Skip to main content

Review: The Falcons of Montabard, by Elizabeth Chadwick


Pages: 473

Original date of publication: 2003

My edition: 2008 (Sphere)

Why I decided to read: I needed a good comfort read

How I acquired my copy: Amazon UK, May 2009

After reading the harrowing Wish Her Safe at Home, I needed a book that was going to be comfort reading, and so I turned to a sure thing: Elizabeth Chadwick’s The Falcons of Montabard, a book that’s been sitting on my bookshelves for ages but was waiting for the right time to be read.

The story opens on November 25, 1120, the eve of the sinking of the White Ship. Sabin Fitzsimon is a young knight who, having seduced one of the mistresses of the king and murdered a man, is put into the service of Edmund Strongfist. Strongfist takes his entourage to the Holy Land, taking with him his daughter, Annais. Sabin is strongly sttracted to Annais, but he has promised his employer, and himself, that he’ll stay away from her. True to form, however, they keep being thrown together, and the result is almost predictable. But getting to that end result is the fun of the novel, for there are many twists and turns before Sabin and Annais can be united.

Whenever I read one of Elizabeth Chadwick’s novels, I always wonder, “how does she do that?” over and over again. The period details of her books are always exquisite, and she truly gets the reader to know her characters intimately. There is wonderful character development in this novel, too. I never get the sense that these are modern people dressed in 12th century clothing, and I always wonder how Elizabeth Chadwick gets to know her period so well—maybe it’s an innate thing by this point? I wish that all authors of historical fiction could write like this!

Labels:

Comments

Marg said…
It must be nearly time for me to read another Chadwick. It's been a while for me, but I know that when I do get to it, I will love it in just the same way you have expressed here.
May 11, 2011 at 8:19 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Another giveaway

This time, the publicist at WW Norton sent me two copies of The Glass of Time , by Michael Cox--so I'm giving away the second copy. Cox is the author of The Meaning of Night, and this book is the follow-up to that. Leave a comment here to enter to win it! The deadline is next Sunday, 10/5/08.
194 comments
Read more

A giveaway winner, and another giveaway

The winner of the Girl in a Blue Dress contest is... Anna, of Diary of An Eccentric ! My new contest is for a copy of The Shape of Mercy , by Susan Meissner. According to Publisher's Weekly : Meissner's newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost loves or fallen-away family members to tell them that all is forgiven and that life is too short for holding grudges. Achingly romantic, the novel features the legacy of Mercy Hayworth—a young woman convicted during the Salem witch trials—whose words reach out from the past to forever transform the lives of two present-day women. These book lovers—Abigail Boyles, elderly, bitter and frail, and Lauren Lars Durough, wealthy, earnest and young—become unlikely friends, drawn together over the untimely death of Mercy, whose precious diary is all that remains of her too short life. And what a diary! Mercy's words not only beguile but help Abigail and Lars...
115 comments
Read more

Review: The Piano Teacher, by Janice Y.K. Lee

The Piano Teacher is a complicated novel. On the surface, it’s about a love affair between two British ex-patriots in Hong Kong in 1952-3. Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong with her husband Martin at a time when the world is still recovering from WWII; Claire takes up work as a piano teacher for the daughter of a wealthy Chinese family, where she meets Will Truesdale, the Chens’ enigmatic chauffeur. The book jumps back in time between the 1950s and the beginning of WWII, when Will is interned in Stanley, a Hong Kong camp for enemies of Japan. On “the outside” is Tudy Liang, Will’s beautiful Eurasian lover. There’s no doubt that Lee’s writing is beautiful. But there’s something lacking in this short, terse novel that I can’t quite put my finger on. First, I think it’s the tenses she uses when taking about each story: that which is set in the 1950s is in the past tense, while the war scenes are talked about in the present tense (confusing, no?) The interpersonal relationships of the m...
12 comments
Read more