Witch Child

This book by Celia Rees has been on my wishlist for ages and I finally got a copy via bookmooch. It's about Mary, an orphaned English girl whose Grandmother is accused of being a witch and hanged. Mary is sent to America with a group of Puritans to escape the witch hunts. As you can imgaine, things aren't so nice and rosy on the other side either.

The story is told by Mary herself, in the form a journal. It gives the reader an idea of what life would have been like in the 1600s - the mistrust, the fear, the paranoia. Plus it doesn't paint the Indians as the bad guys, which is always a plus for me.

It's meant for young adults so it has a certain nice innocence to it. I enjoyed it, although found it a bit overly simplistic at times. But hey, it's not meant for my age group!

Challenges: 888 Challenge, Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

Star of the Sea

Joseph O'Connor's Star of the Sea is the best book I've read in a while. It's the kind of book that has it all - real characters, a great plot, twists, mysteries and secrets. The style it's written is varied and interesting. And you get a history lesson while you're reading.

The story centers around the passengers of a ship bound for America in the 1840s - one of the coffin ships associated with Ireland during the Famine. They are connected in various ways and the book goes back in time to tell us about how each of the characters got to be on the same ship at the same time. And it all comes together really well in the end.

It paints a horrifying picture of what life in West Ireland must have been like at that time. I think that's what struck me the most. And my brain simply can't comprehend how terrible it all was, while at the same time knowing that there wasn't a famine at all, there was plenty of food for everyone, it's just the potato crop that failed and there was nothing else available to the poor Irish people. Unthinkable.

I'd been saving this book for when I actually go to Ireland again and I'm really glad I did. We travelled all over the Western coast, inluding in Irish-speaking Connemara, so the place names mentioned in the book were all familiar to me. That was pretty cool.

I think that everyone interested in European history should read this. American history too I guess, since the Irish poor who didn't die emigrated to the US. Don't miss this, it's really worth reading. The story and the characters really stay with you - I'm already looking for other books set during the same time period because I want to know more!

Challenges: A-Z Challenge, Historical Fiction Challenge

Amsterdam

I finished Ian McEwan's Amsterdam during my vacation - it was fairly easy to read, but I didn't find it very engrossing. I didn't really care about the characters - three men who meet again at the funeral of a woman who was dear to all three. I wanted to finish it though because I was curious what the title meant and you only find that out towards the end of the book. That was kinda cool as endings go, but Amsterdam can't possibly be McEwan's best. The only other book of his that I read was Atonement and that was way better.

Amsterdam won the Man Booker Prize in 1998 - I haven't read anything off the shortlist so can't say if I thought they were better. Maybe one of you has?

Challenges: Man Booker Challenge, 10 out of 100 out of 1001, 888 Challenge, A-Z Challenge, Seconds 2008 (I'm counting it even though I finished in August, technically)