The Curious Tale of the Lady Caraboo, by Catherine Johnson

Sexually assaulted on the Bristol road, a dark-skinned young lady has had her fill of suffering. Broken hearted, abused and mother to a dead child, she has suffered immensely. Instead of choosing suicide, like many ruined, impoverished girls of the 19th century, Mary chooses to disappear. She vanishes, leaving instead the Lady Caraboo- a haughty warrior princess; fearless, exotic and fascinating.

Taken in by the Worrals, a prominent middle class family hell bent on integrating themselves into society, Caraboo is befriended by daughter Cassandra, reader of romantic novels and general Victorian tween. She is obsessed with dresses and ribbons and dances, and the apple of her eye is currently her brother's boorish friend Edmund, who is something of a womanising brute. Mrs Worral is a keen anthropologist and is fascinated by Caraboo, who she assumes is some sort of Eastern Princess based on her headwrap and her proud, defiant carriage. What starts off as a quick way to secure a bed for the night becomes a larger deception as Caraboo goes along with it; making up a language, crafting a bow and arrow and shooting pigeons, climbing trees and praying to her made up, exotic gods. She is a thorough, gifted actress and master of deception, a true con artist. While her actions could be seen as wrong, the reader knows that she doesn't mean any harm by it, and is just trying to escape herself and her meagre lot for a while. Mary is a stronger person when she is Caraboo- she is brave and powerful, and more importantly, she has no history. No lost child, no broken heart.

Caraboo is authenticated by "experts", men of science and experience who are no more real or genuine than the pretend Princess- proof that our reality is built on shaky foundations and that the Princess, though a fraud, is not gaining by her deception. She is an honest forgery, where these experts are not. There's two romantic sub-plots woven into Caraboo's exhibition and attempts to validate or expose her; Cassandra's dreamy romance with the in-keeper's son; a dalliance that Caraboo knows can never end happily. Mary also plots something of a deliberate bewitching of Cassandra's brother Frederick- aiming to avenge, even slightly, the countless women all over the world that are drawn to society men with gifts and promises- then ruined. She aims to get him to fall hopelessly for Caraboo, then disappear, breaking his heart in payment to all the ruined women. Needless to say, it doesn't go to plan.

TCTotLC is an enjoyable historical novel that I think will be brilliant for fans of Tanya Landman and Mary Hooper. The author has built a beguiling novel around the bones of a real historical mystery. I loved the how the book questions identity, how do we tell what is real when everyone is playing a role in society. Though Cassandra and Will's infatuation doesn't add a huge amount to the plot, I thought Caraboo and Fred made a much more interesting pairing. Fred, previously shown to be quite the regular at brothels around his school, is much improved by his relationship to Caraboo. He becomes more thoughtful, more caring- it's the real Frederick showing through the laddish nightmare. In his case, the fiction really is better than the truth, and it's the fiction he tries to desperately to hold on to.

My favourite aspects of the novel is when it begins to question gender roles, particularly via the Phrenologist fool, constantly spewing facts about the tiny female brain. Frederick too comes to realise the disparity of his own future compared to that of his sister. Caraboo demonstrates how capable women can be, and it's a surprise to them all. Also, I liked that an English set historical novel had a POC as their main character. I loved this attempt to redress that lack of diversity.

Tough it's a very well crafted, enjoyable read with an appealing romantic twist on a fascinating true story, I'm not sure it has the same impact or relatability as some of the other YA Book Prize shortlisted titles. Caraboo is a wonderful creation and an engaging character.

The Improbability of Love, by Hannah Rothschild

A lovely, lovely gem of a book that refuses to be closed for even a minute. It begins with an auction- a lost masterpiece of the 18th Century by French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau, the guy credited with founding the Rococo movement. The glamorous, the filthy rich and the hangers on are all on the prowl determined to own a piece of history that once hung on the walls of Katherine the Great and Madame de Pompadour. Hundreds of Millions of pounds to prove to the world that you have taste and class and most importantly, deep pockets.

