Though she writes about Scotland during the Jacobite era (1688 to 1745), Susanna Kearsley is a Canadian author who lives near Toronto. Obviously, she has Scottish ancestors, some of whom must have been players in the Jacobite rebellion. I have not read her first two novels – Undertow published in March 1993 or The Gemini Game published in March 1994 – so I can’t comment on this work. But starting with Mariana (1995), and following along with The Splendour Falls (1996), Named of the Dragon (1998), The Shadowy Horses (1999), Season of Storms (2001), The Winter Sea (2008), The Rose Garden (2011), The Firebird (2013), A Desperate Fortune (2015), and Bellewether (2018), I have read every Susanna Kearsley book out there. And they are all wonderful. So when I learned that a new one had appeared, I opened it in great anticipation.
I hate writing negative reviews, but I would be lying if I didn’t tell you all how disappointing this book is. And I don’t understand quite why it is so bad. For, as you can see Ms. Kearsley is an experienced writer, not a newbie.
So what is wrong with The Vanished Days?
In my opinion, the main problem has to do with pacing.
Yes, of course you need to create slow, intimate moments between your reader and your character, where you allow emotions to unspool on the pages. You need glorious descriptions. You need to linger. But you don’t want to do that all the time. You want to leaven your slow moments, with fast ones. You want to skim over needless detail. You want to edit out all the boring bits. But in this volume, the reader is obliged wade through too many weeds, before getting to the heart of the novel.
It takes Ms. Kearsley the first third of the novel – with all of its background detail, digressions and meanderings – to start the engine of the novel! That is 5 hours and 43 minutes of stuff that the reader is obliged to wade through before something actually happens. What happens? Something tragic happens to ten-year-old Lily, the heroine of this piece. Before this gut-wrenching incident, I got so weary, I nearly abandoned the novel.
Once something does happen – at the ten hour mark – things begin to get more interesting. But there are still too many problems. Ms. Kearsley is too fond of information dumps, given in the form of long speeches her characters make to each other about Scottish politics. This is calculated to make the reader fall asleep.
Then there is That Scene. Or rather there are two scenes which are extremely confusing.
The first one occurs when the narrator, Sergeant Adam Williamson, describes how Matthew Brown suddenly appears while he is in the middle of talking with Lily (now in her early thirties.) And how Lily “with love in her eyes” rushes past Adam to embrace Matthew, her long-lost beau. This is all the more frustrating for Adam because he had just been kissing Lily passionately. But Adam’s reaction is so strange. He merely shrugs his shoulders and lets her go. I don’t know of any man who would allow that to happen without registering some sort of protest.
Which brings us to That Scene, ~ SPOILER ALERT ~ in which we realize that Adam Williamson the narrator is in fact Matthew Brown the romantic lead. Wait a minute, I can hear nearly every reader saying. If Lily recognized that it was Matthew Brown who was heading the enquiry to investigate her case, if it was Matthew who realized she was trying to con money out of the government via a sham marriage certificate, why was she so anxious? True enough, she was caught in a snare between being hanged for her “crimes” and ruining the reputation of the young woman (Maggie) in her care. But surely Matthew would have that all sorted for her. After all, they had loved one another for years, and Matthew is a clever and resourceful character. And surely, she would have recognized him, even after ten years of not seeing him, and even if his name were completely different?
I have seen many writers execute plot twists with successful aplomb. But this one thudded with a clunk. And I don’t understand why such a skilled and talented author let that happen. Surely Ms. Kearsley is an experienced enough writer not to make rookie mistakes?
