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Seeking historical fiction recommendation

R

roman

pfm Member
My partner's birthday is coming up and I thought I'd get her some historical fiction.

She devours books and has read all of Hilary Mantel and Philippa Gregory as well as some others, all of which she's enjoyed.

She's fairly discerning but has the unusual tendency of finishing almost any book, regardless of how good or bad it is as she is curious about how it ends. That said I gave her a Patrick O'Brien to read and she found it dull.

One author I was considering is Bernard Cornwell. He seems to be quite highly thought of but I'm open to all suggestions.
 
Just checked with Mrs BM. She says Bernard Cornwell does ripping good yarns. Also, If she likes Phillipa Gregory and Hillary Mantel she`ll probably like Elizabeth Chadwick and Helen Dunmore.
 
Agree with above..... Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell Trilogy are stupendous works of literature and there is not much else can match them. As is A Place of Greater Safety, her novel based around the French Revolution.

Bernard Cornwell is pulp fiction by comparison tbh. Don't go anywhere near Conn Iggledunn (spelling?) - absolute junk.

Has she read Tolstoy's War & Peace? If she devours books it might slow her down a bit!

Another good Tudor one is The Man on a Donkey - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/567462.The_Man_on_a_Donkey

Gore Vidal's series of novels on American politics from the revolution onwards are very good but the writing can be very dry and dense - Burr was my favourite of them - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8722.Burr?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=MJpWVimrzW&rank=2
 
roman said:
That said I gave her a Patrick O'Brien to read and she found it dull.
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Patrick O'Brien dull! o_O I can only think that all the naval minutiae didn't suit.


Bernard Cornwell's stuff is an easy read, but nowhere near Hilary Mantel standard. Going down the historical pulpy route though, I really enjoyed Ken Follet's "Pillars of The Earth" trilogy.
 
The Flashman books by George MacDonald Fraser are a lot of fun and have the benefit of a lot of footnotes explaining the true history on which the events are based.
Flashman is the coward and bully from Tom Brown's Schooldays. He doesn't get any braver or less of a bully as he ages, but is involved in many major historical events, from the Charge of the Light Brigade, through the retreat from Afghanistan (no, not that one) to the Battle of the Little Big Horn and beyond.
 
I now avoid things described as a 'trilogy'. It seems to be a synonym for florid verbal diarrhoea and 4-inch thick books. It's interesting though that the word 'trilogy' seems to drive authors to write their sagas in threes. Not always mind, because you even have up to six books in some series, still perplexingly called a 'trilogy'.

Trilogies in the ancient world (i.e. 'told thrice') were always published simultaneously. A lot like three perspectives of a situation; three dimensional, like sculpture. This is not really like modern 'trilogies' which are sometimes a just a long novel split up. Or three (or more) novels vaguely connected. why aren't they called a triptych? Or a tristoria?

Sorry for the derailment.. I wish I had some books to suggest.
 
C. J. Sansom is very good at creating a sense that his characters really are living in the time-period. He has written two novels set in the twentieth century (Winter In Madrid and Dominion), but he’s best-known for the Shardlake crime series set in Tudor England (Dissolution is the first of these).

Robert Harris wrote a series of three novels based on the life of Cicero that are also surprisingly good (Imperium, Lustrum, Dictator).

A second recommendation for Ken Follet’s Kingsbridge novels (Pillars of the Earth, World Without End, Column of Fire).
 
Mantel gave me a taste for historical fiction too but haven't really been able to find anything that does the same job.

I liked Daniel Kehlmann's Tyll, also Measuring the World.

Currently reading The Luminaries (New Zealand gold rush), but I dunno...It's a bit hammy and pedestrian, and 800 pages. There's a TV series though if the prose gets to her and she just wants to see what happens - might take that route myself.

Oh, Colson Whitehead, Underground Railroad. Do any of these count? Not sure.
 
Robert Graves's "I, Claudius" is a wonderful classic. Some of the old James Michener novels were also very good.

For something more pulpy, but still a lot of fun, there's James Clavell's novels about the far east.
 
Seanm said:
Mantel gave me a taste for historical fiction too but haven't really been able to find anything that does the same job.

I liked Daniel Kehlmann's Tyll, also Measuring the World.

Currently reading The Luminaries (New Zealand gold rush), but I dunno...It's a bit hammy and pedestrian, and 800 pages. There's a TV series though if the prose gets to her and she just wants to see what happens - might take that route myself.

Oh, Colson Whitehead, Underground Railroad. Do any of these count? Not sure.
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Try Follet's stuff.
 
KrisW said:
C. J. Sansom is very good at creating a sense that his characters really are living in the time-period. He has written two novels set in the twentieth century (Winter In Madrid and Dominion), but he’s best-known for the Shardlake crime series set in Tudor England (Dissolution is the first of these).
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I support this suggestion - try the series starting with Dissolution.

Hook said:
Robert Graves's "I, Claudius" is a wonderful classic.

For something more pulpy, but still a lot of fun, there's James Clavell's novels about the far east.
Click to expand...
two more good suggestions; and Clavell's Shogun remains a great read.
 
roman said:
My partner's birthday is coming up and I thought I'd get her some historical fiction.

She devours books and has read all of Hilary Mantel and Philippa Gregory as well as some others, all of which she's enjoyed.

She's fairly discerning but has the unusual tendency of finishing almost any book, regardless of how good or bad it is as she is curious about how it ends. That said I gave her a Patrick O'Brien to read and she found it dull.

One author I was considering is Bernard Cornwell. He seems to be quite highly thought of but I'm open to all suggestions.
Click to expand...


I'll tell you the historical fiction I've enjoyed the most -- Marguerite Yourcenaar's The Abyss. It's set in the 16th century Europe, at a time when medicine and science were just starting to separate themselves from superstition, tradition and alchemy. I read it in the original French but I expect the translation is good.

She wrote another book called Memoirs of Hadrian, which is about the Roman emperor's relationships with his wife and various lovers, one of whom kills himself and this provokes thoughts of suicide in Hadrian. Very good too, though I enjoyed The Abyss more.
 
narabdela said:
Patrick O'Brien dull! o_O I can only think that all the naval minutiae didn't suit.


Bernard Cornwell's stuff is an easy read, but nowhere near Hilary Mantel standard. Going down the historical pulpy route though, I really enjoyed Ken Follet's "Pillars of The Earth" trilogy.
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It was indeed the minutiae that did for her. She read me a passage which had me in stitches by the time she reached the end, so full was it off jargon and banality ( taken out of context of course). It reminded me of Harrison ford complaining of his part on star wars and saying that you can write this shit but try saying it!
 
I'm a bit of a fan of the Brother Cadfael series. As someone once pointed out as the series goes on they become less about whodunnit and more about life in medieval England during The Anarchy.
 
A few that might work,
Patrick Suskind "Perfume, The Story of a Murderer" a brilliantly written book that gives you the full squalor of France at that time.

Phillip Kerr has written quite a few detective novels(Bernie Gunther) written about Germany after the second world war, it is extensively researched and again gives a feel of living in that time.

James Ellroy "The Cold Six Thousand" is a tale of JFK's assassination along with CIA and Mafia involvement in Vietnam and Vegas. A mix of real and imagined (maybe) events
 
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