Review: Three Tales, Gustave Flaubert (1877)

I’ve previously reviewed Gustave Flaubert’s 1869 novel, A Sentimental Education, for this blog, but this month I’m back with a post about a lesser-known work—his collection of Three Tales, published eight years later in 1877. 

In the first story, ‘A Simple Heart,’ a servant woman, Felicité, suffers through a difficult existence, despite the love she has to give. She ends her days unable to distinguish between her stuffed and moldy parrot, the one creature that ever showed her any affection, and the Holy Ghost.

Meanwhile in the second story, ‘The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitalier,’ a much-loved son with a sadistic passion for hunting finds himself subject to a terrible curse. Destined to kill his own parents, Julian abandons his former life to save theirs, but fate soon catches up with him with terrible consequences.

Finally, in his third story, ‘Hérodias,’ Flaubert expands on the biblical tale of the beheading of John the Baptist.

All three tales, which I read in Roger Whitehouse’s translation, have a modern feel, especially when contrasted with Flaubert’s full-length novels. ‘A Simple Heart’ and ‘The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitalier’ are both incredibly readable, while ‘Hérodias’ is denser, packed as it is with proper nouns and theological references. 

I found ‘A Simple Heart’ emotionally arresting, even as the old woman’s veneration of a taxidermied parrot borders on the absurd, and the descriptions of Julian’s blood lust as he hunts will stay with me. ‘Hérodias’ left me a little cold, but that could be due to familiarity with later works, such as Oscar Wilde’s Salome (1893), which Flaubert’s story is said to have inspired.

Overall, Flaubert’s Three Tales succeed in feeling fabulistic, while remaining unexpected. They’re peopled by characters with depth—these men and women aren’t just archetypes—that show off Flaubert’s range and far-reaching empathy. If you’re looking for a shorter work of nineteenth-century literature to read next, check the collection out, or dive into my full “Victorians in Brief” list here.

What book would you like me to review next on the Secret Victorianist? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

The Historical Novel Society UK 2024 Conference in Quotes

Last week, I flew back from England after attending my fourth HNS conference in person. This time we were in Dartington Hall in Devon, the theme of the conference was “from the author’s page to screen and stage,” and I spoke on a panel with fellow writers Heather Webb and Kris Waldherr about authors as “adaptors” in retellings. 

On the ground at HNS 2024

Throughout the conference, as usual, I took notes on the gems of wisdom shared by other speakers. I hope you enjoy this roundup of some of the best quotes…

“Nurses don’t say, ‘I can’t work today. I have nurses’ block.’” Bernard Cornwell urged us all to treat writing as a job and show up at our desks, even when we don’t feel like it.

“Go camping.” Matthew Harffy gave us all this unusual piece of advice for getting into a medieval mindset.

“People deep down are still people regardless of when they lived.” Sharon Bennett Connolly suggested getting into your characters’ heads by considering what has remained consistent about the human experience.

“Butterflies are best seen flying around.” Ian Mortimer uncovered what is problematic about traditional approaches to history and made an argument for historical fiction as the best way to “experience” the past.

“No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. No outline survives first contact with drafting.” Kate Quinn gave us this apt metaphor for how novels evolve beyond the planning stages.

Finola Austin (the Secret Victorianist) reporting from Devon

“Give each person space to do the things they love. Writers are drawn to different story elements.” The two writers behind A.D. Rhine gave us this valuable insight into their approach to co-writing fiction.

“Static settings are uninteresting.” Deborah Swift suggested we bring motion to our setting descriptions to bring them to life for readers.

“[Adapting for the screen] is intellectually challenging and fun.” Diana Gabaldon disagreed with Bernard Cornwell about how involved authors should be in screen adaptations of their work.

“It is much more difficult to write about history that’s within living memory.” Jane Johnson cautioned us about the tweets you might receive if you get details wrong in late-twentieth-century-set historical fiction.

“If I’d known how much research was involved in historical fiction, I’d have written contemporary!” Helen Steadman jokingly suggested that for aspiring writers, ignorance is sometimes bliss.

