The House in the Hollow (The Talbot Saga) by Allie Cresswell
| The House in the Hollow (The Talbot Saga) by Allie Cresswell | |
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| Category: Historical Fiction | |
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Reviewer: Sue Magee
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| Summary: An exceptional piece of historical fiction. It's a big book but I would have delighted had it been longer. I want to hear more about the Talbot family! | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 388 | Date: October 2020 |
| Publisher: Independently Published | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-1916072039 | |
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We meet part of the Talbot family in Yorkshire in November 1811. Twenty-seven-year-old Jocelyn Talbot and her mother have travelled in some discomfort from their home at Ecklington, to the house in the hollow. The two women are angry with each other and Jocelyn is well aware of her mother's strengths and weaknesses:
She is practiced at subterfuge, at concealing, beneath a facade of respectability, the deplorable truth.
Hester is furious about Jocelyn's refusal to do as she was asked, which has precipitated this violent and unexpected removal.
Then we are told of the birth of a child and, soon after, Hester Talbot departs, leaving Jocelyn in shame and isolation in Yorkshire.
You can understand Hester a little better when you understand that her family circumstances required that she marry a man whom she would not have chosen to marry. As a young widow with a daughter she then had to do the same thing again - and marry Roger Talbot. Her peers would look askance at her, not for marrying for money, but for marrying beneath her. Talbot had made his fortune in India: he spoke Bengali like a native, which didn't help assimilation into Regency society. Not knowing how to behave in society doesn't help either: gentlemen are not supposed to pester like puppies as Hester wryly comments.
Talbot was befriended by an impecunious viscount, Lord Petrel, who taught him how to behave, living high on the hog whilst doing so. This isn't the first time he's done this: we're told that he cultured the acquaintance of men he scorned. But the rewards were good and before long the viscount accompanied the Talbots as a flea accompanies a dog.
As I read, I was put in mind of Jane Austen. It's not just that the time frames are similar but rather that there's that same exquisite turn of phrase, the humour which sounds gentle but which is best characterised as biting wit. Allie Cresswell has Austen's grasp of how society really worked and the importance of class divisions.
What Cresswell does have that Austen eschews is (sensitively-handled) sexual content. Austen never went beyond personal experience. Cresswell's plot is also rather more complex than Austen's plots. As you begin an Austen novel you can be pretty certain that you know how it's going to end: you read for the journey rather than the destination. With Cresswell you get the enjoyable journey and a plot which has a twist in the tale that I barely suspected but which played out perfectly. The polotting is exceptionally-well done.
I'm not usually a fan of twenty-first-century historical fiction: so little of it rings true but I read The House in the Hollow over just a couple of days and would have been delighted had it been longer. That's not something I often say about books with 128,000 words!
I'd like to thank the publisher for sending a copy to the Bookbag.
You can read more about Allie Cresswell here.
The House in the Hollow (The Talbot Saga) by Allie Cresswell is in the Top Ten Self-Published Books 2022.
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You can read more book reviews or buy The House in the Hollow (The Talbot Saga) by Allie Cresswell at Amazon.com.
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