regshoe

[my most recent reading is this new, very cute Alan/Davie fic, yay!]

Lady in Waiting by Rosemary Sutcliff (1956). As usual I decided to start the year with a Sutcliff book, and I chose this one by looking and seeing what the library had of hers that I hadn't already read. It's one of her later-history ones, Tudor/Stuart England this time (the book is split into two halves titled 'Elizabeth' and 'James'); and it's about Walter Ralegh, as Sutcliff spells it, or rather about Bess Throckmorton, Ralegh's wife, and her perspective on his story. It is not one of Sutcliff's better books; there's a lot of totally uncritical portrayal of colonialism and a lot of that tedious 'angst in het relationship because man cares about Ambitions of Greatness while woman only cares about man' trope. It's an interesting comparison with The Rider of the White Horse, which I was surprised to look up just now and see is from only a couple of years later; that book is similar in its basic concept—early modern England, famous historical man, wife's perspective—but much better because (among other things) there's so much less tedious gender stereotyping and so much more interesting individual character in Anne and Thomas. The prose, language and descriptions are still as good as they always are in Sutcliff, which is to say very good indeed, and the book was worth reading for those alone; but I think I'll have to pick a better one next time and remind myself what those powers of writing can do in the service of a story more worthy of them.

A Lost Lady of Old Years by John Buchan (1899). A Jacobite novel! Unfortunately as Jacobite novels go this one was a bit of a disappointment. The lady of the title is Margaret Murray of Broughton, an interesting and worthy Jacobite, but Buchan seems to have been rather uncomfortable with her (the edition I read has an introduction which actually quotes him describing the historical Margaret as 'really a very bad lot... her life does not bear inspection'); the portrayal of her is not what it deserved to be and also doesn't take up that much space in the book, more of which is devoted to a) following the adventures of the rather annoying young protagonist and b) trying to make Simon Fraser of Lovat appear tragically heroic.

Curious Wine by Katherine V. Forrest (1983). Described on the front cover as 'THE MOST POPULAR LESBIAN ROMANCE NOVEL OF ALL TIME', so of course I had to know what that was about. It's a romance between two women who meet as friends-of-friends on a skiing holiday at Lake Tahoe, and it was a fun and cool read, interesting in its historical context—recent enough that it can be perfectly open in being about queer characters, early enough that the attitudes are quite noticeably different from those of today. I did like the main characters, Diana and Lane, and their relationship; there's a lot of emotional and sensual description, and a lot about how very into each other they are and how amazing the sex is, which was cute, and I liked how they bond over a shared love of Emily Dickinson's poetry. They are both fairly 'normal' women who've had relationships with men before (balanced against some of these relationships having been good and meaningful for them, there's also a lot of discussion of how unsatisfactory heterosexual relationships often are for women), and the way they come to understand their identities now doesn't seem to fit neatly into modern categories of lesbian vs. bi etc. The general cultural background was kind of interesting too—I was a little alarmed at all the casual gambling, and the 'encounter games' were fun, though I would not have wanted to play.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë (1848). Technically a partial re-read; I read this book years ago, but only in the abridged/censored text which was produced after Charlotte Brontë tried to suppress her sister's unsuitable writing and which is still used for most modern editions of the book. I recently discovered that the Internet Archive has some copies of the unabridged first edition, and that's what I read now (curiously, the one I read, an American edition, has 'by Acton Bell, author of "Wuthering Heights"' on its title page—hmmm). I remembered this book as a shockingly brilliant main story sandwiched in between two sections of kind of annoying framing story, and I agree with that now! The main story is really good and I love Helen as much as ever; the framing story is questionable in plotting as well as judgement. I was especially struck this time by the universalist religious views expressed by the narrative and Helen—who articulates a clear view of Hell as temporary and hope for eventual universal salvation which must actually have been pretty unusual at the time as well. I haven't delved properly into the question of exactly what was cut from the abridged text, though Wikipedia mentions one chapter that was almost entirely removed and that was interesting to note (Helen writing about her love for her newborn son and talking about him with Mr Huntingdon, who is significantly uncaring). I think Helen and Esther Hargrave becoming happily-ever-after unmarried companions would have made a much more satifsying ending and there should be femslash fic.

Right, here we go! A double bill of Jacobite novels, and some Alan Garner.

