The Fair Botanists: Could one rare plant hold the key to a thousand riches?

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The keeper of the collection had promised the seeds to Kew for his own advancement; the head gardener has sold the seeds to pay his debts; our courtesan, Belle, wants the flowers to add to her love potion; and our artist, Elizabeth, is drawing the flowers. Independent minded and ambitious, she is prepared to pursue a life of pleasure without concern for social conventions. Just as in real life, the novel describes the garden’s many trees, plants, flowers, aloes and cacti being transported slowly through Edinburgh’s streets, to the wonder of watching members of the public. There was the feeling of Edinburgh on the edge, new developments, resisted somewhat by the residents, transforming the city into what it is today. The Fair Botanists is set around the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens’ move from Leith Walk to the new larger location at Inverleith in 1822.

Both are fascinated by the imminent blooming of the century plant; the Agave Americana, which blooms only once before it dies. Everything that happened could probably be conveyed in a much neater, stronger, more effective form in a novel 1/3 the size of this one. This is a riveting, alluring and spellbinding historical novel packed with entertaining scandal and intrigue. Belle is single-minded, selfish, she tramples on those who get in her way (especially if they are men) and yet she has her own very strong moral code.The pace was slow but deliciously told, the characters were really interesting and believable, I particularly enjoyed the Edinburgh setting which I could visualise so clearly. It’s around this extraordinary moment in Edinburgh history – and the historic visit of King George IV to the city later that summer, which led to what became known as the “Daft Days” of runaway royalist enthusiasm – that Sara Sheridan builds her new novel, a tale which somehow succeeds in being both completely enchanting and fascinating to anyone who loves Edinburgh and its history, and very slightly disappointing, in the neatness with which it ties off all its narrative ends, in best romantic novel style. Elizabeth is a widow moving to Edinburgh to live with her husband’s family, and hoping for a better life.

And then there's Belle, a sex worker of noble birth who uses her profession to fund her ambition to make a love potion.This treatment is not just applied liberally to the main characters, Elizabeth and Belle, and does not just happen during conversation – Sheridan is so keen to show you just how much planning and nuance has gone into every single character, major and minor, that even characters that show up for a single scene, who have absolutely no bearing or weight on the story, are given hefty introductions that serve only to fill space and add more words to the wordcount. Clementina is her dead husband's aunt, an outlandish (I love that word) woman who her nephew wishes to keep hidden away, outspoken and overtly political.

Using the knowledge she possesses that others would not want made public, she determinedly pursues her aim of developing a scent that she hopes many will pay a fortune to possess. I do use Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns and Adam Smith, but it is nice to make sure that is balanced with books by women that people perhaps don't realise were as important as they were at the time. Sheridan’s habit of over-describing, which comes through clearly in this line, is omnipresent throughout the book as well. What is less great, though, is when certain things are written in present tense that should really, really be written in past tense.The unlikely friendship between the two ladies with very different ideas about life and love form the main plot of Sara Sheridan’s latest novel, The Fair Botanists. But that of course is the strength of this sort of story, especially in the hands of an author as confident and experienced as Sheridan. There are many other characters, both real and fictional, who play parts in this story centering around the Royal Botanical Gardens Edinburgh (RBGE) and the environs of Georgian Edinburgh. I wanted her to learn more from Belle in terms of being single minded and independent - which I know is not necessarily right for me, because as a gentle-woman of the time, she ought to have run a mile from Belle (as she very nearly does) and she certainly wouldn't have imitated her. Perhaps if we knew more it would tell us something about the character, but it doesn’t – we are instead left with this vague feeling of authorial smugness, as though Sheridan is showing off just how much she knows and we don’t.