Rose Nicholson - Andrew Greig

 

Historical fiction has never been quite the same since Hillary Mantel got her hands on it! The breadth of her ambition and achievement threatened to let everything else pale in comparison. Or so I thought. Then I read Andrew Greig’s Rose Nicholson. I’m sure that for during the duration of my reading I began thinking in the Scottish dialect! So palpable and authentic is his narrative that I was almost immediately enveloped in the 16th century Scotland, grappling with the Reformation and crises of faith in the same way that I lived alongside Thomas Cromwell in Mantel’s trilogy.

William Fowler is our hero and protagonist, student at Saint Andrews, learning to think in Latin and on his feet. As with all the great storytellers,  pivotal, sliding door moments perhaps, open up the novel for what follows. A chance encounter with a redheaded youth and the lending of a knife is one catalyst. Another encounter with a fisher girl and a subsequent friendship with her brother set all wheels in motion for this entertaining and immersive novel of romance and the conflicts that religion can provoke in the hearts of men. Throughout the novel Greig strikes an almost perfect balance between the two strands of the story. Fowler, no doubt based on the real William Fowler, is very real. His responses and philosophies lead the reader to ponder whether throughout time immemorial youngsters follow similar patterns of thought, action, inaction and reaction.

I loved Fowler’s observations as to the nature of History - 

‘For the most past History goes by us like the breeze, lightly brushing at our sleeve as if ‘Come along! Come along!’ We notice in the distance it is bending the corn, and observe on the high road it has shaped trees to the east. News comes to us days later of armies meeting, a royal birth, an execution, the plague in another city. We meet in the street, talk about it, and pass on to our more pressing interests of the day - our sick child, a ship arriving with new merchandise, the by-law from  the Council setting the hours for the water pumps, the cutting of silver content in our coins, that attractive smile across the street…’

It is as if nothing changes fundamentally throughout history in terms of the way people deal with their lives. It is the specifics that change dramatically. 

It is one thing to tell a story, but to tell it with such exacting and flowing prose adds a sustaining satisfaction to the book. One of those novels where there is a sense, need even, to read sections aloud and let the words tumble off your tongue for the sheer exhilaration of someone who has assembled all the right words in all the right places at all the right times. The research is thorough, convincing and, for me, the real measure of its worth is whether it has me hungry for more. So I went a googling, for William Fowler and James VI. But not all the characters are googleable. The titular Rose is of the imagination but her power to convey the restrictions ‘enjoyed’ by sixteenth century women will cause many a reader to ponder the relative freedoms women have acquired over the centuries.

I was most grateful for the glossary of Scottish words. At times I felt I was learning a new language, very willingly so, for to describe myself as ‘doolie’ or ‘glaikit’ seems so much more interesting than merely melancholy or foolish. 

It’s a book for the historically curious, and it’s a book for the word lover and a book for those who simply revel in good writing. It’s rich in historic detail and allows us a window into a time when life was precarious and looking over your shoulder was as part of life the  as wearing a face mask has become now. 

To my shame this is the first Andrew Greig book I have read. Yet I see he has a significant back catalogue of fiction, non fiction and poetry. Part of me shudders; but another part of me is very excited to have so much work to add to my TBR lists.

My thanks to Ana McLaughlin and Elizabeth Masters at riverrun for a gifted copy.