sovay: (Sovay: David Owen)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2021-07-31 04:44 am

But—will you e'er forget the scent of hawthorn in the sun, or bracken in the wet?

D. K. Broster's The Flight of the Heron (1925) is indeed a more complex novel than The Wounded Name (1922) and almost as damn-the-subtext slashy—it's not difficult to see one as a dry run for the other, although they differ substantially in the ending and I am not getting over the incredibly gay string of classical allusions in the earlier novel any time soon. This one piles on not just the loyalty and the hurt/comfort but the conflicted pursuit of honor between heart and duty in ways that occasionally and unexpectedly gave me flashbacks to some elements of Turn (2014–2017). The latter were not unwelcome, but I don't consider them statistically significant; they may be a side effect of emotionally twisty narratives set between rebellion and empire. Conversely, I am indebted to [personal profile] nineweaving for confirming the lineage between Broster and Rosemary Sutcliff with the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, since after one novel of Broster's I was suspicious, but after two I was willing to buy a hat to eat if Sutcliff hadn't read her. I have found myself saying recently that Broster feels like a bright body in a constellation of writers I was raised on, but it took me until now to see her. I feel like I could end up with a research project on my hands if I'm not careful.

It was strange, it was alarming, to feel, as by this time he did, how strongly their intimacy had progressed in two months of absence and, on his side, of deliberate abstention from communication—like the roots of two trees growing secretly towards each other in darkness.

(Slash goggles continue to be superfluous.)
regshoe: Redwing, a brown bird with a red wing patch, perched in a tree (Default)

[personal profile] regshoe 2021-07-31 11:26 am (UTC)(link)
I agree about TWN being a sort of 'dry run' for FotH—I do think the central relationship in this book is much better developed and more interesting, if not quite so id-tastically over-the-top.

Ah, so Sutcliff did read Broster! That similarity had also occurred to me, and it's great to have it confirmed. (And, returning to the 'did they mean it like that' question, it's certainly a possibility Sutcliff was aware of for her characters, given the canon m/m relationship in Sword at Sunset).

I feel like I could end up with a research project on my hands if I'm not careful.

Sounds like a great idea :D

And that line about the trees is one of my favourites—aww, Keith...
regshoe: Redwing, a brown bird with a red wing patch, perched in a tree (Default)

[personal profile] regshoe 2021-08-01 09:56 am (UTC)(link)
I've heard the name Megan Whalen Turner somewhere, but not read any of her books—textual m/m inspired by Eagle of the Ninth sounds like a good thing.

It feels characteristic of both Keith and the novel that that simile ends with him deciding that the roots of their intimacy must be severed and the scene ends with him cutting a lock of Ewen's hair.

Aargh—oh dear, you're right. </3
regshoe: Redwing, a brown bird with a red wing patch, perched in a tree (Default)

[personal profile] regshoe 2021-08-02 06:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh yeah, the 'Queen's Thief' series, isn't it? I've definitely heard of them—and they do sound interesting! I shall add it to the ever-growing to-read list.
sartorias: (Default)

[personal profile] sartorias 2021-07-31 12:15 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, wow, you just made the Big Bell gong inside my head. I devoured Sutcliff as a kid. The only reasons I haven't reread them is that I remember little humor, and some awful endings. Slash sailed right over my head at age ten. Now I think I have to take another look!
luzula: a Luzula pilosa, or hairy wood-rush (Default)

[personal profile] luzula 2021-07-31 03:52 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, I'm so glad you enjoyed it! Well, except for the ending. One thing I really like about the book is how it offers both sides of the historical conflict--there's Keith being less than impressed by the Jacobites, Ewen's loyalty and idealism, Keith's horror at what his own side is doing at the end even as he still doesn't sympathize with the other side politically...it's just a really good set-up for the enemies-to-lovers plot and offers a lot of opportunity for fic.

I am not getting over the incredibly gay string of classical allusions in the earlier novel any time soon

I wish I was better at classical allusions and Latin citations, I feel it's a limitation in my fic-writing. Ah well.

One writer who I feel is not in the Jacob/Broster/Renault/Sutcliff lineage (if one can call it that), despite living in the same time period and writing historical books that have same-sex relationships in them, is Naomi Mitchison. I mean, I love her books dearly, but despite occasionally portraying same-sex relationships, they are not at all slashy IMO. Some of the differences in writing may be because Mitchison was a socialist (not that one can't combine socialism and slashiness). I mean, I don't explicitly know Broster's political opinions, but I am 110% sure she was not a socialist. All those French royalists probably do say something about her opinions, even if she probably also wrote them because they offered tragic and honour-laden storylines. And Renault was, um, definitely not a socialist. No idea about Sutcliff.
Edited 2021-07-31 16:19 (UTC)
luzula: a Luzula pilosa, or hairy wood-rush (Default)

[personal profile] luzula 2021-07-31 08:37 pm (UTC)(link)
I am happy to supply classical allusions if you'd find it useful. I have done it professionally.

Oh, cool. Thanks for the offer!

