Recent reading

[luzula]

Status of fic writing: at 19,500 words. \o/

Masculinity, Militarism and Eighteenth-Century Culture, 1689-1815, by Julia Bannister (2018)
Well hey, who knew I would find my court-martial information in a gender studies book? Admittedly not information on procedure, but the book analyzes a couple of mid-18th-century court-martials that were widely discussed in public, in the context of different models of masculinity for military men. Definitely useful as background material for fic.

I am slowly making my way through a concurrent re-read of Flight of the Heron and Christopher Duffy's The '45, which is an extremely readable and detailed 600-page brick about the war in which Flight of the Heron is set. I'm switching between them so I can compare events in the war, and I am so impressed with D K Broster's research and the depth of the background in the book. But then, her Wikipedia entry says that she was one of the first women to study history at Oxford at the end of the 19th century, and later worked as secretary to a professor of history.

One thing that struck me is how Keith's aversion to the Highlands in the beginning of FotH, which I had thought to be kind of exaggerated, is actually very historically reasonable. Did mid-18th-century Englishmen really think mountains were ugly? Turns out they did. Duffy quotes a contemporary source saying about the Scottish Highlands: "an eye accustomed to flowery pastures and waving harvests is astonished and repelled by this wide extent of hopeless sterility," where the mountains, "always horrid to behold, looked positively diseased when the heather was in bloom." I am boggled at how aesthetics change! It seems to be related to Age of Reason attitudes to landscapes as primarily seen as beautiful if they were cultivated, tamed, and useful to people (useful in a certain civilized way, I guess, since a lot of people made their living by transhumance with cattle and sheep in the Highlands). A far cry from the later Romantic period, anyway.

Oh, and also I read one non-FotH-related book, because my reservation on it came in at the library.

Den rödaste rosen slår ut, by Liv Strömqvist (2019) [The Reddest Rose Blossoms]
The author is a well-known Swedish feminist and this is the latest in her series of non-fiction graphic novels exploring romantic relationships and gender roles. She's always worth reading.

Comments

[feroxargentea]

I'm halfway through listening to your podfic! (Or one of them. Maybe there's more. The one about the water horse, anyway.)

So, the book. It was fun! Surprisingly jolly, given its subject matter! I think that was mostly down to the dialogue -- clearly Broster was having fun with it, & it's all just a little bit overripe, more Georgette Heyer than Rosemary Sutcliff, & very entertaining. Also the romance arc -- I had expected this to be much more subtexual than it was, but on Keith's side it's very open, very romantic, and then there are all those strange subcurrents swirling through the other characters -- Ewen's obsession with his chieftain, his reluctance to join his wife in France ("Oh but I have guilt re: my chief!"), her reluctance to get married in the first place ("Oh but my dad is sick!"), all complicating things until the only pure romance arc is Keith's for Ewen. Ah, so much fun! BUT, ALSO, KILLING THE GAYS :(

Odd things -- how reluctant Broster is to include any actual battles. She just assumes you know what happened next! (Um, I do not. My understanding of Jacobite rebellions does not extend to remembering dates, battles, facts etc :P) She's obviously much more interested in soldiers' everyday lives than in their occasional action (which is fair), but it is amusing that so many chapters end with the threat of battle, only to skip straight to "...and three weeks later...".

Also, *maybe* she had spent more time trekking through history books than through heather? It doesn't have quite that sense of "thereness" in a landscape that you get with Sutcliff, where you can almost smell the heather in bloom and feel the squuuuluck of boots through peat bog. But maybe that's because I don't know the history and do know the bog!

Have you read the sequels? My copy is a three-in-one brick; I would have gone on reading straight away but my wrists hurt from holding the damn thing up (literally hurt, ow).

[luzula]

So glad you enjoyed it! : D I have, like, zero ability to be objective about this book, since the pairing hit me so hard.

I've got one short other podfic, but soon I will also be finished with a podfic of the long fix-it fic where Ewen drags Keith onto the ship with him and he survives. I'm just waiting on help with some Gaelic pronunciation. And then I have a monster fix-it story on the way as well--the first part of that is posted already. : )

Yeah, the romance on Keith's side is very obvious, I agree! I mean, I think it's there on Ewen's side as well, though less obvious: there's his feelings about that hurt-comfort scene after Culloden, about which he says, after realizing that Keith didn't betray him after all, that "you gave me back that night in the hut". And stuff like "his pulse quickened with pleasure" when he thinks about Keith. But yeah, it's less obvious, and of course he's married by then.

Yes, Keith's dialogue in particular is a lot of fun!

I had no idea about the history before reading the book, but I don't remember being confused? This is possibly because I was focusing on the characters instead of the wider story of the war, about which I now know a ridiculous amount because of fic research, where before I hardly knew what a Jacobite was! *facepalm* And yeah, I agree that Sutcliff's nature writing is better, on the whole.

