My Brother Michael (1959) by Mary Stewart

 

‘The result of my own visit to Greece and the impact of that wonderful country on a mind steeped in the classics. ‘My Brother Michael’ was my love affair with Greece.’ - Mary Stewart

Camilla Haven had broken with Philip her fiancée of six years, and now at twenty-five years of age, she had come to Greece for a holiday. Elizabeth, the young woman who was to have been her companion had broken her leg and had to remain in England. The story opens in a cafe in Athens with Camilla writing to Elizabeth about her time in Greece up until then.

‘I’m told that Delphi really is something. So I’ve left it till last. The only trouble is, I’m getting a bit worried about the cash. I suppose I’m a bit of a fool where money is concerned. Philip ran all that, and how right he was…’

As Camilla reflected back on her time with Philip, she was sure now, that although it was fun while it lasted, it wouldn’t have worked out. But after six years of being swept up in Philip’s magnificent wake,’ she did feel life was a trifle dull at times.

‘This is the first time for years I’ve been away on my own - I was almost going to say ‘off the lead’ - and I’m really enjoying myself in a way I hadn’t thought possible before. You know, I don’t suppose he’d ever have come here all; I just can’t see Philip prowling around Mycaenae or Cnossos or Delos, can you? Or letting me prowl either… There’s no regret, only relief that perhaps, now, I’ll have time to be myself…Even if I am quite shatteringly incompetent when I am being myself…’

To miss Delphi was unthinkable but it seemed that her only option was a one-day bus tour. It was all she could afford but a case of mistaken identity and her limited knowledge of the Greek language changed her plans. A stranger had come up to her table in the cafe with the keys to a hire car saying that the car was wanted urgently by Monsieur Simon in Delphi - it was a matter of life and death. He was told to give the keys to a young girl sitting alone in the cafe and she would drive it to Simon in Delphi.
After an unfruitful conversation with the cafe owner and various customers and a wait to see if another young woman arrived to pick up the car, she decided she might as well turn the situation to her advantage and drive it to Delphi herself.

‘The thing was simple, obvious and a direct intervention of providence.’

Camilla differed from the other heroines I’ve come across in Mary Stewart’s novels. She was unsure of herself and described herself as incompetent and cowardly. As the story progressed, she encountered situations where her mettle was tested, and she proved to be stronger than she imagined.
There was the usual romantic interest, which also differed from that in other books. Simon, a young Englishman, was reserved and gentle - a counterpoise to the overbearing Philip. Compassionate and tolerant, he saw beneath Camilla’s lack of confidence and gave her credit for having a personality of her own. I liked this shift from the feisty, competent heroine to one who was unsure of herself and couldn’t reverse a car to save herself.

My Brother Michael is set about fourteen years after WWII. Simon’s older brother, Michael, had been with the Special Air Service when the Germans occupied Greece and had been doing undercover work as a British Liaison Officer attached to a guerrilla organisation. Michael had died on Mt Parnassus in 1944 and Simon had come to Greece to find out more about the circumstances surrounding his death.

There’s a bit of history in this story - ELAS, the Communist Resistance; EDES, the anti-Communist Resistance, and the failed Communist coup in 1944.

‘And when you think harshly of ELAS, remember two things. One is that the Greek is born a fighting animal. Doesn’t their magnificent and pathetic history show you that? If a Greek can’t find anyone else to fight, he’ll fight his neighbour. The other is the poverty of Greece, and to the very poor any creed that brings promise has a quick way to the heart.’

Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you...?
- King Lear, Act 3; Scene 4

I was reminded of Helen MacInnes book, Decision in Delphi (1960), as it touches on the Greek Civil War and has its climax in Delphi. I linked to a few articles on the aftereffects of the civil war when I wrote it.

My Brother Michael has more violence than any of Stewart’s other books and there is one particularly nasty account of a s*xual nature and betrayal in Chapter 17 which was unexpected and jolting but not very explicit.

‘And that was how (…) was murdered with twenty yards of me, and I never lifted a finger to help…’

Some interesting links related to the content of this book:

The Charioteer of Delphi in the Clutches of WWII

Excavations at Delphi

Nine Coaches Waiting (1958) by Mary Stewart

 

Linda Martin was back in Paris after an absence of nine years. With an English father and a French mother, she had grown up in France during the Second World War. When she was fourteen both of her parents were killed in a plane crash and she was sent to an orphanage in England where she remained for seven years. When she was offered a position in France as governess to nine-year-old Philippe, Comte de Valmy, she jumped at the opportunity to go back to the country she loved.

'Those sweet, those stinging memories…things I had never before noticed, never missed, until now I saw them unchanged, part and parcel of that life that stopped nine years ago…I was back in France; that much of the dream of the past nine years had come true. However prosaic or dreary my new job might be, at least I had come back to the country I had persisted in regarding as my home.'

Arriving at the Château Valmy in Savoy, Linda found that her young charge was a reserved, lonely child, heir to a large estate kept in trust by his uncle after the boy's parents died. It didn’t take Linda long to warm to the young boy and to discern that he was afraid of his uncle. His uncle had no time for his nephew and was cold and harsh towards him.
A shooting which narrowly missed Philippe, another near fatal ‘accident,’ and an unlikely romance, sets the scene for adventure, danger and uncertainty as Linda commits herself to take care of Philippe while trying to work out who the potential murderer might be.

