Recent reading
Nov. 18th, 2023 05:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaBadort by Tove and Hanna Folkesson (2023) [Spatown]
Another of the slew of recent Swedish historical novels that looked interesting. This one is cross-class f/f set in 1938 in the dilapidated spa town of Borgholm on the island of Öland. I don't know much about the time/place, but I thought it had a very good sense of setting, with lots of specific detail of both place and attitudes. It's litfic and not genre romance; the authors are a married couple where one of them did the drawings in the book, which match up nicely with the impressionistic language. The two main characters don't end up together and never see each other again, but only meet during a few intense days which completely change the course of both of their lives. I enjoyed it!
The Fiery Cross by Lady Kitty Vincent (1930)
A Jacobite historical, which I originally hoped would be about Margaret and David Ogilvy, whose descendant the author is. Instead it follows another newly married Ogilvy couple (Ronald and Mairi) through the '45, though Margaret and David do appear. This book is definitely worth reading, even if I think it suffers in comparison to Flight of the Heron--the prose is not as good, I think, and she's not quite as good at...setting the whole thing up so that it hangs together well, I guess? But some scenes I enjoyed were Mairi getting her dilemma between honour and duty, when she is asked to get information by conversing with a enemy guest (which breaks the law of hospitality!) Also the scene where she, Lady Ogilvy and Lady Kilmarnock drink General Hawley under the table, thus making him late for the battle of Falkirk, is great. I appreciated the scenes of women interacting!
The book compares interestingly to FotH, because in a way it's a variation on the story of Ewen and Alison and Keith, with a different ending. Because yes, there's a Keith analogue: the young subaltern Tony Wylie, who is wounded and captured at Falkirk, is nursed by Mairi, and falls head-over-heels in love with her. Wylie has a strong sense of honour in common with Keith, but they are otherwise not similar, since Wylie is young and idealistic. Okay, I'm going to spoil the ending here, because this book is not accessible online and there is currently only one copy of it on abebooks.com, which sells for $70, so I don't think a lot of you are going to read it. So I suppose it is fairly predictable that when Ronald and Mairi are about to be captured after Culloden, Wylie is going to be with the party of redcoats! He protests against the senior officer who is about to kill Ronald and (probably) rape Mairi, and on account of his good family connections, he prevails. This is of course similar to FotH, which I suspect the author has read, but similar situations also occurred in actual history. So Ronald and Mairi end up in the Edinburgh Castle gaol.
Mairi wastes away and dies of consumption, and for a while there I thought Ronald was going to go willingly to his death on the scaffold. But no! He is moved to Newcastle instead, and who should be there but Wylie, who is deeply grieved by the news of Mairi's death. He confesses his love for her to Ronald, who only replies, 'of course you loved her, how could you help it?' Wylie also comes armed with rope and a file, ready to help Ronald break out of gaol. Ronald at first protests: he can't possibly let Wylie do this, and anyway he wants to die. But Wylie replies that Mairi would have wanted him to live, whereupon Ronald proposes that Wylie run away with him to America! He can't possibly want to continue serving in the British Army after this, anyway. And so Ronald breaks out of jail and, after a few further adventures, they get on a ship together. The end!
Obviously this is a very slashy ending, which is all well and good, but the thing is, most of the earlier relationship building is het--aside from the Wylie/Mairi, Ronald and Mairi are portrayed as still in the first flush of love. So it felt a little imbalanced that way. Also, Mairi didn't have to die--she could have lived, and they could all have had a happy poly life together! Hmm, I am now wondering if there exists a third Jacobite novel where the Ewen-analogue dies, and the Alison-analogue and the Keith-analogue end up married... Oh, and I should perhaps also say that the blurb lets you know that when Ronald and Mairi's noble deer-hound Angus dies, no reader's eyes will be dry! I confess that my eyes were indeed not dry when the dog died.
Another of the slew of recent Swedish historical novels that looked interesting. This one is cross-class f/f set in 1938 in the dilapidated spa town of Borgholm on the island of Öland. I don't know much about the time/place, but I thought it had a very good sense of setting, with lots of specific detail of both place and attitudes. It's litfic and not genre romance; the authors are a married couple where one of them did the drawings in the book, which match up nicely with the impressionistic language. The two main characters don't end up together and never see each other again, but only meet during a few intense days which completely change the course of both of their lives. I enjoyed it!