I've read Gleam in the North and enjoyed it (well, except for the lack of Keith, AUGH). There are a lot of reminders of him, though, and Ewen clearly hasn't got over his death--I mean, the very first page hits you with the fact that he named his second son after Keith (the first is named after his now dead chieftain, obviously). And there's a lot of Keith's family. The ending is quite tragic for one of the minor characters of FotH, though. The third book has a het romance, and also Ewen deals with fall-out from Gleam in the North, though I haven't read it yet.

[feroxargentea]

I have, like, zero ability to be objective about this book, since the pairing hit me so hard.

It's lovely to see you falling in love with something – it's so sweet :) I didn't feel it that strongly but I do understand the feeling!

I will also be finished with a podfic of the long fix-it fic where Ewen drags Keith onto the ship with him and he survives.

That is *exactly* what I need. I nominated The Flight of the Heron for the Hurt/Comfort exchange, not because I think anyone will write it, but because it does no harm to point out to people that the fandom exists...

Yeah, the romance on Keith's side is very obvious, I agree! I mean, I think it's there on Ewen's side as well, though less obvious.

With Ewen it feels more like the “romantic friendship” that was more standard/expected at the time than it is now, but on Keith's side it's much more explicitly a physical attraction – not only that, but there's a clear character arc from confusion to recognition of its nature.

I had no idea about the history before reading the book, but I don't remember being confused?

It's not particularly confusing, no – and you don't need to understand all the details as long as you can gather the basics (who is winning!), much the same as with Patrick O'Brian's sea battles. I just found it amusing how blatantly the author leaves out what she's not interested in :)

I've read Gleam in the North and enjoyed it (well, except for the lack of Keith, AUGH). There are a lot of reminders of him, though, and Ewen clearly hasn't got over his death--I mean, the very first page hits you with the fact that he named his second son after Keith (the first is named after his now dead chieftain, obviously).

Ahh, really? Isn't there a bit of Heron where Ewen is hoping Keith might name one of *his* sons after him? I can't remember the details but remember being misled into thinking Ewen was the doomed one, arrgh. (The name is actually really offputting for me because it's my dad's name. I wish the character was called anything but that. I'm not sure why – I mean, Jack and Stephen and Fraser and Ray are all family names too and that doesn't bother me, but Keith, nooooo!)

[luzula]

It's lovely to see you falling in love with something – it's so sweet :) I didn't feel it that strongly but I do understand the feeling!

I've spent six years seeing fandoms come and go and not really falling for anything new, so it's a lot of fun to do so! It's just my luck that when I finally do, the fandom is really tiny. Ah well.

That is *exactly* what I need. I nominated The Flight of the Heron for the Hurt/Comfort exchange, not because I think anyone will write it, but because it does no harm to point out to people that the fandom exists...

It's a great story and does a really good job of showing us Keith through Ewen's eyes and why Ewen falls for him.

Still waiting on the pronunciation help, but now I've got a cold anyway, so I'll need to wait before I do the last few hundred words that are left on the podfic.

Thanks for nominating! It's funny, but hurt/comfort is not ordinarily something that I have a special thing for (though I don't dislike it either), but in this fandom I'm totally into it. That probably has something to do with how much canon does it.

Ahh, really? Isn't there a bit of Heron where Ewen is hoping Keith might name one of *his* sons after him?

Yes, after Keith tells the story of being named after his dad's BFF who was Scottish and died in some battle.

I can see how a character with the same name as your dad might be off-putting. : / Fortunately I don't know anyone named Keith, and actually really love the name. (...as a Brit, how did you handle Margaret Thatcher in due South?)

[feroxargentea]

Soldiering in the wilderness does give a lot of opportunity for hurt/comfort :)

Keith was a much more unusual name at the time of writing the book. It was a Scottish surname that became popular as an English first name in the 1940s-60s or so -- the Baby Boomer generation, like my dad -- and has since dropped like a rock, becoming desperately uncool, as briefly-popular names do. Broster's original readers would have had quite a different perception of it than modern Brits. (Probably more info than you needed, sorry, but I'm fascinated by names and the way they rise in and out of fashion!)

And due South's use of the name Margaret Thatcher was a really poor choice IMO. Obviously dS has lots of joke names, but that one's not funny, not for anyone who grew up under Thatcherism and Section 28. I doubt they put a lot of thought into it, but she might as well be called Beelzebub.

Sorry to hear about the cold. I'm looking forward to the podfic, once you're better!

[luzula]

No, that's interesting about the name. I had no "feeling" about it before reading the book, and the fact that I like it might mostly reflect my love for the character.

Me and my sister were both given names which were unusual at the time, and sounded kind of like "old lady" names. But mine became very popular and common after that, while my sister's name remains an "old lady" name.

Yeah, I agree that Margaret Thatcher was in very poor taste. : / Although since I'm not British, it's of course not as close to home for me. *searches internet for Section 28* ...oh, I had no idea. : ((