Malcolm MacDonald (1)

This book is the last in a four novel series of the Stevenson family. The novel tells the story of Abigail Stevenson, a very different woman of her time, interested in being a famous writer, finds herself immersed in the more sordid, but fascinating part of life, including sex, money and greed. A very passionate story of a women who knows what she wants even if it is not the proper thing to do. Malcom Macdonald is a wonderful storyteller and depicts an era that was not all prim and proper. This tale gives us an idea into the early world of writing, publishing and women's rights. Abigail and Annie are both very strong and enigmatic women in a time when women virtually had no say. A wonderful conclusion to this engrossing family saga.… (más)

Quick Summary: Beginning in 1839 at the beginning of the Victorian era, the story involves an ambitious man, John Stevenson, and the shrewd, equally ambitious Nora Telling. Together they take over a working mill and the building of a railway tunnel in Northern England. With their friends Walter and Arabella Thornton, they create their own dynasty.

While a well-written novel, there were moments where I became bogged down. The descriptions of the building of the Summit Tunnel between Manchester and Leeds were tedious at best, and I feel only to be appreciated with those with an engineering background. I did appreciate MacDonald's attention to details, I merely did not care so much to observe the laying of every brick. Call me a Philistine.

MacDonald brings to the page the ugliness of poverty, the sweat and grime of hard work, the ruthlessness of ambition. John Stevenson, while an observant, good-hearted man, will not allow his emotions to override good sense. Upon meeting a starving family, he offers the father work, but no charity. John's reasoning is that employment is the way out of starvation and the many privations that go along with poverty.

Nora is much of the same mind. Upon witnessing the plight of a beggar child, she states that if charity were done away with altogether, the evil of children begging would be done away with entirely. When John argues that children would die then, Nora pragmatically declares that they'd die anyway. It's not heartlessness on Nora's part. Nora is a realist, coming from a world rife with poverty, incest, and the death of her own small siblings. For her there was no tender upbringing. She was not sheltered from the ugliness of life.

Which calls to question why she is friends with Arabella Thornton, a prim, proper lady from a middle-class background. Pious to the point of absurdity at times, she is the very example of how virtue can be ones downfall. Though kind, she is prideful, arrogant, and class conscious. Her initial meeting with John is witness to this, when she tries several times to put him in his place as a man of lower caste. Instead, he puts her firmly in her place, with the idea that the world is not so cut and dry as she once believed. This makes her uncomfortable with John for some time, but eventually she comes to admire him greatly for his nobility and strength, those often associated with the upper classes.

This brings us to Walter Thornton, her husband, of the upper classes but with absolutely no backbone. John and Nora mock his many weaknesses. His main weakness, however, seems to be a sexual addiction, and Walter has a hard time coming to terms with Arabella's frigidity. Marital relations with Arabella he finds greatly disappointing, and he both respects her and despises her for her coldness. Upon seeing her in her Christmas dress of pale blue,calm and cool, he thinks in admiring terms of how like an iceberg she looks. This could go in many different ways, but it seems that sex is never far from Walter's mind. He creates scenarios in his mind to make up for the lack of excitement. In one instance, Walter pretends that he's having sex with a corpse while making love to Arabella. We witness Walter's degeneration until the close of the novel, where Walter is left in a pathetic state, weeping and syphilitic. Through Walter we see what vice can bring to the weak-willed.

Bawdy at times, heartbreaking at others, this novel is rich and broad and would please both the romance reader and those interested in good historical fiction.… (más)

A looong story (over 500 pages in a very large hardback) about which I have mixed feelings.

The settings were beautifully done; fictitious town names that felt right in their places – Goldeneye and Hawk Ridge on the plains in Saskatchewan, Beinn Uidhe near Strath in the Scottish Highlands, likewise areas around Toronto and London – each place vividly rendered.

