If you enjoy a compelling tale told in lyrical prose, you can’t beat Irish author Orna Ross. She has taken the story of poet W.B. Yeats and his muse Maud Gonne, revolutionary, feminist, social pariah.

They meet in 1889 when he is 23 years old and meets Maud , a beautiful, political amazon. Together, they set about creating a new Ireland, free from the shackles of British oppression, through his poetry and her politics and a shared, often bizarre, fascination with the occult and esoteric.

She is unattainable for a weedy poet from a family that has gone down in the world and his love goes unrequited. She believes his poetry is all the better for it (think: ‘Tread softly for you tread on my dreams’) and that future generations will thank her for it.

Meanwhile she falls for and secretly has two children by a dissolute, married French politician. Their affair includes making love by the graveside of their first child to ensure his reincarnation in their second. You couldn’t make it up and the author hasn’t, skilfully blending fact and fiction.

In lilting poetic prose, the turbulent 1890s in Dublin, London and Paris are brought to life as the story moves seamlessly from the salons and demi-monde of Paris to the mass evictions of tenants in rural Ireland.

I romped through this novel at a sitting, painlessly learning much about the period and Yeats’s poetry along the way. It’s quite my best book of 2016 to date. Fortunately, it is the opening novel in a Yeats-Gonne trilogy and covers only the first ten years of their relationship. I look forward to my next outing with Orna Ross!

I found this fictionalised biography of Yeats and Maud Gonne both compelling and intriguing. It’s the first part of a trilogy and covers the first ten years of their complicated relationship. I look forward to reading the next two volumes. Although Yeats and Gonne are the focus of the narrative, the book ranges far and wide over Irish life and politics and the other key people in Yeats’ life, as well as those in Maud’s. I felt the balance between fiction and non-fiction worked well, although I have to take it on trust that the account is as historically accurate as it could be. Conversations and intimate details are unlikely to have been documented. But it certainly felt authentic, and I was confident that the author had done her research. I was puzzled somewhat by the narrator, who occasionally interjects into the story as though she were a confidante or eye-witness, but the conceit works well, and makes the book appear convincing. Some of Yeats’ poems are included, which is a nice touch. Ross is a gifted storyteller and the book is well-written and well-paced. All in all a very enjoyable, as well as illuminating, novel.

Although this book was released last year, somehow it had slipped past me. HER SECRET ROSE by Orna Ross gives us a fictionalised biography of the legendary relationship between Maud Gonne and W.B. Yeats. Having learned about these two larger than life characters throughout school, I was fascinated by the premise of this story. Told through the eyes of a domestic servant, Rosie Cross, we get to see past their public personas of political activist and poet. Throughout this book, I felt that I got to know them as people - their hopes, their fears, and their inadequacies and doubts. This is a tale about rebellion, politics, and intrigue, mixed throughout with their passion for Ireland and for literature. Snippets of Yeats' poetry is woven through the novel which really added to the mood and understanding of the book overall. HER SECRET ROSE by Orna Ross is a beautifully crafted story and I am so glad that I came across it. I look forward to the next instalment in the series titled A CHILD DANCING.

Before talking about this book, i must admit that before reading it the only thing i knew about WB Yeats was that he was a famous Irish poet and i never read any of his poems. The thing is that i requested this book from NetGalley out of curiosity, i believe that the story behind the poems must be fascinating, what made any poet write those specific words.
Let's just say that i embarked in this journey completely ignorant of what to expect. And i find it was quite interesting!

So, this book was about WB Yeats and Maud Gonne and there fascinating relationship during the last years of the 19th Century.
The first thing that surprised me was to discover that the book was not a kind of Yeats's biography. The author consigned a big part of it to the life of Maud Gonne.
Gonne and Yeats were very different in all aspects, the only thing they had in common was there love for Ireland and their fight for its freedom, her, through her most controversial political works, him through his poetry and the revival of Celtic mythology.

Now, that was another part i absolutely loved, the way the author inserted some Celtic myths, stories, folklore, they were amazing and i would certainly read more of them. It was also interesting, how she inserted some of the poems of Yeats. The context made it easier for me to understand those verses. It was really an interesting experience.

The story was really good, but sometimes both their characters were tiresome, and at moments i felt detached from the story.

The first part of a trilogy following the complicated relationship between Maud Gonne and WB Yeats, this covers the first ten years of their friendship to 1900. Ross makes fine use of Yeats' poetry and seems to follow what is known about both characters - but somehow they don't come to complete life. Maybe the very concern with following the historical record precludes the imagination that makes inner lives knowable? In any case, this is an interesting but somehow distanced and slightly mannered read. But if it sends people to Yeats' poetry and to finding out more about Gonne and her role in Irish nationalism then that's something to be applauded.

Lovers of the romantic poets will adore this book. Steeped in the history of the Irish Revolution and the ancient folklore of Ireland, this epic explores the life of a woman in the European demi-mode. Because it is not narrated by the heroine, one is left guessing at her thoughts and feelings; drawing conclusions based on Yeats' impressions of her when he's with her and an omnicient third person narrator when he is not. I wish that I had heard more of Maude's internal dialog to know how she felt. Instead, it sometimes seemed as if she were watching her life go by; instead of being the active participant we know, historically, that she was. She seems less sassy, less vibrant, less strong in this novel and that vulnerability plays so well into the snipets of Yeats that we see throughout. Loved it.

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."