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A review by justabean_reads
Fayne by Ann-Marie MacDonald
4.5
(But it's weird that it happened twice meme re: historical fiction with a non-binary main character and magical vibes. Though both this and The Cure for Drowning book a radically different run at those ideas.)
Our hero(ine) in this case grew up in the Scottish borderlands (or the English borderlands), in the late 19th century, raised by an absent-mindedly affectionate (or conflict avoidant to the point of infamy) father, whose barony mostly consists of a patch of moorland, a standing stone, an unremarkable old manor, and about five servant. He married an American heiress, who allegedly died giving birth to the protagonist, but might also be a protagonist herself. We read her letters intercut with her daughter's narrative, then flashback to her meeting with the the baron, and life in Edinburgh and on the more. Meanwhile, the child is trying to figure out her place in the world, when she wants to be a medical doctor, and her father has finally noticed that she should probably be wearing like dresses and stuff, and is also thinking of marrying again. But what happened to her mother? Is she actually a young lady, or something else? Why is her dead older brother haunting her? What is going on with the old man of all work and his buckets of muck from the bog?
It's a long book. I ran into my brothers in law reading it when it came out, and their feeling as of about a third of the way in was that it could've been a good deal shorter. I'm assuming they'd just hit the flashback about the mother, which seemed to just repeat the information we'd been getting from her letters. And to a certain extent I agree that maybe the letters might have been cut? But on the other hand, I really appreciated the jarring changes in style between our pedantic aristocratic main character, and her chatty Irish American mother. In any case, once past that first long flashback, the alternating timelines and the reasons therefore become increasingly clear, and increasingly tense as the book continued. The reader starts to realise that pretty much everyone is lying all the time. Will the protagonist figure out the truth in time? Who's actually alive or dead? Which of the multiple orphans have which established characters as parents?
There's a delightful mix of playing in the style of long Victorian gothic novels (several of which, especially Jane Eyre, get name checked), mixing with the grim reality of what the Victorian medical system would do to women, non-binary people, gay men, and on and on and on. There are the joys of science and the work engine of the Scottish Enlightenment discovering fossils and describing electricity and bridging the Firth of Forth, and there's the way that the baron can wield his power with no one questioning him. There's also something much much older on the moor. I liked the way MacDonald balanced all of this, and didn't shy away from the brutality or the beauty. I maybe felt like the borderlands = gender confusion metaphor was laid on a bit thick, but it somewhat went with the meta tone of some of the book. I'm really not scratching the surface of how many characters and relationships there are, and how much your perception of characters change over the course of the book.
It's an absolute voyage, and I'm so happy I bought a ticket.
Our hero(ine) in this case grew up in the Scottish borderlands (or the English borderlands), in the late 19th century, raised by an absent-mindedly affectionate (or conflict avoidant to the point of infamy) father, whose barony mostly consists of a patch of moorland, a standing stone, an unremarkable old manor, and about five servant. He married an American heiress, who allegedly died giving birth to the protagonist, but might also be a protagonist herself. We read her letters intercut with her daughter's narrative, then flashback to her meeting with the the baron, and life in Edinburgh and on the more. Meanwhile, the child is trying to figure out her place in the world, when she wants to be a medical doctor, and her father has finally noticed that she should probably be wearing like dresses and stuff, and is also thinking of marrying again. But what happened to her mother? Is she actually a young lady, or something else? Why is her dead older brother haunting her? What is going on with the old man of all work and his buckets of muck from the bog?
It's a long book. I ran into my brothers in law reading it when it came out, and their feeling as of about a third of the way in was that it could've been a good deal shorter. I'm assuming they'd just hit the flashback about the mother, which seemed to just repeat the information we'd been getting from her letters. And to a certain extent I agree that maybe the letters might have been cut? But on the other hand, I really appreciated the jarring changes in style between our pedantic aristocratic main character, and her chatty Irish American mother. In any case, once past that first long flashback, the alternating timelines and the reasons therefore become increasingly clear, and increasingly tense as the book continued. The reader starts to realise that pretty much everyone is lying all the time. Will the protagonist figure out the truth in time? Who's actually alive or dead? Which of the multiple orphans have which established characters as parents?
There's a delightful mix of playing in the style of long Victorian gothic novels (several of which, especially Jane Eyre, get name checked), mixing with the grim reality of what the Victorian medical system would do to women, non-binary people, gay men, and on and on and on. There are the joys of science and the work engine of the Scottish Enlightenment discovering fossils and describing electricity and bridging the Firth of Forth, and there's the way that the baron can wield his power with no one questioning him. There's also something much much older on the moor. I liked the way MacDonald balanced all of this, and didn't shy away from the brutality or the beauty. I maybe felt like the borderlands = gender confusion metaphor was laid on a bit thick, but it somewhat went with the meta tone of some of the book. I'm really not scratching the surface of how many characters and relationships there are, and how much your perception of characters change over the course of the book.
It's an absolute voyage, and I'm so happy I bought a ticket.