The Fiery Cross by Lady Kitty Vincent (1930)
A Jacobite historical, which I originally hoped would be about Margaret and David Ogilvy, whose descendant the author is. Instead it follows another newly married Ogilvy couple (Ronald and Mairi) through the '45, though Margaret and David do appear. This book is definitely worth reading, even if I think it suffers in comparison to Flight of the Heron--the prose is not as good, I think, and she's not quite as good at...setting the whole thing up so that it hangs together well, I guess? But some scenes I enjoyed were Mairi getting her dilemma between honour and duty, when she is asked to get information by conversing with a enemy guest (which breaks the law of hospitality!) Also the scene where she, Lady Ogilvy and Lady Kilmarnock drink General Hawley under the table, thus making him late for the battle of Falkirk, is great. I appreciated the scenes of women interacting!
The book compares interestingly to FotH, because in a way it's a variation on the story of Ewen and Alison and Keith, with a different ending. Because yes, there's a Keith analogue: the young subaltern Tony Wylie, who is wounded and captured at Falkirk, is nursed by Mairi, and falls head-over-heels in love with her. Wylie has a strong sense of honour in common with Keith, but they are otherwise not similar, since Wylie is young and idealistic. Okay, I'm going to spoil the ending here, because this book is not accessible online and there is currently only one copy of it on abebooks.com, which sells for $70, so I don't think a lot of you are going to read it. So I suppose it is fairly predictable that when Ronald and Mairi are about to be captured after Culloden, Wylie is going to be with the party of redcoats! He protests against the senior officer who is about to kill Ronald and (probably) rape Mairi, and on account of his good family connections, he prevails. This is of course similar to FotH, which I suspect the author has read, but similar situations also occurred in actual history. So Ronald and Mairi end up in the Edinburgh Castle gaol.
Mairi wastes away and dies of consumption, and for a while there I thought Ronald was going to go willingly to his death on the scaffold. But no! He is moved to Newcastle instead, and who should be there but Wylie, who is deeply grieved by the news of Mairi's death. He confesses his love for her to Ronald, who only replies, 'of course you loved her, how could you help it?' Wylie also comes armed with rope and a file, ready to help Ronald break out of gaol. Ronald at first protests: he can't possibly let Wylie do this, and anyway he wants to die. But Wylie replies that Mairi would have wanted him to live, whereupon Ronald proposes that Wylie run away with him to America! He can't possibly want to continue serving in the British Army after this, anyway. And so Ronald breaks out of jail and, after a few further adventures, they get on a ship together. The end!
Obviously this is a very slashy ending, which is all well and good, but the thing is, most of the earlier relationship building is het--aside from the Wylie/Mairi, Ronald and Mairi are portrayed as still in the first flush of love. So it felt a little imbalanced that way. Also, Mairi didn't have to die--she could have lived, and they could all have had a happy poly life together! Hmm, I am now wondering if there exists a third Jacobite novel where the Ewen-analogue dies, and the Alison-analogue and the Keith-analogue end up married... Oh, and I should perhaps also say that the blurb lets you know that when Ronald and Mairi's noble deer-hound Angus dies, no reader's eyes will be dry! I confess that my eyes were indeed not dry when the dog died.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-11-18 07:44 pm (UTC)I also had a double-take on seeing the title for that reason.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-11-18 07:53 pm (UTC)But yeah, those aren't the first things that come up when you're searching for that title in the US. :-/
(no subject)
Date: 2023-11-20 04:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-11-20 05:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-11-18 07:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-11-18 07:59 pm (UTC)Considering how much the modern Ku Klux Klan was shaped by Thomas Dixon Jr.'s The Clansman (1905)/D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), I wonder if it was imported deliberately from the Scottish tradition in one of those heroic, romantic callbacks that nationalists go for. [edit] Ding ding ding! Jeez.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-11-18 08:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-11-18 08:07 pm (UTC)It's like the runic alphabets that were just minding their own business.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-11-18 08:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-11-18 08:31 pm (UTC)I like that designation.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-11-18 09:08 pm (UTC)Echoing
(no subject)
Date: 2023-11-18 09:20 pm (UTC)I am extremely sorry about providing cause for recoil.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-11-18 09:23 pm (UTC)