Characterization – I might almost say excruciatingly drawn, so much detail of each one did we come to know. For instance, just one of the passages describing the doctor’s wife: “Women don't sit down and work out what's in their own best interests and then go forth and do it. The formula” - he pointed at God above - “doesn't permit it. They do whatever makes them feel right. Whatever gives them that feeling of rightness and goodness. And what gives Fiona that feeling is proof of her own superiority. When she peeps in another woman's storecupboard and says to herself How can she tolerate such disorder! When she predicts disasters to show she's a step ahead of God – oho, He can’t put on over her! When I exceed my quota of marital rights and she says, “I wish you'd get a mistress”. When she says, 'No thanks I only drink at Christmas.' All these things add to her feeling of superiority. Her universe is tidy. She's no foolish optimist about the future. She needs no alcohol or sensual titillation like other poor mortals. . . . dependence is death to her. Superior, above it all, untouched by human frailty, immaculate. Those are the things that make Fiona feel good and right. And because she is a woman, she will pursue them to the death, in the very teeth of her own true happiness and real self-interest.”

The story, simplistically, is about the main character, Catherine Hamilton, finding her power. From early in the book : : “…there's a rare quality in you. . . . I would not dare to name it, for I believe we have none of us seen it for what it truly is. But I'll give you a name for it.” She held her breath. “Power,” he said. “And here's what I'm driving at, Miss Hamilton. Until you understand it yourself, it should terrify you. Such power.”

Mind you, this took over thirty more years, of which little was neglected in the telling. But, my, this author does have a way with words. I find I want to tell you a bit of the story, just so you can read some of his words yourself.

Finding that her beauty is causing her problems there, Catherine flees Scotland. : : “She feared beauty and how it kindled men. She feared men and how they kindled her.”

Bound for her uncle’s home in Canada and finding him instead in the hospital in Goldeneye, there she becomes enamored of Dr. Macrae, much older than she. : : “Dr. Macrae glanced sidelong at her and was shot through with regret for his youth that had had no such girl in it, and with envy for some unknown, and certainly less worthy, young man who would feel no such regret.”

Eventually, she marries Burgo, the doctor’s son; their marriage has its ups and downs. At one point, they lose all in the stock market crash, at which time Catherine and the children are sent back to Goldeneye, while Burgo works near Toronto to begin again, but : : “ Burgo wasn't “doing his bit.” Or not like a man pushed to the bottom of the heap and struggling to get back. He was loving it. Ruin had liberated him. He was discovering that this was what he had always wanted to do. He had jumped out of the frying pan and into his true element – the fire of competition and success.”

They do get together whenever they can. : : “But for all its frenzy, it was not lovemaking as they had once known it – an act that rose to a natural peak out of their days and nights together. These were climaxes without foundations. She saw how important was the mere act of being together, living together, spending, say, twenty-three sexless hours over of every twenty-four in each other's company, gossiping, reminiscing, planning, quarrelling . . . sleeping. What they did on those visits was meant to be love – it ought to have been love, for they had not stopped loving each other – but it lacked all those everyday preparations whose importance is not noticed until they are withdrawn. It was not love finding itself in their sex; but sex looking frantically for love.”

Their priorities clash. Catherine is all about Family. Burgo wants to make it, independent of his locally-famous father. He did not understand her, or really, even care what she thought. : : “Sometimes the way he looked at her was like an audit.” “His stove has a hundred back burners and I'm the pot on the smallest of them all.” “There is a method of dipping ice cream in batter and frying it in deep fat, so fast that it can be served with a hot, crisp exterior and a still-frozen heart. And that, with due allowance for the slower chemistry of human emotions, is how the cold of Catherine's misery survived the heat of many subsequent hours (not to say days and even weeks) of happiness. Years of such happiness would have been needed to melt it; and those were the very years that were being denied her – stolen from her. The family years.”

So, bottom line, self, what DO I think? The family saga was an entertaining enough story (3-1/2 stars). The writing – excellent (4-1/2 stars). Place settings that I really enjoyed visiting (easily 5 stars). I guess my mixed feelings come from the minutiae, because on the one hand, it really helped to get into the heart and soul of the matters discussed, and on the other, it just seemed to make the story drag out too long (meh – I’ll say 2-1/2 stars). Oh, and for all this very long story, it still felt as if the resolution tied itself up too quickly and tidily at the end. Definitely recommended, though, for anyone who wants to read a family saga set in a realistically written Canadian setting.… (más)