Kate Braithwaite on Dorothy Dunnett
A Tribute to Dorothy Dunnett
Kate Braithwaite, author of The Girl Puzzle: a novel of Nelly Bly
I first read The Lymond Chronicles as a teen, inhaling all six volumes one after another. For however long it took me, I was swept into the fate of those vibrant characters: gutted when favourites died, torn by the seeming good and bad in Francis Crawford, horrified by the betrayals and violence, seduced by the humour, wit, and cleverness of it all. At the time, I didn’t burn to be a writer. I wasn’t scribbling away in quiet corners or dreaming up storylines, although I did have a half-formed idea that I’d like to write a novel one day. As a teenager I loved reading in an uncritical, all-welcoming way, enjoying nothing more than finding an author with big, fat books, and preferably plenty of them, that I could disappear into on a daily basis. I do remember, however, finding The Game of Kings challenging at first. That opening scene shouldn’t really have been hard for me—I’m Scottish after all, born and bred in Edinburgh—but these are dense stories, full of literary allusions and wordplay. Consider Francis Crawford’s first words: “I am a narwhal looking for my virgin. I have sucked up the sea like Charybdis and failing other entertainment will spew it three times daily, for a fee.” I’m so glad my teenage-self persevered.
As I ploughed through Queens’ Play and onto my favourite (at least in terms of title) The Disorderly Knights, my parents repeatedly told me how lucky I was. It was the 1980s. They and their friends had all read the Lymond series and were waiting impatiently for the next Niccolò book to be published. They also shared that one of their friends had read nearly to the end of Checkmate only to abandon the book in shock and refuse to continue. If you’ve read the book, you know the moment I’m referring to!
Thankfully she was persuaded to read on to the end.
So, what did I learn, and how have Dunnett’s books influenced me as a writer? In the first place, the series confirmed me as a life-long fan of historical fiction. Through these books I discovered that reading could be a shared and cross-generational experience.
The series also takes the reader on a huge emotional rollercoaster – as my parent’s friend proved. But perhaps the most significant thing as I reflect decades later, is the way the novels introduced me to the concept of writing as a craft. Finishing The Lymond Chronicles, I marvelled at how Dunnett must have known about her characters and her plot before that scene in The Game of Kings even began to take shape. My eyes were opened to concepts like character arc and backstory, even though I didn’t have the vocabulary for what I was learning at that point.
Now that I’ve written four historical novels and am an editor for the Historical Novel Review, I’m even more in awe of Dorothy Dunnett’s genius. Writing novels is a lot harder than it looks, at least in my experience! The Lymond Chronicles, for me, are the gold standard for the genre. I’m truly thankful for that seminal reading experience in my teens, and the years of reading and writing pleasure I’ve enjoyed in consequence.
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