The Sealed Knot by Clare Clark

No, it IS good, I promise!

I’m at a low ebb. The creative vim and vigour I felt after the week-long writing-slash-wellness-slash-cold-water-swimming (voluntary) retreat to which I retreated in September* has through temporal entropy become foggy and indistinct; coupled with what feels like a year-long cold I can barely lift my AeroPress®™ espresso without sighing. It didn’t help that in all the beautiful photos taken by the immensely talented Jassy Earl (quickly, send her money, you feckless boobs!) I look like a fat, 46-year-old who’s going all-in on his dad-jowls and is resigned to his fate – not even Jassy can disguise the attritional damage of time and neglect.

So, to start a new sentence with a preposition, I decided that the only way to lift my spirit is to lift up other people, starting with Jassy but continuing with my good friend Clare Harman Clark and her historical romance (histomance? romanstory? romantasy? Where’s a good portmanteau when you need one?) The Sealed Knot.

In a futile exercise of shared madness, Clare and I swapped manuscripts a few years back. I corrected her spelling and grammar where it was necessary (it wasn’t), and she eviscerated my "novel” with a big digital red pen, softening the blows by scribbling in the margins nice things like “I don’t know what this is, but you can really write!”

I printed out a copy of her annotated version and ritualistically burned it on a pyre.

Her manuscript, however, was dead good. I am not an afficionado of the genre and could give a tinker’s cuss for the tribulations of long-dead zealots and their long-dead but saucy bints**, and that probably came across in my tongue-in-cheek 5-star Amazon review, which I dashed off to get her to ten 5-star reviews. 

However, the spirit of the review is accurate.

Set in the tumultuous period of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, [INSERT DATES HERE], we find Tara Villiers, daughter of a proud Stuart-supporting family, thrust into a dark web of intrigue when, during the reign of Lord Protector Cromwell, she is married off against her will to her enemy, Gabriel Moore, suppressor of Irish freedoms and betrayer of the rightful King of England, Charles I. I can see you’re already ahead of the game though, because of course you’re thinking, “I bet there’s more to this guy Gabriel than meets the eye, eh?”

Yep, he’s a mysterious one alright, so, yeah, Tara starts having real feelings about him – how could she not! He’s hot! And she’s hot too! They’re so hot together! Things develop as things do and yaddah yaddah, hot stuff!

Ok, you got me, I can’t remember much of the plot specifics, and I can’t remember where my copy of the manuscript might be hiding to check, but I can say with confidence that I was embarrassed to have enjoyed reading it, so that’s not nothing. The plotting and scene-setting are cinematic in scope and the language, whilst judiciously subtle but provocative, is pared back to keep juicy things moving towards the juicy crisis/conclusion. Tara is an intelligent character, thoughtful and resourceful, and not victim to romantasy tropes, and Gabriel... well, he’s just Fitzwilliam Darcy Esquire. What’s not to love?

You may have gathered it’s hard for me to recommend a book of this type, damning as I am the whole merry bunch with such faint praise as to be almost obscured, but I can reassure you it’s not hard for me to recommend Clare’s writing***. She is very much aware of the lazy pitfalls of the genre – the sappy romanticism, purple prose and breathless indiscretions – and she manoeuvres around them with guile and no little craft. Her research is, appropriately for a lawyer, meticulous, and the story fairly zips along – I had read it and proposed sarcastic mansplainations for my very many specious corrections in no time at all. I am unapologetic, therefore, in heartily proffering The Sealed Knot as an exemplar of muscular and intelligent escapism. If you do fancy a literary detour, and you don’t mind a bit of [INSERT CENTURY HERE]th-century historical intrigue, then you could do MUCH worse. Philippa Gregory has a serious rival in the wings.

[Ed. I've been made aware recently of two things: first, that I am open to accusations that I've been unfair to the whole romance genre by saying it's lazy. I do know the great effort required to both write and edit, and get published, ANYTHING these days, so my response is a big raspberry. I said there are lazy pitfalls into which any writer, including romance novelists, can fall and that Clare has skillfully avoided them. I don't enjoy romance novels so I can't have any more informed opinion on them than I don't enjoy them. Second, the lukewarm gents of Three Bean Salad discussed the civil war re-enactment society The Sealed Knot on a recent episode, reminding me that there could be a joke in the title of this novel. It has passed me by sadly, but see if you can get it. Nov 2024]

*September 2024, in case time has run away with us all again. The organiser, Holly Rigby, is running another one in January (2025) and you can and should and MUST sign up to it here: https://www.hollyrigby.co.uk/retreats. Spot the token dude in the sacred feminine space....

**historically accurate terminology, reflective of the time and not necessarily the view of the author or her reviewer

***although I have less to say about her exciting-looking back-catalogue.

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