The narrative then backtracks to reveal how the painting came to be re-discovered after being happened upon in a grotty junkshop by Annie, an almost destitute aspiring chef. She forks out the last £70 she has to buy it as a birthday present for an unsuitable man met at a singles' art dating event. He stands her up and so her fate (and that of many others) becomes tangled with the painting.

It's such a readable book- despite its genteel façade, it's incredibly action packed. It's not long before the reader is drawn into whirlwind of authentication and research; down at the Wallace collection where she meets Jesse, a lovestruck guide and part-time painter; some long-shot detective work as Anna pores over sketches and monographs in the British Library, trying to determine if her painting is a worthless copy or something else. She totes it around London in a carrier bag, to her day job cooking steamed fish and wilted spinach for the Winkleman dynasty, a family of ruthless Art dealers with a dodgy past. In a 400 page novel we are lavishly treated to Louis XIV style banquets, musings on the nature and subjective worth of art, legacy destroying secrets, Nazi loot, royal scandals, lots of detective work, shady cloak and dagger murders and a desperate dash for evidence and acquittal. We see the coiffured, silken lives of the disgustingly rich and the Spartan lives of the modern artist. It's quite the whirlwind.

I loved the characters in this book- they were so easy to care about. The heart-broken starting-again Annie and her sumptuous banquets of art-inspired food, her alcoholic mother who shows up just in time to ruin everything, sweet, awkward Jesse who is head over heels for Annie within seconds of meeting her. And Rebecca Winkleman, the insecure ice-queen dominated by her patriarch father, schooled in Art History from nursery age, ruthless and steely who thinks nothing of sending an innocent employee to prison to keep the family reputation intact. Most notable perhaps is the voice of The Painting, the Improbability of Love itself. Sassy, sarcastic, kind of pretentious and hugely characterful, the painting gets the chance to tell its own story, of camel caravans, looting and theft and royal palaces and all the things its seen in its 300 years on walls. It knows and revels in its power to inspire love (it has quite the track record) I loved this idea- a completely new perspective of history that nobody living could ever recount.

I really liked the book's musings on the value of art, how subjective art is and the contradictions around its purpose and worth. It argues that art is an indicator of good taste; some people will buy a painting owned by a king of a queen and congratulate themselves on sharing the impeccable, refined tastes of a dead monarch. They will pay record breaking sums to be part of the club. But art has intrinsic value too; it's a window into human emotion. Recurring themes of misery, pursuit, suffering, rapture, love and lust (unrequited or mutual) have been depicted since mankind first figured out how to smear pigments on cave walls. The modern viewer, looking at any given painting hung in any gallery in the world is reminded that whatever it is they're going through, it's all been suffered before. There's also the argument that art exists to be beautiful, to inspire emotion and joy. Art exists because somebody is compelled to create it. Art exists to make money. I loved how much time and room the book laid aside to talk about the different routes and reasons that might one day see at artwork fetch a record price at auction. It shows that whatever art is to *whoever* wants to define it, it's never possible to truly explain what art is and why it matters. I like that.

I'm convinced this book has an unusually broad appeal and manages to make the unlikely jump from literary or contemporary fiction to casual readers, beach readers and romance readers alike. It's got beautiful prose, a satisfying if slightly inevitable romance plot, a devastating fa
mily secret that threatens the very foundations of the art world and a whistle stop tour of some of the lesser known masters of the 18th century art world. Personally I'd never heard of Watteau, but I found myself falling into a Wikipedia wormhole of 18th century art, seeing who painted what, who their contemporaries were, where these painting are now (hopefully a national collection) and the scandals and history of their creation.

Books like this make me wish I knew more about art, they make me wistful for travel to go and see some of these creations in the flesh (in the oil?) and it makes me really think about the legacy of the human race and our need to create. I love books about artists and the creative process. The Improbability of Love is a glorious read, an unlikely thriller (look, I'm a librarian, I find research and discovery thrilling) and a beautifully paced, intricately and artfully written novel about art, love and food. I will be recommending this an awful lot, and I genuinely fancy its chances for the Bailey's Prize.

My one singular gripe is that you would never get a librarian giving out patron data or info to anybody, no matter how eccentrically charming or ingeniously excused. Wouldn't happen.