Tag: Historical

Sue Reid – Mill Girl | Review

November 29, 2020
Authors P-T (By Surname)Fiction

Title: Mill Girl

Author: Sue Reid

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 224

Rating: 3.5/5

I read this book because it came with a whole bunch of others that I bought as a job lot on eBay. It stood out because it’s part of a Scholastic line that focusses on historical fiction, and it’s also pretty cool because it takes the form of a diary.

We’ve got a young female protagonist living in Victorian Manchester and who works in a Mill, and so you know going in that she’s going to have a pretty tough life. At the same time, the book’s clearly aimed at younger readers and so there’s nothing here that’s so intense that it would stop a parent from reading it to their kids.

But to be honest, the point here is more to educate kids about what it was like back in the day, and I think it does a pretty good job of that. Even though it’s written the way it is, in an episodic format based on diary entries, the author actually manages to do an impressive job of worldbuilding, and so it’s easy to feel as though you can smell the city.

Plus I’m originally from the Midlands, which makes me an honourary northerner. I was always going to like it. A nice find!

Learn more about Mill Girl.

Susan Hill – The Small Hand | Review

February 9, 2020
Authors F-J (By Surname)Fiction

Title: The Small Hand

Author: Susan Hill

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 208

Rating: 3.75/5

Susan Hill has this certain style about her that truly is inimitable, although that hasn’t stopped me giving it a go for a recent short story that I wrote. She just spins a great ghost yarn, especially when she’s dabbling in historical fiction cum horror.

I also appreciated the fact that the protagonist of this book was a rare book dealer on the hunt for a first edition Shakespeare Folio for a client. The hunt took him to France, which made me kind of sad because reasons, but at least it gave me an excuse to practice my French some more.

I’ve read quite a few of Hill’s ghost stories by this point, and this one is up there with the best. At the same time, there’s kind of not too much to mark any of the different books out, and I’ll probably not remember too much about this six months along the line. But that’s good, because then I could re-read it, and I think it would hold up well. I imagine it would make for a cracking audio book, too. So yeah, I’d definitely recommend it.

Learn more about The Small Hand.