SCOTTISH INTEREST – Page 3 – Scott's Book Review

Consider the Lilies by Iain Crichton Smith

LITERARY BENT - Writing at its best, SCOTTISH INTEREST

The Highland Clearances, occurring roughly between 1792 and the 1850s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances), was one of the cruellest episodes in Scotland’s history. In Consider the Lilies (1968) Iain Crichton Smith (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Crichton_Smith) captures its impact through the thoughts and memories of old Mrs Scott who has lived all her life within the narrow confines of her community. Alone and bewildered by the demands […]

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Joseph Knight by James Robertson

LITERARY BENT - Writing at its best, SCOTTISH INTEREST

Exiled to Jamaica after the Battle of Culloden in 1746, Sir John Wedderburn made a fortune, alongside his three brothers, as a faux surgeon and sugar planter. In the 1770s, he returned to Scotland to marry and re-establish the family name. He brought with him Joseph Knight, a black slave and a token of his

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Garnethill by Denise Mina

CRIMINALLY MINDED - Tales of the behaviourally challenged, FANTASTIC FICTION - Escapes to other places and other times, SCOTTISH INTEREST

Denise Mina (http://www.denisemina.co.uk/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denise_Mina) treats us to a grisly Glasgow crime novel in Garnethill. Maureen O’Donnell wasn’t born lucky. A psychiatric patient and survivor of sexual abuse, she’s stuck in a dead-end job and a secretive relationship with Douglas, a shady therapist. Her few comforts are making up stories to tell her psychiatrist, the company

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Crowdie and Cream by Finlay J. MacDonald

SCOTTISH INTEREST

Finlay J MacDonald was born and brought up on Harris, in the Outer Hebrides. As a child he spoke only Gaelic while the village schoolteacher spoke only English. His account of pre-war life on Harris was later to be published, in English, in a trilogy of books: ‘Crowdie and Cream’ (1982); ‘Crotal and White’ (1983); and ‘The Corncrake

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The Life and Death of St. Kilda by Tom Steel

SCOTTISH INTEREST

In August 1930 the 36 last remaining inhabitants of St. Kilda (a tiny archipelago 40 miles west of the Outer Hebrides http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Kilda,_Scotland) left for the mainland, bringing the end to an extraordinary way of life that may have persisted for 2000 years in near total isolation. This was the remotest community in Britain and its way of life

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Collier’s Row by Jan Webster

FANTASTIC FICTION - Escapes to other places and other times, SCOTTISH INTEREST

Jan Webster (Jan Webster) had a deep and instinctive feel for the Scots people of whom she wrote. This is an affecting saga of Scots life. Collier’s Row is the first novel in the Kate Kilgour trilogy, following a resilient woman navigating poverty, family, and class struggles in a 19th-century Scottish mining community. The story

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Capital of the Mind by James Buchan

SCOTTISH INTEREST

The Scots are a small nation living in the north west corner of the British Isles remote from the traditional centres of power in England and the European continent. Yet miraculously the Scots have contributed an enormous amount to Western culture and civilisation. Their contribution has been quite disproportionate to their population. Eighteenth Century Edinburgh was

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The Provost by John Galt

LITERARY BENT - Writing at its best, SCOTTISH INTEREST

James Pawkie, haberdasher in Gudetown (based on Irvine), rises by degree to the ultimate position of local power – that of Provost. This is a brilliantly acute fictional analysis of small town ambition, politics, power and manipulation. The Provost convinces by the realistic deployment of small detail and its ironic touch. Be prepared for the use

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Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

CHOICE CLASSICS - A pick from the enduring classics, SCOTTISH INTEREST

The advent of the First World War brought about the end of a whole way of life in the Scottish countryside that had persisted for perhaps a thousand years. With technological change picking up pace as well, the old patterns were swept away. It was a ‘sunset song’ for a harsh yet beautiful existence. In this novel of 1932

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