Good read. Like the characters and story flow. Entertaining read based around real people and time. Like author's interpretation of events from history.

Her Secret Rose is the first in a trilogy based on the lives of the poet WB Yeats and actor-turned-political campaigner Maud Gonne.

From their first meeting they are united by their passionate commitment to Irish nationalism, but there is much that divides them. Gonne is independently wealthy, worldly and confident. She has the resources – bolstered by an unconventional upbringing – to break through many of the constraints facing women at the time.

Yeats, by contrast, is naïve and sexually inexperienced, living at home in genteel poverty and struggling to make a name for himself. He becomes infatuated with Gonne and she looms large in his thoughts and fantasies even though they rarely see each other. She, in turn, seems to need his friendship, though it is never entirely clear, perhaps even to Gonne herself, whether she feels a profound connection to him or whether he is just another plate she has to keep spinning.

The story is narrated by Rosie Cross, a woman who reveals little of herself in this first volume, except to say that she was also involved in nationalist movement and was a servant at that time. This frame works well – Rosie is close enough to know their thoughts and feelings but also has a nice ironic distance. She is clearly not blind to the faults of her subjects.

Yeats, like his artist father, is concerned that his art should not be tainted by banal concerns such as earning a living. The burden of supporting the household therefore falls on his long-suffering sisters.

Gonne is portrayed as a more complex and enigmatic character. For all her strength and charm, she is embroiled in an abusive relationship with a married man in France who is happy to use her to further his own political agenda.

Gonne elects to keep her private life a secret. She is constantly aware of her public persona and its importance to her political activity. She tells Yeats – and presumably the world at large – that her children are orphans she has adopted. His lack of knowledge of her real life allows him to mythologise her further.

Their vision for Ireland draws on Celtic myth and mysticism which can put them at odds with other nationalists (Gonne is conflicted about whether to share a platform with a socialist, and at times people criticise her interventions in the evictions of tenant farmers as more theatrical than constructive).

The story is interwoven with extracts from original documents and Yeats’ poetry. It portrays two fascinating but not necessarily attractive characters, and gives an insight into an important period in Irish history.

The first book in a trilogy, The Yeats-Gonne Trilogy Book 1. It's a fictionalized biography of the great poet, Willie .B.Yeats and the turmoil of 1890's Ireland. This book follows the first ten years of the relationship between the Irish poet, Willie B. Yeats and his muse, Maud Gonne: revolutionary, feminist and political activist. I look forward to reading the next two books in the trilogy.

Pub Date 30 Aug 2016
Thank you to NetGalley and Font Publications for providing me with a review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

A big thank you to Orna Ross, Font Publications, and Netgalley for the free copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

This is a debut novel the first in a trilogy, which always grabs my attention. It's a fictionalized biography of the great poet, W.B.Yeats and the turmoil of 1890s Ireland.

Yeats met Maud Gonne on January 30, 1889, in London and nothing was the same for him. Yeats is one of the last great Romantic poets;
Gonne, one of the earliest Irish political activists. It was love at first sight for Yeats, perhaps for Gonne, but she was so absorbed in the Irish question and her French aristocrat that she couldn't see anything else. For years.
I'm struck by the amount of loss and despondency in the plot. Not much gets done for all the goodwill expressed. The Yeats poems interlaced with the chapters are a pleasant touch, but really don't lighten things up.

I'm not interested in continuing this trilogy. My attention was not piqued.

As long as I can remember, I have been a fan of the poetry of William Butler Yeats. So when I was presented, through Netgalley, with Orna Ross's book "Her Secret Rose," I jumped at the chance to delve a bit into the early part of his life and his complicated relationship with his muse, Maud Gonne.

The book is easy to read, absorbing, and very well researched. Inspired by the historical resources of private letters, journals, communications and published works, Orna Ross in effect writes of a love affair that never truly was, but which sparked passion and creativity. At first I was put off by how the story was being told, narrated from the point of view of domestic servant, Rosie. Through her eyes, we are lead on a fascinating journey behind these public personas into the private, real world of their human strengths and flaws. Maud is not a typical woman of her era. She is tall, outspoken, and political. She is a femme fatale and a passionate feminist. Her passion inspires Yeats to write some of his most beautiful words.

"Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light;
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."