Category: book review

book review · bookish things · historical fiction

Boudicca’s Daughter by Elodie Harper — Giving a Voice to the Forgotten

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Elodie Harper’s Boudicca’s Daughter tells the imagined story of two young girls who, according to Roman accounts, were ordered by Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, the Roman governor of Britain, to be raped by Roman soldiers while their mother was flogged. This atrocity became the biggest catalyst for Boudicca’s rebellion against Rome. Historically, we know almost nothing about these daughters: not their names, their fates, or even whether Boudicca had other children besides the two girls. After their assault, they disappear completely from the historical record.

That’s what makes this novel so compelling. Harper takes these nameless figures, women who were written out of history, and gives them identities, voices, and lives of their own. The book begins with the lead-up to Boudicca’s rebellion, but the uprising itself only occupies about the first quarter. The rest of the story unfolds from the perspective of her eldest daughter, who in this book is called Solina, as she navigates the aftermath of her mother’s rebellion – the trauma of the assault, the crushing defeat of her people, and her struggle to survive being sold into slavery in the heart of Rome.

One of the things I appreciated most was Harper’s willingness to explore the complexity of what happens after the rebellion ends, especially to the women who are left behind. Solina’s story feels like a reclamation of history, giving voice to those who were silenced. I’m always drawn to stories of strong women, and this one in particular highlights how resilience and strength can take many forms. Sometimes strength is quiet, sometimes it is choosing one of two evils and hoping you can live with that choice. It is aways deeply personal.

A theme that really challenged me while reading was the “enemies to lovers” dynamic. Normally, that trope doesn’t bother me when it’s something like academic rivals, sports competitors, or even just a couple of people who take an instant dislike to each other. But I’ve always been uncomfortable with stories that romanticize relationships between oppressors and victims, for example, between a Nazi officer and a Jewish prisoner. While such relationships almost certainly existed – I would think it’s a survival mechanism in at least some cases – I’ve always found that version of the trope disturbing and something I’d rather not read even if it might be historically accurate.

Yet in Boudicca’s Daughter, Harper approaches that idea in a way that made me think more deeply. When Solina forms a complicated relationship with Paulinus, the very man who ordered her rape and who destroyed her people, it isn’t presented as simple romance. If it was, it would have been unforgivably disrespectful to Solina, Boudicca, and every other woman in history who had to make a similar choice. Instead, it’s messy, painful, and psychologically complex. It made me reflect on how trauma can distort love and loyalty, how survival can blur moral boundaries, and how what we label “enemies to lovers” might sometimes be closer to a portrayal of coercion, dependency, or even Stockholm syndrome. I am still not sure what I think about Solina and Paulinus’s relationship or how honest such a relationship could ever really be.

In the end, I came away deeply impressed. Boudicca’s Daughter is not just a story about rebellion; it’s about identity and reclaiming one’s voice in the aftermath of violence. It’s powerful, unsettling, and unforgettable. I’d highly recommend it to readers who love stories about strong women, historical fiction, or anyone interested in the human side of Boudicca’s rebellion.

(Image credit: duncan1890 via Getty Images)
Exploring Connections in ‘Landlines’ by Raynor Winn
book review · lifestyle · travel

Exploring Connections in ‘Landlines’ by Raynor Winn

kristenLeave a comment

Landlines by Raynor Winn Genre: memoir/ nature writing I read it as a(n): trade paper Length: 303 pp Her Grace’s rating: 5 stars

Landlines – not just the telephones for old people! In Winn’s newest book, they are lines on maps. Lines on the land. Lines of communication. The theme of Winn’s third book are the various lines we encounter everyday and how they connect us to each other, to our home, to the places and people we love. 

Ray and Moth went walking, with the intention to walk the Cape Wrath Trail. That trail’s name sounds scary to me and I would probably die. Moth seemed to be getting worse and falling into a depression. Ray browbeat him into going walking again. At first, and for much of their trip, she felt guilty about it because Moth was convinced he was no longer able to do a long distance walk and he seemed to be genuinely miserable. But Ray, understandably, cannot give up on him or her hope. So she pushed and pulled and harangued until he kept going. And soon enough, they hit a rhythm that worked and rather than walking Cape Wrath and then going home, they decided to go to the next leg of the trail. And then the next. And the next. And ultimately they walked a thousand miles back home to Cornwall. 

As I wrote about previously, I don’t care if any of Raynor and Moth’s story is made up. I don’t think it is, but even if it is, I don’t care. I don’t think it matters. It’s memoir, not testimony, and there is still plenty of inspiration to be gleaned from any book, fiction or otherwise. I found Landlines to be just as inspiring and beautifully written as The Salt Path and The Wild Silence. I especially loved the references in this book to The Salt Path and how Ray now looks back on that time as one of the best parts of their life, even though while they were in it, it felt like one of the worst. I loved the way she weaves in reflections and memories of her life with Moth. They are all full of love, now tinged with the anticipation of dread and grief. “He reaches his hand out, and for a second I’m taking the last few steps through a freezing Arctic river and he’s pulling me up on to the bank of black ash, but that’s only a memory now” (20). 

A word I learned from this book: Moraine, an accumulation of dirt and rocks and other debris that is carried and deposited by moving glaciers. 

Some of my favorite quotes:

[Upon being given a couple bottles of beer by a stranger at a pub] “Put these in your bag, they’re for the big man later, don’t tell him ‘til tonight. What he’s doing, being out here, it’s a big thing. I might be loud, and drunk, but I know courage when I see it” (101). 

They’re the moments which turn desperate, annoying or desolate experiences into an understanding that the person you share the plastic bag with is the one, that you have the ability to laugh at anything, and that even having lost most of your material possessions you can survive on love, hope and a packet of dried noodles (105). 

