Orphaned by the age of six, Winter is sent to England to be raised by her great-grandfather, the Earl of Ware, but the country of her birth still holds a special place in her heart and she dreams of returning one day to the Gulab Mahal, the place she considers home. Our heroine, Winter de Ballesteros, is born in Lucknow to an English mother and Spanish father. Like The Far Pavilions, it is set in India, but at a slightly earlier time – before and during the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. Shadow of the Moon was originally published in 1957 and revised in 1979. When I saw that Cirtnecce was hosting a readalong of Shadow of the Moon this summer, it seemed the perfect opportunity to try another of Kaye’s historical novels in the hope that I would love it as much as The Far Pavilions! Kaye wrote until recently, when I read two of her Death In… mystery novels. The Far Pavilions has been one of my favourite books since I was a teenager, but for some reason it just never occurred to me to look into what else M.M. Must dig it out again soon….I really have no idea why I haven’t read this book before now. Memories of hot summers devouring, reliving, revelling in the story of Winter and Alex and the implosion of the British East India Company. Periodically I feel a need to revisit this exotic and satisfying tale, and so had to acquire my own copy in case I couldn’t get hold of mum’s in an emergency. And it shows in the detail – Full of brilliantly drawn fictitious and real characters and a plot that engrosses. Kaye herself was intimately acquainted with and deeply enamoured of the sub-continent, having started her life there, returning as a young woman to the land that held such vivid, wonderful memories of pre-independence India, to live and love there during the 1940s. It captivated003ghbcq me, such a swirling, intriguing maelstrom of people and events cascading through generations across a tremendous canvas of England during the regency and the Napoleonic wars and eventually arriving in 1850s India in the tragic years of the mutiny. My mother had read the abridged version in the 1950s, and in the 1980s the unabridged version was released, so I bought it for her as a gift so that I could finish reading it. I first read this novel as a teenager at school, in the middle of studying the Indian Independence movement.
0 kommentar(er)
