My hovercraft is full of eels

The other Scotland Book I read on my brief trip was Walter Scott's Waverley, which I have been sort of thinking I ought to read every time I pull in and out of Waverley Station.

Waverley has the distinction (or so the front and back-matter leads me to believe) of being maybe the first English-language Historical Fiction Novel, which is kind of fascinating to contemplate and honestly very readable as such given the givens! The plot involves a naive English romantic, signed up with the British army, who happens to be on an ill-timed vacation visiting a new friend in the Scottish Highlands when the Jacobite Rising breaks out and stumbles through a series of circumstances that ends up with him sort of confusedly signing up to fight on behalf of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

There's a bit in Scott's intro where he's explaining why he chose to publish this book anonymously -- sidenote, I had no idea he had written this book anonymously, and it's very funny to read his pages and pages and pages essentially going 'why? well, because it was fun, and funny, and also I was already so rich and famous that I really had nothing to gain from publishing a book under my own name that might have been bad' -- anyway, one of the things he brings up is "people have suggested that I Might have been worried that the King would be mad about this book about the gallant heroes of the Jacobite rebellion, but why would I worry about that? The sufferers of that melancholy period have, during the last and present reign, been honoured both with the sympathy and protection of the reigning family, whose magnanimity can well pardon a sigh from others, and bestow one themselves, to the memory of brave opponents, who did nothing in hate, but all in honour." Well, okay, sure, but one has to genuinely admire the delicate dance that Scott is doing in his portrayal of the Rising; the Jacobites romantically valiant but tragically misguided, our good English hero signing up because he's pushed by every circumstance into doing so and feeling conflicted about it the whole way because he respects everybody on both sides so much, Bonnie Prince Charlie himself the flower of chivalry of course, and George II? well, no need to talk much about him. He's offscreen occasionally offering a gracious pardon.

My only Scott experience previous to this was Ivanhoe; with Waverley Scott is now two for two on "here is the Wrong Woman who is fascinating and compelling and heroic but alas! so independently devoted to a incompatible cultural/religious ideal that she cannot properly devote herself to a man, and here is the Right Woman, who is -- well. What can we say about her. She's wife-shaped!"

The women in this one are Flora the ardent Highland Jacobite who was raised at the French court and speaks multiple languages and translates poetry and Rose the lowland aristocrat's daughter who has never gone anywhere or done anything or had any opinions whatsoever, and they are Best Friends; Waverley is in love with Flora and Rose is in love with Waverley and Flora spends the whole book like oh my god please please transfer your affections to Rose. please I am so uninterested in marrying anything except the platonic ideal of the Rising. Honestly, I was fascinated and quite pleased to see a near-duel situation arise from the hero's insistence that it is the object of his affection's right to refuse his proposal if she wants and her brother should please stop intimating that she doesn't really mean it! she has made it very clear that she's not into him and he doesn't want to push it any more!!

Anyway. Broadly speaking, the takes are more nuanced than expected, and the people act like people, often confused, often self-interested, often funny; more knowledgeable people than I can talk about the resounding effect of this book on Romantic Ideas About Scotland, but as founding patterns for the shape of historical literature in general, one could do a lot worse.

I ended up sort of unexpectedly in Scotland this past weekend (or rather, sort of expectedly, but all expectations were cancelled during the course of the cat's illness and I did not foresee them being un-cancelled) and as a result spent some time last week trawling the BPL to see what sort of Scotland-themed books might be available to me in ebook for plane reading Right Now No Waiting, which is how I ended up reading Val McDermid's 1979.

I was previously unfamiliar with Val McDermid's game, but apparently a.) she is Scotland's reigning Queen of Crime (though the Agatha Christie has formally threatened legal action against the use of the title); b.) her wife is Scotland's Geographer Royal, which, WHAT a power couple; and c.) she started her career as an journalist in the late 70s, hence the powerful ambience of 1979, a book about journalists uncovering and sometimes whoops maybe a little bit causing crime in the name of getting the byline.

Allie Burns, the protagonist of 1979, is one of the only women in the newsroom of her one-step-up-from-tabloid Glasgow-based newspaper, desperate to avoid being relegated to the celebrity gossip and miracle baby circuit. Meanwhile, her colleague Danny Sullivan has a white-collar crime scoop that could launch him into the front pages, but can't write for beans; after they have a bonding experience on a snowed-in train, Danny brings Allie in on the investigation to help him clean up his prose. Unfortunately for Danny, his big scoop directly implicates his brother and looks likely to blow up his entire family - which puts him in a position where he's just as desperate to prove himself as Allie is. Dream team for taking big risks and skirting the very edge of journalistic ethics in ways that could either make their reputations, or get them fired! or arrested! or worse!

I like Journalism Thrillers and I found this one very readable and pacy; occasionally McDermid paused briefly for one character to explain to another How, As You Know, A Newsroom Works In 1979, but as this is a topic of interest to me it didn't bug me as much as it otherwise might have. The characters broadly believe that overall they are doing the right thing and on the side of the angels or at least The Truth throughout but McDermid leaves plenty of room around the edges for the reader to disagree if they choose, which I appreciated. I also enjoyed that although the book initially looks like it might be taking the shape of a het romance, ( spoilers )

This is the start of a series; the next book is 1989 and the third, 1999, is being published in October I think. I kind of love this as a series structure and I look forward to finding out at some point how Allie's standards and practices change with the invention of the Internet.