Corrag

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Author Susan Fletcher was inspired by the historical stories of Charles Leslie and the struggle of the Highland clans to survive the political turmoil of late 1600's, so she wrote a story to ignite a spark of knowledge and understanding in the reader, and she has Corrags magical gift for storytelling ignite a spark of knowledge and understanding in Charles which he then pays forward as well. My favorite part of this book was the growing friendship between Corrag and Charles--two very different people who eventually come to understand and trust each other. Each time they spoke, Charles took notes and later that evening wrote to his wife and detailed his thoughts on Corrag and their meeting.

Si vous cherchez une lecture sympa pour Halloween cette année pendant ce mois d’octobre je vais lire pour la première fois une sélection spéciale Halloween 🎃 si vous avez des recommandations n’hésitez pas. Corrag takes the old and beaten horse of a cruel neighbour, a grey mare who becomes her best and only friend, and spends the next year living off the land and making her way north-west where she arrives in Glencoe. From the bed of dirty straw in her tiny cell known as a "tollbooth," Corrag tells her story to daily visitor Reverend Leslie, who is there to gather information on the massacre.Corrag agrees to talk to him so that the truth may be known about her involvement, and so that she may be less alone, in her final days. Oh, but Corrag is a very memorable character, finely drawn (for some reason I see her sketched in detail in pencil), drawn into a story that once it takes off, soars like a bird over glen and brae.

Seeing true, natural beauty can lessen it, because sunsets and winter light can make you say inside you I am not alone-you feel it, through such beauty. The intersection of Corrag and Glencoe is that her mother, before being hanged, takes the horse of a neighbor who was one of her accusers and tells Corrag to ride north and west.

These are pressed into the narrative again and again, the repetition hypnotic and staccato, like a spell. The book opens with Corrag sitting in a squalid prison cell a few weeks before she is scheduled to burn as a witch. The same way the Church carried out witch-hunts against heretics and suspected witches 400 years ago and for centuries before that , today it is against anyone accused-usually falsely of racism.

I wanted her spared and, surprising myself, didn't care if it turned out to be by deux et machina if that's what it took. No spoilers of her life in Glencoe prior to ending up in the cell; little by little the strange little woman insinuates herself into the close MacDonald clan. It was a quiet, night-time valley which I crept into, with mud and moths in my hair… It was cool air, with the sea’s breath.Thank you to Candi for recommending this book as we exchanged comments on another review she had written. This was, for the most part, a well-written and enjoyable piece of historical fiction, but it was overlong in parts and repetitive in others and contained an unnecessary love story that would have been better left on the cutting-room floor.

Fletcher comes at her story obliquely, through the eyes of the eponymous Corrag, whose curious name is an amalgamation of her mother's – Cora – and the epithet most frequently thrown at her, hag.Fletcher frequently juxtaposes sadness and joy as she emphasizes her themes of kindness and tolerance, death and grief, and following one's heart. stars because of the pacing problems and the "romance," which was a distraction and a subtraction for me in a book that needed no romance, let alone that one. The themes that dapple the novel are love of nature, getting in touch with one’s heart, futility of hatred and violence, tolerance of others’ values and compassion for all living creatures. I’ve never turned into a bird, skimmed a night-time loch, or settled on ships to make them drown… I’ve not summoned anything… I pray – not in church and with no Bible, but otherwise I reckon it’s probably like how you pray, which is with the heart’s voice talking, not the mouth’s.