Alan Warner (2023) Nothing Left to Fear From Hell.

Alan Warner’s debut novel Morven Caller was adapted and made into a film. He’s one of Scotland’s most successful writers. Nothing Left to Fear From Hell is a step away from the usual write-what-you-know school. A short novella. Bonnie Prince Charlie’s flight through the Highlands. Most readers know about his escape to France. So we know the ending. We think we know the plot. Why bother?

Warner addresses these issues in Afterward. This could and should be read as a stand-alone document for most would-be writers such as myself. I’m saying that because I agree with the points he makes. I’ve often thought the same thing. Once been told by a creative writing tutor that the seventies wasn’t really historical. Aye, it fucking is.

Warner puts it this way.

‘These episodes, which we visualise in our heads and call ‘history’, really happened to living breathing human beings. This is the challenge of ‘historical fiction’. Yet I wonder if all fiction writing is in fact historical fiction. Even if I set my novel last week, it is still a form of historical fiction.’

The following extract switches the point of view to the maid of Kiribost.

‘Recognising as what she thought of as one of her own dominion, Mrs MacDonald’s maid gives a stern eye to the shocking, overgrown serving woman walking, along by them, accompanying Factor Kingsburgh. Kingsburgh was a canny man of proper high standing, and with him for his walking companion was a sober seeming Mr MacEachain. But the maid was affronted by the display of that… Irish servant thing, it was said to be, clearly with expectations beyond her scrawny gifts. Even on a Sunday, the sniffen thing carried its skirts shamefully high in both hands. Crossing the low ford at Romesdale stream, it wholly leapt, like a hopping ewe, slapping its knapdallicks – with her starved dancer’s legs, all a-showing in glaured and messed stockings, petticoat swishing, like a pintle-seeking-tumble-me-now-pox trembler in a godless port city, rank with sin.’

In other words, the way the sonsy wench, in the way she’s dressed and behaving, has turned the world upside down. She’s acting like the equal of these good men. You’ve probably guessed the Irish serving wench is Bonny Prince Charlie. S/he is dressed in drag to escape the English patrols and acting as Miss Flora MacDonald’s maidservant, but with little guile. The Bonny Prince can’t help himself.   

Alan Warner captures the times and the place by going sideways here to the heart of the social order. Everyone knows their place and where they stand. Bonny Prince Charlie’s actions challenge divine providence, but only God knows if he’ll succeed. He seems to lead a charmed life the way he keeps escaping being captured. Others, including Kingsburgh, aren’t so lucky. How do we read fate? Read on.