Book Review: Becoming Mrs Mulberry by Jackie French

 Becoming Mrs Mulberry

by

Jackie French

Publisher: Harlequin Australia

 

Publication date: 8th March 2023

 

Genre: Historical Fiction

 

Pages: 512

 

RRP: $32.99AU (Paperback)

 

Source: Courtesy of the publisher

 

My review of Becoming Mrs Mulberry

Becoming Mrs Mulberry, set in the picturesque Blue Mountains region of NSW post WWI, is a story of compassion and the healing power of nature.

Jackie French, through Agnes, highlights the fight women endured to become doctors. Agnes had to study and qualify in Edinburgh before she could return to Australia and join her father in general practice.

At the plea of her best friend Hortense (Puddin' to her friends), Agnes forgoes her career and marries Puddin's shell shocked brother to save the family fortune from their greedy uncle. Douglas was to be declared insane and committed to an asylum.

Agnes and Douglas move to his property in the secluded Blue Mountains region of Australia. The quiet surroundings and the natural environment, along with Agnes' care, see Douglas slowly heal. Agnes uses her new found wealth to supply a calm and accepting escape for the men and women disfigured by war.

I was totally shocked by the way returned soldiers, greatly disfigured while fighting for their country, were locked away and treated badly, called freaks and misfits, completely disregarding their physical and mental suffering.

Becoming Mrs Mulberry is both heart-wrenching and up-lifting. Agnes' humility and compassion brought tears to my eyes, more than once.

Agnes was taught to look for people who were suffering and try to help them. Money brings power - it's how you use that power that counts.

It's not all heart-wrenching scenes; there are plenty of humorous moments with characters like Private Private, the naturist who discarded society and his clothes, also the appearance of a wombat who has a knicker fetish.

Becoming Mrs Mulberry also has an interweaving story about a young child who Agnes saves from a circus freak exhibition. The child is grossly deformed however Agnes feels she can cure her. The circus owners call the child Dingo, saying she was brought up by dingoes.

 

If you have ever attended a talk by Jackie French you will know she is a passionate person and that passion shines through in her writing.  

I truly think Becoming Mrs Mulberry will be one of my top reads for the year. If you only read one book this year - make it this one!

My rating 5 / 5    ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

About the author

Jackie French AM is an award-winning author, historian and ecologist. She was the 2014-2015 Australian Children's Laureate and the 2015 Senior Australian of the year. In 2016 Jackie became a Member of the Order of Australia for her significant contribution to literature and youth literacy. She is regarded as one of Australia's most popular authors with her vast body of work crossing from fiction, non-fiction, picture books, ecology, fantasy and sci-fi to her much loved historical fiction.

 

 

Book Review: The Nurses' War by Victoria Purman

 The Nurses' War

by

Victoria Purman

 

Winning the battle will take more than guns...

Publisher: Harlequin Australia

Imprint: HQ Fiction

 

Publication date: 30th March 2022

 

Genre: Historical Fiction

 

Pages: 608

 

RRP: $32.99AUD

 

Format read: Paperback

 

Source: Courtesy of the publisher 

 

My review

 

I love reading stories about both WWI & WWII. Stories set during the battles from a soldier's point of view, those from a civilian's point of view and also those from front line workers, the doctors and nurses.

As the title depicts The Nurses' War is about Australian nurses who enlisted during WWI and travelled to England to treat and care for the Australian soldiers in a makeshift Australian hospital.

 

The Nurses' War is based on the true stories of real life experiences of the Australian women who served at Harefield Hospital in Middlesex, England. 

 

Purman writes of the anticipation and camaraderie of the nurses as the hospital prepares for its first patients and the anguish and fatigue as the wounded and maimed ariive day after day for years.

 

The Nurses' War is a story of women breaking the mold for their time and choosing career over marriage.

Told in the dual narrative of Cora, an Australian nurse who leaves her family to work in England, and Jessie, a young local girl living in the small country village of Harefield. Through Jessie we learn how everyday citizens were affected by the war and the changing face of society in work and fashion.

 

Purman writes about how the men coped with their injuries and the lose of their mates. The Nurses' War is a story filled with emotion, pride and a touch of Aussie larrickinism.  For me however the book was about 150 pages too long. I am not a lover of big books!

 

The added romance interests for the two protagonists added a heart-warming element to the story.

 

The Nurses' War is a story of love, grief and the sacrifices everyone made during the war.

 

My rating 4 / 5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

About the author

 

Victoria Purman is an Australian top ten and USA Today bestselling fiction author. Her most recent book, The Women's Pages, was an Australian bestseller, as were her novels The Land Girls and The Last of the Bonegilla Girls. Her earlier novel The Three Miss Allens was a USA Today bestseller. She is a regular guest at writers festivals, a mentor and workshop presenter and was a judge in the fiction category for the 2018 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature.

