Paul-Loup Sulitzer’s saga Hannah was published in 1988 – translated by Christine Donougher. This is one of those sprawling novels that cover many years, taking the heroine from childhood to old age; a book to get lost in and enjoy. It’s narrated from an omniscient point-of-view.

It begins in Poland in 1882. Hannah is a seven-year-old Jew. While playing in the fields with her brother Yasha and a friend Taddeuz, a young Polish Catholic, she learns of the attack by Cossacks on her village. Then the pogrom reaches them; Hannah hides but her brother is burned to death and Taddeuz betrays her by running away.

She was a precocious child and her father Reb Nathan taught her to read and talked of the wonders of the universe. ‘There was between the two of them an extraordinary closeness that she would know with no other man’ (p5). ‘He would declare: Nothing in the world is more mysterious than a little girl’ (p5). Her father was killed in the raid.

The drayman Mendel Visoker was twenty-four when he discovered Hannah alone in the fields and took her home. She was traumatised, but did not cry. A phrase Mendel uses is: ‘One of two things is possible…’ which Hannah hijacks several times in the narrative, to comic effect.

The years passed and Hannah continued her learning in several languages, borrowing books from Mendel when he visited. She would always be of diminutive stature and had enchanting grey eyes. When she was fourteen Mendel agreed to take her to a relative of the village rabbi in Warsaw as Hannah was plainly stifled in the little village. She stayed in the Klotz household; the woman Dobbe was the power in the marriage, Pinchos was ‘only a suggestion of a husband’. There are many amusing and colourful character descriptions in the book; this one stands out: ‘The couple were nearly sixty and had never had any children. In fact, they had not spoken to each other for some thirty-odd years, united in one of those silent bonds of well-maintained hatred that only a perfect marriage can achieve’ (p77). ‘She was truly colossal, as tall as Mendel, and the look she shot him would have terrified a lesser man. Her small keen eyes were tucked away beneath heavy eyelids that fell, like the rest of her face, in folds’ (p77). However, Dobbe is no match for the wilful Hannah.

While working in the Klotz shop, Hannah sets about improving things and strikes a deal with Dobbe to earn a percentage of the takings. Eventually, she strikes out on her own, achieving considerable success – until she is attacked and robbed. Mendel learns of this and metes out his own revenge but is then on the run and arrested, sent to Siberia. Hannah is given his boat-ticket to Australia, where she is taken in by the Mackenna family. ‘… this sudden immersion in a real family came as something new and surprising; she had not experienced the same since she was seven… Their average height alone was impressive… She felt like a fox terrier invited to share a meal with an assembly of St Bernards’ (p206).

Hannah was a quick study and soon turned her hand to developing scented cream lotions. She scoured much of Australia for the ingredients and quickly understood commerce: ‘she knew that the less cream she included in each pot the more highly priced – and prized – the contents would be’ (p284). All the time she desired to find and reunite with her childhood love, Taddeuz…

‘She was not going to remain in Australia for twenty years, and she was already getting old, nearly eighteen. Taddeuz would not wait half a century for her, nor would Mendel, in the event he had not already escaped…’ (p292).

By the turn of the century, Hannah is a rich and successful woman, head of a cosmetics empire with establishments in London, Paris and Vienna. And yet she seems unfulfilled unless she can find Taddeuz…

This is a completely engrossing novel with a wonderful and memorable heroine in Hannah and plenty of other fascinating characters, not least Mendel, her protector who possesses an unrequited love for her.

The book ends on a reasonably high note; however, there appears to be a sequel, The Empress, dubbed Hannah Tome 2, but it is hard to come by. I’m quite content to leave Hannah at the end of this book.

Apparently, Sulitzer used a ghost writer for many of his books: Loup Durand. I don’t know if Durand wrote this one.

Sulitzer is a French financier, and was a self-made millionaire by the age of seventeen.

It has been postulated that Hannah’s story is a fictional account of Helena Rubinstein. True, both originally came from Poland, and both took the cosmetics and fashion industries by storm at the start of the twentieth century. Quite a number of authors have used real larger-than-life people as templates for their fiction. Whatever the story behind the book, that should not detract from a well-told and affecting tale.

 

 

 

Connie Monk’s fourth book Hannah’s Wharf was published in 1987; she has published at least 35 novels.

 

It’s the mid-1800s. Thirteen-year-old Hannah Ruddick is left an orphan and is sent to Deremouth in Devon to live with Aunt Louise, a cantankerous old woman who does not seem fond of children and can only get about with the aid of two walking sticks. Unlike Hannah’s father, who barely scraped a living by writing poetry, her widowed aunt was rich, owning a large house, the Hall, and the Netherton Shipping Company.

Hannah is taken to her aunt by the gardener Harold Thurlston, who lives in the gatehouse. Harold has two daughters, Kath and Beatrice, both of whom she befriends, which helps her assuage the inevitable loneliness in unfamiliar surroundings.

