Hat Trick In Three
With her third novel, the Edwardian set The Wild Air, Rebecca Mascull has done what she did in her two earlier novels – found a way to hook the reader’s heart to that of her central character, so that the reader absolutely cares about their journey, roots for them and, in this case, I was left feeling quite violent towards the prejudice and spite encountered by our quiet, shy, plain protagonist: one with the courage of a lion, hidden beneath the exterior of a mouse.
It is the first decade of the twentieth century. Cordelia (Della) Dobbs is the third daughter of a bitter, retired, theatrical star. Her charismatic father was seriously injured in an automobile accident, and his stage days are over. Della’s older sisters are beauties, one has gone on to success in the theatre, the other has made a good marriage. Her younger brother is favoured and golden. Della is the family mouse within a vibrantly extrovert, flamboyant set. A bit of a disappointment she does not have the pulchritude, the talent, the artistic creativity, the obvious personality, wit or intelligence to shine out in this family where everyone possesses at least one of these gifts.
Della likes quietness. In a family of extroverts where everyone is glittering and shining all together, there is no point in trying to outshine, or be loud enough or flamboyant enough to command attention. Della stays quiet, helpful, useful. But she does have her own talent – practical, kinaesthetic, a listening gift and passion for mechanics : how things work. Unfortunately, the time is not yet ready for female engineers. And, there is something else. Della is fortunate to come under the protective wing of her great-aunt Betty, newly returned from the States to her North East origins. Betty, a plain-speaking, adventurous woman with a similarly ungraceful, unfeminine appearance, had set out, aged 40, with her younger brother, an engineer, to the New World. Betty had married a practical man, and lived happy with him until his death brought her homewards. And Betty was fascinated by the new challenge and daring of flying. She had seen the Wright Brothers. Betty, with her strength, earthiness and willingness to ignore the constructs of graceful, eye-fluttering femininity, instead, to find her own ways towards being a strong person, a strong female person, becomes a mentor and encourager, helping Della to find her own ‘star’. Della is in love with the idea of flying. And female aviatrixes, though rare, are there to be aspirational role models
Hélène Dutrieu, aviatrix, 1911
I have to admit that my surrender to Della was not as ‘upon the instant’ as it had been to her earlier ‘sisters’. Feisty Adeliza Golding, from Mascull’s first book, The Visitors, and the wonderfully intelligent scientist, Dawnay Price, from The Song Of The Sea Maid, eccentric, flamboyant personalities both, had snaffled my interest in their stories from the off.
So, courageous for Mascull to explore this far quieter girl and woman, this introvert. Della proves, though, to be ‘still waters run deep’ She is the person in the corner of the room you don’t notice at a party, the mousy one, until by chance you discover this overlooked one has a wealth of story to tell, and a life of more strangeness and fascination than you could dream of.
One of the many facets of Mascull’s writing, which I admire hugely, is her heart and her kindness. There is tenderness here, a kind of respect for the integrity of her invented characters. She is not someone who seems to force her characters into some structure and shape. More, a sense of the author’s creation revealing themselves. Della, true to her quieter nature, takes time also to reveal herself to the reader – but she is absolutely authentic, both in her quietness and reticence, and in where she soars (literally!) when she discovers where her true North lies.
Lanoe Hawker’s (First World War flying ace) No 1611 Bristol Scout
I read, a year or so ago, a fictionalised biography of another aviatrix, Beryl Markham. What disturbed me about that book, was that the author had to some extent played fast and loose with the facts of Markham’s life, for her ‘faction’. Something which leaves me with a kind of distaste. It is, I think, another mark of Mascull’s integrity that though she might take specific achievements and stories from the history of real people as a starting point or inspiration for her fictions, she does not mangle the authenticity of real lives for her fiction. Della is not Amelia Earhart, Amy Johnson or any other ‘real’ aviatrix, bent into Mascull’s story. Della is Mascull’s genesis, but she grows into her own shape. Something magical happens when an author so clearly ‘listens’ to the arisingness of their creation.
If you want your heroes to be full of ‘flashing eyes, floating hair’ and mesmerise you with their magnetic charisma, Della may not do, but my advice would be, stay patient and wait for her to find herself, to reveal who she is, as she discovers that for herself.
