The Montmaray Journals

The Montmaray Journals:

A Brief History of Montmaray (Book I)

The FitzOsbornes in Exile (Book II)

The FitzOsbornes at War (Book III)

When I was researching war novels targeted at the Young Adult audience, I came across Australian author Michelle Cooper's The Montmaray Journals -- and I suspected, quite correctly, that they would be just the sort of thing I like.  A tumultuous, dramatic time period, an eccentric family, strong female characters, action, adventure and political intrigue:  yes, please.

World War II provides an endlessly fascinating canvas for fiction, and this trilogy of novels set during the period of 1936-1944 covers far more ground than most.  This is not just a portrait; it's a vast landscape, but always with Sophia (the narrator) and her family in the foreground. If your historical knowledge is a bit sketchy, or if you were taught that World War II began with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, you will be particularly (and delightfully) enlightened.  

The first novel begins on a tiny island called Montmaray in the Bay of Biscay.  The Montmaravian Royal Family has been reduced to King John (who has never recovered from losing his entire regiment to World War I), his daughter Veronica (passionate about history and politics) and Toby, Sophia and Henry (Henrietta) -- their orphaned cousins.  Rebecca, the housekeeper, and her son Simon are also central to the plot.  The author has an ingenious way of involving this miniature and seemingly irrelevant kingdom in the churning political sea of the mid 1930s.  The Spanish Civil War, Nazi Germany's Ahnenerbe research and the League of Nations are all plot-points involving Mortmaray and its young royal family -- whilst also giving rich historical context to the events leading up to World War II.   The best bit is that Cooper is never guilty of info-dumping.  Instead, she sprinkles and folds her historical facts into a cracking good story.

There has been a strong trend for blending "historical fact and imaginative fiction" (as Cooper describes it in her Author's Note), and I am all for it.  Elizabeth Wein's brilliant Code Name Verity and Rose Under Fire used the same strategy and they are amongst my favourite war novels of all time.  Like The Montmaray Journals, they are epistolary novels:  told through a series of diary entries, they create both an intimate, confiding tone and a particularly suspenseful way of shaping a story.  The other obvious similarity between these novels is the way that young women are at the forefront of the action -- not just because they narrate the story, but because they are actively engaged in their own "war" stories.  When I was an adolescent, we only had Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl -- also a wonderful book, but undeniably a more passive point of view.

Another delight of this trilogy is the way that the author references literature and poetry, often symbolically. Sophia, the narrator the story, is a passionate reader and story-teller.  Throughout the trilogy, Sophia has a book to hand.  At the beginning, when she is far more sheltered and romantically inclined, she is reading Pride and Prejudice.  As Great Britain edges into the war, she is reading Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas.  Unless you are completely unfamiliar with Dodie Smith's classic novel, it would be impossible to miss the homage to I Capture the Castle.  The FitzOsbornes in Exile begins with a deliberate echo of that famous opening line:  "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink."  As the second book begins, Sophia and her family have been rescued from their crumbling castle and ensconced in their Aunt Charlotte's luxurious home in England.  "I write this sitting at an exquisite little Louis the Fifteenth secretaire in the White Drawing Room, using a gold fountain pen borrowed from the King of Montmaray and a bottle of ink provided by one of the footmen."   At the beginning of the trilogy, the parallels between Sophia and Cassandra in I Capture the Castle are so obvious that I was afraid that the novel would just be a pastiche of a beloved favourite.   Certainly the two novels share coming-of-age and first love themes, but A Brief History of Montmaray goes into quite unexpected territory -- and instead of feeling isolated in its 1930s setting, it is very much part of larger world-view.  Unlike heroines of old, Veronica and Sophia have far more to think about than the marriage plot.

In England, in November, you can see the distinctive red poppies everywhere.  We all have our own way of honouring Remembrance Day, but my recommendation is to immerse yourself in a good war novel -- or three of them, as is the case with The Montmaray Journals.

Click icon for more
book review blogs
@Barrie Summy

Cuckoo Song

After a mostly glorious and golden beginning to October, today was the first day when I really felt the in-betweenness of the seasons.  The wind, brisk and biting, definitely had the chill of winter.  I have been reading lots of ghost stories lately -- not really my favourite genre, but I like them when the "ghost" is more of a subtle, symbolic thing.

Halloween and Guy Fawkes Day and Remembrance Day have a tendency to slide together in England, as they all take place within two weeks and just at that time of the year when Daylight Savings conspires with the natural dying of the day and plunges us all into darkness.  If you really want to go with that mood, I don't think you can do much better than Frances Hardinge's Cuckoo Song.

There is a ghost in the house at The Beeches, Luther Square, Ellchester.  The father of the house may be Mr. Piers Crescent, civil engineer and designer of the railway bridges and station which will save Ellchester, but he hasn't been able to save Sebastian -- his oldest child, and only son, who died in the final months of the Great War.  Although Mr. Crescent has done his best to stop time, and wrap his daughters Triss and Pen in cotton-wool, he has made something of a bad bargain (literally) with a sinister Architect.  The entire family has been arrested in a prolonged state of grieving, and the inability of the parents to let go of their dead son has lead, directly, to the events which take place in this novel.

The War had ended, but it was not gone.  Somehow it was still everywhere.  Sebastian was the same. He had ended but he was not gone.

Like all the best children's books, this book operates on two levels -- thus making it appropriate for ALL ages. On the more surface level, this book is about a changeling (a "cuckoo") who is substituted for a real girl. Only gradually does "Triss" realise that she is actually a not-Triss -- and just a "monster" or made-up thing with an expiration date.    Unlike the real Triss, not-Triss (who later becomes Trista) is "allowed" to be something other than the "sweet, quiet, well-behaved girl" that her parents expect and want.  She has agency; she does things and makes things happen.  She eats dolls instead of playing with them.   Somewhat like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, not-Triss ventures into an alternate world -- the world of the Besiders -- and uses her wits to bargain for something which will change the outcome of not just her brief existence, but lots of other realities, too.

But there is a more complex level to this book; truly,  I think that all of the best fantasy novels have that ability to throw some light on what we like to call the "real" world.  That aspect of the book deals with the aftermath of World War I and how it impacts not just one grieving family but an entire society. The novel manages to take in the changing role of women -- and there is fascinating commentary here about the "containment" of the feminine -- but also how the war changed the "certainties" (religious faith and class structure) of the country.

One of the subversive female characters is Violet Parish, the former fiancée of Sebastian.  She has bobbed hair, rackety friends, a variety of short-term jobs and she drives a motorcycle; she drinks and smokes and is generally "fast".  She also takes in Pen and Triss when no one else will.

Once she had been 'Violet'.  After Sebastian's departure she had been 'poor Violet'.  And then somehow, in the years since his death, her name had blackened and speckled in Triss's family home, like a fruit left to rot, until it was thrown out and no longer allowed in the house.

A specific pleasure of this book is the quality of the writing; Hardinge has a wonderfully expressive way with words.  I cannot think of another writer who uses figurative language with such fresh precision.  I felt, often, the urge to copy sentences and paragraphs down -- to capture the words for myself -- just because they pleased me so much.   It wasn't a book that I would have sought out if left to follow my usual tastes, but it was a suspenseful, thoughtful and pleasurable reading experience.

Click icon for more
book review blogs
@Barrie Summy