Orkney - Amy Sackville

I missed Amy Sackville's first novel (lovely cover but the subject didn't quite grab me) I could not however resist something titled 'Orkney', especially as it's also set in Orkney and promised allusions to selkie myths. George Mackay Brown is probably the best known Orkney writer but he's by no means alone either in terms of being home grown talent or an inspired visitor - Orkney is rich in stories and history. When you visit the history is close to the surface be it in the form of the Italian Chapel, Maeshowe, or any and everything in-between - it's an invitation to story telling and myth making as is the sea - George Mackay Brown's 'ocean of time'.

Richard is an ageing professor; at 60 he's not quite elderly, but the signs are all over his body - joints ache, skin is papery, hair greying, toe nails horned and monstrous, and now there's a very young woman in his life. A brilliant student who seems to be interested in him. She has silver hair, pale skin, and slightly webbed hands and feet. Richard is quickly obsessed, trailing around in search of this creature who appears and disappears without seemingly without warning. Perhaps in an effort to pin her down he asks her to marry him and she agrees to it.    

Richard is also a Tennyson scholar, well aware of the poetic irony of falling for a woman 40 years his junior, and the folly of old men blinded by lust - but he remains powerless against his wife's charms - and so at her request they set off for a frequently in Orkney where she - we never learn her name - spends her days on the beach looking out to sea and he sits at the window watching her. 

Initially Richard's narration put me broadly in sympathy with him, he's so aware of his ageing, and how open to ridicule the situation makes him, but also so hopelessly infatuated that he seems just as hopelessly vulnerable. Slowly though his behaviour becomes more menacing, possessive, maybe even violent. There are odd moments as when for example he holds his wife under the water of her bath at her request, or a night when the sex sounds suspicously close to rape. Richard rather gloats over the sex and that again erodes sympathy. 

Word play is an integral part in this novel, Richard and his wife exchange strings of adjectives as a kind of game - some reviews see it as overwriting but I think it works in this context. It feels like a natural way for people who immerse themselves in literature to communicate, and also a natural way to describe a landscape like Orkney where sea, sky, and light are forever shifting - transforming a landscape which itself frequently melts into the rain or mist. Something else that I only really noticed about half way through is that when his wife speaks it's punctuated with inverted commas, Richards speech isn't marked at all which adds to a sense of dislocation from reality already created by the girls physical oddities and the couples relative isolation. 

It's possible that she is entirely a figment of his imagination - we only see her through his eyes but even so she constantly throws doubt on his reliability as a narrator. As Richard tries to tell back the story of their relationship she keeps correcting him. He describes first seeing her on an autumn day in a 'purple sweater, the colour of heather on the heath...' she denies ever owning a purple jumper but also states heather blooms in spring - which Richard accepts - but heather is a late summer flower. I don't think this is a mistake; neither character is reliable. 

I also think this is a book open to being the story you want it to be. This mysterious girl with a fascination for the sea could be a selkie child or more mermaid than woman; something otherworldly intent on seducing a human creature, equally she might be the victim of an older man's obsession, or again, and just as likely she might not exist at all and this is Richards reworking of all the stories he's worked with over his career. Or perhaps as in Edith Olivier's 'The Love Child' Richard has conjured a physical being from fantasy. 

The reviews I've read of 'Orkney' are mixed. I think it works, and would go as far as to say it's a remarkable achievement - but you'll have to judge for yourself what you make of it...   

Feeling very much at home

My memory of Orkney is of unremittingly grey weather – which is almost unfair because every time the sun came out so did my camera with the result that a surprising number of pictures suggest that the weather was okay. It wasn’t. True it didn’t really rain but I did need a jumper, a coat (yes the one full of holes that made me look like a down and out), a scarf, and gloves. The Scottish one had a hat, it was a balaclava, I expect we made quite an impression on the local population. Leicestershire feels as hot as hell after all that.

Happily the B&B we stayed at (Holland house) was amazing – warm, welcoming, open fires (very much appreciated) scones for breakfast – a little bit of heaven, and grim weather sometimes has it’s upsides. When we went to look at Skara Brae (oldest Neolithic village in Europe is what the website says) it was initially sunny and infested with bus tourists. Skara Brae is quite small so three bus loads of assorted Europeans wondering why they didn’t go to Greece to look at remains which are still really quite old and in the sun makes quite an impact on the overall ambience. It also meant the cafe was full.