“I know you’ve walked a long way.”

I look down at my clothes, muddy, ripped, smelling of dried bog-water. “I know, we do look a bit of a mess.”

“No, you can’t get away with it like that. I know who you are. Your book changed our lives – it changed the way we live our lives. We would never have given ourselves the time to just walk, not before we read your book.”

I look at the couple, heading towards middle age, but glowing from the wind, sun and enthusiasm. “The book might have given you an idea, but it didn’t change your lives.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because books don’t change lives. They can change how you think, but it’s you that changed your life” (227). 

Thousands of feet over thousands of years have trodden many of the same trails we have, tracing their passage on to the landscape, imprinting their memories into the soil. What remains are not just paths, they’re precious landlines that connect us to the earth, to our past and to each other. We’ve followed them for a thousand miles, seen so much, heard so many stories, until now, at the edge of the land, we’ve become something other than just walkers. We’re at the point where time and place and energy combine, where we become the path, the walker and the story. No need for runestones, it’s all held within us; we’re already part of our landlines, part of the song of the land (298-299).

academic · book review · bookish things · Medievalism

From Purity to Corruption: Gardens in Medieval and Gothic Stories

kristen2 Comments

So this initially started as a straightforward book review. I read a book that I’m reviewing for the Historical Novel Society, called Her Wicked Roots, which is a retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” But as I worked on that review, I kept getting side-tracked and decided that I wanted to write a more in-depth article about gardens, both mediaeval and Gothic. Plus, I can’t post my HNS reviews until they publish it first. So instead I decided to remove the HNS book from this and will just post that plain review once they publish it. So now, behold! I will talk at you about gardens.

The concept of a divine garden has carried symbolic weight for thousands of years. From the gods’ garden in ancient Sumeria to the Hesperides’ golden apples, to the comparatively new Garden of Eden, stories of sacred gardens appear in myths all around the world. In medieval Europe, the image of the hortus conclusus (the enclosed garden) was particularly popular. It symbolized purity, chastity, and divine protection. In art, the Virgin Mary is often depicted sitting serenely within walled greenery, surrounded by lilies or roses that symbolize innocence and immaculate conception. The hortus conclusus was supposed to be safety itself. 

Anonymous, Madonna and saints in the Garden of Paradise (around 1410), Public Domain

But by the time Gothic literature popped up centuries later, that enclosed space had changed. The Gothic garden is the hortus conclusus inverted, a space where safety becomes confinement, purity becomes corruption, and nature no longer reflects divine harmony but human ambition, repression, and dread. It is the Upside Down of gardens! Also, humans ruin everything. 

St. Dunstan in the East, London, my own photo taken Sept 26, 2024.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” portrays this transformation. Hawthorne sets his tale in a beautiful but deadly garden in mediaeval Padua, which mirrors the mediaeval hortus conclusus while also making it dark and twisty, and honestly way cooler. Rappaccini filled his garden with extremely poisonous plants and raised his daughter, Beatrice, among them until she herself literally became toxic. Birds avoid her, bugs and butterflies drop dead if they breathe near her. She is an innocent made unclean, a sort of parody of the Marian enclosed garden. Rather than a rose without blemish, Beatrice is a warped flower that was made monstrous by her father’s quest for knowledge at any cost. Rappaccini’s garden is a site of scientific overreach and destruction. It might be hidden away but it’s not protective, and its walls keep in corruption rather than keeping it out. Beatrice is just another victim of patriarchal control and as such, she is easily discarded once she is of no further use to her father or the story.

The Gothic novel frequently returns to this darker version of the garden. There are ruins, tangled vines, shadowy groves, hidden paths, and rot rather than cultivation. Nature turns into something dangerous and unhealthy. Flowers no longer symbolize purity. In Gothic hands, the garden isn’t a symbol of sanctity anymore. It becomes a mirror of humanity’s depravity. This reversal would very likely cause the Romantics to rend their garments and tear their hair. Byron would probably write super emo poems about it, for sure.

The medieval tradition makes the change in how nature is viewed even sharper. Texts such as the Song of Solomon which reads, “My sister, my spouse, is a garden enclosed, a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up” (4.12, Douay-Rheims Bible), were read as allegories of Mary’s virginity. Poetry and iconography saw gardens as pure and contained spaces. But the Gothic imagination with its preoccupation with death and the uncanny, was, like Romanticism, a reaction against Enlightenment rationalism. As a result, the Gothic turned the idea of enclosure inside out. Enclosure meant captivity. Purity blurred into promiscuity. Now everything is all open and leaky and symbolic of corruption, specifically female corruption.

This shift tells us a lot about cultural change. The Gothic garden reflects human fears about unchecked knowledge, the danger of passion, and women’s agency. God forbid a woman have agency in any time period. These changes make sense when we view them as a reflection of the fears Enlightenment rationality and pursuit of science had upon much of society. Hawthorne’s Padua is one piece of this cultural shift, but so are the other crumbling castles, gardens, and estates that are scattered throughout Gothic fiction across the centuries.

Where the hortus conclusus invites reflection about purity, the Gothic garden forces us to reckon with corruption. Both depend on boundaries and are heavy with symbolism, but they serve opposite ends. One offers a vision of sanctity; the other, a mirror of human darkness. And yet they are inextricably linked: without Mary’s walled gardens, the poisoned gardens of the Gothic would lose their danger. The Gothic thrives on inversion, and the Gothic garden is my favorite reversal.