A Daughter of Raasay: A Tale of the ’45 by William MacLeod Raine (1901). I'm afraid this is not one of the worthier Jacobite novels I've read. It follows our hero Kenneth Montagu, a foolish young Englishman who loses a lot of money at cards, gets manipulated into joining the Jacobites by the historical Lord Balmerino (here portrayed with very questionable judgement: yeah, just invite this random guy who you know is hostile to Jacobitism to your secret Jacobite meeting, what could possibly go wrong???) and falls in love with a beautiful Jacobite Macleod—then the '45 begins... The book is composed of about equal parts romanticisation of the Jacobites/the Highlands and irritating heterosexuality (occasionally at the same time, as when Kenneth goes on about his love interest's ~pretty broken English~). It's very silly, while trying to take itself seriously. About half the time the villain (Kenneth's rival for Aileen Macleod's affections) is onstage there's an attempt at a sort of Brosterish 'slashy honourable enemies' dynamic which is sadly undermined by the rival spending the rest of his time as a moustache-twirling pantomime villain no one could possibly take seriously. There's that bizarre thing where there's supposed to be some kind of worthiness and even redemptive value in a "love" (a man's for a woman, naturally) which totally disregards the woman's own feelings and wishes. And the descriptive writing includes this sort of excellent metaphor:

In her cheeks was being fought the war of the roses, with Lancaster victorious.

Treacle Walker by Alan Garner (2021). It's time, thought I, to have a go at the new Alan Garner book! It's got the Uffington White Horse on the cover, which is promising. Like most Garner books this one is difficult to summarise. The main character is Joe Coppock, a sort of quintessential twentieth-century British boy who reads comics, plays with marbles and goes roaming about the countryside collecting birds' eggs and so on, and the book spends its short page-count making everything about this premise very weird. Treacle Walker is a rag-and-bone man who gives Joe a magic paste with which he accidentally anoints his eye (a familiar folklore trope; isn't it also in Susanna Clarke somewhere?), allowing him to see supernatural things like the Iron Age bog body who lives in the local alder copse and comes to life. I suppose there's something about showing the long history of the familiar landscape as a living and powerful thing, which is something Garner is generally very good at. The writing is spare and striking and—as Garner goes—not too difficult to follow. I wouldn't say this was my favourite of his books, but it is highly worth reading. (I'm not sure what the Uffington White Horse had to do with anything; I suppose it fits the general ideas, but the actual setting appears to be Cheshire again).


The Fiery Cross by Lady Kitty Vincent (1930). Happily, a far more worthy Jacobite novel! Lady Kitty Vincent was from the family of the Ogilvy Earls of Airlie—the book is dedicated to her brother David, the twelfth Earl (the book says tenth, but from Wikipedia and the relevant dates that must be wrong)—and this book is about the '45 as experienced by two fictional Ogilvies, Ronald Ogilvy of Inverquarity and his wife Mairi. Vincent is especially concerned with women's experiences during war. Mairi accompanies her husband on most of the Jacobite army's travels (though not the march into England; apparently that would have been impossible, though I believe luzula has written a fic contesting that idea :) ), and we spend much of that time following her perspective, her thoughts and feelings about the Rising, and her interactions with other women—many of them historical Jacobite women, including Margaret Ogilvy, Jenny Cameron and Lady Kilmarnock. When I say there are lots of good interactions between women, don't get your hopes up re. Jacobite femslash possibilities—the female perspective here is very much that of women who love men and are largely concerned with the fate of their men during war. But it's good for what it is, and that's something. (And one gets the distinct impression that Vincent is writing with her own generation and the trauma of World War I in mind.) Also Mairi does get her own 'terrible dilemma of honour and loyalty' moment at one point (and that's about her in her own right, rather than her relationships with men), which I appreciated.

The other interesting thing about this book is that I'm pretty sure it was influenced by The Flight of the Heron! At one point early on there's what looks very much like a deliberate reference: while describing the standard-raising at Glenfinnan, Vincent suddenly digresses into discussing an English officer who, captured by Lochiel, was surprised by his courteous and hospitable behaviour, and by his knowledge of French and Latin; incidentally Lochiel is also called 'Ewen Cameron', the only historical figure whose name Vincent changes as far as I could tell. Later there are a couple of side characters called Wyndham. And the ending could, if one squints, be seen as an attempted fix-it for FotH—albeit one which isn't terribly convincing and which ignores most of what makes FotH such a compelling story, for alas Vincent sadly isn't anything like as good a writer as Broster.

There's quite a lot of use of historical detail and characters, and while it's not in the full-blown Romantic Jacobites mode it's again not as interesting as the history in Broster's books. Oh, also I think Vincent must have been very keen on dogs, because Ronald and Mairi's dog Angus is an important character and paid a lot of attention throughout.

Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1856). I had two reasons for wanting to read this: firstly, in order to remember the difference between it and Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon; and secondly, so I could see what D. K. Broster, who quotes from it at some length in The Yellow Poppy, liked so much. It's a novel-length narrative poem, a kind of work I have not read very much of, which made for an interesting and not always very easy reading experience. Anyway, it's presented as an autobiography by the poet Aurora Leigh, who describes her early life, the beginnings and development of her writing career, and the relationships between Aurora, her cousin Romney Leigh and Marian Erle, a working-class girl whom Romney meets in the course of his philanthropic work. Romney proposes marriage to Aurora, who refuses him because amongst other things he is a condescending, sexist ass about her literary work; then Romney meets Marian and falls in love with her, but a jealous rival sabotages their relationship before they can marry; later Aurora and Marian meet again, and finally, after they've all been through a lot, Aurora is reunited with Romney. Aurora has a lot to say about art, poetry and women's place in the creation of it, in her arguments with Romney and in her own musings, which was good. The poem also handles the subject of sexual assault in a surprisingly frank and progressive way for anything from the 1850s. Unfortunately I disliked Romney too much in the early part of the book to buy the reconciliation at the end, lovely as the romantic bits that D. K. Broster quoted are; I thought Aurora and Marian should have gone on living happily together instead.

The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer (1928). I read one Heyer novel, Regency Buck, some years ago and it was so appallingly bad that I've been rather boggling at her popularity ever since. But of course that's not fair—all authors have their bad days, I wouldn't want someone to judge D. K. Broster by Almond, Wild Almond, and when I learnt recently from muccamukk that Heyer had written an at-least-tangentially Jacobite novel, I decided to give it a try. Anyway—this book is about a sister and brother named Prudence and Robin who had the misfortune to take part in the '45, and escape through England in disguise as, respectively, a brother and sister. Their plan is to lie low in London until they can meet up with their father, a rather formidable schemer, and thence probably escape to France; but of course things don't go that smoothly... I did like the crossdressing, which is handled in a light-hearted and playful way. Prudence is rather sensible and somewhat cautious about the 'masquerade' and yet at the same time actually very good at pretending to be a man and getting into daring adventures; meanwhile Robin, a consummate actor and a lover of mischief in general, has a great time going around balls and so on breaking hearts as the lovely Miss Merriot. I liked them both individually and as a pair!

Robin's love interest is the ingenuous and romantic heiress Letty Grayson, whom he courts in disguise at a masked ball while befriending her as Miss Merriot; their relationship is pretty cute in a 'self-aware enjoyment of Dashing Romance' sort of way, and was only spoiled for me by continually thinking how much better I'd have liked it if it was really f/f. Unfortunately Prudence's love interest, Sir Anthony Fanshawe, is awful, and in pretty much the same kind of way—albeit a much less extreme form of it—as I remember the love interest in Regency Buck being. He must domineer and dictate to Prudence in everything, because he loves her so! The plot in the later part of the book involves the question of Prudence's and Robin's real identities; she agrees to marry Sir Anthony on condition that she turns out to be of a suitably respectable family, a condition to which he responds by basically laughing at her and going on about how he will marry her regardless of what happens or what she decides. He can't even let her get down from a horse on her own without 'masterfully' lifting her down. And of course Prudence, otherwise a fairly sensible and interesting person, likes all this, having 'an odd delight in this masterful treatment'. Eeeurrgh. I also found a few more minor things to dislike: I find Heyer's authorial attitude unpleasant (in the way that she seems to enjoy a joke at the expense of the characters and the readers a little too much), and she has a few annoying prose habits (using verbs that don't describe speech as dialogue tags; virtually no setting description anywhere; etc.) Anyway! The Jacobitism is not prominent, but interesting where it does appear; I liked Robin's grief over the lost cause in particular. And an unexpectedly fun element of the book is Prudence's and Robin's father, an amazing 'masquerader' whose schemes play out in spectacular fashion—actually all the romances aside, I think by far the most interesting aspect of this book is the family relationships. So on the whole there was a lot to like in this one, but I am afraid Heyer and I have unresolvable differences in taste and I don't plan to read any more of her books.

I'm going to count novel-length fics as books from now on, so: I also read A Walk in the Karakorum by Daegaer, a sequel to Fix Bay'nets with slash, lost soldiers of Alexander the Great and dinosaurs—which in all these things was good fun!

