably the best living historical novelist and the final book in the series more than delivers.
I’ve been reading lots of books set during the French Revolution (check out a recent summary here), and Edward Carey’s Little, an imaginative look at the childhood of famous waxwork artist Madame Tussaud, is a standout. Like Dexter’s novel, this one isn’t for the squeamish, with Carey’s own illustrations bringing a visual dimension to a lively, gruesome, and original novel.
Non-Fiction Favourite
As you can see from my stats, I read much more fiction than non-fiction, but I did read some great non-fiction this year, on everything from ballet to millennial politicians, and Napoleon’s mistresses to Queen Victoria.
My favourite non-fiction read was, unsurprisingly, one of the most fiction-related—How the French Invented Love, by Marilyn Yalom. This book takes readers on a whirlwind tour through French literary history, charting how the country and its capital have become synonymous with romantic love.
Top Nineteenth-Century Read
I didn’t read as many books as usual this year actually written during the nineteenth century, probably because the publication of my own debut novel,Bronte’s Mistress, brought me into contact with so many talented living authors.
My top pick of those I did read is decadent novel The Marquise de Sade, by Rachilde. Check out my full review here and venture into this scandalous story of late nineteenth-century depravity if you dare.
Top Neo-Victorian Voices Read
I also continued to review books set in the nineteenth century, but written in the twenty-first, for my Neo-Victorian Voices series. Of those I blogged about this year, The Confessions of Frannie Langton, by Sara Collins was my favourite. The story of a woman formerly enslaved on a Jamaican sugar plantation and now on trial for her London employers’ murders, this book is written in a compelling first person.
Top Reads for Bronte Lovers
If you follow my blog and me, you might very well be a lover of the Brontes. So, as well as recommending you read my Bronte-inspired novel, Bronte’s Mistress, I wanted to suggest some other Bronte-related reads.
The Mother of the Brontes by Sharon Wright, a biography of Maria Bronte (nee Branwell), is my non-fiction Bronte pick (review here). And novels I recommend you check out are The Vanished Bride, by Bella Ellis (review here), The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte, by Syrie James (review here), and Mr Rochester, by Sarah Shoemaker (review here).
Self-Published Pick
My reading skews heavily towards traditionally published books, but I also wanted to give you an indie pick—The Best Man on the Planet by C.G. Twiles. This genre-bending modern Gothic is exactly the kind of gem non-traditional publishing gives us. Check out my interview with Twiles here.
Debut Novels
Finally, the best part of 2020 for me has been the support and community I’ve enjoyed from and with other debut novelists. You might have noticed that none of them were mentioned above, but that’s because I didn’t want to pick between them! I still have plenty more novels to read by the other debuts, but here’s a list of the ones I got to this year.
Historical fiction lovers should read Fifty Words for Rain, by Asha Lemmie (set in post-WWII Japan), and regency rom-com To Have and To Hoax, by Martha Waters. I’m also shouting out The Jane Austen Society, by Natalie Jenner, which I actually read in 2019, but reviewed in 2020, its publication year.
Both contemporary debuts I have to recommend deal with grief. In Lindsey Rogers Cook’s How To Bury Your Brother, a woman discovers undelivered letters from her dead brother and takes a journey to the past. And in The All-Night Sun, by Diane Zinna, a young orphaned college professor develops an inappropriate relationship with her female student.
Love thrillers, mystery and suspense? Sisters are pitted against each other in The Better Liar, by Tanen Jones, and family drama is also at the heart of A.H. Kim’s A Good Family. While Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden is a dark and violent tale of a vigilante tracking down drug dealers on a Native American reservation.
What did you read in 2020? I’d love to hear your recommendations! If you did read and enjoy Bronte’s Mistress, please consider reviewing the book on Goodreads and Amazon—every review helps. Wishing you a very happy 2021 and beyond. To stay up to date with books, news and reviews from me, sign up to my email newsletter below.
Back in October, to celebrate the release of Ribbons of Scarlet (2019)—a multi-authored historical novel about the women of the French Revolution—I strayed out of the nineteenth century and into the late eighteenth, with a round up of the best novels I’d read set during that tumultuous period.
I reviewed Andrew Miller’s Pure (2011), Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety (1992), Daphne du Maurier’s The Glassblowers (1963), and the most iconic of all novels of the French Revolution, Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (1859).
Eight months later, I’m back, with thoughts on three more novels, which take this bloody conflict as their backdrop.
Mistress of the Revolution, Catherine Delors (2008)
Delors’s novel centres on noblewoman Gabrielle—first, on the trials and tribulations of her childhood, doomed adolescent love and horrific forced marriage, and, later, on how she becomes embroiled in the events of the revolution. Gabrielle’s lot is a believable, if dramatic, one, but her character is underdeveloped and she seems to offer little beyond her attractiveness (her main bargaining chip throughout the book). There’s plenty of sexual content to titillate and horrify by turns, and Delors covers a lot of ground historically, incorporating some great details. Yet, on occasion, passages of political exposition become a little skim-worthy.
