Darkening of the Heart

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.