A Darkening of the Heart is set in eighteenth-century Scotland. It
contrasts the harsh life in the countryside, where social
opportunities are few and far between, with life in the teeming
streets of Edinburgh, where, on the surface, the bawdy and the
proper seem poles apart but, in reality, they seep into one another
on all kinds of different levels. It is in this world of sometimes
sham respectability that brother and sister Alexander and Susanna
try to advance their social standings. Alexander has qualified as a
doctor but this is not enough for him - he has ambitions to become
a famous poet. Snobbish Susanna also aims to climb the social
ladder but, as a woman, her only hope of doing so is by finding
herself a wealthy husband. Her drive for money and position leads
her to become caught up in some truly terrifying situations that
end up warping her character and her outlook on life. What makes
this a cut above the usual historical romantic fiction is that one
of the main characters is none other than Robert Burns. Margaret
Thomson Davis has skilfully interwoven known events from the poet's
life into the fictional world inhabited by Alexander and Susanna to
stunning and often moving effect. Burns's sexual magnetism and the
ease with which he got along with people from all sorts of
backgrounds are normally seen as positive attributes but here we
see how they could lead to exploitation and cruel deception at the
hands of those Burns believed to be his friends. In addition to the
narrative, Margaret Thomson Davis includes songs, poems and letters
by the bard and the seamless way these fit in with events in the
novel is evidence of a storyteller at her masterly best.
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