King Hereafter: Additional Thoughts

 It’s been a week and I find that I’m still, despite reading other books, reflecting back on Dorothy Dunnett’s King Hereafter. I’d love to write a post focused on the women of Dunnett’s novels, but I’ll save that for another day, when I’ve had more coffee (and hopefully once I’m no longer blogging from my phone). This post is dedicated to all the ways the book continues to inspire me a week after turning the last page. Mostly, I’m thinking of all the things Dunnett doesn’t say, and how they impact characterization.

Speaking of the women, Groa specifically in this case, Dunnett’s gift for understatement shines most especially in her depiction of Lady Macbeth. 

For me, the beauty of Dunnett’s work lies not in the story itself - though her stories are rich, and sprawling, and encompass every aspect of her characters’ lives - but in her prose. The blend of absurdity, tragedy, and triumph would be clumsy and disjointed in lesser hands. I think the secret of her success - her memorable impact on the reader - lies in the careful dovetailing of the lyrical and the understated. The tiny diction choices that paint a scene to best effect. 

For instance: she sets scenes before the reader in richly-layered oils. The glow and flicker of sunlight on water; the bustle of a crowded wharf; the sumptuous receiving rooms of a palace. And the close, dark moments when devastating news is delivered; I will never look at a candle flame again without thinking of Lymond’s “coin-bright head” bowed in silent reception of said devastating news. And therein lie the moments of magic: we watch the physical restraint of emotion, and either know or can guess how the character is feeling. Sometimes it’s an incorrect guess - an intentional misdirect in which the reader is as frustrated as the character’s friends - and the truth is revealed in due time. 

With Groa, we see her fear and anguish as a very young widow as coldness, indifference. No doubt she hates Thorfinn, though there was certainly no love for her first, dead husband. She is a war prize and a tool used for ruling, and she knows this, and holds herself with poise, but of a cutting sort. That tension between them in the early days is all bristling undercurrents, a silent reader’s fear that disaster lies ahead. 

We meet Groa as a widow, and that’s how we leave her. Dunnett doesn’t wax poetic over her sorrow: 

“Of course,” she says, but we know her pain because we’ve watched her love for Thorfinn take root, and unfurl, and thrive over the course of the novel. Understatement, again; emotion rendered more poignant because we admire Groa’s steel backbone, and can only marvel at her reaction, as we imagine ourselves falling apart upon hearing such news. 

For me, the success of a novel - and by that I mean “its resonance with me as a reader” - is fumbled or fostered line by line, in the unglamorous turning of each sentence. The drama of Dunnett’s prose - the ebb and surge of action and stillness, the dynamic shifts in imagery, and the restraint to allow characters their inner privacy in key moments, is what sets her work apart. You can have the most dynamic and intriguing concept in history, and flub it on the page. Dunnett’s work is always suggested as instructional for writers and would-be writers, and the prose itself is, to my mind, the aspect most worth studying. 

Talking about it now makes me want to embark on a Lymond reread. I have other books to read, books I’ve never read; should I spend that time retreading old ground? But with books like hers, the reread is where most of the learning occurs...so can I really afford not to do it? 

#ReadingLife - No. 7

 

I'm lagging behind on #ReadingLife posts - for lack of blogging time, rather than lack of reading time. I try to squeeze a little reading in every day, even if it's just a page or two; my brain works best when it has books to chew on. Let's see if I can get caught up on posting about them. As I mentioned at the start of the year, I don't read anything I'm not enjoying, so I'll only be sharing winners. 

This was a soul that he knew, gifted and eager and generous; beloved of many; destined surely for fame; and determined, as Robin was, to follow a man he thought worthy. A noble child of his race, Francis Crawford of Berecrofts. Francis Crawford of Templehall, it would be, one day. 

But this was not the piercing spirit, clear as a snowfield in sunlight, for whom Nicholas de Fleury was waiting. A being fiercer than this, he had been told: far more passionate, far more vulnerable, with far more to give a world which would not know, at first, how to receive it. A spirit that would always lead; that could never be a disciple.

The other half of his being, come again.

