A Son of the Rock

A veritable account of ‘Fair Helen of Kirkconnel Lea’ scrieved by Harry Langton.
Quercus, 2014, 368 p. Borrowed from a threatened library.

After all these years, all those novels, you’d think there would not be much more to say on the subjects of love, sex and death. But they are the human driving forces; or fears. There isn’t really much else to write about. And Greig has a heart and a talent to match anyone’s.

In Fair Helen Greig adds himself to that long line of Scottish authors who have illuminated the byways of the country’s history, in this case the last gasps of the Border reiving tradition. James VI – referred to as Jamie Saxt in the text – sits in Holyrude awaiting the death of “the Auld Hag” (as our narrator Harry Langton calls Elizabeth of England) to fulfil his destiny and incidentally ensure the end of the border feuds. Langton, though flawed, is an engaging guide to the times; discursive, reflective, and prone to the occasional footnote. If the setting and vocabulary were not enough (an appended “Scots Guide” defines some of the non-English words used: my favourite of these, houghmagandie, is given as sexual shenanigans but that fails to recognise the connotations of exuberance) the attentive descriptions of landscape and evocations of other works of Scottish literature, “Timor mortis conturbat me, indeed,” “a mere mouse running before the coulter blade,” “‘How can they stay sae fresh and fair?’” would anchor Fair Helen firmly. (That some of these references post-date the novel’s times only makes them the more redolent.)

Early on we have a warning about the trustworthiness of text, “What is the point of gossip and story if not to exaggerate our lives to the scale we believe they should be rather than the small affairs we fear they truly are?” – and there is that “veritable” in the strapline – yet the tale purports to be the true story of the tragedy described in the border ballad ‘Fair Helen of Kirkconnel Lea’. Greig’s choice of narrator is subtle, being none of the three main actors in the events that led to balladry. Harry was cousin to Fair Helen (Irvine) and friend of Adam Fleming, her lover, though not so close to the man whom she is contracted to marry, Robert Bell. Langton’s presence at, and contribution to, the outcome of the affair is approached via his entanglement not only with the lovers but also with the coming man, Walter Scott of Branxholme and Buccleuch. Langton notes that, “Rarely is it fortunate to come to the attention of the high heid ones.” But Helen has words of advice when, “‘I am much changed,’ I said, ‘And the world has grown ugly.’ Her hand squeezed my wrist. Her grip was strong and urgent. ‘Think that and they have won.’”

Through Langton, Greig is also overly modest. “I contemplated my Thucydides. The wars of Greek city-states did not seem so distant. If they appeared more noble, perhaps, it was just they had better writers.” The meat of his quote from Montaigne, “‘The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre,’” is alas followed too closely to this day.

Greig has been described as a post-Calvinist author. This is explicit here in passages such as, “The rediscovered voices of Antiquity have offered a vision of a greater, kinder, more humane and playful life (scarcely in Scotland, ma foi, not till the hoodie craws of the Reformed Faith back away from the carcass of this my only true home!)” The older Langton reflects, “There is no dancing in the inn courtyards now, religious fanatics denounce and rule, witches still confess under torture and our songs are all grim or piously false as ‘Fair Helen of Kirkconnel Lea’,” and, “Women have become douce-like, modest, eyes downcast as though feart to trip on their own feet, and men are penitential. The flesh is sinful and chastity rated far higher than charity,” adding cuttingly, “It is a wonder that bairns still get born at all.” The women and men Langton knew in the borders in the far-off days of his youth, “were … otherwise.” He tells his latter day patron, Drummond of Hawthornden, (in whose library he leaves a copy of Love’s Labours Won, a gift from a strolling player in London, another knowing authorial touch,) “‘Reform may have banished corruption,” (of the church.) “It would also banish wit and laughter, music and dance and kindliness.’” And thinks to himself, “And fornication.”

As to the country itself, “Here all about lay Scotland, dark and dreich and dear. Cloud-shadow scurrying over hill and burn, cold wind and dry branch, our hard humour and hidden hurts. Here affection came wrapped in insult as sweet fruit in burnt pie-crust. Tenderness was hidden under armoured jacks, with only keening pipes and fiddle and human voice to tell the heart’s ways.”

The novel is threaded with a sense of loss. This could perhaps arise only in that the story is narrated by an old man, “My soul is an old horse-trough that lies forgot in a field, its rotting boards mottled with fungus and moss,” remembering the past – were it not that this sort of deep nostalgia is a familiar strand in Scottish literature. And the Scottish fixation with death is marked by, “The skull and hourglass we Scots inscribe on our tombs to counter any pious suggestion of the life to come.”

