Tag: Titanic

Book Review: ‘The Spirit Engineer’ by A J West

I am so ashamed that this book sat on my NetGalley shelf for so long! I was missing an absolute treat – and I’m not alone in my opinion as this was recently voted as Bert’s Books’ Book of the Year by readers on Twitter.

The story opens in Belfast in 1914, a city still grieving the loss of the Titanic two years before. A scientist, William Crawford Jackson, is working at the Institute and living in the city with his wife, Elizabeth, and three children. Having suffered a personal loss in the Titanic sinking, Elizabeth is reeling with grief and, like many of the city’s residents, open to the new ideas of spiritualism that oppose everything her sceptical husband stands for. When he hears mysterious voices at one of Kathleen Goligher’s seances, he starts on a quest to discover the truth…

Wow, this is such a cleverly-plotted book! As I followed William on his lengthy journey to find answers, I found myself really unsure what to think about spiritualism – and this is an absolute strength of the novel. Are the practitioners genuine conduits between the living and the dead, or are they frauds looking to play on other’s grief? Are those who attend the seances merely naive and silly, or pitiable figures whose emotions are being manipulated? West keeps his cards incredibly close to his chect until the end of the novel. As William vacillated in his own thoughts, I found myself being pulled along and as keen for answers as he was.

The setting of the book is also a triumph – a perfect historical moment for this story and some genuinely creepy settings, from the Goligher’s seance room to the austere halls of the Institute with their sinister statues. There are some truly frightening elements in play here and West uses them well to create a sense of rising horror – the images of the Titanic victims that keep being recalled are horrific and vivid and the sensory description slightly stomach-churning at times.

William Crawford Jackson is a brilliant choice of narrator – he is both based on a real person (as is Kathleen Goligher) and wildly unreliable as he narrates his experiences. His voice is distinctive and strong – he starts out as a kind of mildly comic Edwardian man in the model of Charles Pooter from ‘The Diary of a Nobody’ and then expands into something much more multi-dimensional and complex. Lady Adelia Carter begins as a snobby Lady Bracknell character, yet also takes quite a journey over the course of the novel. The characterisation is pitch-perfect throughout, and there is the added bonus of cameos by Arthur Conan Doyle (himself an advocate of spiritualism) and Harry Houdini (for the history nerds like me!)

I can also imagine this is a gorgeous book to have a physical copy of as there are some beautiful illustrations that start each of the novel’s main sections.

There is so much to love about this novel and I recommend it highly to all lovers of cleverly-plotted and immersive historical fiction. For me, this is up there with the best writing by authors like Sarah Waters, Laura Purcell and Andrew Taylor. I really wish I had read this sooner and it is one that will stay with me for some time to come. The end – when it comes – is surprising and eye-opening and entirely unforeseen. I defy anyone to predict it – although you will have fun trying.

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Header photo by CHIRAG K on Unsplash

‘Maiden Voyages’ by Sian Evans

I loved this book so much. I wasn’t planning on writing a review for it right away, but I couldn’t wait to shout about it!

This book is about ‘Women and the Golden Age of Transatlantic Travel’ (as the subtitle says) – this covers a fairly short span of actual time in which a huge amount happened. It opens with Violet Jessop (more about her later) joining her first ship as a stewardess in 1908 and ends with transatlantic ocean crossings being overtaken by air travel in the late 1950s.

Only fifty years, but a period encompassing the end of the Edwardian era, World War I, the interwar years, World War II and its aftermath. And – wow – how the world changed in that time!

I’ll admit, I was drawn to this book as I was hoping for stories of glitz and glamour – having seen the excellent ‘Ocean Liners’ exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum a few years ago, I wanted to read more about the people who travelled in such style and opulence. It absolutely covers that. However, this book is also so much more.

What I loved is that it is the story of women of all ages, classes and backgrounds who chose – for various reasons – to travel by sea. Some, like Violet Jessop, worked aboard the ocean liners in order to support families back home. Others travelled on the ships to new lives in America, escaping the Old World and (in some cases) persecution before World War II or joining their GI husbands after the war. Luckier women, the wealthy and famous, relied on the ‘Atlantic Ferry’ for leisure or work purposes. A common theme though was the importance of the transatlantic crossing in the women’s lives.

It would be hard to pick favourite bits from the huge range of material that Evans has squeezed into this book – I found myself being carried along with the narrative as Evans moved seamlessly between people’s lives, great ships, historical context and some great stories.

I did love the story of the ‘Unsinkable’ Violet Jessop who managed to survive the sinking of Titanic and her sister ship, Britannic. She was also on board a third ship that was in a massive collision. Her fortitude and courage in the way she kept returning to sea was amazing, especially when she was made redundant by she shipping company at the start of World War I but retrained as a nurse to join a hospital ship in the Aegean Sea. An amazing woman – but one that I would have worried about sharing a ship with given the fates of her previous ones!

Including Violet, this book is packed with amazing women who survived all kinds of hardships and who led fascinating lives. Although the conditions were often tough on the transatlantic route – for reasons of inhospitable weather or the treacherous conditions of war – these women continued to travel, work and live on board the ships.

In short, I came to this book for the glamour of the ocean liner, but stayed for the immersive accounts of real women whose lives were connected by the need to cross the Atlantic. Indeed, the stories of bravery, determination and grit are staying with me now the book is finished.

I’d wholeheartedly recommend the hardback version of this book (before the paperback is due for publication in June) – it has two sections of photographs that allow you to put faces to some of the women in the book, plus see some shipboard scenes. This is a glorious book and worth every penny I paid!

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