Margaret
12-05-2008, 12:35 AM
Two of the books that will go on my "best I've read this year" list are set in seventeenth century England, a period I hadn't thought I was especially interested in until I read these books.
I posted about the first one on the old forum: Mary McCann's As Meat Loves Salt, about an emotionally impaired man who becomes involved in the English Civil War as a soldier for Cromwell's forces and also in the "Diggers" movement, a poorly organized but idealistic movement to take over uncultivated land for agricultural communes. It's quite interesting from an abstract standpoint, but the novel is not abstract at all. I've reviewed it here (http://www.HistoricalNovels.info/As-Meat-Loves-Salt.html).
The other is a novel by a Canadian author, Mary Novik, called Conceit, which I've just finished reading (and reviewing here (http://www.HistoricalNovels.info/Conceit.html)). It's about a daughter of John Donne, the famous poet and Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral. The writing is exceptionally fine, and the characters were so alive, it felt like they were right in the room with me sometimes. It got excellent reviews in the U.K., but seems to be almost unknown in the U.S., which is a shame. Maybe people think U.S. readers aren't interested in John Donne - but this would be a great read even if the characters were entirely fictional.
I posted about the first one on the old forum: Mary McCann's As Meat Loves Salt, about an emotionally impaired man who becomes involved in the English Civil War as a soldier for Cromwell's forces and also in the "Diggers" movement, a poorly organized but idealistic movement to take over uncultivated land for agricultural communes. It's quite interesting from an abstract standpoint, but the novel is not abstract at all. I've reviewed it here (http://www.HistoricalNovels.info/As-Meat-Loves-Salt.html).
The other is a novel by a Canadian author, Mary Novik, called Conceit, which I've just finished reading (and reviewing here (http://www.HistoricalNovels.info/Conceit.html)). It's about a daughter of John Donne, the famous poet and Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral. The writing is exceptionally fine, and the characters were so alive, it felt like they were right in the room with me sometimes. It got excellent reviews in the U.K., but seems to be almost unknown in the U.S., which is a shame. Maybe people think U.S. readers aren't interested in John Donne - but this would be a great read even if the characters were entirely fictional.