Aunt Louise is a fine creation who the reader and of course Hannah come to like and then even love.

Then Hannah meets Daniel Lowden, the godson of Louise, and an attraction is formed, though there is a disparity in their ages and they therefore treat each other simply as friends. Daniel is the master of a ship that puts in to the Netherton quay from time to time for loading and unloading.

In her wanderings, Hannah walks to the quayside and encounters Mr Alan Webster, Aunt Louise’s company manager. Webster has a wayward son, Tommy, who doesn’t show an interest in taking his father’s job. He is a handsome fellow and knows it.

As time passes, Hannah convinces her aunt that she would be more gainfully employed helping Mr Webster in the office. And so it proves; she is a natural, learning the ropes both literal and metaphorical. Author Connie Monk divulges enough about shipping, ship construction and the vagaries of the sea and sailors to satisfy most readers.

This is a well-described period piece with engaging characters and enough plot to keep you turning the pages. Here you will find heartbreak, deceit, and tragedy as well as uplifting moments.

The relationships between Hannah, Louise, Daniel, Alan, Tommy, Kath and Beatrice become complicated so that not much runs smoothly for Hannah, yet she remains constant and determined throughout.

A worthwhile read, with memorable characters.

Brenda McBryde’s novel was published in 1991.

Set in the 1680s in Northumberland, Hannah Robson evokes the period well from the traumatic beginning where twelve-year-old Hannah witnesses the painful and bloody birth of her baby brother, to the satisfying end several years later.

Witnessing that birthing event, Hannah swore she would never marry or have children. She was a hard worker on the family’s bleak hill farm and suffered more than her fair share of lashings from her father’s belt. She is protective of her younger sister Joan who was born with a deformity: ‘It was unfair of God to disable thee when the rest of us are all well-made,’ Hannah says. Apparently, hers was a difficult birth and the father would not spare the fee of a midwife. ‘It is not God I blame,’ says Joan (p71).  Hannah has an older brother, Tom who leaves home to be apprenticed to a local potter. Her mother Mary offers little comfort or kindness, more noticeable when Hannah briefly stays with the potter’s family where the matriarch Emma is warm and sensitive: ‘It was a cold welcome back. No smile. No embrace. Not the smallest hint of affection. That part of Hannah which had flowered in the warmth of Emma’s kindness curled up close like a bud caught by the frost.’ (p69)

Hannah is bright and was a good student and learned to read and write; so she is taken on by the local lord’s wife to work in the laundry. In no time at all she progresses from that drudgery to assist in the kitchen and thence as a lady’s maid to Ursula, the lord’s daughter. The unlikely pair are soon firm friends, and it seems Hannah’s on her way up in society. Then tragedy strikes and Hannah is cast out and decides she will not be a servant again so instead takes on the role of a fisher-woman. Yet Hannah is indomitable and will rise above all setbacks, of which there are plenty: the affairs of the heart press strongly but she resists; and there is danger and attempted rape.

Throughout, resilient Hannah is true to herself. The privations of the period are leavened with poignant moments and the generosity of spirit of many characters, both male and female.

The Geordie vernacular is used on occasion but is almost always comprehensible; there’s also a glossary on p351.

The author wrote a sequel, Hannah’s Daughter, but I have not read that yet. Her writing style is excellent and she has a deft way with describing nature as well as individuals.

Interestingly, the author hailed from Whitley Bay, my home town in Northumberland (now Tyne & Wear). That fact drew me, as did the title character, Hannah, which happens to be the name of our daughter; additionally, the character’s surname belongs to a lifelong friend: Robson is quite common in the region. There is mention of many places familiar to me – Beamish, Druridge Bay, Newcastle, and Tynemouth.

 If you enjoy stories with strong female characters, then this is right for you. Recommended.

Benita Brown (1937-2014) published almost two dozen novels. A Safe Harbour was her thirteenth novel, a saga set in the Northeast of England. 

This well-written saga is set mainly in Cullercoats, in 1895. Eighteen-year-old Kate Lawson has striking Titian hair and is known to be bright and a worthy catch for any local man, but she has chosen Jos, a fisherman. Unfortunately, shortly before their wedding, Jos dies at sea due to a foolish accident. When her drunken father discovers she is pregnant, she is banished from the family home. Kate has to rely on the kindness of her aunt.

Richard Adamson, the handsome owner of a fleet of steam trawlers, is not popular among the fishermen as his new boats are more efficient and claim bigger catches. Despite her family’s enmity towards Adamson, she falls in love with him. Yet she cannot reveal her shame to him or anyone else in the community. The best she can hope for is to move abroad, heartbroken, to be confined with a relative in North America…

Brown was a north-easterner and it shows in her characterisation and depiction of the area and period. Many of the places named are familiar to me, not least Cullercoats, Tynemouth, Whitley, Jesmond, Newcastle, and Monkseaton. There is a smidgen of Geordie jargon, but nothing that is too incomprehensible. A family doctor figures, too, by the name of Phillips; which reminded me of our Whitley Bay family physicians, Doctors Phillips and Vardy, both of whom sported bow-ties!

