As noted last week, I’ve been taking advantage of a brief spell between books I need to read for interviews here or on the New Books Network by exploring some of the buried treasure already present in my Kindle library, by now all neatly slotted into categories (although I’m enough of a realist to know that I can still lose track of books inside a large collection).
Since I ended the previous post with my nonfiction selection—one of the great advantages of being retired is the chance to read academic books midday, when my eyes and mind remain fresh—let’s start with Erika L. Monahan’s The Merchants of Siberia: Trade in Early Modern Eurasia (Cornell University Press, 2016) this time around.
It would be a lie to say that I really forgot that I had this one. For one thing, I know the author and wouldn’t consider denying the importance or relevance of her work. But I did intend to read the whole book while working on Song of the Sinner, where the merchant hero makes a grand journey down the Volga in search of textiles and spices. Instead, I skimmed a few chapters and set the rest aside for later.
The book’s focus on Central Asian Muslim merchants in Siberia makes it especially relevant to Song of the Silk Weaver, though, so now I plan to read it cover to cover. I’m looking for clues to how my heroine’s life and expectations might have been shaped by her merchant husband and how she would relate to the Venetian traders who themselves traveled great distances in search of profit and adventure, but also for a more general sense of commercial life in lands that, as a rule, boast more animals than people.
Since I read scholarly works during the day, that leaves evenings free for lighter fare. Right now, that means Marlowe Benn, Relative Fortunes (Lake Union, 2019). This one isn’t quite as old as some of the other selections, but it had somehow slipped way down the list, so it still merits inclusion here. A family mystery set in 1920s New York, Relative Fortunes stars Julia Kydd, a fledgling printer who leaves her home in London to secure the money that has been held in trust for her by her half-brother, Philip, until her twenty-fifth birthday.
Only after reaching the United States does she discover that Philip is contesting her father’s will in the hopes of claiming the entire fortune for himself. Meanwhile, the sister of Julia’s childhood friend Glennis Rankin dies—apparently a suicide, but the absence of any suicide note causes both Glennis and Julia to suspect murder. Philip, who himself has something of a reputation as an amateur sleuth, offers Julia a deal: prove that Glennis’s sister was killed by someone else’s hand, and he will release his hold on her funds. How can Julia resist?
The novel took a while to get started, but it’s humming along nicely now as we learn more about Julia and her past, as well as the Rankin family’s many conflicts and secrets. With all the unread books I already have, I can’t justify buying the sequel just yet, but it’s definitely on my Wish List for when I manage to reduce the virtual pile.
Of the seven books listed in this post and the last, I have already made my way through five. Whether I will next focus on Jessie Burton’s The Miniaturist (Ecco, 2014) or Debra Dean’s The Mirrored World (Harper, 2012) I have yet to decide. The first is set in a seventeenth-century Amsterdam merchant household, with a touch of fantasy; the second in eighteenth-century Russia, following the life of St. Xenia during the reign of Catherine the Great. So they are both relevant to my interests and my work in different ways.
Most likely, I’ll try The Miniaturist first (those details of merchant life again), but I definitely plan to read Debra Dean’s novel as well. I also have her first book, The Madonnas of Leningrad (Harper, 2009), in my Kindle library. But since I just finished The Bronze Horseman, and Madonnas is also about the 1941 Siege, here as remembered years after the fact, I will revisit that one later.
Seven books is, of course, a mere drop in the proverbial bucket when there are more than six hundred to go. Not to mention that there are numerous new installments to series by authors I love that I am eager to read, and a new slate of NBN and blog Q&A novels that I should get back to quite soon. For the next couple of weeks I’ll be featuring other writers here on the blog, but who knows? By the beginning of December, I may have a new list of buried treasures to share!
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