“The key to being a writer is getting a dog.” Lisa Highton noticed a theme in the conference of writers having their best ideas when walking, with or without a furry friend!

“I just became obsessed with people who are dead.” S.G. Maclean shared her (all too relatable!) experience.

With Heather Webb & Kris Waldherr

Were you also at HNSUK 2024? If so, I’d love to hear your conference highlights. Please stay in touch by following me on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, or signing up to my monthly email newsletter here. 

The Historical Novel Society UK 2024 Conference: An Interview with Finola Austin

I'm currently in London en route to the Historical Novel Society UK 2024 conference in Dartington Hall, Devon, where I'm speaking on a panel alongside fellow writers Heather Webb and Kris Waldherr.

Check out my pre-conference speaker interview here! If you're also going to the conference, please connect with me, on person or online (on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or by subscribing to my email newsletter). 

Neo-Victorian Voices: Frog Music, Emma Donoghue (2014)

I’m back with a review of yet another novel written in the twenty-first century, but set in the nineteenth, as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices blog series. This time we’re in 1876 San Francisco for Frog Music by Emma Donoghue, whose 2016 novel, The Wonder, I reviewed back in 2018.

Frog Music really drives home the idea that truth can be stranger than fiction when it comes to writing historical novels. I had no idea how well-researched the book was and how deeply Donoghue had engaged with the historical record until I read her concluding author’s note. 

Not only is it true that SF was suffering a sweltering summer, along with a smallpox epidemic, in 1876, but the murder the book opens with was a real crime. Jenny Bonnet was a cross-dressing, unicycle-pedaling frog catcher, who had frequent run-ins with the city police. But the question is: who shot her dead?

In Donoghue’s novel, Blanche Beunon, the dancer and sex worker who was with Bonnet when she died, is the character who sets out to uncover the truth. But Blanche has problems of her own to deal with—an angry erstwhile lover, disagreements with the madam at her brothel, and (most heart wrenchingly) trying to locate her missing baby. We alternate between sections focused on Blanche’s investigations and earlier scenes depicting the meeting and relationship between Blanche and Jenny, as Donoghue skillfully unravels what happened and, crucially, why.

If you’re a fan of trigger warnings for fiction, please note that this novel would require many. Donoghue’s brand of historical fiction is gritty, peopled by characters who are of their time when it comes to their illnesses, hygiene, and more. Frog Music details child neglect and animal cruelty, and the novel also contains sex scenes that walk the line between consensual and non-consensual.

But that isn’t to say that the novel is entirely dark. Music, as you might imagine from the title, is a powerful through line in the book and the snippets of nineteenth-century lyrics that pepper Jenny and Blanche’s interactions paint a vibrant picture of 1870s West Coast culture. My favorite thing was how transported I felt to nineteenth-century San Francisco, where different immigrant groups were meeting and forming a new, composite culture.

Overall, I’d recommend Frog Music to readers who a) won’t get queasy at realistic depictions of nineteenth-century life, b) have an interest in queer relationships in the period, and c) love SF. 

Let me know what novel you’d like to see me review next as part of the Neo-Victorian Voices series. You can always contact me on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. And don’t forget to sign up to my monthly email newsletter.

What About Margaret? Reading Sense and Sensibility with Fresh Eyes

Welcome back to the Secret Victorianist. This month I wrote a guest post for Sarah Emsley's blog as part of her A Summer Party for Sense and Sensibility series, exploring Jane Austen's novel from a variety of perspectives.

In my post I share a close reading of the sections of Sense and Sensibility that deal with Margaret Dashwood. If Elinor represents sense and Marianne sensibility, what are we to make of the third sister in the family? Read my full post to find out.

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Neo-Victorian Voices: The Witches of New York, Ami McKay (2016)

Welcome back to my long-running Neo-Victorian Voices series, in which I review books set in the nineteenth century but published in the twenty-first. Today, I’m blogging about Ami McKay’s 2016 novel, The Witches of New York, which combines three of my favorite things—the 1800s, NYC, and a little dash of magic. 