South Sea Tales by Robert Louis Stevenson (written and mostly published 1891-94; this collection published 1996). Robert Louis Stevenson spent the last few years of his life in the Pacific Islands, particularly Samoa, and his observations and experiences there furnished him with much material for writing. starshipfox recommended this collection to me back when I first read Kidnapped, and now that I've been getting more into that book and thought I should give some of his other stuff a try, I decided to check it out. There are two longer stories, 'The Beach of Falesa' and 'The Ebb-Tide', which focus on white characters and their experiences in island society; two fairytale-style stories, 'The Bottle Imp' and 'The Isle of Voices', starring native Pacific Islander characters and partly inspired by real Hawaiian folklore; and a couple of very short sketches. It's an odd and a fascinating mix. Stevenson seems to have had Views about the development of society in the islands, European imperialism, trade and missionary activity; his ideas about all this as expressed in the stories, particularly the two longer ones, are complicated and often pretty highly critical. 'The Beach of Falesa' is narrated by an unscrupulous British trader who tricks a native woman into a sham marriage (apparently a common practice!), but ends up really falling in love with her, having the marriage performed properly and working together with her in the story's main conflict against an even less scrupulous British trader. 'The Ebb-Tide' is a strange story of crime, dissipation and missionary religion and is rather memorably horrifying; but it also goes out of its way to highlight the mistreatment of native people by white colonists, as well as Stevenson's highly ambivalent thoughts about religion. Both of those are a lot to think about, but I enjoyed the two folklore-ish stories best, especially 'The Bottle Imp', a classic logic puzzle of a folktale whose solution—again significantly—relies on the wisdom, courage and loyalty of a Hawaiian woman and the folly and vice of a white man. The actual styles of the stories are highly variable—Stevenson has a lot of range in prose, mood and subject matter. Altogether very good stuff. I must read Treasure Island next!


For the White Rose by Katharine T. Hinkson (1905). I was delighted to discover another old historical novel about Jacobites, and even more so when a brief glance at this book suggested that it's about a loyal friendship between two women. It's narrated by Jane Evans, loyal and loving lady-in-waiting to the historical Lady Nithsdale who memorably contrived her husband's escape from the Tower of London where he was imprisoned awaiting execution after the '15: we follow Jane's early life and her decision to devote herself to the service of her beloved lady, their peaceful life in Scotland together before the Rising, and finally the '15 itself and the great adventure of the escape. (Whether Jane is supposed to be the Cecilia Evans who, according to Maggie Craig, was Lady Nithsdale's 'faithful companion' and actually assisted in the escape, I'm not sure; I suspect so, because the rest of the names of secondary players in Craig's account match those Hinkson uses). If you squint, it's kind of like Sutcliff's Bonnie Dundee if it was narrated by Darklis writing about Jean instead of Hugh about Graham. I did indeed greatly enjoy Jane and Lady Nithsdale's relationship, constant declarations of devotion and all (like Darklis, Jane has a love interest, but she nobly chooses to follow and serve her lady instead of settling down with him; this was a bit annoying, but never mind; and of course Lady Nithsdale's marriage is historical!).

Unfortunately the book has two major flaws. Firstly it's very short—125 pages of fairly large type in the edition on archive.org—and far too brief. The early part of the book is taken up by what should have been—and would have been, if it was actually Sutcliff—the slow, long backstory to a much more developed main plot, but instead the main plot is told with very little change of pace and is over in two chapters. Parts of it felt almost like a summary of a longer novel rather than an appropriately-paced novella, and Jane and Lady Nithsdale's relationship inevitably suffered a great lack of development and complexity as a result. The second big flaw is that Hinkson does not care about history at all. She gets things wrong which I think, in order to know enough to have come up with the plot in the first place, she must have known were wrong, and which she seems to have done deliberately in order to play into the myth of the romantic Jacobites rather than the real history. Lord Nithsdale's house is correctly named but placed in the Highlands when it was really in Dumfries, and some other characters are inappropriately Highland-ised (most egregiously, Hinkson/Jane claims that Jacobite visitors to the Nithsdales' house all wear Highland dress, while the wearers of Lowland/English dress are universally Whigs); James VIII/III is shown arriving in Scotland before the '15 begins and cheering the hearts of his Highland friends, when really he only arrived after the defeat was virtually certain and couldn't have met Lord Nithsdale before his capture. All this was very frustrating, and certainly a let-down for a reader used to the meticulous historical writing of D. K. Broster.


Re-read Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (1814; audiobook read by Karen Savage, 2011). I decided to try out listening to an audiobook while walking to and from the office and other suitable walks; this was a cunning way to get more reading time, and generally enjoyable! I found it a good way to re-read an old favourite book, though it certainly wouldn't have worked for a new book—between thoughts wandering off, my auditory processing being what it is and the general loudness of the outside world, I definitely missed quite a lot of detail. (While reading I often pause briefly to think over a line or go back and re-read a passage to take in the meaning better or just enjoy it again; not being able to do this is a major drawback of audiobooks for me).