Further Reading:

Reference:
The Holy Bible: Douay-Rheims Version. Translated from the Latin Vulgate. Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1971.

book review

Cultivating Our Garden with Voltaire: Why Candide Still Resonates

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Candide by Voltaire Genre: Classics I read it as a(n): pb Length: 155 pp, including extensive footnotes Her Grace’s rating: 4 stars 

Stick with me here. I promise this has to do with Candide. Most of you probably know that the Enlightenment was a movement focused on reason, individualism, and challenging traditional institutes of authority like religion. One of the greatest Enlightenment authors, philosophers, essayists, and satirists was Voltaire. He had a bit of a feud going with Gottfried Leibnitz. That was the guy who independently discovered calculus at the same time as Sir Isaac Newton. Seriously, fuck both of those guys. Actually, nobody apparently ever did fuck Newton. The going belief is that he died a virgin. That’s what you get for inventing calculus. 

Then, on November 1, 1755, an offshore earthquake caused a tsunami that all but annihilated Lisbon, Portugal. It killed about 30-40,000 of Lisbon’s ~200,000 people outright, and about 10-15,000 more in Morocco and other seaside port towns. All of Lisbon’s churches were destroyed. Incidentally, this earthquake also occurred on All Saint’s Day and the vast majority of those killed were in church for worship. The irony.

This catastrophe posed a big problem for Leibnitz and the Optimists, those who follow the philosophical idea that this is the best of all possible worlds. God wiping out all the churches on his own holiday sure is a hilarious way of showing that this is the best of all possible worlds and that it somehow solves the Problem of Evil while also proving God’s perfect goodness. Leibnitz and his fellow Optimists apparently tied themselves in knots trying to rationalize this in the face of such tragic loss of innocent life and human suffering. I’m not sure why they didn’t have a crisis of Optimism in the face of the vast suffering and death caused by capitalism, slavery, colonialism, war, torture, disease, or any of the other daily horrors that existed and still exist, but compartmental thinking is a special skill most humans have. People are strange. 

Enter Voltaire, that absolute scamp, with An Explanation! Sort of, anyway. He wrote a satirical novella – if you guessed Candide, you were right! – to refute the concept of Optimism since this is very clearly NOT a great world and he was going to point that out to anybody who thought it was. I did mention he was a satirist, yes? Good, that bit is important.

Now, on to the actual story!

Candide is a young scholar in the house of a baron. He gets kicked out of the baron’s estate for carrying on with the baron’s daughter, Cunégonde. Candide sets out to try to make his own fortune. Along the way, he gets forcibly conscripted into the military, gets shipwrecked, survives an earthquake (nods to Lisbon), gets flogged, reunites with Cunégonde, loses her again, goes to South America, finds actual El Dorado and befriends its king, inexplicably decides to leave El Dorado but now he’s filthy rich since he picked up mass quantities of diamonds and gemstones just laying on the ground in that city, loses most of said fortune when the majority of his pack red sheep (AKA, llamas) fall off a cliff, has run-ins with Inquisitors, and a variety of other upsetting and disturbing experiences in his vast travels. Seriously, it’s like the story of Job, only Candide is a whole lot derpier than Job, and naive. I think naivete is really unappealing in an adult, and I am pretty sure Voltaire thought so as well. The only good thing that happens during his varied travels, really, is that Candide collects a terrific assortment of friends and companions. 

All of Candide’s experiences sorely test his devotion to Optimism which, as he explains to his servant Cacambo, is “The mania for insisting that all is well when all is by no means well” (52). It’s the same line of reasoning as “God works in mysterious ways” or “Everything happens for a reason,” and just as unrealistic. Voltaire thoroughly excoriates Optimism as delusion by using his little treatise to highlight religious hypocrisy in the face of massive amounts of suffering, humiliation, war, greed, and human cruelty, because these things happen in this alleged best of all possible worlds. 

Voltaire is imaginative and diabolical in the torments he invents, only not really because everything he heaps onto poor Candide is drawn from the real world. Some of it is honestly funny, such as when he got rich in and then lost his money and jewels because the llamas that were packing it out for him fell off a cliff. Poor llamas. But many other examples were not funny, and not intended to be so. For instance, Candide encounters a slave who is only half-clothed and is missing a leg and hand. Candide stops to talk to him and the man tells him, “When we work in the sugar-mills and get a finger caught in the machinery, they cut off the hand; but if we try to run away, they cut off a leg: I have found myself in both situations. It is the price we pay for the sugar you eat in Europe” (51-52, my emphasis). This is just one scene where Voltaire criticizes the common practice of the time. He was against slavery, and took ample opportunity to speak against it in Candide, despite his sometimes problematic views on race, which we can also see in the novella. 

Similarly, Voltaire challenged colonialism and religious hypocrisy by showing Candide’s experiences with the Jesuit priests. They had control over the indigenous peoples and claimed that they were there to convert and be spiritual leaders to them. That’s pretty hard to do when your whole group is deeply involved in political and economic power struggles that expose the breathtaking hypocrisy of such organizations. Throughout Candide, Voltaire spoke against colonialism, religion, greed, war, and the general human capacity for overwhelming cruelty. I could go on for days about it, and how amazing it is that he could so thoroughly cover so many pressing issues in under 100 pages. But I won’t. I just urge you to read it if you haven’t done so.

Candide reads as easily as a modern book, partly because so many of the topics Voltaire tackles in it are still so disgustingly relevant to today’s society. That is the beauty of satire as well. It takes heavy topics that nobody wants to think about and uses absurdity to mirror those issues. It can also highlight the struggle between cynicism and hope. Personally, I think too many people confuse reality for cynicism. One can be hopeful and work towards good things and still be realistic about the fact that we do, in fact, live in a vast and relentless hellscape. The two are not mutually exclusive. That’s where Candide’s naivety comes in, and why we shouldn’t be naive. Also, let’s be honest. Satire also works as a social commentary because some of it is fucking hilarious and we remember things that are funny, even if they are darkly so. Laugh or cry, folks. If you have to do one or the other, I reckon it’s better to laugh.

