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.