Review : Playing St. Barbara by Marian Szczepanski

Posted by on January 28, 2014 2:51 am in 3 stars reads | 2 comments

playing st barbaraPlaying St. Barbara by Marian Szczepanski
Pages : 400
Genre :  Historical Fiction
Stand alone
My Rating : 3/5

From the author’s website  :

The big coal strike of 1928 ends, yet crosses still burn.

Angry miners plot. Company policemen stalk and spy. Miner’s wife Clare Sweeney hides bruises inflicted by her husband—and her real name. Her three daughters harbor secrets of their own. Each knows (or guesses) only fragments of the others’ unvoiced stories.

Their intertwined lives eerily mirror the 7th century legend of St. Barbara, patroness of miners, reenacted annually in the town pageant. Tested by scandal, heartbreak, and tragedy, each woman will write her own courageous ending to St. Barbara’s story.

My Thoughts :

I have always enjoyed reading historical fiction. I mostly appreciate stories exploring ancient history, French Revolution, Victorian England or the World Wars; but I had yet to read a book with quite this setting, and I found it to be a very new  – though very bleak – experience. Through the details and the worrying atmosphere, I really felt like the author took me back to another era.

The story is hard and it’s impossible not to feel for Clare and her daughters, who each have their own voice and their own personal journey. It is hard to read about domestic abuse, especially when the characters are so overwhelmed by their misery. It was heartbreaking, but I was rooting for Clare all along. It was clear how unhappy and badly cared for she was from the start, and I hated her husband Fin like I hadn’t hated a character in a long while.

On the other hand, I hadn’t had the opportunity to read about this type of relationship in a similar setting. While abuse still unfortunately exists today, I feel like we have a lot more resources available to help those in need. But it was a different time, with its own abundance of issues with the Second World War looming over these characters, which makes it an incredibly rich setting with numerous openings for book discussion, which I always like.

The story has a lot of characters and I’ll admit I got a little confused about the minor ones from time to time. Fortunately the author was quick to react when others mentioned a similar problem, and shared a characters’ list on her website, here. This is a great idea and I wish more authors thought of that as I, for one, almost always have a hard time with names!

Overall, Playing St. Barbara was quite a good read. While I usually don’t shy away from difficult books (I’m thinking of you, The Road!), I found this one to be a tad too bleak for my personal taste. But I enjoyed the rays of hope that shined in the end and allowed Clare to finally find herself, and I believe many readers would appreciate the historical aspects, too.

Thanks to the author and TLC Book Tours for inviting me to this book tour and providing a copy of the book!

2 Comments

  1. I am sure I will read this one of these days. I am curious about the subject matter!

  2. St. Barbara is a new-to-me saint and I’m interested in knowing how she became associated with mining and explosives …

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this book for the tour!

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Marian Szczepanski, author of Playing St. Barbara, on tour January 2014 | TLC Book Tours - […] Tuesday, January 28th: The Infinite Shelf […]
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