I didn't take my own picture so this one is shamelessly pinched from the Skaill house web page

With an instinct for approaching rain born and honed in the Shetland Islands (which were apparently ‘enjoying’ weather even less summery) it soon became apparent that a romantic walk on the beach should be postponed in favour of a ash for the interpretation shed/the cafe/or nearby Skaill House (same ticket but unjustly gets second billing). We headed for Skaill getting in well ahead of 17 disgruntled French teenagers which was probably a blessing, and just ahead of the rain.

Skaill has a long and no doubt fascinating history (the Scottish one appropriated the guide books and has them still so I’m hazy about the details), it’s a surprisingly big house made up of comfortingly small rooms. They have Captain Cook’s dinner service and a couple of nice Stanley Cursiter’s on the walls but the best bit was the library. I can’t count the number of times I’ve stared at the book shelves in houses like this, mostly laughing at books about country pursuits with unlikely but precise titles. Skaill was different; Skaill had my kind of books. They had E. H. Young’s and Elizabeth Von Arnim, Vicki Baum’s ‘Grand Hotel’ which I read last year and would love a copy of, Dorothy L. Sayers, Dorothy Whipple, Sheila Kaye-Smith, and Sapper. Books I’ve read and books I own (sadly not quite the same thing).

These are the books that every house would most likely have had – good middle brow fare, but which don’t generally make it on the library shelves. I didn’t notice the great long runs of Shakespeare and the like that never tell you anything about the people who lived there and far preferred these tatty runs of clearly well read volumes. There was a comfortable chair, a well placed window, and a book called ‘The Law Breaker’ by someone calling themselves Ridgwell Cullum – what could have been better than staying for the rest of the afternoon – if only I’d been allowed to touch!

Back again and it’s like I never left

Not even a tan for my troubles either, Scotland and Orkney in particular where we spent most of our time wasn’t overly warm and sunny (Orkney was cold enough to demand not just jumpers but also hats gloves and scarves) unfortunate then that I forgot my coat. I realised that I was sans coat half an hour up the motorway when it had been raining (torrentially) for 40 minutes. I swore a lot until finding an old wax jacket at the back of the car, despite looking like a tramp as I modelled a garment tastefully held (mostly) together by gaffer tape I sort of managed to stay warm and dry – so holiday saved.

It has basically been a books and whisky tour of – I would say Scotland, but actually I mean the A9 and Orkney (with a little sojourn on the A68). The A9 turns out to be an awesome road if you like Whisky; we visited Blair Athol, Dalwhinnie, Glenmorangie, and Old Pultney which leaves plenty for the next trip. I bought enough whisky to eclipse my book buying habit (and somewhat dread my credit card bill – is it any defence to say the Scottish one lead me astray?) between us we managed to acquire 18 bottles of malt and 2 bottles of gin. I swear that’s not all for me, and the more I think about it the less I look forward to that bill, I must not get carried away again.

Book wise I managed a quick visit to the Main Street Trading Company in Newton St Boswells which remains one of my favourite bookshops ever, even more bookish as it followed a visit to Sir Walter Scott’s Abbotsford (where I pinched tiny wild strawberries from the garden and wished I could live there forever – it’s beautiful and the strawberries were good). The borders seem to take bookshops seriously, there is a Borders book trail (leaflet sadly lost) which had at least 2 shops new to me on it. There was no time to visit them this trip, but next time... It’s right and proper that there is some fuss about these places though. Each and every one of them that I’ve visited so far has been excellent and a trip round the lot would make for a damn fine day out.