I really liked the end, which has been a source of discussion for a long time. In case you have gotten this far and don’t want to be spoiled about the ending, I’ll put it behind a spoiler tag.

Click to reveal the spoiler Candide, Cunégonde, Pangloss, Cacambo, Martin, and a handful of other motley characters retreat from society and go live on a little farm, their Optimism thoroughly beaten into submission.

On occasion, Pangloss tries to wax philosophic with Candide, whose final reply is, “That is well said, … but we must cultivate our garden” (94). That’s a nice little bit of Stoicism, which Voltaire embodied through his own preference for emotional control and rationality, even if he might not have specifically adhered to that philosophy. It also brings to my mind the mediaeval concept of the hortus conclusus, the enclosed garden, a metaphor for one’s inner thoughts and growth, and protection. Traditionally, it was originally symbolic of the Virgin Mary and purity, and I am morally certain that Voltaire did not have that in mind when he wrote his famous final line of the novella. Maybe he meant it in more of the protective way, that Candide and his found family took care of each other and were safe from the dangers of Optimism. That seems like something he’d say. 

Regardless of whether you are the darkest pessimist, the ultimate optimist, or something in the middle, I think Candide is a great read and you should do so if you haven’t already. Like I said, it’s still highly relevant to modern society and is a great little book to get you thinking about what really matters and what is just distraction and chaff. 

Reference:

Voltaire. Candide, or Optimism. Translated and edited by Theo Cuffe, Penguin Classics, 2005. 

book review · books · Star Trek

Maps, Mystery, and Mayhem in Star Trek’s The High Country

kristenLeave a comment

The High Country (Star Trek Strange New Worlds) by John Jackson Miller
Genre: sci-fi
I read it as a(n): hardcover
Length: 371 pp
Her Grace’s rating: 4 stars 

Pike and the gang are headed out to test an experimental new kind of shuttle. It is a miserable failure, but not because the technology is flawed. It’s because they stray into a region of space where absolutely no technology works. They crash on a planet, Skagara, their emergency transporters sending the shuttle crew all across the planet. To the surprise of everyone, not only is there a thriving blended civilization there, but a close friend of Pike’s. 

The people of Skagara come from many places. The humans are descended from a lost ship that harkens back to an episode of Enterprise. The thing they all have in common is that they were brought to Skagara to follow a tech-free way of life. To Pike’s friend, Lila alley, it is paradise, but to Pike and the rest of the Enterprise crew, it’s awful. They set off on a mission to reconnect with the shuttle crew and also solve the mystery of why nothing works so they can escape from the planet. Unfortunately, Lila and many others will do anything to prevent Pike from doing what they think will ruin their way of life. 

Ok, first things first. This Star Trek book has MAPS! I fucking love maps in sci-fi books! I have never seen a map in a Star Trek book before, and not only is there A map, there are five maps! THERE! ARE! FIVE! MAPS! I fully support putting maps in Star Trek books and I wish every one of them that is based even in part on a planet or moon or planetary body of any kind came with a map. 

Next, the story itself was quite fun. It is a pretty typical Trek story – crashes and planets and a Problem That Will Destroy the Universe unless Our Heroes can fix it! The civilization on Skagara is very Old West, so there were plenty of parts of this book that read like an episode of Firefly. I ALSO approve of Trek that reminds me of Firefly! And vice versa! When can we get more Firefly books as well as Star Trek books, please and thank you? 

We got to see a lot of good character development for Uhura in particular, which was nice. Not everything the shuttle crew experienced was good and some of it will leave scars. Not even Utopia is perfect. There was also some good back story for Pike, which I always like. I dig a good back story. 

For me, Number One had the least interesting story line and least amount of character growth. Spock had the most “yeah, right” story line. Fun, but yeah, right, like that would happen. 

I also liked that this book had short chapters. It felt like I was making faster progress than I was, and also made it a lot easier to read in bed at night. I could say that I was going to read 2 chapters and actually make it through 2 whole chapters without my book hitting me in the face. 

Anyway, it was a fun story, nothing too unexpected at all. A solid Star Trek brain candy book.

book review · bookish things · books

Exploring Witchcraft in Lolly Willowes: A Feminist Classic

kristen3 Comments
A woodcut from a 1579 pamphlet showing a witch feeding her familiars. From englishheritage.org, courtesy of The British Library

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner Genre: British classics I read it as a(n): hardback Length: 222 pp  Her Grace’s rating: 4 stars 

This is another classic that I had never read and didn’t know anything about. I picked it to read partly because of that, and I also picked it for my book club when it was my turn because it was the very first book ever chosen by the Book of the Month Club. I thought that was cool. Also, a spinster who decides to move to the countryside and take up witchcraft? Hell, yes, sign me right up!

Laura “Lolly” Willowes is a spinster who has to go live with her brother and his family in London when their father dies. Because god forbid a woman live alone, as Lolly wanted to do. She has an affinity for the countryside and for learning about plants and herbs and animals. But she is not married and has few prospects of becoming so. I think maybe she is on the spectrum, though of course nobody knew about ASD when this book was written. Just the way she is described, though, makes me think that. She was also supremely introverted and didn’t want to go to parties or meet men to marry. Warner writes, “They had seen her at home, where animation brought color into her cheeks and spirit into her bearing. Abroad, and in company, she was not animated. She disliked going out, she seldom attended any but those formal parties at which the attendance of Miss Willowes of Lady Place was an obligatory civility; and she found there little reason for animation” (26). So, no weddings for Lolly.