Beatrice Dunn arrives in New York in 1880 on the same day as the great obelisk, Cleopatra’s Needle, which is nearing the end of its long journey to Central Park. Beatrice is seeking employment in a teashop after reading an advertisement that warns, “those averse to magic need not apply.” She already has a keen interest in the occult, but it’s only after touching the city’s Egyptian wonder that she starts to see and interact with spirits, making her of great interest to Adelaide and Eleanor, the teashop’s proprietors, to alienist Dr. Brody, who takes a scientific approach to the supernatural, and to a preacher and a demon, both of whom wish her ill. 

The novel’s best moments are those where Beatrice interacts with ghosts—when she sees a small boy playing around his mother in the teashop, before realizing he’s dead, and when she scribes messages from spirits using Dr. Brody’s scientific instrument—and the portions dealing with the history of New York (e.g., the lunatic asylum on Blackwell’s Island and a terrible hotel fire). I also enjoyed the inclusion of the raven familiar, Perdu, and the newspaper articles, journal entries, and grimoire excerpts that head each chapter, painting a charming picture of McKay’s magical world. 

Less satisfying was how overstuffed the novel felt at times, with some plot lines (e.g., the relationship between Adelaide and her ghost mother, Eleanor’s affair with a married woman, the threat posed by the woman who deformed Adelaide’s face, and the conflict between the demon Malphas and the witches of the novel’s title) feeling unresolved. I went into the novel expecting it to be a standalone, but it became clear early that I was reading setup for future books, and I was unsurprised to learn that a second novel, Half Spent Was the Night, followed in 2018. I also would have loved to better understand the theological underpinnings of McKay’s magic system. The proponents of Christianity in the novel are uniformly terrible, but this is a world where demons roam. Is there a God? And, if so, what does He/She/They think about witchcraft?

Overall, I’d recommend the book to those who enjoy their dark magic on the lighter side and to readers for whom a series is a bonus, rather than detracting from their enjoyment. What novel(s) should I read next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want future blog posts delivered straight to your email inbox? Sign up here.

Review: Stranger in the Shogun’s City, A Japanese Woman and Her World, Amy Stanley (2020)

I know very little about nineteenth-century Japan, but I strongly identified with non-fiction writer Amy Stanley’s author note in her 2020 biography, Stranger in the Shogun’s City. Stanley writes about her excitement at uncovering the story of Tsuneno, a woman born in the early years of the nineteenth-century, through letters and other family records. As a writer of historical fiction, I too have felt that thrill of looking through an unexpected window into the past, when an ordinary person, not one of history’s great names, becomes real to you. It’s hard to know why particular people from the past are so compelling to us. But it made perfect sense to me that Stanley spent years of her life painstakingly uncovering what is knowable about Tsuneno and her family.

When I write that Tsuneno was “ordinary,” I don’t mean to suggest that she was boring. She married (and divorced!) several times—something that would have been unthinkable to many of her European contemporaries. She fled her family to move to the big city, Edo—now part of Tokyo. And, as far as her brother was concerned, she was a problem. She was independent, strong-willed, and opinionated, i.e., she possessed exactly the same traits as most heroines in historical fiction. 

But Tsuneno was not a political actor on a global stage. Historical shifts—in Japan’s governance, economy, and relationship with the outside world—shaped her life, rather than the reverse. Stranger in the Shogun’s City is more about transporting us back to Edo, a city that no longer exists, than bringing us into Tsuneno’s psyche, which outside of fictionalization is unknowable to us. As a novelist, I couldn’t help but wonder if Stanley had ever considered turning Tsuneno into a character. Did she have a sense of what she might have said, felt, and thought, beyond the letters that the records have left us?

I think it’s notable that some of the reviews of the book that I read online, and even the biography’s Wikipedia page, don’t mention its subject’s name. Yes, Tsuneno’s life acts as an effective vehicle for transporting us to nineteenth-century Japan, but I hope I remember her—not just the lost world she inhabited.

What book with a nineteenth-century link would you like me to review next? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want reviews, writing advice and more, delivered to your inbox once a month? Subscribe to my email newsletter here.

A Dickensian Master Class in Epiphanies

Welcome back to my master class blog series, where I dissect passages by famous nineteenth-century authors to inspire writers today. 