Adamson is made from the broadcloth of Victorian heroes, and Kate is his equal in her strength of character.

Highly recommended.

This was Alison McLeay’s debut novel, published in 1990. An extensive biography of her can be found in her entry in Fantastic Fiction: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/m/alison-mcleay/, a resource which I recommend. There followed six more books before her demise at the relatively young age of 39 (1949-1988).

McLeay was meticulous about researching her books, whether fiction or non-fiction, and it shows in The Wayward Tide. It’s rather sad that this book has only one review on Amazon. Of course the author died before Amazon took off. In fact the book became an instant best-seller, and was labelled ‘the most stunning fiction debut in years’ by Publishers' Weekly in America, where the first print run reached an astonishing 100,000 copies. The American version was titled Passage Home. The Wayward Tide was published in ten different languages.

McLeay travelled to many parts of the world to carry out research for her books. ‘If you are going to have the feel of the place, you have to go there,’ she once said.

It’s good to have a break from crime and thrillers and sagas such as this certainly immerse you in their author’s world.

The Wayward Tide is a first person narrative by Rachel Dean, beginning with her childhood in Newfoundland in 1827. Her parents are not particularly loving towards her; she tends to escape into the world of nature – until a shipwreck brings Adam Gaunt to their community, where he resides in the Dean household. There’s a big age difference; so Rachel merely has a crush on him. When her mother learns that Adam once had a native Indian wife, her attitude alters markedly and soon Adam Gaunt has left the family home. Rachel’s coming-of-age is amusingly and touchingly revealed, including her infatuation with another lodger, Francis Ellis, who proves duplicitous. Both Gaunt and Ellis keep popping up in her life in the future.

It would be a shame to reveal more, save that Rachel is made of stern stuff and faces hardship in the American wilderness as a young wife, as a saloon singer, and as a mother. Her eventual move to Liverpool, her family’s ancestral home, brings fresh changes and a new husband.

McLeay captures the period, the lifestyle of frontiersmen, the squalor of Independence (Rachel’s wilderness home), the deprivation of the bustling Liverpool, and the burgeoning shipping business of the time.

A very satisfying read.

The cover artwork is excellent; the back cover illustration reminds me of a still photograph of James Stewart, probably from the film How the West Was Won.   

 

 Ken Follett’s family saga, published in 1993, is yet another of his fast-paced satisfying historical novels; the 596 pages simply sped by.

Set in the period 1866 to 1892, the saga revolves around the Pilasters, a banking family. Young Hugh harks from the ‘unfortunate’ side of the family; his father committed suicide on being ruined in a financial collapse not of his making. Yet Hugh is bright and quick to learn, unlike Edward, his cousin, who is incompetent, cowardly and unimaginative. Also affected by the financial disaster is Maisie: her father loses his job, so she and her brother run away to save their parents from worrying about them.

The story begins at private boys’ school when an illicit absence of a small group turns into a drowning. Among those involved are Hugh, Edward and Micky Miranda. To cover up the tragic death and ostensibly protect Edward, Micky lies to Edward’s mother, the powerful attractive Augusta. Over the years Micky inveigles himself into the Pilaster family and once leaving college he is taken into the banking fraternity. Meanwhile, Hugh works his way up from a lowly position in the London bank.

Hugh meets and becomes enraptured by the wilful Maisie, who has grown into an enchanting woman desired by many men in London society. His brief liaison is discovered by Augusta and rather than he be exposed and bring scandal upon the family, she arranges for Hugh to be transferred to the American branch of the bank.

However, as the years pass, Hugh makes a success of his transfer and finally returns to London to acclaim from his seniors. Unfortunately, Micky has meanwhile been plotting to indulge his brigand of a father by arranging dubious loans to his country, Cordova in South America. Exposure of this scheme would ruin the bank and the Miranda family’s chances of a coup against the incumbent dictator. The stakes are raised.

All the characters are well drawn, and either evoke sympathy or anger as they contend with events out of their control. The period is shown in its finery, its sordidness, and the hypocrisy of the times. Some of the sex scenes might distress those of a ‘sensitive disposition’ but I believe they’re true to the period. Above all it’s a story of international finance, the establishment’s complicity in shady dealings, the betrayal of friends, the manipulation of weak men and women, multiple murder, and, above all, love and honour.

There are enough twists and turns in the plot to keep you reading to find out what happens next. I’ve yet to read a bad book by Ken Follett, and this is no exception.