She was viewed by her family as useful. The useful and doting aunt. The helpful sister. The competent household manager. Nobody ever really saw her for who she was, only for what they wanted her to be. So once her nieces and nephews were grown and no longer needed her, Lolly decided she was going to leave London and move to a town in the countryside called Great Mop, which is an awesome name, like she had wanted to do since her 20s, when she was required to move to London. 

She found a room to rent as a lodger in a nice little town with a nice little lady and her husband. Where Lolly discovered that all the townspeople were witches and served Satan, so she decided to join the fun. But all she ever did with her satan witchy powers was curdle some milk, though. I mean, WHAT? If I had satanic powers (or the Force, or telekinesis, or anything of the sort) I would most definitely not just curdle milk with them. I would be visiting some politicians. “That is not the bill you are voting for. You will vote for this bill. Behave or I shall cast deep rectal itch upon you.” I would also totally make everyone on the road get out of my way. Like Fezzik in The Princess Bride.

Something I noticed throughout the book, or at least until Lolly moved back to the countryside, was that there isn’t a lot of dialogue in it. It was a blur of events and years. Even World War I took like 1 ½ pages, if that. I think Warner did that on purpose. It highlighted how dull and drifting Lolly’s life was, how empty and meaningless she felt. She was just going through the motions. She came alive when she left the city for the country, and it had little to do with giving her soul over to Satan and getting a cat. Though those things helped. Everyone needs a cat, and a dark lord. 

The things Lolly noticed throughout the book were all tied to nature. She bought some fruit and jams from the grocer’s and wondered about the woman who had picked the fruit and made the jams: “A solitary old woman picking fruit in a darkening orchard, rubbing her rough fingertips over the smooth-skinned plums, a lean wiry old woman, standing with upstretched arms among her fruit trees as though she were a tree herself, growing out of the long grass, with arms stretched up like branches” (79). Sounds like some solid life goals to me! 

Since Lolly knows that “nothing is impossible for a single, middle-aged woman with an income of her own” (95), she decides to stop being useful and go do what she wants. She was also 47 when she came to that decision, the same age I am. Yes, girl, rewild yourself! Her coming-of-age is very late, but it comes all the same. She figures out, finally, that she is her own person and that nobody – not her brother or nephews or nieces – could “drive her out, or enslave her spirit any more, nor shake her possession of the place she had chosen. While she lived her solitudes were hers inalienably; she and the kitten, the witch and the familiar, would live on at Great Mop, growing old together, and hearing the owls hoot from the winter trees” (159-160). 

One thing I really loved is that Lolly totally had her own Barbie Speech. It is even longer than the Barbie Speech in the actual Barbie movie, but just as powerful. The Devil did tell her to talk, “not that I may know all your thoughts, but that you may” (216). And she certainly did talk. Her entire speech is still just as relevant today as it was when this book was published 100 years ago. That’s fucking infuriating. If you want to read her whole Lolly Barbie Speech, it is below the cut.

Click to reveal the spoiler

“When I think of witches, I seem to see all over England, all over Europe, women living and growing old, as common as blackberries, and as unregarded. I see them, wives and sisters of respectable men, chapel members, and blacksmiths, and small farmers, and Puritans. In places like Bedfordshire, the sort of country one sees from the train. You know. Well, there they were, there they are, child-rearing, house-keeping, hanging washed dishcloths on currant bushes; and for diversion each other’s silly conversation, and listening to men talking together in the way that men talk and women listen. Quite different to the way women talk, and men listen, if they listen at all. And all the time being thrust further down into dullness when the one thing all women hate is to be thought dull. And on Sunday they put on plain stuff gowns and starched white coverings on their heads and necks – the Puritan ones did – and walked across the fields to chapel, and listened to the sermon. Sin and Grace, and God and the –” (she stopped herself just in time), “and St. Paul. All men’s things, like politics, or mathematics. Nothing for them except subjection and plaiting their hair. And on the way back they listened to more talk. Talk about the sermon, or war, or cock-fighting; and when they got back, there were the potatoes to be cooked for dinner. It sounds very pretty to complain about, but I tell you, that sort of thing settles down on one like a fine dust, and by and by the dust is age, settling down. Settling down! You never die, do you? No doubt that’s far worse, but there is a dreadful kind of dreary immortality about being settled down on by one day after another. And they think how they were young once, and they see new young women, just like what they were, and yet as surprising as if it had never happened before, like trees in spring. But they are like trees towards the end of summer, heavy and dusty, and nobody finds their leaves surprising, or notices them till they fall off. If they could be passive and unnoticed, it wouldn’t matter. But they must be active, and still not noticed. Doing, doing, doing, till mere habit scolds at them like a house wife, and rouses them up – when they might sit in their doorways and think – to be doing still! …