However, what about the book itself? Mansfield Park is my favourite Jane Austen, and I loved revisiting it. I love, admire and support Fanny Price more than ever, and am confirmed in my shipping decisions (Fanny/Mary in an 'aww, Fanny totally has a crush, but it probably wouldn't have worked as an actual relationship' way, Fanny/Edmund as 'hmm, I don't love it, but it's what she wants and I support her' way, Fanny/Henry as ultimate NOTP of all time). I appreciated how much the whole thing is pro-quiet, steady, rural life, and the complexities of the relationship between Fanny and Mansfield (the book's actual OTP). Austen's language, especially the humour in her narration, works especially well read out loud, and I enjoyed how Savage gives personality to the characters. She's recorded several other Austen books, and I think I'll try another next—Persuasion, maybe, or Pride and Prejudice?


Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life by Stephen Jay Gould (1999). Having enjoyed Gould's book about science and the humanities, I thought I'd see what he had to say about another (apparent) major conflict of science. In this book Gould propounds and develops his concept of 'non-overlapping magisteria', the idea that science and religion are compatible because they deal with totally separate areas of inquiry—science with empirical facts about the world, religion with questions of meaning and morality. I'd heard of this idea before, but enjoyed seeing it laid out here; Gould's writing is as erudite and eloquent as ever, a pleasure to read. I thought his actual arguments were pretty weak in places; he acknowledges that religion has historically laid claim to ground which he places under the magisterium of science, but seems not to appreciate or to acknowledge how important empirical claims about the world are to (much) religion and how much religion would have to change in order to fit a strict interpretation of his scheme. Gould is writing in an American context inevitably influenced most by (particular types of) Christianity; he says at the start of the book that his own perspective is that of a non-practising Jewish agnostic, but that he doesn't want to be too personal-essay-ish and won't say much about it—but I think I would have liked to see a bit more of that background brought in. I know that Judaism has much more of a tradition than Christianity of people who are atheist or agnostic and also religious, and I wonder if that context of compatibility influenced his ideas? I did enjoy the historical discussions—of the history of the myth of medieval belief in a flat earth (of surprisingly recent origin; Gould pinpoints it to the 1870s-80s and a specific, post-Darwin-influenced conception of the conflict between science and religion), and of the attempts by American fundamentalist Christians to ban the teaching of evolution in schools (obviously a bad and totally unjustifiable cause; but Gould explores how at least one major creationist was inspired in his views by a parallel and equally condemnable overreach on the part of scientists into the moral sphere of religion, using their interpretation of Darwinian evolution to support eugenic ideas).

Clementina by A. E. W. Mason (1901). This is an adventure novel dramatisation of the historical episode in which Princess Clementina Sobieska, on her way from her home in Poland to marry King James III/VIII in Italy, was kidnapped by the King's enemies and subsequently rescued by the Irish officer Charles Wogan. A bit of a different sort of Jacobite historical novel! As luzula has said, the book is roughly half swashbuckling action and half agonising unfortunately-directed love, and I enjoyed both aspects of it very much. Mason is clearly an accomplished adventure novel writer; his style, very fast-paced and lively and frequently funny, makes for an enjoyable ride during the part of the book in which Wogan is constantly pursued and ambushed by various disguised enemies in a series of inns, and lots of good swashbuckling swordfights. Later on the book concentrates more on basically all the main characters falling unfortunately in love with the wrong people, and I really liked this bit too—there's a lot of agonised struggle and noble renunciation and all that (I think this is my favourite kind of het romance—it's not interesting if it's supposed to happen...!), and Mason manages to bring a good deal of life to the scenario of eighteenth-century royal arranged marriage being complicated by feelings while Honour and Duty stand in the way. I also loved Clementina herself as a character, spirited, bold and noble—reading this book, I felt like I could really see where Charles Edward got it from. :D

