Fayne

A Novel

By: Ann-Marie MacDonald

Narrated by: Ann-Marie MacDonald

THE INSTANT #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE 2023 PARAGRAPHE HUGH MACLENNAN PRIZE FOR FICTION
A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
ONE OF CBC’S BEST CANADIAN FICTION BOOKS OF 2022

A beloved writer returns with a tale of science, magic, love and identity.

In the late nineteenth century, Charlotte Bell is growing up at Fayne, a vast and lonely estate straddling the border between England and Scotland, where she has been kept from the world by her adoring father, Lord Henry Bell, owing to a mysterious condition. Charlotte, strong and insatiably curious, revels in the moorlands, and has learned the treacherous and healing ways of the bog from the old hired man, Byrn, whose own origins are shrouded in mystery. Her idyllic existence is shadowed by the magnificent portrait on the landing in Fayne House which depicts her mother, a beautiful Irish-American heiress, holding Charlotte’s brother, Charles Bell. Charlotte has grown up with the knowledge that her mother died in giving birth to her, and that her older brother, Charles, the long-awaited heir, died soon afterwards at the age of two. When Charlotte’s appetite for learning threatens to exceed the bounds of the estate, her father breaks with tradition and hires a tutor to teach his daughter “as you would my son, had I one.” But when Charlotte and her tutor’s explorations of the bog turn up an unexpected artefact, her father announces he has arranged for her to be cured of her condition, and her world is upended. Charlotte’s passion for knowledge and adventure will take her to the bottom of family secrets and to the heart of her own identity.

©2022 Ann-Marie MacDonald (P)2022 Knopf Canada

Critic reviews

“A reinvention for the bestselling author. . . . MacDonald is wildly successful in creating a rich Victorian world as seen through a young person’s eyes. . . . With its tenderness and twists that recall Charles Dicken’s Bleak House and the upstairs-downstairs dynamics of shows like Downton Abbey, MacDonald’s fourth novel is a paean to the act of storytelling and a triumph that challenges the constructs of gender.” —Quill and Quire (starred review)

"Engrossing, gorgeous, funny. . . . Fayne illuminates the experience of being queer before such things were discussed openly." —The Globe and Mail

“Richly and minutely detailed . . . Fayne is . . . a subtle meditation on gender identity and environmental degradation that feels precisely attuned to the present. MacDonald’s work has always featured outcasts, and Fayne is her celebration of every marvelous living thing that flourishes on the margins, refusing to be categorized or controlled.” —The Walrus

Modern Bronte, but better

What storytelling! What characters! Just a lovely, thoughtful, topical, brilliant book. Thank you skilled Author.

Altogether wonderful!

What a great story - complicated, engaging, lots of twists and turns but knit together with wonderful skill.

A slog

Interesting perspective with surprise situations. High brow, wordy and effusive.
The high point at the end happens quickly and makes it difficult to capture. Many long dog walks later it is finally finished Nit for the faint of heart.