The Other Side of Stone by Linda Cracknell
Posted in Reading Reviewed, Scottish Fiction, Scottish Literature at 12:00 on 1 October 2024
Taproot Press, 2021, 148 p.
This is a novel (or more correctly a collection of nine shorter pieces linked to each other, four with the same narrator) which tells the story of a woollen mill situated thirty miles from Perth. The viewpoint characters are:-
The stone mason who leaves a stylised mark on the reverse of the entrance lintel in order to house a glaistig (defined in a later section as a sort of green witch) which has been troubling a local family during the building of the mill in 1831.
A woman in the years immediately prior to the Great War (an event whose imminence will save the mill’s fortunes – for a while,) who addresses the mill directly as she unfolds her story of frustrated suffragism and workers’ rights.
The loyal worker who lingers in the mill after it closes in 1990 and takes the pattern book and last bolt of cloth home with him.
The owners’ son who in 2003 hives himself off to Zanzibar to set up a loom there. But it is a short-lived interlude. On the train home from the airport he reflects of an encounter that, “He would have hugged the man, but there was a table between them, and he was Scottish.”
The property developer who hasn’t calculated the effect of his refurbishments on the mill building’s safety.
The young urban woman dragooned into a project to find rare fruits (a wasted ‘food resource’ and repository of knowledge and skills on how to store and cook them) who can’t believe anyone would choose to return to such a backwater but comes across the now demolished entrance lintel. Mrs Campbell, the old artist whom she meets, tells her a witch is just another word for a strong woman.
Each of these works on its own as a short story. Cumulatively they describe the rise and fall of an industry, the lure of patronage, feelings of hope and revenge, the transience of human endeavour, but that the future will come regardless.
Cracknell’s writing is sharp and her characters are drawn superbly. This is excellent stuff.
Pedant’s corner:- “a midgie” (a midge,) “softened by sticky dust. .” (only one full stop needed,) “has been put it in the newspaper” (doesn’t need the ‘it’,) “there’s nothing more that Knights can do” (Knight’s.) “He span round to face her” (He spun round.) “Her question sunk him onto one of the kitchen stools” (Her question sank him into…,) “where the stone had laid before” (where the stone had lain.)