Becoming Josephine, Heather Webb (2013)
Webb’s protagonist’s biography would strain our credulity were it not true! This novel takes the future Empress Josephine as its subject, from her childhood in Martinique, to her terrible first marriage (there’s a theme here), to her love with Napoleon, to the pressures mounted on her to produce an heir, and beyond. Josephine was placed to be a great observer of the revolution, so these sections in particular are well wrought, and the nuances of her relationship with Napoleon come through. However the later parts of her life are a little rushed. I wish Webb had ended sooner, so the book had a clear novelistic arc vs. bordering on dramatized biography.
Little, Edward Carey (2018)
Carey’s Little (my most recent revolutionary read) is a very different beast. Like Webb, he takes a real person, who had a front row seat at the revolution, as his main character. In this case, it’s Marie Grosholtz, still famous the world over as Madame Tussaud. However, Carey isn’t constrained by history. His novel reads as an imaginative response to the art of waxworks, against the backdrop of a violent period when real bodies were frequently dismembered. His Marie (referred to by other characters as “Little” due to her diminutive size) is obsessed with bodies—their innards and their outer flaws and features. Illustrated by the author, this isn’t a read for the faint-hearted or weak-stomached, but it captures the madness and horror of the French Revolution, as well as the obsession with objects (clothes, wigs, locks, wax figures), which gave so many eighteenth-century Parisians their livelihood.
Do you know of any more great books set during the French Revolution? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.
My first novel, Bronte’s Mistress, about the older woman who had an affair with Branwell Bronte, is available for pre-order now. Subscribe to my newsletter for monthly updates below.
Back in June, the Secret
Victorianist attended the Historical Novel Society Conference in Maryland (read
my full review of the event here). While there, I was lucky enough to receive a
signed advanced reader copy of Ribbons of
Scarlet (2019), a novel jointly written by six historical novelists
depicting the lives of many of the women who played an important role in the
French Revolution, which began in 1789.
Ribbons of Scarlet is
now top of my TBR (to be read) list, but in honour of the novel’s release on
October 1, in this week’s blog post, I’m straying out of the nineteenth century
and back into the eighteenth to share with you some of my favourite reads set
during, or inspired by, the revolution that rocked Europe and changed France
forever.
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles
Dickens (1859)
Dickens’s depiction of the revolution, written seventy years later, influences how its events live on in
popular imagination to this day. Expect narrow escapes from the guillotine,
long imprisonments and rampant blood lust.
Aside from being a classic, A Tale of Two Cities offers a great
glimpse into British responses to the revolution on England’s doorstep. It also
has one of the best openings of any novel in English (check out my close
reading here). Bonus fun fact: I once appeared as Monsieur (yes, Monsieur, not
Madame) Defarge in a school play.
The Glass Blowers, Daphne du
Maurier (1963)
Daphne du Maurier dug into her
own family history to inspire her 1963 The
Glass Blowers, a wonderful novel that examines the revolution through the
eyes of a middle class family in the provinces. The novel deals with the
divisions within families occasioned by any civil war and the misinformation
that fuelled much of the paranoia that dominated the French Revolution.
Her main character, an
unobtrusive first person, is representative of many men and especially women of
the period, who tried to maintain domestic normality, while war and political
strife ravaged the country.
A Place of Greater Safety, Hilary
Mantel (1992)
Reading Hilary Mantel’s dense and
captivating novel is as close as we can come today to experiencing the French
Revolution blow by blow. Focused on Paris, Mantel illuminates the lives of
three of the conflict’s main actors—Georges Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Maximilien
Robespierre—with a huge cast of supporting characters.
The novel is replete
with interpersonal as well as political drama but this isn’t a story of
ordinary people. If you want to dig into the nitty-gritty of factions,
espionage and corruption, this is the book for you.
Pure, Andrew Miller (2011)
The most recent novel on my list,
Pure isn’t really a novel of the
Revolution at all, but of the years preceding it. Our protagonist is an
engineer tasked with clearing the graveyard at Les Innocents in Paris, which is
literally overflowing with corpses and therefore endangering the health of the city's residents.
The book captures the rising
tensions in Paris in the 1780s, the bureaucracy of Versailles, the autonomy of
different parts of the city and the fading influence of the Catholic Church.
There’s even a cameo for Dr Guillotine himself as social discord rumbles,
creating a dramatic stage for our central story. It’s dark, compelling, and
beautifully told.
Other French Revolution related
novels that are on my radar include Catherine Delors’s Mistress of the Revolution (2008), Edward Carey’s Little (2018), and, of course, Ribbons of Scarlet. But I’d love to hear
what other books on the topic you’d recommend I check out! Let me know—here, on
Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.
