Tag: Scotland

The Cromarty Library Circle by Shona MacLean

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My experience of Shona MacLean’s work has so far been limited to her historical thriller, The Bookseller of Inverness, set in Scotland in the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite Rising (and published under the name SG MacLean). Her newest novel, The Cromarty Library Circle, is very different – the only similarity is that it’s also set in Scotland.

Cromarty is a town in the Scottish Highlands, situated at the tip of the Black Isle. The story takes place in 1831, when a group of people get together to form a circulating library and discuss which books they should order for it. They’re a select group, referred to by the town clockmaker (who has not been invited, despite being better read than they are) as ‘the great and the good’. They include Sir William and Charlotte Mackenzie, the local laird and his wife; her best friend, Rachel who is married to the minister, Alasdair Mackay; the previous minister, Micah Fraser, now retired; the hotel keeper Mrs Cameron and her son Ludovic, who works in a bank; two spinster sisters, the Misses Rose; a newly arrived schoolteacher, John Learmonth; an antiquarian, Isaac Fordyce, and the owner of a rope factory, Willie Hossack.

If you feel overwhelmed by this list, I can tell you that there are even more characters – those outside of the library circle – who also play a part in the story. Maybe it would have been better if I’d read this book in physical form and could easily turn back to the character list at the beginning, but I read it on my Kindle and struggled to keep track of who was who. It didn’t help that we switch from one perspective to another every few pages, rather than being given time to get to know one character before meeting another. Once I eventually managed to settle into the book and keep the many residents of Cromarty straight in my head, though, I found a lot to interest me.

In terms of plot, not much actually happens in the first half of the book. MacLean takes her time setting the scene and introducing the characters, focusing on all the gossip, snobbery, rivalries and minor scandals that go along with being part of a small 19th century community with a clearly defined social structure. I was strongly reminded of Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. The drama is saved for later in the book, when the troubled marriage between Sir William and Charlotte Mackenzie reaches breaking point, the secret past of schoolmaster John Learmonth is revealed, and the people of Cromarty have finally had enough of the arrogant, bullying attitude of the ropemaker’s son, Farquhar Hossack. I was more invested in the story by this point, so I think, for me, it was worth persevering through the slow, confusing beginning.

The lives of the characters play out against the backdrop of wider political and social changes affecting Scotland and the world as a whole. One of these issues is the debate around the abolition of slavery; this is of particular significance to our story because Sir William owns a plantation in the Caribbean and another character, Hester, is a formerly enslaved woman from Demerara who now works as a servant at the Camerons’ hotel. There’s also a lot of discussion in Cromarty of the Reform Act about to be passed in parliament which will extend the right to vote (although still not to women or most working class men). Then there’s the cholera epidemic gradually moving closer and closer to Cromarty and we even hear about the recent Polish uprising against Russia through the character of Stanislas, the clockmaker’s apprentice. The novel touches on so many different things that I felt the library circle storyline got a bit lost in the background, although it serves its purpose of bringing the central group of characters together now and then.

I had a mixture of feelings about this book, then, but in the end I enjoyed getting to know the people of Cromarty. I’ll look out for Shona MacLean’s next book, but I still have one of her earlier ones, The Redemption of Alexander Seaton, waiting to be read.

Thanks to Quercus Books for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Night Hag by Hester Musson

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Have you ever suffered from sleep paralysis – the feeling that you’re awake but can’t move your body? Maybe it’s accompanied by a sensation of pressure on your chest, as if something is pinning you to the bed, or the impression that someone is in your room. It’s more common than you may think – many people will experience it at least once or twice in their life – and it inspired the famous painting, The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli. In fact, the word ‘nightmare’ itself (originally hyphenated as night-mare) comes from the idea of a mythological female demon (a ‘mare’ or ‘hag’) sitting on the chest of a sleeping person. Someone who has had a lot of experience of these terrifying night-mares is Lil Vincent in Hester Musson’s new novel, The Night Hag.

