Impassioned Clay

by Stevie Davies

A striking seventh novel from British scholar and critic Stevie Davies.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, LGBT

228 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Welsh born Stevie Davies is a novelist, literary critic, biographer and historian. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the Academi Gymreig and is Director of Creative Writing at the University of Wales, Swansea.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stevie Davies has rapidly become one of my favourite authors. She writes beautifully and this novel is no exception. Earlier in the year I read Davies’s work on reclaiming women’s voices and writing from the Civil War period of English History. This novel revisits the women of the Civil War period. Olivia comes from a Quaker background in modern Cheshire. When her mother dies she is buried in the garden of the family home. A skeleton is discovered of a seventeenth century woman; her neck is broken and she has a scold’s bridle on her head. This is a secured metal cap with a metal flange which fixes in the mouth and on the tongue. This scold had metal spikes on it. Olivia becomes increasingly fascinated by the woman and as years go by she begins to try to establish her identity. This is interspersed with Olivia’s growing up, her difficult relationship with her father and his new wife, and Olivia’s struggles with herself and her sexuality. Olivia follows the historical trail as would any scholar and the work becomes part detective story as the woman is gradually brought to light. Hannah Williams/Jones/Emanuel is the woman in question and Olivia follows contemporary writings, some by Hannah herself to tell her story.
Davies skilfully weaves fact and fiction in the historical side of the tale and does so with great empathy. Hannah is a rebel and through her research Olivia sheds light on her own situation. Hannah, through ill-treatment, disillusionment and contact with the radicalism of the Civil War, develops her own interpretation of religion. Hannah rejects the notion of a male God and an established church and is persecuted and tortured, but refuses to be quiet. Hannah has a “yoke-fellow” (wife and religious helpmate) Isabel and her anarchistic notions and challenge to the establishment means her fate is sealed. Davies says that many of her characters are transients, displaced or wayfarers (Hannah is Welsh and crosses the border) and often “mouthy and anomalous”. There is a connection of personal identity between the two women which transcends time and makes the novel work well. Davies gives a voice to characters usually confined to academic books and offering a critique of conventional historical fictions with conventional meanings.
A moving novel with an interesting and feisty protagonist; I really do now want to read the rest of Davies’s work.

[Ape · Rating 4 out of 5]

A friend of mine picked this up in a second hand bookshop in Scotland and posted it to me, telling me I should read it. This was in the summer 2005. It looks like the bottom half has been dunked in water. A book that's been around, been well-read. You can't help but wonder who else has read this copy.

This is a compelling story. It follows awkward book-worm Olivia through her life, and the constant connection back to a skeleton wearing a skold's bridle that was dug up in her back garden when they were burrying her mother (legally, I'll add!). This isn't the book of mystery and intrigue that it might sound like from that description. It takes you back in history to the English Civil War and outbreak of all kinds of extreme religions, and people's intolerance towards anyone or anything that dares to be different. Powerful and moving.

[Rainbowgardener · Rating 4 out of 5]

How could I not like a novel whose main character is a Quaker lesbian bookworm? :-) But honestly, Olivia is not the most likeable character. She was raised Quaker, but is now mostly atheist and repudiated a lot of her Quaker mother's values. She is so shy, introverted, socially awkward that it seems like she must be autistic.

The interesting part is her quest to find out about a 17th century woman whose bones are discovered in her garden. The woman turns out to be a direct ancestor of Olive and a heretic. Lots of good information about what was going on in England in the early days of Quakerism.

[Andrew H · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing historical novel that spans the present and the past. The book owes a lot to the author's critical work on dissenting women: Unbridled Spirits. In the background to this novel, there is The Bible and Ruth, the seventeenth century Quakers, and the rights of women to love freely. As the Keatsian title suggests, this is a novel about our own personal histories and how we excavate our memories in the search for truths about who we are.

[Cindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting, well-crafted book. Good prose. I found the ending a little disappointing but still a very good read.

[JenniferB]

Set around Cheadle! Bit dark.