 

Book Review: The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason

                                      The Winter Soldier
                                                   by 
                                          Daniel Mason

Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia 
Publication Date: 25th September 2018
RRP: $29.99
Pages: 352
Format Read: Trade Paperback
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher

From the bestselling author of The Piano Tuner, comes Daniel Mason's The Winter Soldier, a story of love and medicine through the devastation of the First World War.

Vienna, 1914. Lucius is a twenty-two-year-old medical student when World War One explodes across Europe. Enraptured by romantic tales of battlefield surgery, he enlists, expecting a position at a well-organized field hospital. But when he arrives, at a commandeered church tucked away high in a remote valley of the Carpathian Mountains, he finds a freezing outpost ravaged by typhus. The other doctors have fled, and only a single, mysterious nurse named Sister Margarete remains.
But Lucius has never lifted a surgeon’s scalpel. And as the war rages across the winter landscape, he finds himself falling in love with the woman from whom he must learn a brutal, makeshift medicine. Then one day, an unconscious soldier is brought in from the snow, his uniform stuffed with strange drawings. He seems beyond rescue, until Lucius makes a fateful decision that will change the lives of doctor, patient and nurse forever.

From the gilded ballrooms of Imperial Vienna to the frozen forests of the Eastern Front; from hardscrabble operating rooms to battlefields thundering with Cossack cavalry, The Winter Soldier is the story of war and medicine, of family, of finding love in the sweeping tides of history, and, finally, of the mistakes we make, and the precious opportunities to atone.

This is my favourite type of Historical Fiction. Stories that follow ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events during the war. Be they doctors, soldiers, nurses or civilians, everyone has a story that needs telling.

This story follows Lucius Krzelewski, from a well-off Austrian family, through his years of medical training. Mason highlights how training during this time was not hands on but merely observation only. When the war breaks out the students are fast tracked to doctor status and sent straight to remote makeshift hospitals treating an endless run of wounded soldiers. Lucius is sent a converted church in a remote area of Northern Hungary.

The majority of the story takes place during Lucius’ time at the makeshift hospital in Lemnowice, Hungary and how the doctor, nurse and orderlies deal with the terrible wounds, rats , plague, soldiers with shell-shock, typhus, louse, lack of food and the freezing conditions. As the small group of medical staff bond we also get to learn about their lives, their triumphs and their failures. With one particular failure having far-reaching effects and will linger with Lucius long after he leaves the hospital.

There is much to this novel with mentions of early medical practices and experimental medical procedures, the food shortages and the black market. The social aftermath of the war is highlighted by a greater divide between the haves and have-nots and the need for arranged marriages.

The story is sombre and atmospheric, quite often harsh and brutal. There are tender moments dispersed throughout with an underlying story of love and loss.

The ending was bittersweet. A twist I certainly didn’t see coming. 

Content: War related injuries

My Rating   5/5              🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 

Photo courtesy of Pan Macmillan

Daniel Mason is a physician and author of the novels The Piano Tuner and A Far Country. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages, and adapted for opera and theatre.

A recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, he is currently a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University, where he teaches courses in the humanities and medicine. He lives in the Bay Area with his family. The Winter Soldier is his third novel. 

You can read more about the author and his books on his website:

http://www.danielmasonbooks.com/

Book Review: The War Bride by Pamela Hart

 

The War Bride by Pamela Hart
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The war has ended and the English brides of Australian soldiers are now arriving in Australia. But what happens if the man you married isn’t waiting when the ship arrives? This is exactly what happens to Margaret Dalton.
Sergeant Tom McBride is in charge of checking everyone off the ship and takes Margaret to a hostel while the Army sorts out the whereabouts of her husband, Frank.
They find Frank is no longer at his stated residence and his papers also mention a wife and child.
Margaret feels like a fool but must now put on a brave face and come to terms with the idea that Frank deceived her.

”She’d been gullible, tricked by a warm smile and nice brown eyes. No. Forget him. She would wear her lovely nighties and use those embroidered tablecloths and be damned with him. But it was a hollow kind of defiance, a thin shell over pain and humiliation.”

I found this not only a captivating read it was also a sentimental journey as it was set in the area and time of my Grandmother’s early twenties and through Hart’s descriptions I could clearly see Sydney as my Grandmother would have seen and lived it.

I loved the Australian colloquialisms in the story. Well researched, the story comes across as real and natural.

The War Bride is a stand alone however I would recommend The Soldier’s Wife is read first. Not only because it is a moving read but it’s where the character of Tom McBride is first introduced. It will give you a whole new perspective on Tom’s heartbreak.

There is a lot of angst in this story as the characters rebel, with much soul searching, against the morals of the time.

Hart brings in relevant issues such as divorce, unemployment, religion, fear of being ostracized, dressing and doing what is considered proper. However these are all set around a changing country and Hart integrates the push for acceptance and change on a lot of levels.

My thanks to Hachette Aus via Netgalley for my copy to read and review.
I loved this book so much I have bought myself a paperback copy.