The hyper-critical might carp that the story is merely (merely!) a recapitulation of Romeo and Juliet – the Fleming and Irvine families are after all in feud when they first get together – but star-crossed lovers are a literary staple and here there are complications; an end to the feud is negotiated but Helen’s engagement to Bell is announced at the celebration which marks the reconciliation. Fair Helen is a delight and, despite any lack of Calvinism, still Scottish to the bone. As in That Summer and Electric Brae Greig makes you care about his main characters and portrays the others as rounded.

Pedant’s corner:- That mention of high heid ones looks odd as it is usually rendered as high heid yins. We have maw as mouth rather than stomach, hung at times (when hanged is used elsewhere,) Lucretius’ (Lucretius’s.) “As we forded the stream I look off to my left,” (looked,) Longshanks’ (Longshanks’s,) snuck in (sneaked? tucked?), their force were (was,) had began (had begun; or merely, began,) snuck (definitely sneaked.) I also thought I caught a continuity error when Langton hands Mrs Smeaton’s packages to Jed Horsburgh, who is in custody for protecting Adam Fleming.

Memoirs of William Fowler of Edinburgh: Student, Trader, Makar, Conduit, would-be lover in the early days of our Reform.

Riverrun, 2021, 458 p

Greig has been described as Scotland’s first post-Calvinist writer. With this book it seems he has decided to run with that designation. In many ways a companion volume to Fair Helen, this is the second time he has examined the genesis of the country’s immersion in that stern, moralistic creed. We also find references to Montaigne again, not to mention Walter Scott of Branxholme and Buccleuch. For added measure we are given a glimpse of Giordano Bruno and extended encounters with George Buchanan, Jamie the Saxt and the political struggles of the times.

Above all though, as a novelist Greig is the great expositor of love, the grand theme that runs through all his prose work, but with a poet’s eye for its joys and sorrows. And of course, where would literature be without it?

The love in question here is that of narrator William Fowler of Anchor Close, Embra (“Fowler” always designates Edinburgh in this way,) for Rose Nicolson, the sister of his companion scholar, Tom, at the University of St Andrews, to whom he is drawn one day as he sees her mending fishing nets, down by the harbour. He becomes a friend of the family but Rose has an understanding with John Gourlay, a fisherman with boats and, more crucially, prospects. He also discovers Rose’s remarkable intellect, which distances her from her peers, and her unusual views about God, which could threaten her survival.

Given their times the book shows us debates about free will and predestination and Fowler says that “Humanism and the Reform were brothers locked in a deadly embrace, for one was destined to destroy the other.”

This historical era, for so long unexamined, has become ripe for novelistic consideration. It was a more foundational moment for Scotland than the Jacobite rebellions much more harped on by Scottish literature. It was the time when the country plunged into the dark umbra of Calvinism from which it has only emerged, blinking – and astonished at itself – during the last fifty years. As Will says in his last words to Rose, “‘But you’ll be back some day? …. When times are fit?’” She replies, “‘In five hunner years they may be fit.’”

The book also encompasses 16^th century Scotland’s JFK moment – hearing of the death of John Knox. Of that firebrand preacher’s style Tom says, “‘Aye, he was the great rebuker,’” before adding, “‘It’s a sair fecht, to keep men rightly building our New Jerusalem.’”

The politics were dark and messy. Adherents of the old faith – Will’s mother for one – have a strange belief they work towards that the exiled Queen Mary might return at the head of a French army and be restored, perhaps to share the throne with her son, Jamie Saxt. In his minority various regents had come and gone; most by violent or nefarious means. Even the great survivor, Regent Morton, will fall while Jamie Saxt is forever prey to threats of kidnap and manipulation.

The fanaticism of statements like, “‘This is now a Protestant nation. Dissent will not be tolerated,’” is contrasted with the situation in England. “We had no theatre in Scotland, on account of the Kirk.” Fowler asks, “A Reformed Kirk indeed, but of what kind? And who would limit its reach? The King?” On his trip to Paris he notes the sumptuousness and brilliance of the stained glass in Paris churches. All such fripperies had been stoned out of Scotland, and the Cathedral in St Andrews pillaged of its stone. The town’s once thriving economy, dependent on pilgrims, has vanished, the University is on its uppers.

Nevertheless, that reform, since it believed women had souls, had ensured the teaching of girls up to the same age as boys. (Much good it did them. They were still liable to be denounced as witches or pawns of the Devil.)