Is it true that you can poke the fire with a stick of dynamite in perfect safety? I used to take my nieces to scientific lectures, and I believe I heard it then. Anyhow, even if it isn’t true of dynamite, it’s true of women. But they know they are dynamite, and long for the concussion that may justify them. Some may get religion, then they’re all right, I expect. But for the others, for so many, what can there be but witchcraft? That strikes them real. Even if other people still find them quite safe and usual, and go on poking with them, they know in their hearts how dangerous, how incalculable, how extraordinary they are. Even if they never do anything with their witchcraft, they know it’s there – ready! Respectable countrywomen keep their grave-clothes in a corner of the chest of drawers, hidden away, and when they want a little comfort they go and look at them, and think that once more, at any rate, they will be worth dressing with care. But the witch keeps her cloak of darkness, her dress embroidered with signs and planets; that’s better worth looking at. And think, Satan, what a compliment you pay her, pursuing her soul, lying in wait for it, following it through all its windings, crafty and patient and secret like a gentleman out killing tigers. Her soul – when no one else would give a look at her body even! And they are all so accustomed, so sure of her! They say: ‘Dear Lolly! What shall we give her for her birthday this year? Perhaps a hot-water bottle. Or what about a nice black lace scarf? Or a new workbox? Her old one is nearly worn out.’ But you say: ‘Come here, my bird! I will give you the dangerous black night to stretch your wings in, and poisonous berries to feed on, and a nest of bones and thorns, perched high up in danger where no one can climb to it.’ That’s why we become witches: to show our scorn of pretending life’s a safe business, to satisfy our passion for adventure. It’s not malice, or wickedness – well, perhaps it is wickedness, for most women love that – but certainly not malice, not wanting to plague cattle and make horrid children spout up pins and – what is it? – ‘blight the genial bed.’ Of course, given the power, one may go in for that sort of thing, either in self-defense, or just out of playfulness. But it’s a poor twopenny house-wifely kind of witchcraft, black magic is, and white magic is no better. One doesn’t become a witch to run around being harmful, or to run around being helpful either, a district visitor on a broomstick. It’s to escape all that – to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to you by others, charitable refuse of their thoughts, so many ounces of stale bread of life a day, the workhouse dietary is scientifically calculated to support life. As for the witches who can only express themselves by pins and bed-blighting, they have been warped into that shape by the dismal lives they’ve led. Think of Miss Carloe! She’s a typical witch, people would say. Really she’s the typical genteel spinster who’s spent herself being useful to people who didn’t want her. If you’d got her younger she’d never be like that” (211-215).

And this quote really sums up not only the book but my entire worldview in a handy lil nutshell: That was one of the advantages of dealing with witches; they do not mind if you are a little odd in your ways, frown if you are late for meals, fret if you are out all night, pry and commiserate when at length you return. Lovely to be with people who prefer their thoughts to yours, lovely to live at your own sweet will, lovely to sleep out all night! (222).

Anyway, I enjoyed this book, and am eager to read more classics that I have never got around to before now. 

Reference:

Warner, Sylvia Townsend. Lolly Willowes. Book of the Month, 2017.

book review

Top Quotes from Hardy’s ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’

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Sheepfold at Early Morning by Sir George Clausen. Image from Gallerix.org.

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy Genre: British classics I read it as a(n): paperback Length: 468 pp Her Grace’s rating: 4 stars 

So this is one of those classics that I not only never read in high school or college, but I didn’t even know what the plot was. Like, at all. All I knew was from the blurb on the book that I have. Since I want to be better about reading more classics, I thought this would be a good one to start with partly because I didn’t know anything about it, and because it’s British and I like British authors for the most part. 

But I don’t feel like writing a proper review of it. It’s been sitting on my desk for weeks since I finished it, waiting for me to review it. Other than saying that I loved it and that there were quite a few parts that I thought were actually hilarious, it was a solid story. I thought it took a bit longer than necessary to introduce all of Bathsheba’s suitors, but it was fine. I loved it overall regardless. 

One thing I like to do is make a note of any books or music that are mentioned in a book. The literature mentioned in this one is:

Anyway, like I said, I don’t feel like writing an actual review. Partly because I’ve had the book sitting on my desk for weeks and I finished reading this quite some time ago. So instead of a traditional review, I’m going to share my favorite lines from the novel. Here they are. Behold.

The instinctive act of human-kind was to stand, and listen, and learn how the trees on the right and the trees on the left wailed or chanted to each other in the regular antiphonies of a cathedral choir; how hedges and other shapes to leeward then caught the notes, lowering it to the tenderest sob; and how the hurrying gust then plunged into the south to be heard no more (14).

To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction – every kind of evidence in the logician’s list – have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation (18). [Extroverts? I think this describes extroverts.]

“My name is Gabriel Oak.”
“And mine isn’t. You seem fond of yours in speaking it so decisively Gabriel Oak.”
“You see, it is the only one I shall ever have, and I must make the most of it.” (27)

There was left to him a dignified calm he had never before known and that indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man is the basis of his sublimity when it does not (43).

[Discussing Joseph Poorgrass’s shyness]
“Yes – very awkward for a man.”
“Ay – and he’s very timid too,” observed Jan Coggan. “Once he had been working late at Yalbury Bottom, and had had a drap of drink, and lost his way as he was coming home-along through Yalbury Wood – didn’t ye, Master Poorgrass?”
“No, no, no – not that story!” expostulated the modest man, forcing a laugh to bury his concern.
“-And so ‘a lost himself quite,” continued Mr Coggan with an impassive face implying that a true narrative, like time and tide, must run its course and would respect no man. “And as he was coming along in the middle of the night, much afeared, and not able to find his way out of the trees no-how, ‘a cried out, ‘Man-a-lost! Man-a-lost!’ A owl in a tree happened to be crying ‘Whoo-whoo-whoo!’ as owls do you know, Shepherd” (Gabriel noddled), “and Joseph, all in a tremble, said ‘Joseph Poorgrass of Weatherbury, sir!’” (62-63). [LOOOOOOL that poor guy! 😂]

The good old word of sin thrown in here and there at such times is a great relief to a merry soul (65).