This is the second book that I’ve read by Mary Stewart (the other being, Madam, Will You Talk?) and it was every bit as good as the first. It took a little longer for the story in Nine Coaches Waiting to develop, but it was also longer than the first.
There were some similarities between the two - a vulnerable but strong young woman, a lonely child who needed protection, the French setting, and a romance.

‘An owl called below me, down in the woods; called again. Its muted melancholy found too ready an echo in me. I felt tired and depressed. Too much had happened today; and the pleasant things…had somehow faded back out of mind and left me with this queerly flattened feeling.
I know what it was, of course. I’d lived with loneliness a long time. That was something which was always there…one learns to keep it at bay…’

Again, Mary Stewart’s writing is just lovely and each chapter is introduced by a literary quotation, e.g.

‘I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so.
John Donne: The Triple Fool.'

And this on the ability of poetry to educate the mind:

'The cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land…yes, that was it. That was it. Not for the first time I was sharply grateful to Daddy for making poetry a habit with me. The best words in the best order…one always got the same shock of recognition and delight when someone's words swam up to meet a thought or name a picture. Daddy had been right. Poetry was awfully good material to think with.'

There are some allusions to Cinderella and Jane Eyre intermingled in the story which were nicely done, as were the revelations of what underpinned the actions or thoughts of various characters.

‘Wrapped up in my loneliness and danger I hadn’t even seen that his need was the same as my own. He and I had hoed the same row, and he for a more bitter harvest.’

A great book to curl up with a cup of tea and no interruptions, if possible, because Mary Stewart’s books are hard to put down - at least the two I’ve read so far have been.

 

Madam, Will You Talk? (1955) by Mary Stewart

 

Mary Stewart was a new author to me in 2022 when a friend recommended her books and what a delightful author she is! Madam, Will You Talk? was her first book and it is a cracker.

Set in Southern France, it is a suspenseful story that doesn’t waste any time in plunging the reader into murder and mystery.

When I wrote that summer, and asked my friend Louise if she would come with me on a car trip to Provence, I had no idea that I might be issuing an invitation to danger…though the part I was to play in the tragedy was to break and re-form the pattern of my whole life, yet it was a very minor part, little more than a walk-on in the last act…How was I to know, that lovely quiet afternoon, that most of the actors in the tragedy were at that moment assembled in this neat, unpretentious little Provençal hotel?

Charity Selbourne, a twenty-eight year old woman, and the book’s heroine, narrates the story. I warmed to her character immediately when she befriended a lonely and deeply unhappy twelve-year-old boy. It’s not the usual stuff of romantic suspense but in one of Mary Stewart’s other books (Nine Coaches Waiting) she sympathetically portrays another young boy. I read in her obituary that:

At the age of 30, she suffered an ectopic pregnancy, undiagnosed for several weeks. Peritonitis set in and she nearly died. It was a long time before she accepted childlessness.

Mary Stewart’s writing is beautiful and descriptive, and reflects not only her own personal experience but also her interests and educational background. There is an abundance of literary allusions, nods to the classics, and knowledge of theatre and art scattered throughout this book. Her rendering of place/setting, in this case the south of France, in particular Avignon and Marseille, play their role as characters in the story - as does a dog!

Then fate, in the shape of Nidhug, took a hand.
My cue had come. I had to enter the stage.

Avignon is a walled city, as I have said, a compact and lovely little town skirted to the north and west by the Rhone and circled completely by medieval ramparts, none the less lovely, to my inexpert eye, for having been heavily restored in the nineteenth century. The city us dominated from the north by the Rocher des Doms, a steep mass of white rock crowned by the cathedral of Notre Dame, and green with singing pines.

le Rocher des Doms à Avignon | Avignon et Provence (avignon-et-provence.com)

The deserted town of Les Baux, in medieval times a strong and terrible fortress, stands high over the southern plains. The streets of eyeless houses - little more than broken shells - the crumbling lines of the once mighty bastions, the occasional jewel of a carved Renaissance window, clothed with ferns, have an uncanny beauty of their own, while something of the fierce and terrible history of the ‘wolves of Les Baux,’ the lords of Orange and Kings of Arles, still seems to inhere in these broken fortifications.

Les Baux-de-Provence Travel Guide - France - Eupedia

I saw the first light, fore-running the sun, gather in a cup of the eastern cloud, gather and grow and brim, till at last it spilled like milk over the golden lip, to smear the dark face of heaven from end to end.

In addition to her quality writing is an exciting, convoluted plot with many twists, including a thrilling car chase through the Rhône-Alpes. I enjoyed the (highly improbable) romance and the old-fashioned feel which reminded me of Agatha Christies’ The Man in the Brown Suit and (just a little) of Helen MacInnes’ writing style.

A wonderful read on a rainy day for me, and best of all, I have two more of her books waiting for me.

Mary Stewart's legacy as an author is vast. She is considered by many to be the mother of the modern romantic suspense novel. She was among the first to integrate mystery and love story, seamlessly blending the two elements in such a way that each strengthens the other.