A Burglary; Or, Unconscious Influence by E. A. Dillwyn (1883). A while ago I was comparing E. A. Dillwyn to E. W. Hornung—both from Victorian industrial backgrounds, both writing exciting and entertaining novels that deal with issues of crime and punishment in society—and I hadn't even read this book, in which Dillwyn, fifteen years before The Amateur Cracksman, tackles the subject of the gentleman thief! The story centres around a burglary at the Welsh country house of Llwyn-yr-Allt: the rich heiress Lady Ethel Carton, visiting the Rhys family at their house, is robbed of her jewels in the night by a mysterious disguised burglar. The rest of the book follows the characters after the burglary: the tomboyish Imogen Rhys (whom we first meet out catching moths, fishing and causing general havoc in the countryside with her brother) adjusts to coming out in Society and generally being a young lady; Lady Ethel deals with the challenges of life as an heiress whom everyone wants to court for her money rather than for herself; the characters move to London and get involved in various minor adventures; and, eventually, the true identity of the burglar is revealed... Well, I enjoyed the 'gentleman burglar' plot a great deal—Dillwyn is more straightforward in her treatment of the morality of the subject than Hornung would be, but there is still quite a bit of interesting ambivalence there, and the general tone of the book combines moral lessons with an air of amorality in a similar intriguing way to the other books of hers that I've read. Unfortunately, the book has a massive flaw: the excellent Imogen starts off by declaring that she'll surely never want to get married—and actually argues at some length against the prevailing view that marriage is women's only use and purpose in life—and later on she attracts the attention of a suitably non-criminal young gentleman and, well, I think we all know how this is going to end. I honestly had thought Dillwyn was better than that. :( On the other hand, Imogen also has a more or less explicit crush on Lady Ethel, which is presented as clearly equivalent to the book's heterosexual romances in the discussions of the power of 'unconscious influence'—to give grudgingly what credit is due, I liked that. Dillwyn also chooses not to present the ending as decisively triumphing over Imogen's earlier points about women's purpose in life—by avoiding the subject entirely—which she could easily have done; perhaps there's a point there? I don't know. I'm going to go and ebook Winifred Holtby instead.

Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott (Agatha Christie) (1944). For book club, and this was a good choice! I'd read lots of Agatha Christie books before but never anything she published under her non-crime pseudonym, and I was expecting something really rather different. In fact, the style and themes here are not different at all; it reads just like the more psychological and disturbing of Christie's murder mysteries and thrillers, and it was an interesting experience seeing that style—tense, unsettled, disturbing—in a story that doesn't actually have any murder in it. The book follows Joan Scudamore, a respectable middle-class Englishwoman travelling home after visiting her married daughter in Iraq; on the journey she's delayed in the middle of the desert, and, stuck with nothing to do, she starts thinking back over her life and the great success she's made of her marriage, relationships with her children and life in general... or has she??? It's a great bit of limited POV and playing with the gap between the character's understanding and the reader's: the past Joan, rather impressively, consistently and wilfully misinterprets just about everything she does and everything about how other people respond to her, and the presentation of present-day Joan's gradual journey to understanding is very enjoyable. The atmosphere of the desert, which brings about this change in her, reminded me of—of all things—Small Gods by Terry Pratchett: the desert as uncompromisingly stark and clear, forcing the traveller to confront their true self, with no space for pretence and nowhere to hide. A good one!

Jill by Elizabeth Amy Dillwyn (1884). This is one of those meandering first-person Victorian novels, narrated in highly engaging style by our heroine Gilbertina 'Jill' Trecastle, a bold and unscrupulous young lady who runs away from home after being mistreated by her stepmother and undergoes various dramatic adventures on her subsequent career as a lady's-maid. I really enjoyed it! The first-person narration is lively and Jill—daring, selfish and outrageous as she is—is great fun as a protagonist. The plot is episodic and not particularly serious, and many of the episodes are very funny—but it does also manage to touch on serious issues like medical abuse and sexual harassment of domestic servants. Most interesting was Jill's relationship with Kitty Mervyn, her distant cousin and later, when Jill is working in disguise as a maid, her mistress. Jill, who usually prides herself on not caring about other people, can't at all fathom why she suddenly feels so strongly about Kitty and everything to do with her... all great fun, and I thought the ending was very much in need of some femslash fix-it fic. This is the first of Dillwyn's novels I've read, but she sounds like a fascinating figure—I will definitely be reading more of her stuff in future.

The Bull Calves by Naomi Mitchison (1947). Well, to start with I'm glad I read this one after all those Jacobite history books last year, because otherwise I wouldn't have had a clue what was going on! The book takes place over two days in the summer of 1747, when Naomi Mitchison—Naomi Haldane, I ought to call her—imagines a group of her historical ancestors gathering at the family estate of Gleneagles in the Ochils. Their conversations, relationships and conflicts are the vehicle for what feels like a complete account of the author's thoughts and opinions on Scottish historical development in the context of the years following the '45 Jacobite rising. Actually a lot of the specific biographical detail is fictional (including most of what we hear about the two main characters, Kirstie Haldane and her new second husband William Macintosh of Borlum—apparently they weren't really married and both of them died years before the book is set), but the characters' discussions of their pasts and presents brings in all sorts of historical subjects.