Orkney has some decent book shops too, Stromness has the Legendry Stromness Books and Prints (doesn’t sell prints) it’s a tiny shop a few hundred yards from the house George Mackay Brown lived in (fan girl moment) with far more books in it than seems feasible with hindsight, they also have little snippets of text taped to the shelves as well which sort of suggest what you’re browsing. My favourite would have been ‘The fluttering kilt connection’ if it hadn’t have been for another which read ‘keep away from children’. Kirkwall has the Orcadian bookshop which is good for books about Orkney and a really good second hand shop. I didn’t see its name but if you’re ever up that way it’s a couple of doors down from the library and looks like it might not be a bookshop at all from a distance, but it is and it’s entirely worth a visit.

I have more of this holiday stuff but more to the point I have quite a lot of laundry and some whisky to be stored out of harms way. Pictures of big piles of books to follow.

   

The Captain’s Wife – Kirsten McKenzie

This is one from the guilty pile and I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself for striking it off the list. I really liked McKenzie’s first book ‘The Chapel at the Edge of the World’ (heavily featuring the Italian Chapel in Orkney) so had high hopes for book number two which also has an Orkney connection but goes back a little further than the second world war.

‘The Captain’s Wife’ is a multi stranded tale which follows the life of John Fullerton, Orkney boy and eventual pirate, and also Mary Jones a young woman sent off into the world to marry Captain Jones, a much older and previously married man who needs a male heir to secure his uncles estate. Unfortunately Captain Jones (as well as being a laudanum addicted drunk with a violent streak) seems incapable of fathering his own child so he gets his best friend and possible lover Robert to do the job for him. From there on in it gets complicated.

John’s story is also complicated, the illegitimate son of a poor crofter who acknowledges him enough to give him a good beating when he asks for more for his mother. He seems to be mostly motivated by greed (with a good dose of paranoia) his fate is set when he joins ship after running away from home. He’s picked up by an older man who wants him for his body rather than his sailing skills, but from him John develops a taste for finer living and eventually a ship of his own. Merchant life doesn’t provide enough money and he turns first to smuggling and eventually as mentioned to piracy, he also turns to brandy and gambling – from where – well it gets complicated.

As long as I was reading I was totally caught up in the tale but as soon as I put the book down I found myself picking holes in it. I think McKenzie is a gifted story teller – otherwise I wouldn’t have finished this book, never mind found myself enjoying it, but I also think, and hope that she’s got much better to come. There were just too many holes in ‘The Captain’s Wife’, little things that didn’t quite add up in the plot; descriptions of emotions that felt wrong for the eighteenth century setting and possibly too many drunken gay sailors. I was doubtful about Mary’s life on board ship as well though cursory research suggests that this was quite common, but this brings problems of its own because apart from Mary it’s an exclusively male world.

In fact it needs to be an entirely male world to make sense of all the same sex relationships – the suggestion initially seems to be that a boy is a necessary adjunct to an officer’s life and that the boy will get used to it in return for better food, better clothes, and a better bed (the boys in the book seem to be happy enough with the terms). Still the male relationships are entirely convincing, which is a bit more than I felt about the ménage a trois between Mary, her husband, and their lover.

I ended up feeling quite lukewarm about ‘The Captain’s Wife’ but the Scottish one who read it almost as soon as I got it really enjoyed it although he’s failed to take to ‘The Chapel at the Edge of the World’ so it seems there’s no accounting for taste and if you can suspend your disbelief sufficiently it’s certainly a gripping yarn.

 

Hawkfall – George Mackay Brown

I’m putting sink troubles behind me this morning because the sun is shining again (second day in a row – amazing) and I have the morning off (not focusing on having to work very late, not thinking about it at all...). I’ve made lots of pancakes and eaten quite a few as well which has made me feel at peace with the world. Work to often gets in the way of things like this (eating pancakes on your own whilst still delicious doesn’t generally make you feel like you’re taking part in a long tradition) and now I have to think of something to give up for lent. Without being in any way religious I still think this is a good opportunity to implement a change in life – a second chance at a New Year’s resolution. This year I’m resolved to give up sneaking recyclables into my ordinary rubbish. The bottle bank is close enough for there to be no excuse.

These are the kind of things that George Mackay Brown makes me think of (you see there is a sort of point to all that rambling). He’s also a writer I find myself turning to over winter and spring – I see I was reading him this time last year as well. ‘Hawkfall’ was a happy find (at the Astley Book Farm) a pristine copy of a book I’ve wanted for a while in a half hearted sort of way. I thought it was a novel for some reason and I’ve struggled with Mackay Brown’s novels – but happily it’s another collection of short stories where I feel he’s hard to beat.

