Cornflower Books

On the wishlist

     A few more additions to my wishlist based on gleanings from various sources.

To start with - and I'm very pleased about this - Bloomsbury are re-printing the second of Joyce Dennys' Henrietta books. The first one came out last summer and was of course trumpeted loudly here, and Henrietta Sees it Through: More News from the Home Front which is every bit as good, will be appearing in smart Bloomsbury Group livery a couple of months from now.

So Much To Tell is a biography by Valerie Grove of Kaye Webb, editor and driving force behind Puffin Books, and wife of Ronald Searle. Publisher of Roald Dahl, Joan Aiken and Noel Streatfeild among many others, Kaye Webb founded the Puffin Club (were you a member?), and though her business life was a huge success, sadly her personal life was not, as this review explains.

     This obituary of Penelope Hughes-Hallett led me to her book The Immortal Dinner: A Famous Evening of Genius and Laughter in Literary London 1817 which I hadn't come across before. It sounds wonderful - have you read it?

    

     Lastly today, more recommendations via Twitter, and specifically from the collected tweets of Alexander McCall Smith! Scoot over the list of famous motorcyclists (should not George Orwell be there?) and scroll down a bit and you'll see mention of Roger Scruton's books Beauty and Understanding Music: Philosophy and Interpretation. They've gone on my list.

Second sight

    

     To say that Susan Fletcher's novel Corrag is the story of the Glencoe massacre as told by a witch-woman awaiting execution, is to convey nothing of the involuted complexity and beauty of this book, or of its limpid quality, like a cloudscape reflected in water - subtly shaded, shifting, depths within depths.

    Corrag has fled from the north of England and taunts of "witch" and "hag", riding alone through Scotland and eventually seeking sanctuary in the Highland valley of Glencoe, home to a fierce and feared sept of the clan MacDonald. Her isolation suits her well at first but when her presence is discovered by members of the clan and her skills as a herbalist and healer bring her into close contact with their chief, The MacIain, she is accepted and made welcome. Her existence is still a harsh and solitary one, but this strange young woman with the ghost-grey eyes finds it is her heart rather than her head which guides her, never moreso than in the early morning of 13th. February, 1692, when soldiers receiving hospitality from the MacDonalds turned on their hosts and killed them, committing the heinous crime of murder under trust.

    The book consists of Corrag telling her story while imprisoned in Inverary gaol awaiting trial by fire, her account interspersed with letters to his wife from her prison visitor, Charles Leslie, an Irishman and Jacobite who is there to find evidence of the Orange King William's hand in the massacre. At first he is wary of Corrag and finds her talk rambling, but gradually trust builds until the eventual outcome is not as the reader first suspects.

    Not everyone will take to Corrag's as narrative voice: "her talking is like a river - running on and bursting into smaller rivers which lead nowhere", as Leslie says, but I found it mesmerising: distinctive and entirely fitting. Her account is like a tone poem in prose, individual words and phrases its constantly recapitulated themes, its pace and rhythm providing structure and scope. I found its stillness stilled my mind, while the book's strong sense of place held me firmly. I loved it and I applaud Susan Fletcher for this very original historical novel.