Sophie Lewis
Paperbacks
THE original bequest, and the seed of this turbulent family history, is a tranche of uncultivated land marked out in 1850s Australia, management of which eventually falls to the widowed Emmeline Leslie, who keeps it up even as she embarks on a life-changing journey across Europe. Another chance to make a family and a life for herself appears in the figure of Danish sea-captain Frederik Ziege, but Emmeline's happiness will be short-lived, as he seems fated to die, like her first husband, of consumption. This is a novel peopled by voyagers and survivors. Disease of all sorts is a constant adversary and home is never more than a temporary stopping place. De Falbe makes a charming and convincing story out of this doomed love affair, neatly weaving extracts from letters and family papers into a tissue of fictional detail.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'For all his reputation as the great theorist of democracy, Tocqueville was never an enthusiast for universal suffrage or the kind of electoral politics that went with it.'
Alan Ryan asks what Alexis de Tocqueville's ideas can teach us today.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/oui-the-people
'Within two days of arriving at the retreat, he is called away to attend the funeral of a friend killed in the Charlie Hebdo attacks ... Carrère is soon divorced and suicidal, interned in a psychiatric institution where he must slowly rebuild his life.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/lunge-twist-pose
'Foreign-policy pundits, then as now, tended to lack subtlety, even if they could be highly articulate about a nation they did not like very much.'
Read Lucy Wooding's review of Clare Jackson's 'Devil-Land', which has won the @WolfsonHistory prize.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-view-from-across-the-channel