The Brickworks - Lucy E.M. Black - ★★★.½

AUTHOR: Lucy E.M. Black

GENRE: Historical Fiction

RATING: 3.5 stars

In a Nutshell: An interesting look at a historical brickworks set up in rural Ontario by two Scotsmen. Wasn’t a fan of the overly descriptive writing style, but the story kept me going. Great research, realistic characters. Good for historical fiction fans.

Story Synopsis:

1879, Scotland. When the Tay Bridge collapses, almost everyone blames the driver of the train for the disaster. Reduced to poverty, the life of his widow and his young son Brodie changes forever. Luckily for Brodie, a kind uncle takes charge of his future, and of his wish to study engineering.

1909, New York. Alastair Lamont, an immigrant Scotsman, works at a steel mill, and is very good at his job. But he dreams of having his own brickworks company, just as his father did back when he was alive.

When Alastair and Brodie bump into each other, the two men realise that their ambitions can be achieved faster if they work together. They purchase land in rural Ontario and establish the brickworks, and Brodie also invests in sheep for his plans of sheep farming.

How did Brodie go from being an engineer to becoming a sheep farmer? Why and when did he come to the USA? Will the two men be able to make a success of their business partnership and fulfil their aspirations? Will their hard lives leave any space for personal dreams such as marriage?

The story comes to us in multiple timelines, and in the limited third person perspective of Brodie and Alastair.

Bookish Yays:

🔥 Alastair and Brodie make for a great lead pair. Whether as business partners or as friends, there is a wonderful understanding between them that makes every interaction feel realistic. There is also some humour courtesy their witty banter, especially when each of them is ‘courting’ the two special ladies in their lives.

🔥 Of the secondary characters, Charley and Little Johnny were my favourite. Some of the brickworks employees also had great presence. I loved the detailing of all of these characters, helping us to know them well.

🔥 The entire content related to the brickworks factory: the initial setup, the making of bricks, the details of running a business successfully, effective partnership, being a thoughtful boss to your workers,… All of this had a realistic tone.

🔥 The historical elements of life then. Much of the content felt like a representation of actual life in that era rather than a fictionalised version. Credit to the authenticity of the tone of language as well as characters.

🔥 Love how the author didn’t make this a typical immigrant story of struggle, racism, and comeuppance. Though the two main characters were Scots in the US and later Canada, the story treated them as regular characters than as outsiders struggling for acceptance in a different culture and then winning the golden ticket to riches. The focus is entirely on their hard work and their can-do-will-do attitude than on their background.

🔥 At the same time, the author doesn’t let us forget the roots of the characters. There is some Scottish brogue in their dialogues and reminiscences, which further adds to the genuineness of the portrayal.

Bookish Mixed Bags:

🎆 The initial period of the brickworks setup was almost too smooth to be true. There were barely any hurdles, and even when troubles came up, they were minor and almost immediately fixed. I would have flagged this as a red flag against the truthful depiction of a new business, but the final third makes up for this. I just wish the wins and losses would have been more evenly spread out.

🎆 Somehow, the blurb made me feel like the Tay Bridge disaster would be the primary focus of the story, at least initially in Brodie’s arc. However, the focus on it is minimal until much later in the book. As it was an actual historical incident, and a prime determinant of Brodie’s future, I wish it had been given more prominence. That said, the little that is included is intriguing.

🎆 The research is impeccable! The author has clearly made efforts to get her facts right, especially about bridge construction and bricks manufacturing. However, the writing gets a bit textbook-like at times, with too much focus on the technical details. These were accurate depictions of the brickmaking process, but they took me out of the plot as the matter-of-fact writing style didn’t befit a fictional work. The overdetailing of events in many chapters also was not to my reading preference.

🎆 Of the two romantic relationships in the book, I enjoyed reading Brodie’s as it had a proper development and also a variety of emotions. Alastair’s was more instant in comparison, and as I am no fan of insta attraction, it didn’t satisfy me that much. I also don’t understand how there was no resistance from the girl’s family about that union. That said, the romance never overpowers the core plot – a big plus. Also, keeping in tone with the theme and era, the romances are clean.

Bookish Nays:

💣 I have always complained about dialogues written without quotation marks. In this book, I encountered a new method of presenting conversations. All the spoken lines are without quotations, and italicised. It took me some time to get used to this formatting. I initially thought I could like this decision, but when there were extended conversations, it became tricky to figure out who the speaker was. So no, my meagre brain can’t handle this. Give me good old quotation marks please!

💣 The story is told in two broad timelines, the present (1909-) and Brodie’s past (1879 onwards). The jump between the two timelines isn’t always even. The past comes in randomly, sometimes lasting just for a few paras and at other times, spanning a lengthy chapter. Though the time reference is always clearly indicated, it still becomes confusing at times. Moreover, once the interval between the two timelines reduces, there is hardly anything to distinguish between them as the gap of just a decade is too little to provide any differentiation in style. I would have preferred this book to be written as Brodie’s story in linear order, with Alastair playing a close second lead once he makes his appearance.

💣 Though the details were present, the atmosphere was missing. I didn’t *feel* the historical ambience, though I could see the words depicting life as it was then. Maybe the writing style was too factual? Was it more tell than show? Not sure. But especially in the first half, I felt more like an outsider peeking into a historical setup than like a participant in the story.

💣 I don’t like the cover. It doesn’t represent the book in any way. This is the kind of cover art that will not make me stop in a bookstore and take a second glance at the book. I wish it suited the historical story better.

All in all, despite the relatively no-frills writing, the story is interesting, and unlike most historical fiction works we see nowadays. By focussing on a place, a people, and a process we don’t usually read about, it offers something new to readers saturated of the same old content. I can see this book working well for a limited TV series adaptation.

Recommended to historical fiction fans who want to try something atypical and wouldn’t mind the simplistic writing style.

My thanks to River Street Writing for the DRC of “The Brickworks”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.