Review:
Midlife in Gretna Green, by Linzi Day
| Series: |
Midlife Recorder #1 |
| Publisher: |
Linzi Day |
| Copyright: |
July 2022 |
| ISBN: |
9798837010774 |
| Format: |
Kindle |
| Pages: |
464 |
Midlife in Gretna Green is a self-published fantasy novel. It's
urban fantasy in the sense that it's set in our world but with magic that
most people don't know about, but the primary setting is a parish in rural
Scotland and therefore the genre is not urban in that sense. It was Linzi
Day's published first novel.
As the story opens, Niki McKnight is a widow in Manchester, England with a
job in the Register Office she likes, a boss she hates, and a Bichon Frise
dog she adores. In the year since her husband Nick died, she's put her
life on hold and made as few decisions as possible, despite some concerned
pushing from her best friend Aysha. The death of her grandmother is not
entirely unexpected, but her inheritance is about to upend her life.
Niki assumes that her grandmother has a modest cottage and a small estate,
and therefore being the named heir will mostly involve cleaning up the
details of a modest life. She is caught by surprise by a requirement in
the will that she live in Gretna Green for a year and a day in order to
inherit. Her initial reaction is to treat this as an absurd impossibility
given her life and job in Manchester, but she slowly realizes something
strange is going on. Her grandmother's lawyer is lying to her, he refuses
to tell her the value of the estate and seems to think it's more valuable
than she expected, and her grandmother's tiny cottage does not seem to be
following the seasons of the rest of the world. There is something magical
at work.
I will not spoil the rest of the reveal. I will say that this is a magical
house book because, if you are anything like me, that is why you will want
to read this series. There are not enough magical house books, and this is
one of the better kind that allow the house to be a full speaking
character.
Midlife in Gretna Green is an unapologetic fantasy of personal
agency. Niki starts the novel with a miserable manager, a messy pile of
unread mail she doesn't want to deal with, and a lot of personal emotional
baggage. She gets handed a position that requires and rewards standing up
for herself and being decisive. It comes with a pile of unresolved but not
horribly complex problems that were waiting for someone who would listen,
make sensible decisions, and treat other people with respect. Oh, and
there are a few assholes in the way, but they seriously underestimate the
power she has to put a stop to their bullshit.
This is the sort of book that traditional publishers tended not to buy
(although Day apparently did get an offer for this one and turned it
down), and I'm not sure why. Editors thought protagonists should have to
work harder for their payoff? Some lingering Calvinist dourness in English
language publishing mistrusted triumphant books? Obvious wish fulfillment
was considered embarrassing or low-class and thus didn't warrant
publication? This didn't apply to the endless bildungsromans
about magically talented boys, so some level of sexism was probably in
play. Maybe this is finally changing? It reminds me of the bias against
romance novels and their guaranteed happily ever after, and in the case of
romance there was too much money for publishers to leave it on the table.
In any case, the growth of self-publishing has created an alternative
market that let these books reach an audience and I for one am here for
it. A lot of wish-fulfillment books, and a lot of self-published books,
are not very good, but the ones that have a spark of originality and
character can be a delight worth tolerating the somewhat rocky editing and
pacing problems that a full editorial staff might have cleaned up.
I loved reading books about kickass women who took no crap and fixed
their lives up exactly how they wanted them to be. But how did they
get to be that way? They always started out awesome in the books.
Seriously, did they kick ass at sixteen? Or did their superpower
kickassery not kick in until they were thirty? Forty? If so, then I
was screwed. Would I need to wait till I was fifty or until a genie
arrived offering wishes? I already felt as if I d spent my whole life
waiting for something wild and wonderful to happen.
Niki is a Specific Type to a somewhat hilarious degree, and I'm not sure
if Day is playing into that intentionally or if she's projecting herself
into the book. The amount of self-insertion is not zero: Day also lives in
Gretna Green, owns a Bichon Frise, and worked as an assistant registrar
and civil celebrant. Niki also drinks wine regularly, has a psychic gift,
occasionally reads tarot cards, is an accommodating pushover at work who
struggles to say no to her abusive boss, has impostor syndrome problems,
and swears by a fictional self-help book about grief that provides the
quotes at the starts of chapters. There is a cat, because of course
there's a cat.
(The fictional self-help book is a spot-on parody played entirely straight
in the story. I think Day is having some fun with the reader? I can't
tell!)