But human impulses always survive. “What a piece of work I am,” Will says, “that can encompass fleshly desire, tenderness, sorrow and soul, and the impulse to violence, all within one afternoon. Did Aristotle know of this? Did the risen Christ?” The melancholy that rests in the Scottish soul is expressively conveyed in his response to a song. “I kenned the bleak melody and the story, as did everyone in the hall, for it was ours.”

Though he denies it to his mother, “‘No. Absolutely not,’” the text could be read as if it was Will rather than Gourlay who fathered Rose’s child. “But a stranger I must be.” He certainly exhibits a fatherly interest in Lucy. But he was in love with her mother and notwithstanding her comment to him about her marriage, “‘There were pressing reasons,’” their later conversations argue against that interpretation.

Will’s life, though, and much of the narrative, becomes embroiled in the machinations of the high heid yins and affairs of state, his profession of trader allowing him to be a conduit (a spy in plainer terms,) Walter Scott of Buccleuch’s indebtedness to him for the loan of a dirk on their first meeting and for a subsequent intervention a major factor in his – and eventually Rose’s – fortunes. Lives can be messy and unpredictable. Only in fairy tales does everyone live happily ever after.

Yet some tranquillity can be found. Tom says, “‘Our Stoic masters spend o’er much attention to making a good death, and not enough to living beforehand.’” On which the later in life Will, narrating from the vantage point of old age, reflects, “I felt those words lodge, quivering, somewhere near my heart. Despite everything, they remain there still.”

There are sly allusions; such as to Shakespeare “‘I had not dreamed of such philosophy’” and Larkin “Love and memory remain, to hurt us into life” and many incidental pleasures, little vignettes of Scottish habits and attitudes. When greeted after a beating with, “‘Man, ye look an awfy mess,’” Fowler tells us, “This was what passed for affection in these parts.” It still is.

Greig is always good on what it is to be human. “Perhaps the course of one’s life is made by the particular manner in which we never quite resolve ourselves.”

Rose Nicolson is a magnificent, learned, wise book, imbued with sensitivity and grace, and in its elegiac sense of loss, Scottish to the core.

Pedant’s corner:- “One of the old woman” (women,) “Slainte var” (Usually spelled Slainte mhath.) “For a while I believed there was some sounds behind us” (were some sounds,) Averroes’ (Averroes’s,) “window of main house” (of the main house,) Lucretius’ (Lucretius’s,) “he’d auction his grannie were she were still alive” (that second ‘were’ is superfluous,) “before agreeing marry to young Bothwell” (either ‘before agreeing marriage to’ or, before agreeing to marry’,) “but none were her” (none was her.) “Now she truly looked me at me” (the first ‘me’ is superfluous,) “we all dreamed off” (of,) maw (used in the sense of mouth; a maw is a stomach,) our gang were back (was back,) a missing comma at the end of a piece of direct speech, a missing end quote mark at the end of another, “Kirk o Fields” (usually Kirk o Field,) uses the Scots word ‘baffies’ in its correct sense of ‘slippers’ in the text but the glossary has a baffie described as a golf club, Ulysses’ (Ulysses’s.) “The kirk had lost one of their own” (one of its own.) “The recent intake of Kirk ministers were poorly trained and credulous” (the … intake … was poorly trained,) “the Presbytery were resolved” (was resolved,) Tollbooth (Tolbooth,) “came through the St Andrews” (came through St Andrews.) “We crossed the Forth by boat” (the previous scene was set in St Andrews. Starting from there to go Perth – especially going via Falkland as they do – there is no need to cross the Forth. Indeed had they done it once, they would have had to do it again, in reverse,) a missing full stop.) In the glossary; supervisr (supervisor,) narow (narrow.)

Canongate, 2014, 361 p.

This is another very fine Scottish novel (my second such in a row) but it’s an odd coincidence that both this and Ronald Frame’s The Lantern Bearers should have a boy’s treble singing voice as a significant plot driver.

The main narration duties here are carried out in the first person by Deirdre, a young embroideress in an unspecified Scottish castle overseen by a couple only ever referred to as the Laird and my Lady. Interspersed with Deirdre’s remembrances are third person segments from the viewpoint of the peripatetic priest Father Anthony, and further first person snippets from singing master Signor Carlo and nun Sister Agnes.

The Laird’s daughter, Lady Alicia, is on the marriage market and my Lady has brought back from France, where she has relatives, a suitor with an entourage containing a page, Feilamort, of obscure origin but in possession of a voice like an angel. Feilamort is not the most robust of boys but he and Deirdre make friends and begin to spend some of what spare time they have together playing in the woods.

