Corrag

I should probably point out that this is not really crime fiction, but part of my scheme to widen my horizons a little. Although it does focus on a 300 year old mystery - who was responsible for the Glencoe Massacre? It is centred on a period of British history with which I am pretty familiar - the Glorious Revolution of William and Mary and the abdication of KIng James II and VII and the "earming pan baby", the trigger for subsequent Jacobite uprisings, eventually leading to the times of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

In prison awaiting her death by burning, Corrag painstakingly takes Irish propagandist Charles Leslie through the background to the Glencoe Massacre in 1692. Leslie is hoping she will provide him with evidence that the massacre was in fact engineered by the "Orange King" and that this will somehow give more fuel to a successful Jacobite Rising.

As with all good historically set novels, this challenges what the readers thought they knew about Glencoe and it is no longer possible to see it as an inter-clan warfare. The novel brings the main characters to life.

This is wonderfully narrated by Rosalyn Landor, who magically transforms her voice so that you eventually recognise the main characters without a problem. ( )

This book was beautifully written. The story was about the Glencoe massacre but told from the eyes of Corrag, a healer and independent woman. This was a great historical fiction novel told from a very different perspective. The details were fascinating and the perspectives on life, love and heart. ( )

http://lizzysiddal.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/corrag-suzanne-fletcher/ ( )

What makes a woman a witch? Corrag is a story about a woman accused of witchcraft and told by an outside who comes to the Highland with his own agenda. I got swept away by the characters and the story, enjoying almost every moment of it. ( )

Susan Fletcher’s new book, Corrag, is historical fiction that does something I love: it takes an historical event and looks at it from a new angle, through the eyes of a new character. The story is based on the 1692 Massacre of Glencoe, where supporters of King William were responsible for the deaths of 78 members of the MacDonald clan, killed because of their delay in pledging allegiance to the new king. Corrag is an English witch who had lived among them, imprisoned in the aftermath of the massacre, and sentenced to be burned alive at the stake.

I love the way the story is told. Corrag’s tale makes up the main narrative (and she warns you up front that she tends to talk a lot). At the end of each chapter, Charles writes a letter to his wife back in Ireland. The contrast between Corrag’s stories and the way Charles views her in the beginning is so dramatic! He goes in expecting a wild, godless, savage and to some extent, that’s what he gets. She is completely outside his experience. He takes her dirty appearance as an indication of the condition of her soul. Did he not notice that she is being held in a dungeon, with little food and no access to soap and a bathtub?

Read my full review here. ( )