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[books 2010] Rose
Jan. 29th, 2010 06:35 pm7. Rose by Martin Cruz Smith
1872. Blair, a mining engineer returned from Africa and desperate to go back, suffering from malaria and the evil effects of the drugs he takes for it, is sent to Wigan by the bishop who has the power to send him back to Africa to investigate the disappearance of a young C of E priest.
Naturally, nobody but Blair has any interest in finding out what happened to the priest. His investigations get him involved with a "pit girl" (women who worked at the pit heads sorting coal) named Rose, thus the title of the book.
Despite having been born in Wigan, England is a foreign country to Blair, who is at home neither in the Bishop's home nor the miners' cottages, yet is able to function in both worlds. He may be a mining engineer and be able to find his way around a coal mine, but as a gold miner he finds coal mining awful.
This is a meticulously researched book about coal mining in the late 19th century and Wigan in the same period. (Despite living in Manchester for 5 years I've never been to Wigan. I'd kind of like to go now). I'd always written it off as a "grotty northern mill town" and not realised it was like nowhere else in the 19th century, when it was notorious for amongst other things, that the pit girls wore trousers to work, having deemed skirts too dangerous. The descriptions of the mine are unbelievably real, claustrophobia inducing.
I've read an interview with Cruz Smith in which he said he "took some liberties", but I only noticed two: One was the mother of one of the miners tells stories about when she worked in the mines with her children. This was banned in 1842, which would make her older than she should be in 1872, especially given that coal mining did not lead to long life. The other is that Blair is chosen for the job because he's from Wigan and will understand the local dialect; it later turns out he left too early in life to have really picked it up in the first place.
Which is not to say it's dry and dull - this is one of the most exciting books I've read in a long time. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
1872. Blair, a mining engineer returned from Africa and desperate to go back, suffering from malaria and the evil effects of the drugs he takes for it, is sent to Wigan by the bishop who has the power to send him back to Africa to investigate the disappearance of a young C of E priest.
Naturally, nobody but Blair has any interest in finding out what happened to the priest. His investigations get him involved with a "pit girl" (women who worked at the pit heads sorting coal) named Rose, thus the title of the book.
Despite having been born in Wigan, England is a foreign country to Blair, who is at home neither in the Bishop's home nor the miners' cottages, yet is able to function in both worlds. He may be a mining engineer and be able to find his way around a coal mine, but as a gold miner he finds coal mining awful.
This is a meticulously researched book about coal mining in the late 19th century and Wigan in the same period. (Despite living in Manchester for 5 years I've never been to Wigan. I'd kind of like to go now). I'd always written it off as a "grotty northern mill town" and not realised it was like nowhere else in the 19th century, when it was notorious for amongst other things, that the pit girls wore trousers to work, having deemed skirts too dangerous. The descriptions of the mine are unbelievably real, claustrophobia inducing.
I've read an interview with Cruz Smith in which he said he "took some liberties", but I only noticed two: One was the mother of one of the miners tells stories about when she worked in the mines with her children. This was banned in 1842, which would make her older than she should be in 1872, especially given that coal mining did not lead to long life. The other is that Blair is chosen for the job because he's from Wigan and will understand the local dialect; it later turns out he left too early in life to have really picked it up in the first place.
Which is not to say it's dry and dull - this is one of the most exciting books I've read in a long time. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