Now, I will not deny that there were some aspects that I struggled with. The book has a prologue, dated 1918, but the sequential story begins in 1909, with Della in her mid-teens so, clearly the First War is going to be a major factor. I will not reveal spoilers of course, but there are sequences of some letters, written by a couple of major characters in the book, which had my disbelief unsuspended, and thinking ‘surely………..this could not have got past the censors’ Mascull is, however, meticulous in research and, for the benefit of the interested reader tells us what is true, and where she might have stretched truth into invention. I was quite startled to discover that whilst of course censors would always do their work on anything which might reveal position, military details etc, there were letters which did get home where soldiers did reveal their fear, grief, and despair to loved ones. Although most letters were much more ‘chipper’ than the writers felt, in order to avoid alarming their loved ones, some were far more honest, and escaped censoring.
The beautiful, elegant, Blackburn Monoplane
My other challenge is that The Wild Air is much more ‘Romantic Historical’ than Mascull’s first two books, and romance is more central to the trajectory of the story. One of the genre shelves I never visit in my local library is ‘Romance’ though of course relationships, including romantic relationships, tend to be a crucial part of many if not most of the books I love. There is a very pure, whole relationship which is a central one. Perhaps it is a mark of a certain cynicism in me that felt a little like ‘Mills and Boon’ about that, and I am more comfortable reading relationships which have a dysfunctionality. I needed to lay that cynicism aside, Mascull, as said earlier, is an honest writer, and allows her characters their honesty too. I had been more comfortable with the more intellectual, greater thinking complexity of Adeliza and Dawnay, which inevitably gave a certain – tangle – to their relationships. The central driving relationship in this book is where there is a great expressed emotional honesty happening, and perhaps this leads to a clearer trajectory and clearer mutuality. The conflicts here are conflicts caused externally, not internal conflicts. And, I guess war itself creates a kind of ‘cut to the chase’ intensity.
Mascull is a wonderful crafter of language itself. Now, curiously, I found myself underlining less ‘soaring prose’ in this book than I had in her other two. And, reflecting on this, I think this was also the expression of an authenticity in her writing – Adeliza and Dawnay were both highly expressive characters of brilliance, wit, flamboyance, so of course they are going to express themselves in stunning fashion. Della, as noted is a quiet person. She speaks far more plainly, less elliptically, less in metaphor. So, of course, even though Mascull is ‘third person’ narration, the think through will be through that quieter, more plainly speaking persona :
Della talked aloud to herself. She did that when it was marvellous and she revelled in the complete wonder of flying, the secret joy of it. Or when it was bad. When the mist came down or the wind got up something terrible and she was fighting the weather in order to come back alive
Adeliza and Dawnay would, I’m sure have expressed the above in fizzing expression, I would have been underlining passages of beauty all through. Della does not have that voice. Again, I come back to thinking about Mascull, who, here, does not astound the reader with her own beautiful, poetic, expressive voice – because it would not be Della’s.
Authenticity.
So, having thought through what I mainly loved, and what (and why) I struggled with, I can only raise my 4 ½ stars to 5. Mascull has done it again.
I had one slightly strange thought, an elemental one, as I read this : Mascull’s first creation, Adeliza, found her passion in earth – deaf-blind, it is initially through engagement with what grows – and through ether, the spirit, intangible world. Dawnay connects through water, for Della, that earthed, practical soul, the growth and destiny is airborne. What next……..I do hope not an arsonist!
I was extremely happy to receive an arc, via the publishers, Hodder and Stoughton, shortly before Christmas. A fantastic start to my 2017 reading year
However………as the book will be published on May 4th, I have held back publication of my review till towards the end of April. In fact, this week marks a blog tour of Rebecca Mascull’s book, and I am eagerly looking forward to other bloggers’ impressions. Mascull’s writing always presents possibilities for interested and passionate reader engagement.
I shall be searching out other reviews and they should appear as clickable links in the ‘Catching My Beady Eye’ widget, on the right hand margin
The Wild Air Amazon UK
The Wild Air Amazon USA
(Alas, I have discovered that ‘other’blogging platforms’ don’t easily transfer over to the Post I Like Widget, so you will have to find your way to other reviews yourselves, from the addresses given above!)