It’s 1886 and Lil Vincent has been free of the night-mares, as she calls them, for many years, but recently they have started again and are becoming increasingly intense. Frightened and desperate, Lil writes a letter to the renowned Edinburgh doctor, Dr Lachlan. Relieved to be able to open her heart to somebody at last, even somebody she’s never met, she finds herself telling him all about her childhood, growing up as the daughter of a medium who forced her to participate in fraudulent séances.

Her childhood has left scars that still persist, even today as she tries to build a new life for herself as an archaeologist. Lil is assisting Nils and Effie Jensen with a dig on what they believe is a Bronze Age burial mound in the fictional Scottish village of Pitcarden. When they come across two cinerary urns and a bronze knife, Lil thinks they are on the verge of a significant discovery, but it seems that the villagers are unhappy with their presence and they may not be allowed to complete their excavations.

This is the second novel I’ve read by Hester Musson, the first being The Beholders. Although I found this one a more original and intriguing story, I did have some of the same problems I had with the other book – mainly that the first half is very slow and it took me a long time to become immersed in it. It didn’t help that there are several different threads to the story – Lil’s sleep disturbances, the séances and the archaeological dig – and they all feel very separate, never really coming together until the end.

Once I did get into the story, I found it interesting. There’s a good sense of time and place, with the community of rural Pitcarden steeped in superstition and folklore. The second half of the book drew me in much more than the first half did, and I began to have a lot of sympathy for Lil as she discovers that almost everyone in her life has been lying to her or deceiving her in one way or another. The way one particular character betrays her trust is quite shocking and Lil is deeply affected by it all. But although it’s a dark book, there are some glimmers of hope in the final chapters and the ending is satisfying, so I’m glad I persevered with it.

If you read this book and enjoy it, I would also recommend reading The Hill in the Dark Grove by Liam Higginson, another book about archaeology and superstition in a rural setting. It has a similar tone and atmosphere and I think it may appeal to the same readers.

Thanks to 4th Estate and William Collins for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Three Witches by Elena Collins

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I’ve read other novels inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth, but this is the first one that has focused specifically on the characters of the three witches. Although Shakespeare’s witches aren’t thought to have been based on any individual people (he took the idea from Holinshed’s Chronicles which refers to the ‘Weird Sisters’ or ‘nymphs or fairies’), Elena Collins imagines them here as three young women growing up in 11th century Scotland. They are the daughters of Sidheag, a wise woman or healer, and their names are Isobel, Ysenda and Merraid.

In modern day Bristol, Ruthie Reed is attending an audition for a new documentary about Macbeth and the historical Mac Bethad mac Findláech, King of Alba (Scotland), on whom the play is based. Acting is all Ruthie has ever wanted to do, but her career seems to be going nowhere and she’s desperate for a decent role. When she’s offered the part of one of the three witches in the documentary, she hopes this is the opportunity she’s been waiting for and will lead to bigger things. On arriving at Forres in the north of Scotland, however, things don’t go quite according to plan. The cast and crew are plagued with bad luck and disaster – and then Ruthie herself starts to catch glimpses of a mysterious young woman who seems to provide a link between past and present.

Ruthie’s story alternates with the story of Isobel and her sisters, left alone in the world after their mother’s death. Isobel, the youngest, has inherited her skills with herbs and potions, as well as her ability to see the future in the flames of the fire, but in a world where women who are different are viewed with suspicion, these talents could be a curse rather than a blessing. When Isobel falls in love with Lulach, Mac Bethad’s stepson, she believes she has found the security she needs, but Lulach’s mother, Gruoch, has other ideas…

As with most dual time period novels, there was one narrative that I enjoyed more than the other, and in this case it was the historical one. I liked the way the focus was on the fictional characters of Isobel, Ysenda and Merraid and their daily lives in the village rather than on the real historical figures such as Mac Bethad and Gruoch, who appear only occasionally. It was easy to see where Isobel’s story was heading, particularly as we get a hint of it in the prologue, but that didn’t make it any less impactful. Although widespread witch trials and burnings peaked in Scotland in the 16th and 17th centuries, women were obviously being accused of witchcraft much earlier than that, so it’s not impossible that the historical Macbeth could have met women like Isobel and her two sisters – and this is something Ruthie and her friends in the modern day narrative begin to research, believing that the witches (both in the play and in history) deserve to be given more attention after centuries of being interpreted through the lens of misogyny.