 

Thus ends the eighth and final installment of Dorothy Dunnett's House of Niccolò series, which she wrote after Lymond, but which falls before it on the historical timeline. Looking back at my posts, I noted that I began this series - with book one, Niccolò Rising - in December of 2019. Obviously, it took two and a half years to finish it, which is, one, not unusual for me, given my reading habits, and two, understandable given Dunnett's writing. Rich and dense as the finest chocolate torte, at times less decipherable than the King James bible, references layered into references into more references. At many points throughout the reading of these two series, I wondered if I ought to pause so that I could read Dante, or venture down the Nostradamus rabbit hole. Ultimately, I plowed on, reading smaller, easier to digest books in between volumes, returning always, as if stepping through the looking glass. I'm currently more than halfway through King Hereafter, her Macbeth retelling, and when I'm done, I suppose I'll have to pick Lymond back up and start all over again; reading Dunnett - actively reading it, spending just a little time each day with it - has honed my writing over the last few years. Reading Dunnett leaves me excited to open a Doc and get back to work. 

I've called Dorothy Dunnett "incomparable" before, and I can't think of a better word for what she achieved with her two main series. She wrote historical fiction, yes, but type "books similar to the Lymond Chronicles" into your search bar, and you'll be AI-suggested novels that pale in comparison. A few that even curdle in comparison. I read one chapter of Follet, quietly X'd out of it on my Kindle, and said, "Well, that's enough of that." Hilary Mantel's Cromwell books, while completely different in tone, are the closest comparison I can think of. Even so, there's no one who does what Dorothy did with seemingly effortless flair. 

(I know it took effort. I know she toiled over these books. That they kept her up at night and broke her brain dozens of times. I know this because writing about Vlad Tepes did that to me, and it's the reason I keep bundling my loud, rowdy English king off into the corner rather than wrangle him and his crossbow to center stage where he belongs. Writing this sort of book is nothing but effort, but damn did she do it with style.)

Dunnett's writing feels as though it could have been penned in the age in which it was set. Weighty, at times convoluted, veiled with subtle understatements, it's fully-grounded in its setting. Historical fiction in the hands of the unimaginative or undedicated can read a bit like a glossy summary of events long past; with Dunnett, you are transported. Though they never cross paths, Nicholas de Fleury is a contemporary of Mehmet the Conqueror, with whom my readers will be familiar. Cue the tiny violins because there's not a single mention of Wallachian/Ottoman drama here, but shoutout to my boy Skanderbeg in Albania for getting name-dropped several times. Good on you, John Castrioti, and your goat-head helm. 

I digress. 

With Dunnett, you're getting a dozen stories for the price of one. Very Serious Political Machinations, Historical References, Troop Movements and Conquests, along with the beating heart of the books, an amalgamation of High Family Drama, Romance, Devastating Losses, and Silly Flights of Fancy (Nicholas rides an ostrich in one such, and lands himself in a deadly game of cat and mouse dressed as Guinevere for a play in another). Multi-faced, complexly woven stories full of fully fleshed, complicated characters, told with exquisite attention to detail. None of her books are easy reads, but they're more than worthwhile, once you settle into the rhythm of her style. 

I'm not sure I'll be able to pick between Lymond and Niccolò as favorite until I've done a full re-read. These are the sorts of books that demand re-reading. I will say that, written later in her career, the Niccolò books feel more accessible. The prose is a little less dense, for the most part, the novels more readable in a practical sense. I also like Nicholas better, as a character. His evolution from dye yard assistant to the banker he is by the end is truly remarkable, but while he's a complex character, I also feel like he's more knowable. There's a maturity in him lacking in Francis. 

But Francis is...Francis. Just as his creator is incomparable, so too is Francis Crawford of Lymond. At times I hated him. Wanted to reach into the book and slap him. He's hilarious, and tragic, and infuriating, and is so obviously the model for many dashing, beautiful, foppish, fiendish, freakishly intelligent characters who came after him in popular media. You see shades of Lymond in Lestat de Lioncourt, and most obviously in Laurent of Vere (C.S.Pacat's love of the novels is what inspired me to pick them up in the first place). 

Gemini was full of shock, and sadness, and revelations long-awaited. When I finished it, I sat for a moment and thought to myself how lucky I was to have heard of the late, great Dorothy Dunnett, and felt gladness to have had the chance to read the product of her wild imagination.