Review of The Trials of Mary Johnsdaughter
Christine De Luca warns from the outset: the story takes place in a small community on the main island of the Shetland archipelago, in the second part of the 18th century. Its inhabitants speak Shetlandic, and for the sake of authenticity, the dialogue of the novel is therefore in the same language! ...Which is quite understandable, since the story is based on real events.
I expected a tough read. Well not at all, thanks to glossary at the end of the book. Certainly, at the beginning, I often had recourse to it, but the daily dialogues are not as elaborate as the language written, and the vocabulary enters easily into memory. I even think that the characters are more embodied, and also more endearing.
The Trials Mary Johnsdaughter is above all the newspaper of a community living on a meagre and at all costs in an austere and desolate end of the world, beaten by the storms; of a community playing day-to-day survival, dominated by the obligatory force of habits and solidarity, and the necessary submission to the rules, here severe and presbyterian.
We are in the autumn of 1773. A ship, the Batchelor of Leith, carrying Scottish migrants for North Carolina, is blown off-course following serious damage, and must disembark all these shipwrecked families - 280 people! - who dreamed of a promising new world, who will be welcomed and distributed between the village of Waas and the hamlet's surroundings.
Solidarity and sharing must then be organised between deprived populations, under the authority of the "Elders," ('board members' of the local Presbyterian Church.
Each family welcomes another and, until the ship is repaired, all will share for long months, the seasons, the hard work, the customs, the rites, the celebrations too, of the community.
Seduced by the novelty in a hard-working life where joys are rare, some young girls will innocently "get into trouble" with the newcomers. One of them, Mary Johnsdaughter, will have to atone for her errors, as if she were solely responsible for them. She is summoned before these Elders, these representatives of a patriarchal society and a puritanical Church, an institution established by "old men, for old men", themselves however not flawless.
Through the descriptions, Christine De Luca describes admirably the difficult daily life of these islanders from another era, and is easily based on the historical facts that dot the History of Scotland and of Shetland: strength of Presbyterianism and massive emigration of poor Scottish peoples towards an America that brings hope of freedom and prosperity.
The dialogues or the interior monologues are right, expressing the feelings of one and all others, whether happiness - sometimes; injustice, incomprehension - often; cowardice of men and machismo of the ancients, with a beautiful sensitivity and without exaggeration.
Christine De Luca has delivered a beautiful book to us, which I had great pleasure in discovering, with the Shetlandic charms, carried by endearing characters and which - I told her - would deserve the next Walter Scott Prize for the historical novel, especially since this diary is supplemented by very useful maps, a presentation of these very real actors who make the story, documents from the period and local photos.
Review of 'The Trials of Mary Johnsdaughter', Pierre Deligniere (Chairman), Brittany-Scotland Association