I liked Ruthie and enjoyed following the filming of the documentary, but it did feel that her storyline was there mainly to add more context to the historical one and I didn’t become quite as invested in her chapters as I did in Isobel’s. The supernatural element of the book is well done – although it’s not a time travel or timeslip novel, there are moments where past and present seem to merge – but I wasn’t convinced that everyone else would have been so ready to believe Ruthie when she told them what she’d been experiencing! There’s also a romance for Ruthie which seemed to happen very suddenly and not with the person I’d expected it would be with.

Overall, I found this an interesting, engaging read. It’s the first I’ve read by Elena Collins, so I’m looking forward to reading some of her other books.

Thanks to Boldwood Books for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Love and Other Poisons by Lesley McDowell

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I wasn’t sure whether to read this new novel by Lesley McDowell as I didn’t get on very well with her last one, Clairmont. Although I liked her writing, I struggled with the structure, the way it would jump from one timeline to another and the lack of context to explain characters’ backgrounds and relationships. I like to give authors a second chance, though, and this book, based on a true crime, did sound intriguing…

In 1857, Madeleine Smith is put on trial in Glasgow for the murder of her lover, Emile L’Angelier. After listening to witnesses and examining the evidence, the jury, still unable to decide whether she is guilty, give a verdict of ‘Not Proven’ and Madeleine is set free. Seventy years later, Harry Townsend, an aspiring filmmaker, believes he has tracked down the woman who used to be Madeleine Smith, now living in New York as a respectable elderly widow, Mrs Sheehy. Harry wants to interview her about Emile’s murder, but when Mrs Sheehy refuses to cooperate, Harry is forced to question whether he has got the right person after all.

We move back and forth between 1857 and 1927 throughout the book, but I found it much easier to follow the plot and understand what was going on than I did with Clairmont, which was a relief! The first few sections were interesting as they set the scene and introduced the characters, but then we settled into the 1857 period and the story of Madeleine’s relationship with Emile and my attention began to waver. There’s a lot of focus on their sexual encounters, some of which are described quite explicitly (I understood why later on), and I started to get impatient waiting for the murder to happen. It does happen eventually, of course, and I was glad I stuck with the book as I found the aftermath of the murder and Madeleine’s trial much more compelling to read about.

Although I did have some sympathy for Madeleine’s position – Emile had become very manipulative and controlling, threatening her with blackmail – I never really warmed to her as a character and I felt that she could have handled the situation differently. I also didn’t like the way she implicated not just the maid Christina, who arranged meetings and passed letters between Madeleine and Emile, but also her own twelve-year-old sister, Janet. None of the other characters in the book were very likeable either; the way Harry Townsend treated the older Madeleine was horrible and I hoped he would never get to make his film! There’s a twist in that particular storyline which I hadn’t guessed, but which seems to fit well with the historical facts.

I’ve never read about the Madeleine Smith case before, although it seems to be well documented, and I wonder whether my perception of this book would have been different if I already knew some of the details before I started to read. Anyway, it was all new to me and I was fascinated by the author’s note at the end of the book where she explained the origins of the novel – the idea was suggested to her by fellow author Emma Tennant who had wanted to work on it as a joint project before her death – and how she chose to interpret some of the historical evidence. She discusses her theory regarding the murder method and weapon (this is where the strong sexual content earlier in the novel suddenly made sense), and how she tried to piece together the clues we have regarding Madeleine’s later life after the trial.

I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would, having seen a lot of very mixed early reviews – but at the same time, I do understand some of the criticisms. Still, I found it interesting to learn about a true crime I was previously unaware of and which has inspired a large number of other novels, plays and adaptations.

Thanks to Headline/Wildfire for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 11/20 for 20 Books of Summer 2025.