It was one of the usual slow sunrises of this time of the year, and they sky, pure violet in the zenith, was leaden to the northward, and murky to the east, where, over the snowy down or ewe-lease on Weatherbury Upper Farm, and apparently resting upon the ridge, the only half of the sun yet visible burnt rayless, like a red and flameless fire shining over a white hearthstone. The whole effect resembled a sunset as a childhood resembles age.
In other directions the fields and sky were so much of one colour by the snow that it was difficult in a hasty glance to tell whereabouts the horizon occurred; and in general there was here too that before mentioned preternatural inversion of light and shade which attends the prospect when the garish brightness commonly in the sky is found on the earth and the shades of earth are in the sky. Over the west hung the wasting moon, now dull and greenish-yellow, like tarnished brass (104).

O I love him to very distraction, and misery and agony. … Loving is misery for women always (207).

[Petrichor!] She went out of the house just at the close of a timely thundershower, which had refined the air, and daintily bathed the coat of the land, though all beneath was dry as ever. Freshness was exhaled in an essence from the varied contours of bank and hollow, as if the earth breathed maiden breath, and the pleased birds were hymning to the scene (210).

But man, even to himself, is a palimpsest, having an ostensible writing, and another beneath the lines. It is possible that there was this golden legend under the utilitarian one: “I will help, to my last effort, the woman I have loved so dearly” (254).

[A mutt!] He was a huge heavy and quiet creature, standing darkly against the low horizon, and at least two feet higher than the present position of her eyes. Whether Newfoundland, mastiff, bloodhound, or what not, it was impossible to say. He seemed to be of too strange and mysterious a nature to belong to any variety among those of popular nomenclature. Being thus assignable to no breed he was the ideal embodiment of canine greatness – a generalization from what was common to all (277).

All romances end at marriage (281).

Where however happy circumstance permits its development the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death – that love which many writers cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam (409). 

References:
Clausen, Sir George. A Sheepfold, Early Morning. 1890. Oil on canvas. Gallerix, https://gallerix.org/storeroom/1363/N/287/. 

Hardy, Thomas. Far from the Madding Crowd. Edited by Suzanne B. Falck-Yi and Linda M. Shires, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 2008.

book review · Tudors

The Tragic Tale of Mark Smeaton: A Historical Fiction Review

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The Queen’s Musician by Martha Jean Johnson
Genre: historical fiction
I read it as a(n): digital ARC 
Length: 344 pp 
Her Grace’s rating: 5 stars
2025 Reading Challenge tasks: PS: #31 – music plays a prominent role 

Spanning the years 1529 to 1536, The Queen’s Musician follows the story of Mark Smeaton, one of the musicians who played for Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. The novel follows his meteoric rise from total obscurity to fame. Much of his success, at least in this book, stemmed from being in the right place at the right time as much as his genuine musical talent. However, what goes up must come down and his tragic fall from favor was catastrophic and swift. Alongside Smeaton, the novel also follows Madge Shelton, cousin and courtier to Anne Boleyn, whose own path is shaped by the strict rules and expectations of class as well as by rumors. Through the perspectives of these two historical figures, Johnson takes readers on a deep and thoughtful exploration of the perils of the Tudor court.

Anyone familiar with Tudor history knows the fate of Anne Boleyn and the men accused of being her lovers. Smeaton was the lowest-born among them, an easy target for manipulation. Little is known about his life before court, but Johnson vividly imagines what it might have been, filling his world with music that feels as essential as breathing. The novel highlights how deeply Smeaton connected with his art, not just as a performer but as someone who saw music as his true language. His passion for his subject extends beyond the demands of his life as a royal musician. His admiration for composer John Taverner reflects his appreciation for the era’s greatest musical minds. The gentleness written into his character, especially his love for music, people, and, most touchingly, his horses, makes his fate even more devastating. I felt absolute rage on his behalf. 

Music was central to the Tudor court, not just as entertainment but as a reflection of power and prestige. Henry VIII himself was an accomplished musician and composer, and courtiers were expected to be well-versed in music. While some composers of the time, like Thomas Tallis and John Taverner, left behind enduring legacies, no known compositions of Smeaton’s survive. If he did write his own music, as Johnson imagines in the novel, it has been lost to time. This adds to the novel’s poignancy – Smeaton’s talent, like his life, was ultimately erased by history.

Similarly, little is known about Madge Shelton’s early life. At various points, there were rumors that she was briefly Henry VIII’s mistress, but her real experiences are largely unknown. Johnson brings her to life as a woman navigating court politics, her innocent romance with Smeaton offering a brief moment of sweetness amid the court’s poisonous gossiping and currying favor. Even though their social classes made it impossible for them to consider a future, or even a genuine friendship, it was nice to have that hope for just a moment. Their entwined story felt like a rare and delicate thing in a world where relationships were mostly transactional. 

The characters are vibrant and deeply human. Some secondary characters, such as Smeaton’s friend Paul, are a delight on the page and bring a lot of warmth to the story. Others, such as Cromwell and the head musician at court (I’m totally blanking on his name now), give a masterclass in villainy and are the sort of characters you love to hate. Johnson excels at making readers care about them, drawing us into a world where we already know the outcome, but nonetheless making us hope for a minute before slowly shattering our hearts. We know how this journey ends, but the path to that end is gut-wrenching, beautiful, and filled with moments of quiet grace.

Highly recommended for anyone who loves Tudor history or anyone who, like me, enjoys being completely destroyed by a story.

book review · historical fiction

Hungerstone: A Feminist Retelling of Carmilla

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Hungerstone by Kat Dunn
Genre: Gothic historical
I read it as a(n): Digital ARC 
Length: 336 pp 
Her Grace’s rating: 4.5 stars
2025 Reading Challenge tasks: TND: #1 – a 2025 release 

Lenore Crowther learned at a young age that nobody can save her but herself. She spent her childhood after the death of her parents learning everything a titled lady would need to know, secured herself a wealthy but untitled husband, and carried out a campaign to ingratiate him into the social circles that he craved. 