This is what I mean by unapologetic. It's easy to read Niki as a
stereotype, but she's a stereotype a lot of real people can identify with
and there's something highly satisfying in watching her find her footing.
I
like wish fulfillment books; it's fun to see someone's wishes
come true! Particularly in the year of 2026, there's something immensely
satisfying in seeing an ordinary, insecure person get a massive amount of
power and use it to make the world better. I don't need everything to be
hard, fraught, and laden with costs in fiction, although I wouldn't want
every book I read to be like this.
Also, the world building is great. It's not polished; there's a bit of a
grab bag feeling to it, I'm dubious the magic system has any underlying
rigorous rule set, and Niki's powers, once she has access to them, are
more of a semi-sentient genie than a skill she has to learn with hard
practice. But the magic is
fun. The sentient house is one of the
best characters, particularly after Niki realizes how underused it has
been, and I am a sucker for any good sentient house book. The cat is a far
more interesting character than I first thought she would be. And Niki's
new magical job is more complicated and less typical than the normal
Celtic-inspired fantasy that I thought it was going to be at first.
My primary warning about this book is that Niki starts out beaten down and
grieving her dead husband, and it took me about five pages to decide that
her dead husband was a complete piece of shit who was not worth any of the
grief Niki puts into him. She also doesn't stand up for herself for the
first hundred pages or so, which made me want to yell at the book a few
times. Both of these problems go away farther into the book, and Niki does
eventually figure out that Nick was abusive trash, but I was relieved when
the "make endless excuses for worthless men" portion of the story was
finally over. You have to stick with it until Niki gets brave enough to
try being the protagonist; once that happens, it becomes great fun.
It is fairly obvious that
Midlife in Gretna Green was
self-published, and I wish it had gotten the editing that it deserved. My
copy had a couple of obvious formatting errors, the plot veers about more
than was strictly necessary, and I think a careful editing pass could have
tightened the writing by about fifty pages or so without losing any
important detail. If that sort of thing bothers you, make sure you're in
self-published fiction mode before starting this one. But it also has that
irrepressible, bubbling-with-ideas feeling of a book where nothing has
suppressed the author's enthusiasm. It's a very grabby book; once Niki
starts embracing her new life, I could barely put it down.
If you're in the mood for a good fantasy wish-fulfillment story that has
no romance and a whole lot of "why are things run this way, no, we're
changing that," highly recommended. I had so much fun with this book, and
the series is currently making the rounds of my whole family. Don't read
this when you're looking for something challenging and literary and deep;
save it for when you desperately want to watch someone just fix something
for once, damn it.
Followed by
Painting the Blues in Gretna Green, which I have
already read, breaking my usual rule of writing reviews before reading the
next book in a series.
Rating: 8 out of 10
I built my current house server 
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I enjoyed reading this post by Marginalia
The recurring joke is that because of some health issues, in summer I
dress like a Victorian Vampire.
But how would an actual Late Victorian Vampire dress? Picture her, she
would look like some kind of eccentric gentlewoman, as vampires usually
do, probably with a style that is a bit conservative, rather than
following the latest fashions.
Now, she wouldn t probably wear men s shirts. But what if she was a
lesbian
At the front, I wanted the ruffle to be inserted in the yoke, but I was
also whipstitching the gathers to it to make them neater, so I started
bu attaching the yoke lining to the gathered front, then I whipstitched
the ruffle to the front, catching each gather, and finally I
whipstitched the other yoke on the ruffle and the rest of the gathered
front.
And then after sewing the collar, I realized that this way the slit
would have remained open in the front (or the collar too narrow), so I
had to unpick the front part of the yoke, and sew it again, this time
leaving an excess of fabric as wide as half the placket width from the
pattern, to be sewn directly in the collar band.
From then, things progressed smoothly, with some interruptions, until I
got to the first sleeve, which I failed to insert twice, as one does.
On the third attempt, with a different method, I succeeded, I tried the
shirt on, and it already felt extra.
But it could be even more extra. With some ruffles also at the collar.
The shirt had been made with a simple collar band, and I could have just
added the ruffle to it, but I also wanted to be able to wear it with
other detachable collars, so I decided to make another collar band with
ruffles, to wear on top.
And that was mostly it, except for the reinforcement patches at the
side seams and cuffs: I love having them, because they make the seam
end neater and stronger, but they are a bit of a hassle to make, so they
got postponed a few days.
But finally, the shirt was done.
And I tried it on, and it was good.
But now I really need a pair of cycling breeches, don t I?