The Mourning Necklace by Kate Foster

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Some people become famous for their remarkable lives and others for their remarkable deaths. Maggie Dickson is one of the latter – although technically, it wasn’t really a death at all! Known as ‘Half-Hangit Maggie’, Maggie Dickson was sentenced to death in 1724 and hanged in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket. As her family gather in a nearby tavern, they are shocked to look up and see Maggie herself standing at the door. Other than a rope burn around her neck, she seems unharmed by her ordeal and determined to make the most of the second chance she’s been given. But while everyone has questions for her – how did she survive and how did it feel to be so close to death? – there’s only one question that matters now to Maggie: will they try to hang her again?

Maggie Dickson was a real person and the story of her survival is a true one, still remembered three hundred years later; Maggie Dickson’s Pub in Edinburgh is named after her and she is often featured in Edinburgh walking tours. In The Mourning Necklace, Kate Foster builds a fictional story around this amazing woman and her near-death experience, using her imagination to fill in the gaps around the historical facts.

The year before she receives her death sentence, Maggie is living with her parents and younger sister, Joan, in Fisherrow, a small fishing community in Musselburgh, Scotland. The Dickson family have made their living from fish for generations, but Maggie doesn’t see a future for herself as a fishwife and wants something different out of life. Her marriage to Patrick Spencer, a perfume trader, seems to offer the opportunities she’s looking for, but when things don’t go according to plan, she takes control of her own fate and sets out alone for London. However, she gets no further than Kelso in the Scottish Borders before she is forced to make a series of decisions that will lead her back to Edinburgh and the gallows.

I enjoyed Kate Foster’s last novel, The King’s Witches, but I thought this one was much better and I connected with Maggie Dickson in a way that I didn’t with the women in the other book. There’s also a strong cast of supporting characters, including Joan, whose actions as a sister disappoint Maggie over and over again; Mrs Rose, who betrays Maggie for reasons of her own but at the same time is one of the few people to offer her friendship; and the wicked Dr McTavish, one of the book’s villains. All of these people have key parts to play in Maggie’s story, which is divided into three sections: the events leading up to her arrest, the hanging itself, and the path her life follows after she escapes death.

Maggie’s crime is something that will surprise a lot of modern readers as, although she unknowingly broke the laws of the time, today we wouldn’t really consider her to have committed a crime at all (at least not if Kate Foster’s interpretation is close to the truth). At first I assumed that as the death sentence was usually given as ‘hanged by the neck until dead’, it would be decided that Maggie had not served the sentence and would be hanged again. However, it wasn’t as straightforward as that because it seems that the sentence at that time was simply ‘hanged by the neck’ and the additional words were added later to avoid ambiguity in cases like hers.

This is a fascinating novel, with some great descriptions of 18th century Musselburgh, Edinburgh and Kelso. We also learn a little bit about the tea smuggling which was widespread down the east coast of Scotland and England due to high taxes on imported tea. I loved it and must find time to go back and read Kate Foster’s first book, The Maiden.

Thanks to Pan Macmillan/Mantle for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Edinburgh Murders by Catriona McPherson

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This is the second book in Catriona McPherson’s new mystery series set in 1940s Edinburgh, but if you haven’t read the first one (In Place of Fear) it shouldn’t be a problem as both books also work as standalone novels. Those of you who have read In Place of Fear will remember that it introduced us to Helen Crowther, a welfare officer (formally a ‘medical almoner’) in the newly formed National Health Service. This second novel again follows Helen as she carries out her duties for the NHS and becomes embroiled in another mystery.

The novel opens with Helen taking a patient to the public bath house on Caledonian Crescent. As she helps the woman to wash herself, they become aware of a disturbance in one of the men’s cubicles. A man has been found boiled to death in a bath of scalding hot water – but how? Why would he continue to lie there as the water got hotter and hotter? And how could it have reached such a high temperature anyway? Even more worrying for Helen is the fact that she has spotted her father, Mack, at the baths, but when she speaks to him at home later, he tries to deny that he was there. As the bodies of more men are found around Edinburgh, all killed in equally unusual, gruesome ways, Helen becomes convinced that her father knows more about the deaths than he’s admitting to.

