There's something about the Crimean war which meant that after World War one and two, it acquired a certain romance, what with 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' and Florence Nightingale's lady of the lamp image.
So when I picked up 'The Rose of Sebastopol' by Katharine McMahon I wasn't entirely sure what I would be getting. Would it be a romanticised version of the war, or a gritty and realistic drama? Well, in actuality, it's a good mixture of the two.
Mariella is a sheltered, naive Victorian heroine, who is deeply in love with her fiancee Henry, and whose loyalty to cousin Rosa runs as deep her romantic love. When both her loved ones end up in the Crimea ill and lost respectively, Mariella abandons her comfortable, domesticated life and goes out to the heart of the war, only to discover Henry raving in delirium about Rosa. What follows is not just a quest for Rosa, but also the truth about both her relationship and who she really is.
Now I'm on a quest for more Crimean war books - apart from a biography of Florence Nightingale, I'm also hunting out a copy of 'Mrs Duberly's War'. Does anyone else have good suggestions?
3 comments:
This is the first time I've looked at your blog and I'm delighted you've read Rose of Sebastopol. I have very much enjoyed Katharine McMahon's previous novels (especially Footsteps and Confinement.) May you enjoy more of this writers novels.
Margaret Powling
Hello! As chance would have it, I went and bought Footsteps this afternoon (along with quite a few other things). I'm looking forward to reading it!
Hello! I have a couple of links for you which may interest. The first especially should give you a lot of ideas for books about the Crimean War.
http://www.goodreads.com/group/bookshelf/13973.Crimean_War
http://www.squidoo.com/crimeanwar
http://www.squidoo.com/richardramsayarmstrong
My apologies for my self-interest here, but I run the websites for the Crimean War Research Society and I have a feed on the main site which picks up all mentions of the Crimean War in just about all blogs out there, and I amuse myself by seeing what people are blogging about when they use it.
Thomas Muir
Crimean War Research Society
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