The Gathering Night by Margaret Elphinstone

7 July 2010 00:30

Yet again I have to thank Judith of Reader in the Wilderness for her research, she was looking for Scottish authors and came up with Margaret Elphinstone.

The Gathering Night is set in Mesolithic Scotland and although there isn’t much evidence left of the people, Margaret Elphinstone has managed to weave an entertaining story from what is known of the lives of the hunter-gatherers.

The only definite historic fact is that a tsunami struck the east coast of Scotland around about 6150 BC and she has used this for the storyline.

I’ve been imagining the landscape described in it as I was reading, trying to work out which lochs might have featured in the story. I had decided that the Twin Daughter peaks were probably based on the East and West Lomonds in Fife as they are the only hills like that which I know of. In her afterword the author thanked a lady in Scotlandwell for explaining to her how wild honey was harvested. Scotlandwell is not far from the Lomonds, so that sealed it for me.

As so little is known of the people then, this book is inevitably a type of fantasy writing, but I think that as human beings really don’t ever seem to change much then the whole story is very believable.

I especially liked the reincarnation belief system which Elphinstone gave them and the behaviour of the people after a new baby was born. Obviously it was taken from the way we react nowadays. The baby had to be recognised as someone from the past by someone else in the family, other than the mother.

Of course that is exactly what would have happened. I’m sure we’ve all had experience of the older members of our families leaning over the new baby and claiming that the wee soul is the double of uncle Jimmy or whomever.

Anyway, I’m wandering again. I did enjoy reading this book and I’ll certainly read more of her work in the future.

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Not the End of the World by Kate Atkinson

29 May 2010 01:12

This is another one which I bought at the last library book sale. I just picked it up because it was by Kate Atkinson and it wasn’t until later that I realised that it is actually a collection of short stories.

Well I quite enjoy reading short stories, so that wasn’t a problem. They are all sort of loosely linked to each other, with the same characters turning up from time to time. I really enjoyed them.

The book was published in 2002.

The Times review of it said: ‘One of the most fluent and inventive writers around … Atkinson’s prose is always rich, satisfying and self assured, and always surprising. She has such a remarkable way with words that you turn to them again and again.’

The Scotsman said: ‘One of the country’s most innovative, exciting and intelligent writers.’

Although I’ve read and enjoyed a few of her books now and some have been set in Scotland, I don’t think that it had dawned on me that she is actually categorized as a Scottish writer.

Although Atkinson was born in York, she now lives in Edinburgh.

This book has plenty of Scottish words in it. It seems that Kate went to Uni at Dundee and like many others before her, decided to stay on in Scotland. She seems to have revelled in Scottish culture because to me, this book reads as being by a completely Scottish writer.

I don’t know why, but I still get a bit of a thrill when I recognise a place in a book as somewhere that I have been. (Very sad and pathetic, I know.) So I really liked it when the characters in one of the stories take a trip to Deep Sea World at North Queensferry, just at the Forth Bridge. That was a favourite destination for our boys when they were wee.

I had a real feeling of deja vu at one point as the eleventh story starts with the mother taking her son to university for the first time. Although it isn’t named, it is obviously Stirling University, which is well known for the abundance of wildlife around the campus and I don’t mean the student variety. Ducks, geese, squirrels, rabbits and oyster catchers nesting and popping up all over the place.

Laura did her degree there and we lost count of the amount of times that we moved her in and out of the halls of residence. It made me feel quite nostalgic.

Anyway, Not the End of the World is definitely worth reading, even if you don’t frequent east and central Scotland.

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Open the Door by Catherine Carswell

1 April 2010 11:00

This was another random choice from my local library and was first published in 1920. I had never heard of the author before but I was attracted by the blurb on the back. The book is set in Glasgow at first, then the action moves to Italy and then to London before finally ending up in Auchtermuchty (yes, there is such a place) in Fife.

The story starts off in Glasgow in the early 1900s and I found that part enjoyable, mainly because everything was happening in my much beloved old stomping ground of Glasgow Uni, Kelvingrove, the botanic gardens and the Rennie Mackintosh designed Glasgow School of Art.

But I didn’t really like any of the characters in this book, especially not the main one, Joanna Bannerman. She was brought up in a strictly Calvinist household (who isn’t in Scotland?) But she still manages to get married to an Italian (Mario) whom she hardly knows and moves to Italy, where he holds her a virtual prisoner because he doesn’t want any men to look at her.

Mario had previously deliberately smashed some antique wine glasses because they had been bought at a time when Joanna had a relationship with another man. My Top Tip to Joanna is that this was the time to RUN because he is a NUTTER.

This is an autobiographical novel and in a piece of wishful thinking Mario is killed off in a cycling accident. In reality Catherine Carswell’s English husband ended up in an asylum, having gone mad, and she had to have her marriage annulled, no simple task.

Back to the book – after becoming a widow Joanna returns to Glasgow and eventually becomes the lover of a married artist, Louis Pender. Did I mention how much I disliked Joanna and what a bad judge of men she was?

When Louis ends up spending more time in London where his wife and family are, Joanne moves there too. Things eventually fizzle out after a disastrous trip to Edinburgh (know the feeling) and Joanna decides to revisit her family’s old holiday home in Fife. She bumps into some old friends, one of whom has been holding a torch for Joanna for years and she suddenly realises that she loves him.

It was at this point that the words- Pass the bucket – flashed through my mind.

This may be really unfair as I am not a big fan of romances. I love Jane Austen but that is because of the wit and sarcasm. I can cope with romance if there is a lot of authentic history too.

But a book ending up with romance in a field in Auchtermuchty, Fife, can only be a disappointment to me.

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