Reviews with content warning for Death - The Maiden

Read as part of the Women's Prize Longlist 2024.
A fictional perspective of true historical event of a woman being killed for murdering her Uncle. The author gently placed the tracing paper of today's understanding of intra familial abuse & a coersive controlling & abuse male to the experience from over 340 years ago in 1679.

Wouldn't have picked this up due to the cover design, but glad the longlist brouht this to my attention, as helped me to reflect on previous generations of womens experiences.

Content Warnings

kirstym25's review against another edition

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dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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serendipitysbooks's review

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Maiden is a work of historical fiction, one inspired by a real life event - the arrest, trial and eventual execution of Lady Christian Nimmo for the murder of her lover (and uncle by marriage), Lord James Forrester in Scotland in 1679. The Maiden of the title refers not to Lady Christian but to the guillotine type device used for her execution. Foster doesn’t seek to excuse the murder. Nor does she portray Nimmo as innocent, the victim of mistaken identity or a miscarriage of justice. Rather she uses her 21st century knowledge and sensibilities to explain why her character (and she makes it clear that the woman in her book is a fictional character and is not meant to represent the actual historical Lady Christian) acted the way she did. And I found her imaginings to be plausible and convincing. Lord James was a thoroughly despicable character who richly deserved some type of justice, a public shaming by the Kirk at the very least. Sadly his wealth and status protected him from that. Foster also showed the way other’s contributed to the situation Christian found herself in and considered times when the outcome might have been changed. However, I appreciated the fact that she didn’t shy away from Christian not being an innocent party, one who acted badly, had flaws, exerted agency and while provoked did not need to kill her lover. Gender, money, power, status and sexuality all come into play, sometimes in unexpected ways. Overall a solid, well-written story that I’m glad the Women’s Prize put on my radar.

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sophs_mood_reading's review

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sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

1679, Edinburgh Scotland, a Laird is murdered and his mistress the Lady Christian has been sentenced to death as a result, but will she escape, be pardoned or suffer the blade of The Maiden.

We have here a fictional reimagining of a true crime, where the voices of the novel are that of women and not the men who wrote the history books.

This novel had so much potential, duel view points of two women at the centre of the crime, 17th century Edinburgh in all its filth and poverty, class system opposition. However with all this opportunity the book just fell short.

I found it difficult to really connect with our two female main characters, finding them both irritating and well bad story tellers. This is a novel surrounding extramarital affairs (closed door) but it was bland and not exciting.

The last couple of chapters finally give us the “what happened” (well this authors decision) but there was no real suspense or emotion, it was all a bit beige.

Look I have to be fair it was great to see a retelling of a historical crime in the female POV but it just didn’t get over the line for me.

Content Warnings