Miriam, La Colombe Blanche

by Wendy Waters

Rating: *****

With her entrancing singing voice and heavenly face to match, fifteen-year-old serving girl Miriam Tilby would always be a target for Rathe Courteney, the Master of Radclyffe Hall, as her mother, Eirinn, feared.

Six years later, in 1593, accused of bewitching him, poisoning his wife, and pregnant with their child, Miriam is sentenced to be burned at the stake in Smithfield, London.

But the night before the pyre is due to be lit, a black-clad stranger offers Miriam immortality in return for an everlasting partnership of power and vengeance…

Having been privy to Waters’ unique and exceptional writing talent upon reviewing her fantastic trilogy ending in Paradis Inferno* back in 2022, I had an inkling that Miriam, La Colombe Blanche, would, once again, showcase Waters' pure literary sorcery. I was not wrong; her new offering effortlessly blends magical realism, historical fiction, philosophy, and fantasy, woven together with Miriam’s spellbinding musical ability and otherworldliness.

Opening in 1588, Part One of the novel is a wonderfully immersive narrative into, primarily, the below-stairs life of a wealthy family. It instantly transports and hooks the reader, full of historical insight, keen detail, and evocative, lively dialogue.

However, interspersed with, and underneath the fascinating daily life of a late sixteenth-century London household are shivers of the supernatural and tantalizing hints of unearthly guidance enhanced by the lush, dreamlike quality of Waters’ prose, although her conjuring of time and place, throughout the novel, is always sharply drawn and beautifully captured.

Waters dexterously moves the reader into the age of the ‘world turning upside down’ as the novel segues into Part Two. Miriam, now immortal, is in exile in a ruined Abbey sited on the Cornish coast, a plaintive siren seeking retribution.

In a less capable writer’s hands, this area of the novel could have stagnated; many years pass, but Waters uses Miriam’s anchorite and often Gothic existence not only for her emotional introspection and spiritual growth but also to explore precisely who placed her there and his intentions regarding Miriam and the wider world.

So much is encompassed in this novel. Waters is never afraid to address through her story, uncomfortable, whispering truths, such as the role of Christopher “Kit” Marlowe in the ascendancy of Shakespeare, not to mention the broader contexts and consequences of the fundamental socio-political upheavals and ideological shifts that occur throughout the novel’s span.

All of which is seen not only through Water’s penetrating gaze but also in the aching profundity of Miriam.  If this sounds a little dense, it is not; on a superficial level, her novel can be read as a rollickingly good romp through the ages with a preternatural gloss, but there are lots of additional layers and sub-textual nuances to delve deeper into for the curious, probing reader.

And, never more so, as Miriam leaves the Abbey and heads to France in the early eighteenth century. Waters plunges her into the chicanery and conspiracies of Versailles, replacing Marlowe with Voltaire and deliciously bringing to life those intrigues founded on sexual currency involving Mesdames Pompadour and Du Barry.

Waters' characters are depicted with depth, intelligence, and individuality, especially those in Part One who are observed with a rich rusticity. She skilfully embroiders the non-fictional personalities while leaving Miriam beguiling enigmatic.

However, the mercurial, Byronic Stanas Vedil, is the constant presence throughout the centuries and featured in Waters' Paradis Inferno novel. Fascinating, childish, and full of sullen, dandified grandeur, he excites and repels in equal measure. And, it’s not only Stanas who reappears; as the novel concludes, there is a further connective, clever, and unexpected twist. 

Miriam, La Colombe Blanche is a staggeringly brilliant, seductive, and sumptuous tour de force that unfurls an extravagant tapestry of love, betrayal, and revenge, dripping in lavish detail and flushed with latent sensuality. Highly recommended.

*Click here for my review of Fields of Grace.

*Click here for my review of Catch the Moon, Mary.

*Click here for my review of Paradis Inferno.

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