The heroine of Star Gazing is prickly Marianne Fraser, a blind widow living in Edinburgh who sadly lost her husband in the Piper Alpha disaster of 1988. When Marianne meets Keir, an oilman from Skye, Marianne’s carefully ordered world quickly becomes dishevelled and unpredictable. Marianne has been living with Louisa, her novelist sister, and Keir’s entrance into their lives brings chaos to Marianne’s long-accustomed habits and undermines her assumptions regarding her future. It is as if one minute she is searching for dropped keys on her doorstep and the next she is packing for a week away in Skye, and quite understandably it takes Marianne some time to get used to these new developments, and the man instigating them.
Keir is the tall, dark and handsome heroic figure and he plays his part well. He is sensitive, confident in himself, but without the alpha male arrogance of many a literary hero. Despite his profession, Keir is a man very much in touch with nature and through his eyes Marianne learns to ‘see’ more of the world. Keir has the gift of being able to describe sights in terms of music, and senses that Marianne can comprehend:
‘If you look east, one of the brightest stars you’ll see is Arcturus. It has a yellow-orange glow. Most stars look cold. Icy. They’d sound like…flutes. No, piccolos. Shrill. Arcturus looks warmer. A cello maybe…It looks like the stove feels when it gives off just a bit of heat. Arcturus glows, but it doesn’t burn or blaze like the sun. It’s like the feeling you might have for an old friend… or an ex-lover, one who still means something to you. Steady. Passionless. On second thoughts, make that a viola…How am I doing?’
This ability of Keir’s enchants Marianne but also leaves her a little suspicious of that enchantment and afraid of the strength of her feelings. Nonetheless, from the very start of the novel the reader is rooting for Keir and hoping that Marianne will give him the chance that he seems to deserve.
Marianne has been blind since birth and the portrayal of blindness is sensitive and informative. Whilst I am able to get my head around an inability to imagine colours or the sight of the stars, I had never before considered the difficulty that a sightless person might experience when trying to get a sense of the hugeness of a landscape or the concept of the far distance. Marianne experiences a world that is often limited to that within her earshot, and sometimes only that within her reach, so it was fascinating to read of Marianne’s trip to the wilds of Skye, with a terrible moment in the snow leading to extreme tension and a great thudding of this reader’s heart.
Richly packed with back story meticulously researched, the real strength of this novel is in the characters, who are flawed, sometimes abrasive but appealing. To my mind the plot was secondary and at times I wasn’t totally convinced that the plot felt a hundred percent believable, especially in the developments concerning Kazakhstan. However, I was unable to stop turning the pages because of the psychological drama unfolding between Marianne and Keir. The sisterly dynamic between Marianne and Louisa was also compelling.
The story is told from various viewpoints and rather than appearing gimmicky, this device seemed essential to the tale. There is some excellent descriptive writing and Linda Gillard has a particular gift for creating convincing dialogue. However, as strange as it sounds to say, the experience of reading Star Gazing for me was rather dreamlike. At the time of reading, the images and smells and emotions were vivid in my mind but they have not had a lingering impact, which I can’t quite explain. Perhaps it is simply a case of reading the book too quickly, as this is a novel that I gobbled down in a couple of days.
Star Gazing is a quiet, thoughtful tale sure to delight fans of the classic love story. I enjoy good romantic fiction and Star Gazing had a comforting, hopeful quality that reminded me of the work of Rosy Thornton, an author whose novels I rate highly. Still, romance-loathers beware, because if you don’t appreciate the good old love story, then Star Gazing will likely drive you up the wall with its quiet belief in the power of love and its carpe diem sentiment. If, on the other hand, you enjoy a fresh, captivating retelling of ‘girl meets boy’ with a splash of international drama and a sprinkle of Scottish scenery, then I’d highly recommend this sparely-written and heartwarming novel.
Piatkus Books, ISBN-13: 978-0749938970, 272 pages, paperback, £6.99.
Oh, this one sounds good! I like how it’s a love story, but not a traditional type of one. The exploration of blindness would be intriguing & your assurance that Keir lacks the “alpha male arrogance” is certainly a draw. It’s a poetic title, too. Definitely one to look for.
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