This being the Middle Ages and the glorification of God a bounden duty, the preservation of His instrument to that end, a pure singing voice, is an active consideration. In particular, Signor Carlo sees great prospects for himself in Rome with Feilamort under his tutelage. Feilamort himself accepts it is probably his best option for a secure future but before the procedure takes place asks Deirdre if he can know her as a man knows a woman. After initial hesitation she consents, and the novel’s path is set.

Deirdre’s secret revealed to Father Anthony, he arranges for her to travel overseas in the company of Sister Agnes. She ends up in an unusual castle belonging to a Lord known as the Master, where resides an artist called Monsieur Alberto (who has echoes of Leonardo da Vinci.) The Master commissions Deirdre to sew an embroidery of a unicorn from one of Monsieur Alberto’s paintings but otherwise why she was brought there remains a mystery to her. The nature of Feilamort’s – and therefore Deirdre’s – connection to the place slowly unravels while in the background lurks the shadowy figure of a Monsieur Garnet.

The Deirdre passages are rendered in a very braid Scots indeed. It was here I had some initial reservations as Donovan is not entirely consistent in applying this. “To”, for example is sometimes given in English and elsewhere appears as “tae”, whereas Deirdre would almost certainly always have used the latter exclusively. Similarly I noticed “afternoon” where “efternoon” or even “efternin” would seem more natural. But I can understand why Donovan made the choices she did. The liberal use of Scottish words – albeit mostly weather related and hence perhaps more readily understandable – might otherwise present too much of a barrier to readers not familiar with written Scots. A (short) glossary appears at the end but by no means covers all the Scots words in the text. They do, however, provide the flavour of the novel which would, I submit, be a much lesser thing if written in standard English. The expressiveness of these Scots words is a major part of the book’s overall impact. They might even be said to heighten the book’s literary qualities.

The mediæval Scottish setting reminded me vaguely of Andrew Greig’s Fair Helen but Gone Are the Leaves is its own thing entirely. Donovan captures superbly the fears and misgivings of the adolescent – going on adult – Deirdre, the suspicions of Signor Carlo and the wisdom of Sister Agnes. In this light her decision to render Father Anthony’s sections in the third person is entirely appropriate.

Even if resolution comes via frankly unlikely means (but justified within the novel’s narrative) and the ending has a very traditional Scottish feel this is an exemplary work – better than Donovan’s earlier novel Buddha Da.

Pedant’s corner:- whisps (wisps,) Agnes’ (Agnes’s,) Jacques’ (Jacques’s,) Feilmort (x1, elsewhere always Feilamort.)

faber and faber, 1999, 326 p.

So much enduring literature is about love, sex and death. Greig is good on all three, especially love and its tragedies. In When They Lay Bare David Elliott comes to the family home to show off to his father, Simon, his intended. Meanwhile a strange woman has moved into a cottage on the estate. In David’s childhood Simon had had an affair with Jinny Lauder – for whose death he had been tried for murder, and found not proven. The shadow of those events lies over the book, as, since it is set in those same debatable lands Greig would return to in Fair Helen (but here we are in the twentieth century,) does the history of the borders. Border Ballads are frequently quoted and the book’s epigram is an extract from The Twa Corbies. Throughout Greig does not separate off direct speech by quotation marks but this is never a problem to decipher.

The novel has a central conceit wherein the story is foreshadowed by the descriptions of illustrations on a set of eight plates belonging to the woman in the cottage who at first gives her name as Mary Allan but then says she is Jinny’s daughter, Marnie. The eight sections into which the novel is divided are designated as Plate 1, Plate 2 etc – though 4 and 5 are titled Lover’s Plates (Rose and Red respectively.) These descriptions are rendered in italics. The rest of the narration is carried from the viewpoints of David, Marnie, Simon (from whom we learn the details of his doomed affair with Jinny, a grand passion indeed) and his factotum Tat, a voyeur in his youth whose evidence was crucial to the verdict and who leveraged his knowledge into gaining his position on the Elliott estate. Tat’s narration is littered with Scots words and phrases, as is Simon’s but to a much lesser extent.

Marnie is one of those women whom Greig draws so well. She often alludes to Spook, her word for manifestations of sixth sense, a phenomenon not at odds with Borders history (though in that regard the appearance of Jinny to Tat at the novel’s crux was perhaps a step too far.) Important, too, is a precarious bridge over the Liddie Burn, the scene of one of those Border tales from times past.

