When I am travelling I love to read books that are linked to my trip somehow. Right now I am in nestled the heart of New York and I found myself picking up this novel set during the American Civil War. The epic tale begins in the drawing rooms of the affluent Sutter home in upstate New York. Eldest daughter Mary Sutter is a midwife – an occupation that has been passed down through the Sutter females for generations, but Mary dreams the impossible dream of being a surgeon…

When I read the blurb on the back of the book I couldn’t fathom where a novel about a mid-wife could go in terms of plot… and the simplistic name of the novel “My Name is Mary Sutter” didn’t really resonate with me either. Nonplussed I plucked the book off my shelf essentially because in was set in New York where I was headed – however a chapter in I was enthralled. Mary is a plain and headstrong young woman and her relationship with her mid-wife mother her unnervingly quiet twin-sister and the young good-looking neighbour who are all introduced to us at the dinner table on a stormy night, is absorbing and curious.

Plucked from their genteel family life, the Sutters and the characters around them are plunged into the bloody throes of the Civil War. Mary determined to fulfill her ambition as a surgeon when women were barely allowed to be nurses – takes us with her to several battlefields and through her eyes we witness the chaos, death, and trauma of under supplied hospitals and overwhelmed doctors and nurses… and the amazing stamina and courage of those who filled those roles is bought to life.

This is not just a story of one woman’s courage in the face of war, however, but it is also a love story and a story of familial ties. Mary’s rivalry with her twin sister Jenny provides an emotional backdrop to the larger story; and Mary also has a surprising impact on two men who grow to love her – William Stipp, a surgeon nearly three decades older than she, and James Blevens, a doctor who realizes that research is the key to uncovering the mysteries of medicine.

My Name Is Mary Sutter: Fig Tree

Image from We Heart It

No matter how old I get, there will always be a certain thrill in gathering up and asessing my amassed cargo at the end of Christmas day (albeit the cargo is smaller but more precious these days). One, two or three things that are guaranteed to add weight and worth (in the sentimental sense) are books.  Glorious books! A Christmas is never the same without them – whether it’s an anticipated prize winner for the book lover, the year’s most popular biography for a fair weather reader, or a cool coffee table tome, a book is a cosy companion for a long and languorous Christmas Day.

Here is my pick of the year’s fiction and non-fiction reads that i would love to give and receive…

FICTION…

The Night Circus: Erin Morgenstern, Paperback £12.99

Harvill Secker

Tipped to rival the beloved works of J.K Rowling, The Night Circus was released this autumn with great anticipation. It is the story of a mysterious travelling circus open only at night and constructed entirely in black and white, Le Cirque des Rêves delights all who wander its circular paths and warm themselves at its bonfire.

Absorbing, fast-paced and magical Morgenstern creates a rich and immersive world set somewhere in 1886, realised down to the last detail. The atmosphere of the circus is almost palpable, evoking sights, sounds, smells and tastes. There are acrobats, fortune-tellers and contortionists, some tents contain clouds
and some ice and the circus casts a spell over it’s audience.

At the heart of the story is the tangled relationship between two young magicians, Celia, an enchanter’s daughter, and Marco, a rival sorcerer’s apprentice. At the behest of their shadowy masters, they find themselves locked in a deadly contest, forced to test the very limits of the imagination, and of their love.

An exquisitely woven tale its beautifully illustrated cover hints at the wonders within with die-cut covers and black-edged pages, making it the top contender for my Christmas giving.

Mary Boleyn, The Great And Infamous Whore: Alison Wier, Hardback, £20

Jonathan Cape

For lovers of weighty historical fiction comes a highly anticipated tome from one of best writers of this genre, Alison Wier.

Mary Boleyn is remembered by posterity as a ‘great and infamous whore’. She was the mistress of two kings, Francois I of France and Henry VIII of England, and sister to Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife. In this biography, apparently the first full-length biography published about Mary, Wier seeks to identify the truth about Mary and her life. Was Mary promiscuous? On what basis was she known as `The Great and Infamous Whore’? What evidence exists to support the birth order of the Boleyn sisters?

In Mary Boleyn, The Great And Infamous Whore Weir also sets out to examine Mary’s time and reputation in France, the details of her affair with Henry VIII and the possible children born as a consequence. Weir touches, as well, on Mary’s treatment by her family as well as the relationship between Mary and Anne. Because of the scarce information available about this pivotal figure in history, the book offers up not many revelations about this famous sister, but serves as an absorbing and intriguing framework to her life.

Continue Reading…

Next year is a big year for my group of friends and myself… three weddings – two in England and one abroad in India, respective bachelor/ette parties, nearly everyone is turning 30 and we are buying our first home. Because it’s spurred a feeling of sentimentality, commemorating and nesting in me, I’ve been eyeing heirloom products to cherish in years to come…

Rifle Paper Company’s Heirloom Recipe Card Boxes are made using salvaged hardwood with beautiful screen printed lids. You can also purchase simple and charming recipe cards with an illustrated spoon on top available in either pink or charcoal. I’ve never been one for paying much attention to recipes [i'm more of a 'if a dish works i'll remember it' kind of cook] but I like the idea of archiving special dishes over the years – like a sauce or a technique that makes a dinner party that bit more special.

The Q&A Five-Year Diary is a beautiful compact hardback diary lined in gold edging which is a perpetual diary, allowing you to use it for five years, so when you reach your first or second year of completion, you can look back and see what you were doing on that same day however many years ago. The diary also has sweet and inquisitive questions at the top of every page designed to make you re-think your mood and notice how your answers change (or don’t)! With questions that are sometimes provocative (“On a scale of one to ten, how happy are you?”), occasionally silly (“What can you smell right now?”), and inevitably interesting (“If you could travel anywhere tomorrow, where would you go?”).

I’m also on the hunt for a beautiful Book Journal… everytime I put down a book I want to save the essence of that week or how I was feeling when I read that book… when I think about a favourite book I’ve enjoyed in the past, it makes me sad that I can only remember a whisper of that moment because I haven’t documented it.

I have found a few sweet ones from Oh My Cavalier and Cricket Snappers but still on the lookout so any book journal recommendations appreciated!

I saw The Help this past weekend… a perfect Sunday film watched from under my blanket on the sofa… I loved the sugary sweet set and styling… at such odds to the subject matter, but for that very reason so moving. The film was was just as beautiful and gripping as the book – we reviewed it here this summer.

I think I have found the perfect Christmas gift… Great Food is a collection of 20 charming tomes from Penguin charting the  “the sharpest, funniest, most delicious writing about food from the past 400 years,” The books offer a mouth-watering selection of food writing fare from which to choose, with authors ranging from the classic – Victorian ‘domestic goddess’ Isabella Beeton and that wonderfully intelligent food writer Elizabeth David – to the less familiar – eighteenth century innkeeper William Verrall, Pellegrino Artusi.

The delicious looking covers were designed by Penguin’s senior cover designer Coralie Bickford-Smith each one drawing on a decorative ceramic style of dish relevant to the period of the writing concerned. For further insight check out Pen’s Great Food Club, a food blog by a Penguin employee cooking their way through the 20 books. A humorous  and charming account the blog has hints of the Julie and Julia about it with success stories as well as disasters documented in the attempt to translate 18th century recipes to the modern day table!