There's the Jacobites, of course—what there is of a present-day plot involves some members of the family deciding to hide a Jacobite fugitive in the attic, and the resulting conflicts when others who have official duties not to permit things like that find out about it, and there's a lot of tension over who was 'out' when and who knows what about whose past political activities. There's Highland and Lowland, with the Highlander William having married into a Lowland family and meeting various amounts of distrust. There's agricultural improvement and the terribly hopeful striving for progress after a history of conflict and poverty, potatoes and turnips (and some more surprising crops too—melons and grapes, really?) and all. There's class conflict—I hadn't realised how widespread serfdom still was in Scotland at this period, and the stuff about mining and miners was both interesting and a bit harrowing. There's religion in its personal and social-political aspects—quite a lot about the Quakers, besides the various aspects of the Kirk and the situation of Episcopalians, which was interesting. There's colonialism and relations between natives and colonists in America. There's Mitchison's idiosyncratic Jungian-psychological take on witchcraft. And so on and so on—all absolutely fascinating, although it is very dense and not always the easiest to follow and I'm sure I missed a lot of the subtleties. But I very much enjoyed it! The book itself is followed by more than a hundred pages of detailed and sometimes rather rambling notes in which Mitchison explains some of her sources, the thought behind the book and the background for specific details, all of which was also very interesting—and I've picked up some more possibilities for historical reading from it!

A short detour on the D. K. Broster read-through...

Flemington (1911) is a historical novel featuring a significant and emotionally fraught relationship between two men on opposite sides of the 1745 Jacobite Rising, and, while the two books are ultimately very different, it was clearly a major influence on Flight of the Heron—which is dedicated to Jacob 'in homage'. Unusually for me I listened to this book in audio form—thanks to luzula for that. :D

The novel is set in Angus in the northeast of Scotland. Archie Flemington, our hero, is the descendant of a formerly Jacobite family who have changed their loyalties; during the Rising he becomes a spy in Government service, and is sent to Montrose to investigate and report on the activities of suspected Jacobite agents in the area, and in particular James Logie, the soldier brother of a local landowner. Archie gains admittance to the house of Logie and his brother Lord Balnillo, successfully deceiving them as to his real motives under the disguise provided by his artistic skills and painting Balnillo's portrait for him, and discovers that James is indeed plotting to raise the country in support of Prince Charles. But then he and James, who's utterly taken in by his disguise and believes him to be a Jacobite, get to know each other a bit better, and things become complicated.

I found it a very frustrating book, and overall I agree with garonne's assessment on comparing it to Flight of the Heron—what this book does badly FotH does well, and what Flemington does well FotH does better, both objectively and in terms of my own tastes (with just one big exception—the het romance is confined to backstory here). The story is oddly structured, very meandering for such a short book and relatively simple plot. What should be, and feels like it's meant to be, the central relationship between Archie and James is barely developed, and a lot of the time I felt that Jacob was trying to balance far too much emotional weight on a structure not strong enough to support it. Archie and James are together for only a short time at the start of the book, during which Archie is smitten with remorse for his deception of James after James shares his (frankly a little melodramatic, I felt) tragic backstory with him and treats him with generosity and trust. It's a good idea, but it didn't feel like enough, especially in comparison with Part 1 of FotH. After that they barely meet again—only the very brief meeting necessary for James to realise Archie's deception of him—and that's it, until an ending which would have been beautifully dramatic and quite heartbreaking if it had only had more to justify it.

My other main complaint is that I didn't like Archie very much. He has a quality that his contemporaries call 'impudence' and which I think of as 'not taking things seriously', and really dislike in both fictional characters and real people. It's just different enough from Keith Windham's character and development to tip over from something very interesting into something I didn't like—and again, I felt the contrasts and the effect that James has on Archie in this respect just weren't developed enough. Related to this, I found the general tone and mood of Jacob's writing far less generous and kind than D. K. Broster's—and that's one of my favourite things about Broster's writing. It's not hugely different on the surface, but the small differences are enough to make the whole thing feel like a very different sort of fictional world.

I also thought the pacing was too slow—Jacob is very fond of the long narratorial monologue explaining a character's thoughts, personality, backstory or motivations, and considering that the book is barely 250 pages long it spends a remarkably long time getting to the good bits. To be fair, however, it's so rare for me to think anything like this (I mean, my favourite books include Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and The Lord of the Rings, and the pacing is something I particularly like about both of them :P) that I have to think this isn't all the book's fault. I suspect that listening to it as an audiobook, by making me slow down my reading speed, reduced my tolerance for slow pacing—which is interesting in itself, I suppose.