Marnie is the heart of the book, the driving force of its motor, the hinge around which the other characters revolve – though Jinny’s actions and her motivations for them are almost as influential – but the most Greigian of sentiments is voiced by David, “Sin and sex make us glow like coals in the dark. That’s why we do it. To burn.” One of the reasons we read novels is to experience that burn, if only at second hand.

Pedant’s corner:- Quite why the title is all in lower case on the cover is beyond me. It isn’t on the title page. Otherwise: “the prosecution were” (was,) “only a name and a brief tale remains” (remain; in an extract from a piece about border legends,) usually before a piece of dialogue or unspoken thought there is some sort of punctuation. In one instance it was missing, smoothes (smooths.) “That is the cause of the love he feel for his companions” (feels,) “‘he’d had to have grovelled’” (OK it was in dialogue but, “he’d have to have grovelled”,) imposter (impostor.)

Pheonix, 2004, 510 p.

Love, sex and death again; but literature’s subject matter doesn’t get any bigger. And Greig deals with them superbly.

In In Another Light it is death which is the early preoccupation of Eddie Mackay, though love and sex do get a look in. Prior to the immediate events of the novel Eddie suffered from hydrocephalus as a result of a colloid cyst which meant fluid built up in his brain. He therefore feels the imminence of extinction everywhere, “‘Because I was nearly dead once and I’m trying to live with that.’” During his recovery from having a shunt fitted to drain the fluid from his brain to his stomach Eddie experiences the presence of his dead father, who according to Eddie’s mother had, long before she met him, been sent home in disgrace from Malaya after an affair with his superior’s wife. Eddie doubts the truth of this but sets out to find as much as he can about his father’s time in the colony. Eddie is working for a tidal generation project whose headquarters overlook Scapa Flow in Orkney. The jungle drums and the tangled relationships of Stromness become a running theme in the book. Of comments about his liaison with Mica Moar, another of Greig’s complicated female characters (a bit – but only a bit – like Kim Russell in Electric Brae) he says, “‘In my experience there’s only one way to keep a secret in a wee town’ … ‘Plant the sapling of truth in a forest of rumours.’”

This strand of the book, delivered in a first person past tense looking back over the path which brought Eddie to the final scene, with occasional present tense interludes setting that scene, is intertwined with a third person present tense narration of the voyage of his father Sandy, as he was then known, to Penang in Malaya and his brief sojourn there. Medical graduate Sandy hopes to improve the birth survival rates in Penang’s maternity hospital. The boat out is a hotbed of illicit goings on of which deeply moral Sandy is mildly contemptuous. The acquaintances he makes on the trip, US citizen Alan Hayman and the two Simpson sisters, Ann and Adele, “both beautiful, one a gazelle” the elder of whom, Adele, is married and chaperoning the younger, are fateful. A further sister, Emily, also on the boat, is still a child. Each chapter contains several sequences from both stories, generally alternating. The greeting, “‘Oh, there you are,’” bounces around the two narratives. Both strands are thick with metaphor. The descriptions of Orkney and Penang make them almost characters in themselves – particularly Orkney. Certain images also resonate between the two locations.

The text is seasoned with sly critiques of Scottish attitudes, “I was in joyous life-affirming Scottish mode that morning and no mistake.” “Scotland’s a place where everyone explains what is not possible, that it’ll all end in tears, we’re here to make the best of a bad job then die and get a good rest till we’re woken up to be informed we’re damned.” To Sandy’s traditional toast “‘Here’s tae us, wha’s like us? Gey few – and they’re aa deid’” Hayman says, “‘You guys, you can’t even celebrate without bringing death into it.’”

Eddie’s thoughts occasionally stray back to the subject of death. He raises with us the question of “How are we to live in the face of the sure and certain knowledge we will lose parents, friends, lover, the whole shebang and caboodle?” only to answer it immediately with, “Wholeheartedly. Of this one thing I am sure.” Later he tells us, “It’s such a simple and shallow thing, death, only there’s no bottom to it and no way across.”

He reflects that maturity is, “knowing you’ve more or less arrived at yourself and the world will keep changing but you won’t much, and then living with that,” while, “Pure lust, I’d noticed, eventually collapses under the weight of its own contradictions – rather like capitalism, but much quicker.” However, “We need meaning, I thought. The world might not have any, but we need it,” and, “Meaning is something we have to make.”