This is the fifth time I’m taking cues from Charles Dickens (1812-1870). Previously, I used his novel A Tale of Two Cities (1859) to talk about powerful openings, his novella The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain (1848) to talk about repetition, and his short stories ‘The Seven Poor Travelers’ (1854) and ‘Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings’ (1863) to talk about storytelling technique and first-person narration. 

Today, I’m diving into his 1843-1844 novel Martin Chuzzlewit to discuss character epiphanies.

There are plenty of potential pitfalls for the writer who approaches a scene in which a character comes to a major realization. These chapters could be too internal and, therefore, lacking in action and interest. Alternatively, in a desire to maintain momentum, an author might make the mistake of not probing a character’s psyche enough at one of these pivotal moments, leaving readers with the impression of an under-reaction. If the revelation is also a revelation to readers, they may feel blindsided or tricked (for good or ill). If it is not, they may roll their eyes and find the character stupid. 

In an important scene in Martin Chuzzlewit, the character Tom Pinch realizes what readers have known from early in the book—that he has been entirely misguided in assessing the character of his mentor, employer, and erstwhile hero, the architect Mr. Pecksniff. 

The vehicle Dickens uses to bring about this epiphany is dialogue. Early in the scene, Tom shares the world view he has held up until now, telling the character Mary Graham, “[Pecksniff]’s the best of men. The more at ease you were, the happier he would be. Oh dear, you needn’t be afraid of Pecksniff. He is not a spy.”

It is up to Mary to deliver the blow, in dialogue that’s striking and unusual in a Dickens novel for its brevity: “You mistake him.” 

After some back and forth between Mary and Tom, Dickens then moves from dialogue to narrative summary, avoiding the sort of tired repetition that can come about in scenes where a character discovers information readers already have: When she was more composed, she impressed upon Tom that this man she had described, was Pecksniff in his real colors; and word by word and phrase by phrase, as well as she remembered it, related what had passed between them in the wood.

It’s only when he has played out these plot points and given Tom all the information he needs to know, that Dickens can get to work on the true heart of an epiphany scene—the emotional fallout. Mary exits and Dickens’s omniscient narrator becomes a close third point of view, bringing us directly into Tom’s thoughts and feelings.

And now the full agitation and misery of the disclosure came rushing upon Tom indeed. The star of his whole life from boyhood had become, in a moment, putrid vapor. It was not that Pecksniff, Tom’s Pecksniff, had ceased to exist, but that he never had existed. In his death Tom would have had the comfort of remembering what he used to be, but in this discovery, he had the anguish of recollecting what he never was. For, as Tom’s blindness in this matter had been total and not partial, so was his restored sight. His Pecksniff could never have worked the wickedness of which he had just now heard, but any other Pecksniff could; and the Pecksniff who could do that could do anything, and no doubt had been doing anything and everything except the right thing, all through his career. 

This is an interesting mixture of direct “telling,” as Dickens describes Tom’s “agitation” and “misery,” with “showing” via metaphor. Pecksniff was a “star” to Tom. Now he is “putrid vapor.” Grieving Pecksniff’s death would have provided Tom with moments of “comfort,” when he remembered the past. But now, every memory Tom has is colored by this revelation. Dickens also taps into the idea of sight vs. blindness, which has been part of the Western literary tradition surrounding epiphanies since the myth of Oedipus, giving us the sort of dramatic revelation that makes for compelling storytelling.

Earlier in the book, the character of Tom Pinch is used for comedic effect, and readers laugh at his ignorance about Pecksniff, but in this chapter, Dickens packs an emotional punch, layering on further metaphors and making it is hard not to feel for him: it was not [Pecksniff] who suffered; it was Tom. His compass was broken, his chart destroyed, his chronometer had stopped, his masts were gone by the board; his anchor was adrift, ten thousand leagues away.