Yes, I like Sylvia Townsend Warner, too (in fact for Yuletide this year I wrote a crossover between a Mitchison book and a Townsend Warner book). But I've never read Jill Paton Walsh, so thanks for the rec! I do agree that slashiness or otherwise is id, not politics, though politics can of course influence what one writes about otherwise.

Mitchison was a lot more interested in women, as characters and historically, than Sutcliff or Renault or, so far for me, Broster.

Yes, definitely! Broster has some books with stronger female characters than the ones you've read, but overall she's a lot more interested in men.
kindkit: A late-Victorian futuristic zeppelin. (Default)

[personal profile] kindkit 2021-08-01 12:56 am (UTC)(link)
I think I need to read the Patton Walsh book. I've never read anything by her, purely out of dislike for the idea of the Wimsey continuations. But your review makes Farewell, Great King sound like my kind of thing, and I've recently finished a re-read of all the Renaults I want to re-read.
thisbluespirit: (reading)

[personal profile] thisbluespirit 2021-07-31 04:42 pm (UTC)(link)
Hee, I thought you would enjoy it (even if I only know it at secondhand)!
nineweaving: (Default)

[personal profile] nineweaving 2021-07-31 07:09 pm (UTC)(link)
Sutcliff on personal heroes:

"My father's was Sir Christopher Cradoc, who went down at Coronel in 1916. My father was his pilot, and would have gone down with him but for a last-minute transfer. Sir Christopher Cradoc wore steel-boned corsets and used scent. He used regularly to arrive on the bridge when my father was bringing the ship into harbour, and say 'Thirty seconds late, Pilot,' to which my father would reply, 'Sir, kindly get off my bridge, you are upsetting my compass.' Years later, when I came to know about such things, I said to my father, 'Was he a homosexual?' My father looked at me with clear surprised eyes, and said, 'No, just Elizabethan, like Drake and Raleigh.'"

"Upsetting my compass"! Indeed.

Nine

nineweaving: (Default)

[personal profile] nineweaving 2021-07-31 07:18 pm (UTC)(link)
I had no idea she had named Cradoc of The Eagle of the Ninth after a person more recent than the first century CE.

I love how she slips that homage in, invisibly.

Nine
nineweaving: (Default)

[personal profile] nineweaving 2021-07-31 07:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, interesting. Sutcliff clearly spells him "Cradoc" in her autobiography, but he was "Cradock," and a looker.



The ever-useful ODNB:

"The term 'knightly' was easily applied to this very model of a late Victorian naval officer who never married. Tall, alert, and always immaculately dressed with a neatly trimmed beard, the well-spoken Cradock had a reputation as a fine sportsman and seaman. As commander in the Royal Naval College Britannia in 1895 he reminded the future Admiral Andrew Cunningham of Sir Francis Drake. Cradock also published, notably Sporting Notes in the Far East (1889) followed by Wrinkles in Seamanship (1894). His best-known work was Whispers from the Fleet (1907), a series of anecdotes and maxims providing common-sense advice for young officers that would also be carefully examined by historians after his death for possible explanations of his motives."

Nine
Edited 2021-07-31 19:27 (UTC)
ethelmay: (Default)

[personal profile] ethelmay 2021-08-02 03:06 am (UTC)(link)
From the Wikipedia article: "Cradock never married, but kept a dog which accompanied him at sea." I am side-eying that construction, or rather its underpinning assumptions, pretty hard.
selkie: (Default)

[personal profile] selkie 2021-07-31 07:44 pm (UTC)(link)
Growing secretly toward one another in the --

*CLANG*

I wish you'd have told me you'd taken to pinning your hair up. Are you using all the bronze ones from Kameiros that one time?
Edited 2021-07-31 19:45 (UTC)
gwynnega: (books poisoninjest)

[personal profile] gwynnega 2021-07-31 08:15 pm (UTC)(link)
Wow, that quote!
selkie: (Default)

[personal profile] selkie 2021-08-01 01:36 am (UTC)(link)
That's it, no more internet, you used it all.
isis: (head)

[personal profile] isis 2021-08-01 02:15 am (UTC)(link)
Gah, maybe I need to give Flight of the Heron another try - I got to just past where they went through the secret passage in the old woman's house and DNFed.

(I love Sutcliff and her very-not-subtle slashy subtext)
isis: (Default)

[personal profile] isis 2021-08-02 04:00 pm (UTC)(link)
Nothing specifically, I just didn't find it very interesting. And I couldn't quite keep track of what was going on and who was who. But I have so many friends very into it, so I keep meaning to get back to it...
cyphomandra: boats in Auckland Harbour. Blue, blocky, cheerful (boats)

[personal profile] cyphomandra 2021-08-01 09:28 am (UTC)(link)
I will (unhelpfully!) encourage any research in this area. I remember a small me spent a restful weekend with the Shell Road Atlas of the UK trying to work out where everything was set, and significantly older me did consider quite strongly naming my son either Keith or Windham in homage (you can tell who my favourite character was. And I ultimately decided against it, but he does have a Scottish name)