Ten years later, the shine is worn off the marriage and she has no children to occupy her time like a proper Victorian wife should have. When her husband, Henry, buys a large estate, Nethershaw, Lenore is hopeful it will be just what she needs to break the doldrums. 

However, the decrepit mansion is not at all what she’d hoped for, and the arrival of a mysterious woman who survived a carriage wreck only brings about more dissatisfaction. 

This atmospheric novel drips with the Gothic elements that so many of us love. The mansion isn’t a dark and drafty castle, but it is dilapidated and a sad shadow of its former imposing glory. The place is surrounded by misty heaths, treacherous cliffs, and windswept fields. The landscape and mansion are both characters in themselves, which is always a fun experience for readers, though significantly less so for the characters. 

Lenore tries her hardest to conform to the Victorian ideal of the Angel in the House, but as we read on, we learn that underneath her soft outer layers is a ruthless core of iron. Carmilla, the carriage-crash survivor who is recuperating at Nethershaw, is strange and defies every social convention there is. She awakens previously unknown desires in Lenore that are catalysts for her drastic change throughout the novel. 

This story is so much more than a retelling of Carmilla, as it is marketed, or even about hunger, as indicated in the Author’s Note. It is an examination of demand and dependency, societal expectation, and the injuries that cause invisible damage to us all. It is a commentary of society today as well. There is one quote that perfectly encompasses every issue the novel tackles: “What is a monster but a creature of agency?” Women’s agency, independence, intellect, women who decide for themselves what they want rather than allowing men to do it for them – all can be seen as monstrous depending on who’s doing the interpreting. What makes a monster or a savior is, in this novel, entirely in the eye of the beholder. 

Highly recommended for lovers of Gothic fiction, social commentary, and women who proudly identify as a problem.

book review

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke: A Beautifully Confusing Read

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Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Genre: fantasy
I read it as a(n): hardback
Length: 245 pp 
Her Grace’s rating: 3.5 stars
2025 Reading Challenge tasks: TND: #33 – a title you know nothing about

Piranesi is the story of a man in a strange and hidden world. He is alone but for occasional visits from the man he calls the Other, and the bones of several people.The House Piranesi lives in has endless corridors, statues, fish and sea creatures and birds, as well as an ocean that floods rooms and has tides. When the tides rise and a room floods, Piranesi is careful to move the bones of the people who were there before him so they are safe and they know they aren’t alone. Eventually, in his mission to help the Other find A Great and Secret Knowledge, Piranesi discovers that there may be a great deal more to his world and place in it than he ever could have anticipated. 

It is appropriate that the reading challenge this book fits is the one where you know nothing about the title. I really liked this book. I thought the writing style was beautiful, I loved Piranesi as a character, I thought the setting was fascinating. And I have no fucking idea what this book is actually about. 

Piranesi is the most unreliable of narrators because the House damages one’s memory the more time is spent there. The Other has an agenda of his own and is not helpful. And of course the only other people in the House are the Bone People. So readers are left to wonder where he really is, how he got there, why can’t he get out, where are all the other people, and how long has Piranesi been in the House. He keeps a journal and that is an intrinsic part of who he is. But the entries, with interesting dating systems like “the 4th day of the 8th month in the year the albatross came” are also no help.

I think Clarke wrote this as a story to be experienced rather than understood or explained. It had a very dreamlike quality to it, which I love more the more I think about it. The narrative style bears out the idea that it’s a meditation on dreaming. There is an unnatural calmness to the entire setting. Piranesi is quiet and formal in an archaic way. He’s just so very polite, as my friend said at our book club meeting. Time seems to drift and is fairly meaningless. Overall, I think it works well as a meditation on dreaming because, like dreams themselves, the story works fine on partial knowledge. You know something but don’t know why or how. It just is. Also, things that should scare the living shit out of you, like an endless house with an ocean trapped inside it, are just part of the setting and are not alarming. Partly it’s just again with that calmness. The House and Piranesi just have their own internal logic that works. It doesn’t matter if we understand how it works, only that it works. 

Another thing that I really loved, and which also fits the dreamlike narrative, is the deliberate mix of the sacred and the profane. I’ve always been interested in that (or at least have been interested since I first learned about it in college). Piranesi reveres and even worships the House. It could just be a lower-case house, a place where you live, but he elevates it to something more. The House. And it is suitable because of course it isn’t just any ordinary house. Oceans inside it, remember? Tides and sea creatures and birds. Giant statues. Bones of other people. The bones are another way Piranesi turned the profane into the sacred. He tends to the bones as best he can, keeping them clean and in order and all the bones with its respective body. He talks to them so they don’t feel alone. He has somewhat deified them. 

The whole narrative structure is not just the vehicle or container for the story. It is a major part of the story itself. When it first starts and is entirely dreamlike and drifting, it helps readers know how to feel without telling them. Then when we start to get glimpses of other places and people outside of the House, that’s the dream turning, the point where you would either wake up or the dream shifts into something else. 

There’s also maybe some commentary on academic exploitation. The Other, whose name is Ketterley, would fit right in with a dark academia novel. He’s obsessed with this Great and Secret Knowledge, and is willing to do anything and use anyone to get whatever it is he thinks he’s looking for. That’s a big contrast as well between him and Piranesi. Ketterley will exploit the House and Piranesi, whereas Piranesi cherishes the House and Ketterley. Ketterley and his whole thing is a sharp reminder about what can result when you have intense curiosity (yay!) that is divorced from compassion (oh no!). 

Spoilers below the cut!

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