Lockdown: Some Books Wot I have Read. (1) Historical Novels

I am still fighting my way through listening to The Help so can't report back on that for yet awhile. I'm not sure how many more hours there are to get through, but at 15-20 minutes a day, it's going to be a while. I think we can take it as read that the review, when it comes, will be less than positive. 

The library may be closed but just before lockdown it had swapped from the Libby to the Borrowbox app to allow members to borrow books remotely. The choice was at first very limited but they have put a huge effort, and presumably a large amount of money into increasing the available books since then so that I have found a few things to borrow. I am also still working my way through some physical books that I borrowed just before the world fell still. 

So first up is one of  yer actual physical books: Shadowplay by Joseph O'Connor. This was on the Walter Scott Prize longlist . I don;t know that I would have chosen it to go on that but I suppose I don't know much about the competition. Shadowplay is set in the late 19th/early 20th centuries and is about, if it is about anything at all, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, Bram Stoker and their time together at the Lyceum Theatre. I knew little about these people before I started, and I can't hep feeling that I know very little more now that I have finished the book. I think if you have read Stoker's Dracula then you might get more out of it: I haven't read the book but picked up names that I know are used in it, Helsing, Mina, Harker, and various themes including someone sleeping in a coffin, and ship's ballast being made of coffins full of earth. I am sure there must be many many more. I am undecided about whether this is subtle allusion or authorly showing off. If I incline to the latter it is because I also find Mr O' Connor's writing style too self consciously striving to be 'fine writing'. He is a poet I gather from the biographical note on the back of the jacket, and that may be the problem with his prose. 

That said, to paraphrase, it may be a case of 'it's not the book, it's me'. It's been well reviewed so I am patently missing something. 

Turning to a well reviewed historical novel that I love, I reread Alasdair MacLeod's No Great Mischief in February. This was not just to enjoy it (although I did), and to see what I could decide what it was about this time (every time I read it, I decide it's about something different, and this time was no exception). I was rereading it so that I could send off a proposal for a conference paper on it next winter, by which time I hope we will  be back to something approaching a normal that allows for travel once more.  I did not expect great things really and in fact was a bit leery of submitting it at all, but the conference is in Toronto where son no 1 and his family live so although it was a  bit of a bow drawn at considerable venture I thought it was worth a punt.  I am happy to report that, rather earlier than was anticipated, the paper was accepted, which is very pleasing. Quite how well I might cope with Toronto in January remains to be seen!