It’s no secret that one of my favourite books is Robert
Stephen Parry’s The Arrow Chest. It was the first of his books I read and
although I really enjoyed Virgin and the
Crab and Wildish, the nineteenth
century setting of The Arrow Chest won
me over for obvious reasons. Imagine
then how thrilled I was to learn that Mr Parry’s new novel was set in the Belle
Époque…
The Hours Before opens
with Deborah Peters returning to her hotel to find her usual maid has been
replaced by a mysterious young woman who seems to know an uncanny amount about
her. Deborah has an assignation planned
and what begins as an inconvenience turns into revelations as her history is
laid out before her, showing how she arrived at this fateful, terrible night.
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La Robe Chinoise
(1913) Hilda Rix Nicholas
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When tragedy strikes Deborah, ‘the Woman of Cards’, her
grief is compounded by the attack on her reputation for seeing the future. Her ex-husband, newspaper magnet Hugh Peters
is unrelenting in his persecution of his ex-wife, hell-bent on destroying her. Into
her life comes magician Herman ‘Manny’ Grace, an unexpected ally in her quest
to discover the truth.
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The Lady in Blue: Mr
and Mrs J S Macdonald (1902) Hugh Ramsey
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Set in pre-First World War Europe, the characters
travel around the glamorous and dangerous cities and countryside, searching for
answers. In the background, there are
whispers and rumours of war. In some ways Deborah personifies the decadence of
Europe, suddenly besieged by the modern, the terrible, the tragic. Her struggle to overcome the forces of
violence and corruption is what keeps you reading, keeps you desperate to find
out what will happen.
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The Mackerel Shawl
(1910) Algernon Talmage
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There is a theme of personal growth and redemption through
hardship. Both Manny and Deborah move
beyond their ‘trivial’ facades to show their true character as they search
Europe for the truth of what happened to Deborah’s daughter. Chaos engulfs all of the characters and they
show themselves truly in the face of it. The scenes at the isolated fortress of
the spiritual leader are intense and shocking, in contrast to the more mundane,
petty evil of other characters.
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Judith and the Head of
Holofernes (1901) Gustav Klimt
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As always, the writing is excellent. The scope of the action is almost cinematic,
with such diverse and stunning locations.
Each place is described with such skill that you feel you could step into the
scene, for example the way we first experience the newspaper offices, sweeping
from the basement to the top, taking in all levels of people in between. This cleverly ties to themes of rising and
falling, being pulled down in society or raised up and how close these
positions are. The characters rise and
fall, some to rise again, just as we climb up the building, up the monument of
‘truth’ that is the newspaper.
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Bank Holiday
William Strang
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For me, The Hours
Before draws on the very best qualities of the novels that preceded
it. Deborah Peters is a strong female
character, equal to Daphne in The Arrow
Chest, and her trials and preoccupations are both familiar and
compelling. There is plenty of action
and a fair smattering of terror together with the romance and beauty
ever-present in Mr Parry’s work. It is with great pleasure that I wholeheartedly recommend this book to you.
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The Moon (1902)
Alphonse Mucha
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Thank you, Kirsty! :-) So glad you enjoyed it. Some lovely paintings here, too, as always.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this review - and thank you for sharing as this book has been added to my reading list for the near future. It sounds most interesting. Enjoyed your choice of art too.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome, and I enjoyed finding the art almost as much as I enjoyed reading the novel!
ReplyDelete