Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Parcel of Rogues by Olga Wojtas review: 'gloriously improbable'
This is Olga Wojtas’s best, wittiest and most self-assured comic novel yet, writes David Robinson
So far, Olga Wojtas has taken Shona McMonagle, her Morningside librarian time-traveller, to Tsarist Russia, fin de siècle France, medieval Scotland, a 15th century island in the Baltic and early Renaissance Venice. In the course of her comic adventures, she has encountered pirates, sea monsters, Dracula, and Macbeth’s witches. Until now, though, she has somehow stayed clear of what one might have thought the place and time in which she would most feel at home - Enlightenment Edinburgh.
All that changes in Wojtas’s latest book, in which Shona lands slap bang in the middle of the Assembly Rooms on Edinburgh’s George Street. As befits a woman who has received such a superlative education at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls - Miss Blaine herself commissions all Shona’s time-travel adventures - she soon works out in what year she has landed. First, there are as yet no chandeliers in the building, and she knows full well they were only installed in 1796 though the Assembly Rooms opened in 1787. Then, the teenage boy next to her - whom she recognises as the young Walter Scott - explains that, at the age of 16, has already been working at his father’s law firm for two years, so she works out it must be either 1787or 1788. Finally, there’s a poet on the stage who also seems familiar. He looks down at her décolletage - she is embarrassed by how much she has on display - and gives her a long slow wink. “I was in absolutely no doubt as to what he meant,” writes Shona. “Get your coat; you’ve pulled.”
Welcome to 1788. And a big hello to Rabbie Burns.
The plenitude of historical trimmings and the involvement of flesh and blood figures from the past are new additions to an already enjoyable series. Much of its comic energy has always been provided by the mutual incomprehension between Shona’s feisty feminism and 21st century expressions and the attitudes and language of her hosts. That remains the case - Shona’s description of Lord Monboddo as “mad as a box of frogs” prompts a lengthy discussion among the Edinburgh salonnières as to whether the madness refers to the box or the frogs - but the historical embellishments add to the reader’s enjoyment.
So when, for example, the young Scott introduces himself as to her at the Assembly Rooms Jedediah Cleishbotham, Shona is well-read enough to see through his pseudonym. She knows about his limp, and because it is so far to his home in George Square gives him a lift in what she is about to say is a cab before she realises cabriolets are not yet in use, and is about to query why the hackney coachman isn’t taking the shortcut up the Mound when she realises it hasn’t yet been built.
These, though, are just the grace-notes of Wojtas’s comedy. Using real historical figures brings other dividends too. Want to know why Scott chose to write anonymously for so long? Because Shona told him it would be a good, buzz-building, career move. Those Burnsian phrases we all know? Again, all down to Shona or her headmistress, Marcia Blaine, whom Burns believes outshines all other women.
READ MORE: Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Uncharted Island by Olga Wojtas review: 'a delightful novel'
The plot? Well, there is one, and it’s as exuberantly madcap as it needs to be: Marcia Blaine has to be rescued from the hangman’s noose if ever she is to, in the future, found the girls’ school named after her and immortalised in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. There will be chases across the Burgh Muir (wild and remote but not nearly as much so as Shona’s native Morningside) and the most gloriously improbable denouement.
The late Allan Massie used to point out on these pages how rare it is these days to come across a genuinely funny comic novel, and hailed the last two in Wojtas’s series as excellent examples of what we have been missing. He was right, but I’d go even further: this is her best, wittiest and most self-assured one yet.
Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Parcel of Rogues, by Olga Wojtas, Saraband, £10.99
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