Fayne
This is a difficult book to review, not least because it is so long by modern standards, although Victorian readers would not have quailed at 700+ pages. However, much of it is quickfire dialogue, often very witty, so moves at a brisk pace, and it is conveniently divided into seven distinct parts.
It is also difficult to classify. It might be considered historical fantasy, as the narrator is impossibly long-lived, and there are semi-magical elements. The main narrative is, however, contained in a normal human span in the 1870s and ‘80s, and the ‘fey’ elements can be construed as dreams.
So is it Gothic? There are strong Gothic elements, with much of it set in an ancient mansion in the Scottish moors, the eponymous Fayne, with a reclusive laird and his daughter, Charlotte, who has been shut away from the outside world for most of her life, supposedly for health reasons. There are also Gothic improbabilities in the plot, both romantic and grotesque. But Gothic novels are seldom witty or realistic, and Fayne is often funny and harrowingly realistic, with clinically precise descriptions of miscarriages and stillbirths, invasive medical procedures, harsh regimes in Victorian lunatic asylums, and grinding poverty in the Edinburgh slums.
The central character is Charlotte, and her problem (or the problem for her upper-class family) is that she is sexually indeterminate, born with the characteristics of both sexes, so that she is initially considered male until surgically rearranged. This has tragic consequences for everybody concerned, most of all Charlotte’s Irish American mother, as they try to hide her condition from the world. In time there is a vindication of sorts, but at great cost. This is an unusual and fascinating book with a serious purpose, exploring the difficulty and pain of people who do not fit in with current societal norms.