Finally, he makes Tom’s internal epiphany external again via an unlikely, if dramatically satisfying, monologue, which adds to the feeling that we’re watching a scene play out on stage: “I wouldn’t have cared…I wouldn’t have cared for anything he might have done to Me, for I have tried his patience often, and have lived upon his sufferance and have never been the help to him that others could have been. I wouldn’t have minded, Pecksniff,…if you had done Me any wrong; I could have found plenty of excuses for that; and though you might have hurt me, could have still gone on respecting you. But why did you ever fall so low as this in my esteem! Oh Pecksniff, Pecksniff, there is nothing I would not have given, to have had you deserve my old opinion of you; nothing!”

For writers approaching their own epiphany scene, I think there are a few important lessons we can take from Dickens here: limit repetition for readers to maintain their interest; make the dramatic reveal as short as possible but give yourself space, and word count, to explore the emotional aftermath; and consider carefully what you make internal vs. external in your scene. 

What do you think of this important scene from one of Dickens’s less loved novels? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want monthly updates from me sent straight to your inbox? Subscribe here. 

Neo-Victorian Voices: Edith Holler, Edward Carey (2023)

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.

A Master Class in Character Introduction from Mary Elizabeth Braddon

It’s been a while since I published a writing “master class” on this blog, doing a close reading of a Victorian novel to discuss craft techniques that are still relevant to authors today. But this week, I’m turning to one of my favorite nineteenth-century reads—Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s sensational 1862 novel, Lady Audley’s Secret—to explore how she introduces her title character.

If you’re pulling up the e-text of the novel or grabbing a dogeared copy, the passage I’m focusing on begins “But Miss Alicia's day was over…” and ends with “declaring that Lucy Graham was the sweetest girl that ever lived.”

The first thing to note about Braddon’s introduction is that anyone reading the novel for the first time is going to be waiting to find out about Lady Audley in the opening pages of the book. The character is, after all, mentioned in the title and the reference to a “secret” makes her an immediate source of intrigue. What Braddon chooses to do to build on this intrigue, and tease readers even further, is not start with Lady Audley at all. She is in fact the third character described, after her husband, Michael Audley, and stepdaughter, Alicia Audley, in a move that utilizes the writerly rule of three and creates a crescendo of anticipation before Lady Audley/Lucy’s dramatic reveal. Modern writers should consider the power a title character holds in readers’ imaginations and how starting with secondary characters before highlighting the primary can be an arresting technique when writing omniscient or multi-perspective prose.

What happens once Lady Audley is introduced? Braddon attaches multiple positive attributes to her, but in such a way that the author is constantly seeding doubt. Lucy is “amiable,” yet Alicia feels “prejudices and dislike” for her. She has made an “advantageous match,” yet this has turned her into an object of “hatred and envy” for other women. A reference from her former employer seems to have been glowing, yet “no one knew anything about her.” Her accomplishments are “brilliant and numerous,” but strangely she’s happy to accept low pay. At the core of Braddon’s technique here is employing telling vs. showing and overusing modifiers (adjectives and adverbs)—both techniques that strike a deliberately false note. If, as a writer, you want to establish a character as kind or talented, it’s best to show them doing kind or brilliant things. But here Braddon’s apparent encomium is also a clever takedown of Lady Audley/Lucy before she’s said a single line of dialogue, already setting her up for readers as someone who cannot be trusted. 

Lady Audley’s physical appearance isn’t mentioned until later in the introductory passage. Braddon describes Michael Audley as a “big man, tall and stout, with a deep, sonorous voice, handsome black eyes, and a white beard,” while the lines dedicated to Alicia paint her personality rather than her portrait. But, when it comes to Lady Audley, specific features matter less than the effect her face has on people. We’re told that “in the cottages of the poor her fair face shone like a sunbeam,” and that “Miss Lucy Graham was blessed with that magic power of fascination, by which a woman can charm with a word or intoxicate with a smile.” A few lines later we learn that “perhaps, it was the sight of her pretty face, looking over the surgeon's high pew every Sunday morning” that secured her a wealthy husband. The genius of this is that each reader can picture a face that we find personally attractive and imagine a woman who might have this sort of impact on us. What Braddon demonstrates so well is how describing a character can involve not describing them directly, and instead giving readers the chance to co-create with the author via their imaginations. 

What nineteenth-century novel would you like me to write about next? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want Victoriana sent straight to your email once a month? Sign up here.