Lady Fancifull 
What a lovely post, Lady F. Thank you! The video you’ve included is wonderful – it’s filmed at the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden in Bedfordshire. I did a lot of my research there and met my now dear pilot friend Rob Millinship, who later took me flying in a Cessna & a Pitts Special. The pilot in your video is most likely to be Roger ‘Dodge’ Bailey who was my go-to guy for everything Blackburn, as he is the main pilot who flies this extremely rare machine at Shuttleworth. The skill of these MODERN pilots in flying these very old aircraft is immense, as the controls are so much more difficult on old planes; new planes are designed to more or less fly themselves, whereas these old planes you have to fight to keep them straight. I was in awe of all these pilots – new and old. 🙂
Thank you Rebecca – it’s lovely to get the additional information. I did find myself, after reading your book, with an interest awakened in these early planes, and was watching a lot of vintage flying videos whilst looking for media to include. It’s the sitting outside the plane, completely unprotected from the elements that got me – I felt anxious just watching videos of what I already knew were ‘safely completed’ flights. I’m not at all surprised at you ‘in awe of!’
Lovely review Lady F. I’ve not read any of Mascull’s books but I admire her for creating her own characters and not doing this fictionalisation of real people which is so prevalent nowadays!
She is a writer I really endorse, Karen. Personally, I think the way she is marketed misses appealing to some of the readers she might reach – whilst of course, reaching readers which perhaps a more literary marketing might mean other readers are missed,
I almost missed discovering her at all, because the cover of her first book did not immediately suggest lit-fic to me, but it was praise by some reviewers, on wordpress and on Amazon, whose judgement I trust, that led me to try her first book. She’s someone who has good, old fashioned, how to tell a story, how to create meaningful characters, how to say stuff worth thinking/feeling about, how to write and use language appropriately (fitting the voice of a character) and as gorgeously and precisely as fits the book she is writing.
I suspect that living outside the hum of the literary metropolis, not going to all the parties where the movers and shakers go, and all that, means she misses the attention I think she deserves, as a writer.
Each of her books has given me much thought – she is not a difficult read, and, again, that might contribute to her not being as so valued as writers who shock and perform (not always relevant) pyrotechnics.
Her characters end up, to me, being much more intensely real than the ‘fictionalised’ real people, and I can kind of hear their voices in my head
I do wonder at the way some books are marketed – publishers seem desperate to shoe-horn them into a particular genre and the covers and the straplines repel where they could appeal. Such a shame.
TBH I do think Rebecca’s books might be a little difficult to market. I can see that literary marketing might mean that readers of more popular historical fiction might think they wouldn’t like her. I’m kind of amused, on one level – if I remember rightly from a previous Q + A her favourite writer is Dickens – who of course has been adored by both litficcers, and was, at the time, equally adored as a popular fiction writer, in a way, that say, I don’t think Trollope was . I assume Trollope was purely speaking to a literary audience. Some of it may come down to the central characters. Are they hewers of wood or wielders of pen?
Great review. I would highly recommend Beryl Markam’s West with the night. I had heard of the fictional account of Beryl Markam’s life but steered clear of it because her own book is so good.
Thanks Ali. Paula McClain’s fiction book was very well written as a novel, and I would have adored it had it been ‘loosely inspired by’ Markham, rather than ‘biography as fiction’ – I discovered she played a bit fast and loose with Beryl, and that always disturbs me, because, of course, a good writer (and McClain IS) may be able to make their ‘faction’ far more real and memorable than the real life person who perhaps lacks the skills with writing a writer does
What an interesting premise for a novel – when I started reading your review and saw comments about the odd child in a family I never imagined this would go on to deal with female pioneers of flight.
Mascull is wonderfully surprising, but not in a way which ever seems gratuitous or oddball JUST to be different – just in a way which reflects the random uniqueness of individuals fhat life is full of.
What a great review. I will be posting mine for the blog tour tomorrow and it’s also going to be very positive. This is the first Rebecca Mascull book I’ve read, but I certainly want to read her others and am looking forward to meeting Adeliza and Dawnay!
I shall come visit, Helen. Rebecca’s novels are all a great treat, and I’m sure you will fall under Adeliza and Dawnay’s spells as well!