Corrag

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Once the author’s lyricism turns to romantic love I began to feel the absence of a rigorous intelligence informing the text.

She is visited in her cell by an Irish Jacobite, Charles Leslie, and agrees to talk with him as long as he will listen to her story from its beginning. Leslie never quite comes to life; the letters to his wife that punctuate Corrag's story lack sparkle and add little to the narrative. Highly recommended for lovers of historical novels, especially those with an interest in the Scottish Highlands. When we look at the world through Corrag's eyes we are offered a different reality in which what matters is not the supernatural secret of second sight but "what powers are in us – in all of us. It is, however, a novel with moments of such extraordinary beauty and quiet power that it is impossible, having read it, not to look at the world anew.Susan Fletcher is the author of Eve Green, which won the Whitbread Award for First Novel, Oystercatchers, and Corrag. As the story begins, Corrag is chained to a cell in Inverary awaiting her death at the stake while being treated worse than an animal. They both tell her story - thus move the plot along more - but are also composed of inner thoughts and immensely rich in feeling and tone. At first the clan is wary of her, but over time they welcome her into the fold although she still lives in her self-made little hut on the moor. But she speaks so richly of her wild life, of living in heather and moss and rocks, that I feel I am amongst it.

Oystercatchers is the work of a seriously talented young author in possession of one of the most poetic and original voices working now. He has heard of the witch in her cell and that she knew what had happened in the Highlands, so as much as it appalled him as a man of God to speak with a witch, speak with her he must. Fletcher has a remarkable talent with words…her approach to the world is side-on, not direct; she is attuned to the ambiguities, the spaces, the gaps left in language, the things that are not spoken; she imbues inanimate objects with a life of their own, a history and a personality and a voice.No spoilers of her life in Glencoe prior to ending up in the cell; little by little the strange little woman insinuates herself into the close MacDonald clan. This is my introduction to the poetic and beautiful prose from Susan Fletcher and now I want more and more of it. Her only audience was a reverend of Christian faith, whose motive was initially to obtain an eyewitness account for political purposes. Nature itself is a main character, especially the Scottish Highlands, where Corrag decides to make her home. She shows us that the world is magical, not because she is a witch but because there is magic in "the simple daily moments that we stop seeing".

The way Corrag tells her tale to Charles Leslie is through heart and feeling, and by extension these are the same ways in which the reader can feel so deeply her apprpeciation of the small beauties in life, her unrequited love, and her peace in loneliness. It is a tale of passion and courage, magic and betrayal, and the difference that a single heart can make to the great events of history. I might even argue that his wife, Jane, becomes a major character because she clearly is a strong filter for his own thinking. After a life spent wandering and being feared by others, she has finally found a place and a people that accept her and to which she grows deeply attached.When we first meet Corrag, she sits shackled in a jail cell, accused of being involved in the Glencoe massacre. But, if one sits down with a human being and really gets to know them, the truth may transform us, as it did Charles. Ultimately, Corrag is arrested and accused of witchcraft and murder for her supposed involvement in the Glencoe Massacre.