Greig’s numerous characters are all well drawn, their behaviour sometimes unexpected and contrary. I wouldn’t go quite so far as the cover quote (from The Times) “It will be a long time since a book has made you care as much.” Not for me. At least not since the same author’s Fair Helen. He seems to have a gift for it. Add in computer programmes for generating music from tidal movements, the compromises of secret service work in the colonies, a thoroughly worked through plot (which admittedly may be a little too neatly tied in,) the perennial failure of true love (or lust) to run smooth and the whole thing’s a delight.

Pedant’s corner:- “‘I’d left my [gas] mask back in the Mess’” (the Mess? In the trenches in WW1?) Brechin Pier (does Brechin have a pier?) “for a while neither of them speak” (neither speaks.) “Stacked alongside the reference books are a series of different coloured hardback files” (is a series,) baragraphs (barographs,) the phrase, “he was sad under his funny,” (seems to be missing a final word,) furlough (is more a USian usage,) “The Moonlight Band play foxtrots” (plays,) “a think about what the heck’s he’s getting into,” (what the heck,) sub-periphrenaic abscess (a google search for sub-periphrenaic yields only a quote from In Another Light: Andrew Greig,) whigmalerie (spelling of Scots words can be variable but this is usually whigmaleerie,) murmers (murmurs,) Theramin Dr Who electronic music (Theremin: also Dr Who’s electronic instrument wasn’t a theremin which as an instrument should be lower case,) “he scooped more peanuts down his maw” (I suppose it could mean stomach here,) “a group of macaque monkeys come running” (a group comes,) “He’s stares” (He stares,) whispy (context suggests wispy,) tweaked it it (one it is enough,) an assortment of … appear (an assortment appears,) Siouxie and the Banshees (doesn’t she spell it Siouxsie?) vocal chords (it’s cords,) Arshak Sarkies’ (Sarkies’s,) for completeness’ sake (completeness’s,) light defraction (diffraction? refraction? or is this a portmanteau word Greig has invented?) became (in a present tense narration this should be becomes.)

I mentioned recently in my review of Christopher Rush’s A Twelvemonth and a Day that it fell into that long list of laments with which the Scottish novel is liberally bestowed – going back at least as far as the poem on the state of the nation written on King Alexander III’s death after falling from a cliff in Fife in 1286, but which may well be an oral tradition older still.

This sense of things lost seems to be an itch which Scottish letters is unable not to scratch.

Many of the books on the 100 best Scottish Books list fall into this tradition; of the ones I have read not only the Rush but also Iain Crichton Smith’s Consider the Lilies, Archie Hind’s The Dear Green Place, William McIlvanney’s Docherty, George Mackay Brown’s Greenvoe, Neil M Gunn’s The Silver Darlings, Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song certainly qualify. Arguably Jessie Kesson’s The White Bird Passes also fits the bill; its title certainly does.

Whether this dwelling on things gone by is due to a sense of lost nationhood or not is a matter for debate but the itch is played out not just in Scottish literature, the lament is a major strand in bagpiping and has a long history in song (eg The Flowers o’ the Forest.) The Proclaimers’ Letter From America – “Bathgate no more” etc – is merely a modern take on the form.

Another important strand in the Scottish novel is that of the döppelganger/the supernatural. Here James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, which can certainly be seen as a reflection on the duality of the Scots psyche after the Treaty of Union as well as an illustration of Scottish literature’s fascination with the Devil, is the prototypical – and arguably the finest – example though Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is perhaps better known furth of Scotland.

On thinking about all this I realised that, despite being Science Fiction, my own novel A Son of the Rock was also such a lament (though it eschews any truck with the supernatural.) The book was certainly conceived in part as an allegory of the decline of shipbuilding on the Clyde which had occurred in my early lifetime but I had not consciously been aware of any wider resonances while I was writing it. I did though somewhat impertinently consider it as a “condition of Scotland” novel.

Perhaps Scotland’s condition has always been in decline, its writers always noticing what has been, is being, lost. I note here that Andrew Grieg’s Fair Helen is a retrospective lament for the loss of “wit and laughter, music and dance and kindliness” in the Reformation.

This has been a good year for books with me though I didn’t read much of what I had intended to as first I was distracted by the list of 100 best Scottish Books and then by the threat to local libraries – a threat which has now become a firm decision. As a result the tbr pile has got higher and higher as I continued to buy books and didn’t get round to reading many of them.

