Music in the Dark by Sally Magnusson begins in 1884, Rutherglen which is close to Glasgow. Jamesina Ross moved to Rutherglen from the city after all but one of her children had died because of the poor living conditions in Glasgow, her doctor had said it was the only hope for her last child. Jamesina had had dreams of a very different future for herself as she had had a classical education, but it wasn’t to be.

This book is about the Highland Clearances, particularly at Strathcarron in 1854 when the inhabitants were brutally forced out of their homes which were then set alight and pulled down so that there was no shelter at all. Jamesina was one of the women caught up in it and the beating she took from the police has affected her whole life, now as she gets older it’s more obvious that her brain has been impaired. She was left with a dent in her head and a mashed up jaw from a police baton.

I must admit that I found the first half of this book to be rather slow, but the second half was more interesting as Jamesina and her second husband, also a Strathcarron survivor travel back to the scene of the attack.

Music in the Dark is obviously very personal to the author as it’s based on the clearance experiences of her great-grandmother. I had to laugh when she wrote. – There was hardly a man’s name in the Highlands that someone had not had the bright idea of burdening a baby girl with by adding an – ina.

When I worked in libraries in the west of Scotland I obviously knew the names of the readers, there were women called Jamesina, Hughina, Andrewina and Donaldina and of course Williamina. I thought it was just a very local thing – but apparently not.

In the 17 and 1800s landowners in Scotland decided that they could make much more money from the land by filling the place with sheep. It meant that the crofters had to be removed, sometimes they were rounded up and put onto ships bound for America or the colonies, they didn’t have any say in the matter. Others made their way to Glasgow looking for work, presumably that’s how my own ancestors came to be in Glasgow. Going by the letters written home from the colonies, the Glaswegian Highlanders were the lucky ones.

I didn’t enjoy this book as much as the author’s previous ones. This book will be published in May 2023.

I was sent a digital copy of this book by the publisher John Murray Press via Netgalley for review. Thank you.