This review feels much too negative so far! I did actually enjoy this book, but I think the fact that it always comes out the loser in the inevitable comparisons with FotH doesn't work in its favour. Probably the most notable thing I did enjoy was the relationship between Archie and Captain Callandar, a Hanoverian officer with whom Archie works in the later part of the book. Callandar is puzzled, exasperated and intrigued by Archie's contradictions and strange attitudes, and the ending of the book hinges on a horrible choice brought about by Archie's loyalty to James and Callander's to his duty. Again, it wasn't nearly as well-developed as it deserved to be, but there's something very good indeed in there.

Other things I liked include Christian Flemington, Archie's grandmother and decidedly not an Aunt Margaret, who raised him to be the person, the Whig and the spy he is—she's intriguing in her complications. Skirling Wattie, the colourful character who carries messages between Archie and his Government commanders, provides an opportunity for several good Jacobite and other folk songs! And there are some good bits of description and scenery, and the history is pretty interesting—rather than following the famous bits of history surrounding Charles's army, Jacob focusses on the less memorably romantic but nonetheless historically important area around Montrose, dramatising the historical capture of a Government ship by the Jacobites.

Overall, then, I found this book a bit of a disappointment, but it was still very much worth the read, both for its own sake and for the Broster connection—and it has a lot of potential which I do feel could be developed further in fic!

Three very different books from three very different centuries.

Waverley by Sir Walter Scott (1814—subtitled 'Tis Sixty Years Since, although it was actually 69 by then). Despite my mixed opinion of the other Scott novels I've read, I enjoyed this one very much. It's interesting how often, when you take a now-established trope and go back to the early stories that established it, they often turn out not to be particularly straightforward examples of the later stereotype—like how Lord of the Rings isn't at all stereotypical high fantasy. Waverley felt a little like that in relation to romantic depictions of the Highlands and the Jacobites—I've definitely heard how Scott was an important influence on those views as they developed in the nineteenth century, but the portrayal here is more complicated and interesting. The main Highland character, Fergus MacIvor, is far more scheming and pragmatic than nobly romantic in his Jacobitism (although his sister Flora is a different matter), and the English protagonist Edward Waverley, who is stationed in Scotland after joining the army and gets drawn into the centre of the Jacobite rising almost by accident, is repeatedly shown to be naive and ignorant of the real political situation in the Highlands in a way that isn't exactly mocking but certainly seemed to be making some kind of point. I thought Scott did a better job here than in the other books I've read of balancing the story he's chosen to tell with the exciting historical drama he sets it against, and of concentrating on the interesting parts of that drama. The romance was kind of boring, but that's not really a surprise. Definitely my favourite of his books so far.

(I think I've done very well to get this far without mentioning Flight of the Heron, so here goes: I was greatly entertained by how Fergus and Waverley are the almost perfect opposites of Ewen Cameron and Keith Windham. I kind of shipped them anyway, but it would be a very different sort of ship).

Doreen by Barbara Noble (1946). During the Blitz, Mrs Rawlings, a single mother who works as a cleaner in London, decides to send her nine-year-old daughter Doreen to live in the countryside with the Osbornes, a wealthy couple who have no children of their own. The book follows Doreen's new life with the Osbornes, how both sides deal with the new situation, the tensions that arise and the conflict Mrs Rawlings goes through over sending her daughter away from her. Or: my goodness, evacuation was certainly A Thing and Barbara Noble is very good indeed at showing it. This book is a well-drawn portrait of a heartbreaking situation in which there are no easy answers, and where the characters cause each other an awful lot of pain without anyone's intentions really being other than good. Not an uplifting read, but very good.

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764). OK, now this is how you write a novel. Within just the first few pages we have a giant helmet falling from the sky and crushing to death the heir to the castle of the title; an evil, scheming prince threatening to force a virtuous young maiden to marry him; an ominous prophecy concerning the fate of this prince and his castle; a mysterious and handsome young peasant who seems to know more about the situation than he's letting on; etc. etc. Even before we get to all this, there's a preface in which Walpole very earnestly presents the novel that follows as his translation of a mysterious Italian manuscript, and praises and criticises various elements of his own writing in the character of the 'translator'. Things only get wackier. I mean, I could make fun of the book, but it's honestly delightful how Walpole just keeps on throwing out over-the-top melodramatic plot twists and completely bonkers situations with such joyful abandon. Great fun! The eighteenth century was certainly a time to be a reader.