My books of the year were (in order of reading):-
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
Electric Brae by Andrew Greig
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson
Traveller of the Century by Andrés Neuman
The Affair in Arcady by James Wellard
Flemington and Tales from Angus by Violet Jacob
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle
Young Adam by Alexander Trocchi
Song of Time by Ian R MacLeod
The Gowk Storm by Nancy Brysson Morrison
The Bridge Over the Drina by Ivo Andrić
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Fair Helen by Andrew Greig
The Dear, Green Place by Archie Hind
Greenvoe by George Mackay Brown
The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson
The Cone-Gatherers by Robin Jenkins
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
Born Free by Laura Hird
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

If you were counting that’s 25 in all, of which 15 were by male authors and 10 by women, 8 had SF/fantasy elements and 11 were Scottish (in the broadest sense of inclusion.)

A lot of my Scottish reading this year was prompted by the list of 100 best Scottish Books I discovered in February. Those marked below with an asterisk are in that 100 best list. (In the case of Andrew Greig’s Electric Brae I read it before I was aware of the list and for Robert Louis Stevenson his novella was in the book of his shorter fiction that I read.)

Electric Brae by Andrew Greig*
A Sparrow’s Flight by Margaret Elphinstone
The Guinea Stamp by Annie S Swan
The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
The White Bird Passes by Jessie Kesson*
Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks by Christopher Brookmyre
Buddha Da by Anne Donovan*
Flemington by Violet Jacob*
Tales From Angus by Violet Jacob
Annals of the Parish by John Galt
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
Change and Decay in All Around I See by Allan Massie
The Hangman’s Song by James Oswald
Wish I Was Here by Jackie Kay
The Hope That Kills Us Edited by Adrian Searle
Other stories and other stories by Ali Smith
Young Adam by Alexander Trocchi*
The Gowk Storm by Nancy Brysson Morrison*
No Mean City by H McArthur and H Kingsley Long*
Shorter Scottish Fiction by Robert Louis Stevenson*
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett*
Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith
Fair Helen by Andrew Greig
The Dear, Green Place by Archie Hind*
Fur Sadie by Archie Hind
Greenvoe by George Mackay Brown*
Stepping Out by Cynthia Rogerson
Open the Door! by Catherine Carswell*
The Silver Darlings by Neil M Gunn*
Scotia Nova edited by Alistair Findlay and Tessa Ransford
After the Dance: selected short stories of Iain Crichton Smith
John Macnab by John Buchan
Another Time, Another Place by Jessie Kesson
Consider the Lilies by Iain Crichton Smith*
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan*
Poems Iain Banks Ken MacLeod
Mistaken by Annie S Swan
Me and Ma Gal by Des Dillon*
Tea with the Taliban: poems by Owen Gallagher
A Choosing by Liz Lochhead
The Cone Gatherers by Robin Jenkins*
Born Free by Laura Hird*
the first person and other stories by Ali Smith

That makes 42 books in all (plus 2 if the Violet Jacob and Archie Hind count double.) None were non-fiction, 3 were poetry, 2 SF/Fantasy, 19 + (4x½ + 3 doublers) by men, 13 + (3 doublers and 1 triple) by women, 2 had various authors/contributors.

NewCon Press, 2025, 115 p. Reviewed for ParSec 14.

This was published as a novella but reads more like an assemblage of short stories with characters which cross over from one to the next, though outwith their own tale, usually only in brief appearances. Its background premise – something strange (but unspecified) has happened and people have been advised to remain indoors – may be a literary response to Covid. The setting is a small village in Scotland – locals call it a clachan but incomers have used the description hamlet (which I note is actually a particularly English designation) for so long that it has become more common. The village ‘spinsters,’ however, still frown upon it. Apart from the first, very short, chapter which introduces the strange event, each section is given over to the experiences of different characters, Beth, Polly, Helen, Eve, Robyn and Jeanie, with the novella ending with a sort of epilogue from the point of view someone called the Spaceman.

The stories’ time scales are not always immediately apparent as some chapters start before the strange event or more or less ignore it happening. However, there’s enough oddness going on even without it.

Responding to a voice calling to her, Beth, who has inherited her home from her mother and not improved it in any way, instead letting it run to squalor, manages to move through the pipes in her plumbing, whether by her shrinking or the pipes expanding is moot. Eventually she is drawn down to an underground chamber to chat with the spinsters about the end of the world. The chapters which follow may represent different ways in which that end happens.

Thanks to the green-suited spaceman who appears at her window one night, schoolgirl Polly travels the universe and becomes both a witch and a princess.

Helen begins to produce videos which attract internet followers but increasingly show her lack of control of her life.

