Reading and writing my way through a shut-down

 Reading and writing have been important to me during the shut-down. Both allow one to escape thoughts of the pandemic for  a little while.

Writing?  I'm revising a stand-alone sequel to my 2019 novel, Votes, Love and War (Ottawa, Baico, info@baico.ca) The new novel takes place in the late 1920s and early 1930s and centres on Annie, the younger sister of Charlotte, who was the protagonist of V,L and W.  Annie is the quintessential flapper girl, to the extent that one could be a flapper in rural and small town Manitoba. With the 1929 stock market crash and the start of the Great Depression, life becomes more serious.

My favourite genre is historical novels, and I've come upon some great ones during these months at home. Thank goodness the Ottawa Public Library is providing at-the-door pick-ups and drop-offs. 

Here are some novels I recommend to those who like to travel back in time and learn a little about the past while being entertained.

Isabel Allende's A Long Petal of the Sea,  follows some compelling characters who are involved with the anti-fascist side in the Spanish Civil War, and then cross the ocean to settle in Chile, where they are caught up in the 1976 U.S.-supported coup of the military, which overthrew the liberal/leftwing government of Salvador Allende (Isabel's cousin.)

Sofia Segovia, the Mexican author who wrote The Murmur of Bees, has a new novel coming out in the spring.. Tears of Amber, her new novel, which I obtained as a review copy from Compulsive Reader, is inspired by a true story. Segovia traces the lives of two rural children growing up in rural East Prussia during the Nazi period, and their struggle to survive. Their flight from the invading Soviet forces in 1945 is gripping and gruesome.  

The novel focuses on the impact of war upon women and children.  East Prussia is no longer an entity on the map. After the First World War it became part of Poland, but when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 this area, which was disputed for centuries, went under German control again.  After World War II it was divided up among Poland, Lithuania and the U.S.S.R. Segovia's writing is poetic and evocative, and her research extensive.

I love Italian author Elena Ferrante's novels that comprise the Neopolitan Quartet. Her new novel, The Lying Lives of Adults, a coming-of-age story, is set in late 20th century Naples. Unlike the novels in the Quartet, which are about two girls who take two different routes in an effort to escape their impoverished  beginnings, the central character in The Lying Lives comes from a middle-class professional family.  Her interest in tracing her working class roots on one side of her family is educative in many ways.

Another recent novel, Writers and Lovers by American author Lily King, struck a chord with me because the central character is an aspiring writer. Her writing makes her life meaningful in a tough world.  She puts up belittling, nay-saying reactions to her vocation, the sort of crap that gets slung at all writers. All of this is presented in a humorous way. Since reading this novel I have requested several more of her books.