ramblingmads

In early 20th century Britain, society was changing rapidly, but not much was changing for women.

From different ends of the social spectrum, Celia Mapperley and May Hallam wrestle with rules and circumstances beyond their control and must navigate love, sex, war, and the thin line between conformity and scandal. As they each bear the shame of a devastating family secret, their stories come together in ways that neither could have imagined.

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Fiona J. Mackintosh is a Scottish-American author living in Washington D.C. whose
fiction draws from both sides of the Atlantic. Her flash fiction collection, The Yet Unknowing World (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2021), was a runner-up for the 2021 Saboteur Award for best short story collection, and her debut novel Ancestral Virgins will be published on June 26, 2026. Her flashes were selected for Best Small Fictions in 2023 and 2019, and her short stories have been finalists in the Cairde Word, Colm Toíbín, Bristol, Galley Beggar, Exeter, and Fish Short Story Prizes. She is a proud recipient of an Individual Artist’s Award from the Maryland State Arts Council. http://www.fionajmackintosh.com

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My thoughts:  The early 20th century was a time of huge change and upheaval, social, political and personal. Women were demanding their rights and the world would never be the same again, for anyone.

Lady Celia Mapperley is trapped by her family’s old-fashioned rules and society’s expectations. Her parents want her to marry well, and ideally wealth. They have the title and seat in the House of Lords, but are running low on money, as many noble families did. But her secret and dangerous relationship with her brother Makepeace could destroy her whole life.

May Hallam lives with her mother and siblings in a tied cottage, her father’s job as a waggoner gave them their home and her brothers taking over the role keeps them there. But war looms and her brothers decide to sign up and go to France. May protects her brother Davey, who has Down’s Syndrome, but if they lose their home, the only one he knows, can May still protect him?

As the two young women’s stories collide at the railway station, both will have to be brave, confront the past and step into an uncertain future.

I found the story moving and at times terribly sad, both May and Celia suffer losses and find themselves living a life they never really wanted. In a way both are also marked by their relationship with their brother (although May has several it is Davey who dominates her life) and are shaped by that.

As the book ends it isn’t clear what the future holds for either one, May hopes to find her lost sister Lily and establish a home with her and Davey, while Celia must return to the husband and life she doesn’t love and contend with the damage Makepeace did to her. Neither can say for certainty what will happen to them next. Which leaves all sorts of questions and possibilities for the reader to ponder.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

Nineteen-year-old Filip spends his days playing football, listening to music on his Walkman and drawing, searching for something he cannot yet name. He lives in a large family house shared with his grandparents, where an old rift between his grandfather Arnstein and Arnstein’s brother Truls still governs the atmosphere. The cause appears trivial, an apple tree dropping fruit across a boundary fence, but the bitterness between the brothers speaks of something far older and deeper.

1912. With Europe on the brink of upheaval, Arnstein and Truls are sent into the forest for the summer by their stern father, determined that his sons should learn to endure hardship. Left to fend for themselves among travellers, log drivers and Forest Finns, the brothers live from the land, fishing, hunting and roaming the vast woodland. Cold and hungry, yet bound together by fierce loyalty and affection, they crown themselves the Princes of Pauper’s Pond, rulers of a world defined by freedom, imagination and shared struggle.

Until, back home, their father makes a decision that will change everything. Spanning generations, The Princes of Pauper’s Pond is a vibrant, magical and deeply affecting novel about brotherhood and belonging, about finding joy and love in the open landscape, and about those single moments that can seal a family’s fate … forever…

Lars Elling (b. 1966) is a visual artist. His paintings have been exhibited in galleries worldwide, including Oslo, Cape Town, New York and Beijing, and his work is represented in many public and private collections. He lives and works in Oslo and Elgin, South Africa. The Princes of Pauper’s Pond is his first novel.

My thoughts: Filip visits his grandfather, slowly dying from a lung complaint, in the house next door to his younger brother, who he hasn’t spoken to in years. He wants to know why these two old men have been estranged for such a long time.

As Arnstein slowly tells his grandson about the summer of 1912 and his adventures in the forest, finding mushrooms, flowers and fish to sell at the market, camping out under the stars and having adventures.

But it is something that happens that summer, something that starts the rift between the brothers, once so close they were the princes of pauper’s pond, kings of their own world.

Only when the Old Man finally dies, does Filip learn the terrible, sad story of the death of the brothers’ bond. One acted out by their wives in the neighbouring gardens – shoving apple pulp back and forth under the fence.

A moving and sad story which Filip cannot undo or repair, leaving his great-uncle the only one still carrying the tragic end of that idyllic summer. 

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.