To escape the locked down city Eve has come to the cottage she rents out to Matthew (known locally as the Pest.) Not a good choice.

At Helen’s request Robyn builds a doll’s house as an exact replica of Helen’s home but realizes it also needs a doll’s house inside it and then another inside that and so on down.

Jeanie begins to act strangely and eventually locks herself away from everyone. She is however revealed to be a figment, a skin the narrator wore to make her life more amenable. The implication is that all the viewpoint characters are such skins. (But this is the essence of fiction. The reader temporarily becomes – or at least empathises with – a book’s characters.)

The Spaceman is from another world.

The Hamlet has aspects of a fairy tale (but there do not seem to be any happy ever afters, except perhaps for Polly,) has some of the heightened sensibility of magic realism (with a faint echo of John Burnside’s Glister,) moments of horror, and makes a foray into Science Fiction. Whether the disparate elements necessarily cohere into a unified whole is a matter for the individual reader. Corrance can write though.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- “The McIvor’s lived in” (the McIvors lived in,) sat (x 2, sitting, or, seated,) “Mums washing machine” (Mum’s,) “paper mâché” (paper mache:  if its ‘mâché’ then it’s papier mâché,) “it sloped passed me” (past me,) airplane (aeroplane,) “the High-lands” (the Highlands,) curb (kerb.) “‘So where did you learn to cook?’ She asked.” (‘So where did you learn to cook?’ she asked,) “when they played drafts” (draughts,) dollhouse (doll’s house,) “most Saturday’s” (most Saturdays,) “and come pick me up” (come to pick me up,) miniscule (minuscule,) “the little girls’ eyes” (it was only one girl; ‘little girl’s eyes’.)

Mainstream Publishing, 1992, 221 p. First published 1968.

McIlvanney’s writing is held in high regard and now fond memory. This is a book I bought years ago (vaguely wondering if I had already read it) but have only got round to now. (I hadn’t.) It was his second novel, written and published quite a few years before Docherty, the book which would cement his reputation, though, with Laidlaw and The Papers of Tony Veitch he would subsequently be credited as being the “onlie begetter” of the slew of Scottish crime fiction now known as tartan noir.

Eddie Cameron is a sales rep frustrated by his job and life in general. His marriage to Allison has settled into a kind of indifference leavened only by the presence of two young daughters, Alice and Helen, his car is a liability, his interactions with colleagues perfunctory. Compounding his dissatisfaction is the lingering guilt he feels over his affair with schoolteacher Margaret Sutton. The novel is an examination of his swithering over in which direction he should steer his life. Leave his job and go back to working in a bookshop? Quit his marriage and set up with Margaret? Or let things remain as they are. Eddie does not want to cause pain to anyone but things have, of course, gone too far for that. Whatever decision he makes will inevitably grieve someone. The strings of his life begin unravelling when he is accosted one day by Margaret’s brother telling him to stay away from her. Later it turns out his boss, Jim Morton, has also been told of the affair.

While most of the book is focused on Eddie and his thoughts, some scenes are seen from other’s viewpoints, Jim Morton, Margaret, Allison. That chapter on Allison though comes very late in the book; too late really. Her motivations and their intended effect on Eddie ought to have been established earlier.

The characters are all well drawn, recognisably people but McIlvanney’s writing here is consciously literary, his intention in that regard overtly signalled by the classical allusion in the book’s title. However, the prose is at times overwritten, strives too much for weightiness.

There are some lighter moments, though. At one point Eddie reflects on that Scottish institution, the Burns Supper, where, lubricated of course by alcohol, “Men who never contemplated poetry from one year to the next listened to reciters as if they were so many burning bushes. The image of Burns, Scotland’s Jack of all men, would recede further and further until it vanished altogether.”

Pedant’s corner:- “in hawk to” (x 2, in hock,) miniscule (minuscule,) mantlepiece (mantelpiece – this spelling appears later.) “‘I’ll give it to you square, ’Morton was saying’” (has its end quotation mark misplaced.) “‘Everyone of those damned items is justified’” (Every one of those,) “rarified atmosphere” (rarefied,) “brought him to a crescendo” (the crescendo is the bringing, not its end,) “the callous developed by long contact” (callus.) “This was the first word he had heard her speak” (yet, eight lines later is revealed a previous exchange, ‘Excuse me. Is anyone sitting here?’ ‘No. Not at all.’) unsubstantial (insubstantial,) haranging (haranguing,) “vocal chords” (cords,) staunched (x 3, stanched,) focussed (focused.) Could’nt (Couldn’t.)