When I reviewed In Place of Fear, I mentioned that the mystery only formed a small part of the book, with more focus being on the historical element and the work of an almoner in the NHS. This book is the opposite – the mystery is much stronger, with the first murder discovered in the opening chapter and several more following soon after. The murders are carried out using imaginative methods and are obviously linked in some way, so Helen needs to decide exactly what the link is in order to identify the killer. It’s quite a dark book, but although the descriptions of the murders are unpleasant, they’re not too gory or graphic.

As with the first novel, there’s a great sense of time and place, bringing the atmosphere of Edinburgh’s Fountainbridge area to life. McPherson uses a lot of dialect and there’s a glossary at the front for those readers who need help with the Scottish words and phrases. I found that there was less time spent describing Helen’s welfare work, though, which was one of the things I thought was particularly interesting in the first novel. Still, I enjoyed meeting her again, as well as the other recurring characters such as the two doctors she works for and her younger sister, known as Teenie. There’s also the beginnings of a possible romance for Helen with her friend Billy, who works at the morgue and helps her investigate the mystery and I’ll look forward to seeing how this develops in the next book.

I still haven’t read any of Catriona McPherson’s other novels, although she seems to have written a lot of them! I should probably investigate while I’m waiting for a third Helen Crowther book.

Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Clear by Carys Davies – #ReadingWales25

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Clear is a book I hadn’t really considered reading until it appeared on the Walter Scott Prize longlist in February and I was pleased that I was still able to get a copy through NetGalley. Carys Davies is also a Welsh author, which is perfect for Reading Wales Month ’25, hosted this year by Karen at BookerTalk.

Clear is a beautifully written novella set in 1843 and telling the story of a friendship that forms between two men who should be enemies. John Ferguson is one of many evangelical ministers who have broken away from their church to form the Free Church of Scotland. Having given up his job and his home to establish this new church, John is struggling financially and, out of desperation, accepts an offer of work from a landowner who wants him to travel to a remote Scottish island and evict the last remaining tenant from the land. Forced evictions like these, known as Clearances, have been happening all over the Scottish Highlands as landlords remove the people living on their estates so that they can use the land for other purposes such as sheep farming. It’s a traumatic and often cruel process and not something John is looking forward to being part of.

The man John will have to evict is Ivar, who has lived alone on his island in the far north of Scotland since the deaths of his remaining family members. It’s an isolated life, but Ivar is content and has his horse, Pegi, for company. One day, he finds a man unconscious on the beach under the cliffs and takes him to his home to nurse him back to health. This is John Ferguson, who has met with an accident soon after arriving on the island. Ivar finds a picture of John’s wife, Mary, in his belongings and becomes infatuated with her, the first woman he’s seen for a long time – but as the injured man begins to recover, Ivar switches his affections to John himself. He has no idea why John is there, however, and because the two men speak different languages, he’s unable to ask.

Language forms an important part of the novel. Ivar speaks only Norn, a now extinct language once spoken in Shetland and Orkney, and John speaks English with a small amount of Scots. Over the course of the book, we see how two men unable to communicate in words are still able to bond and connect until eventually they do begin to learn each other’s language. In her author’s note Davies explains how the novel was inspired by Jakob Jakobsen’s Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland and she scatters Norn words throughout the book with a glossary at the back. Norn appears to have been a fascinating language; John is surprised to discover how descriptive it is and how many different words there are for mist, fog, wind and other types of weather.

Some parts of the novel are written from the perspective of Mary, John’s wife, who becomes concerned about the work her husband has been sent to do – she’s heard that the evictions can be unpleasant and violent – and decides to follow him to the island. I enjoyed reading Mary’s story and thought her sections of the book perfectly complemented Ivar and John’s. Mary’s thread of the novel comes together with the others near the end, and although I’m not going to tell you how the book ends I can say that it wasn’t what I expected but I was quite happy with it!

Carys Davies’ writing is beautiful and also very readable and I found this a quick, absorbing read. For such a short book, there’s a lot packed inside it. It reminded me a lot of Claire Keegan’s novella Small Things Like These, so if you enjoyed one book I would recommend trying the other.

Thanks to Granta Publications for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.