Fair enough I get a sense of déjà vu reading these stories now because there is a similarity between them; I’ve got well over half a dozen collections and found myself in very familiar territory, that said I think this is one of the best sets I’ve read, I didn’t want to finish it. I also found myself actually making notes whilst reading which is something I rarely do – of course I’ve lost them already, but all the same... What I haven’t lost is a sense of connection with the season changing. A reminder that the sky is sometimes blue, and will sometime be blue again, after spending most the daylight hours of the last 5 months in a windowless corner surrounded by wine bottles it’s something that’s nice to know.

It’s all summed up in ‘The Tarn and The Rosary’ (which has to be Mackay Brown’s own biography) Colm who has become a writer is living in Edinburgh trying to finish a second book. It’s hot and somehow unsatisfactory he wants to go back north, and at the same time doesn’t, writing to a friend

“I am not coming north this year. There are its true so many things I want to see – Tumilshun and the hills, the churchyard, the school, the piers where I fished and the ditches where I burned my fingers. But there are other places that give me a pain at the heart when I think of them – the doorless houses in the village, the Godspeed rotting on the beach, the black forge...”

But self imposed exile gives way to a new realization by the end of the story:

“During the last Gospel it came to him that in fact it would be the easiest thing in the world for him to go home. There was nothing to keep him here. There were still meaningful patterns to be discerned in the decays of time. The hills of Norday were astir all summer, still, with love, birth, death, resurrection.”

And that’s exactly why I read George Mackay Brown.

George Mackay Brown – a Give away...

Andrina and other Stories

I keep hearing that short stories are a dying format and that nobody wants to buy them, a viewpoint I’m particularly glad that Birlinn/Polygon aren’t listening to because I’m relying on them for a regular stream of George Mackay Brown shorts. I’ve said it before, and will be saying it again (and again) I think George Mackay Brown is at his best in short story form. So much so that every time I get a new collection I seriously consider re-tackling his novels and having a good hard look at his poetry.

My last foray into Brown was ‘The Masked Fisherman’ which was not perhaps the best collection that I’ve read, but the two just released – 'Andrina and Other Stories'and ‘The Sun’s Net’ (originally published by the Hogarth press and I would give anything apart from the money demanded – which I don’t have – for some of those original editions in their lovely jackets) are impressing me no end.

‘Andrina and Other Stories’ feels like a fairly loose collection – no particularly unifying theme but rather a gathering of all the themes that seem so dear to Brown’s heart, so wherever his tale is set be it Africa or Mongolia he’s still seeing it from an Orkney window. His concerns are time, tide, season, poetry, and faith – the things that shaped his life as an islander and story teller; equally his hero’s are fisherman, farmers, sailors and poets. He has little time for the laird or the minister, manse and hall being the traditional enemy of the crofter, but there is plenty of his (clearly deep and Catholic) faith here as well.

It’s hard to write about short stories, especially when some are only a few pages long; what can you say without giving too much away? I find this especially hard with a writer whose prose is as lean and succinct as Brown’s tends to be. He really doesn’t waste words, though he does make up some absolute corkers – at a slight tangent he doesn’t use much dialect either, odd bits and pieces nestled amongst the text but that’s it. Still, two from this collection really stood out for me – The Lost Boy; a Christmas eve miracle that I find as heart warming as it is brief, and The Feast at Paplay which enlarges on an event in the Orkneyinga saga (a major influence for Brown) it deals with the murder of Earl Magnus, later Saint Magnus, by his cousin Earl Hakon. Having killed his kinsman Hakon arrives at his aunt’s house for a feast meant to celebrate a peace between the two men. Thora is forced to treat her nephew as a son and to beg for her own son’s body to bury. These are the bare bones as laid out in the saga which Brown builds on, but oh how he builds; a pig is to be killed for the feast, but its death also doubles for the death of Magnus:

“John set the bewildered piglet on its feet in the yard. He took a knife out of his belt and pushed the blade into the pink throat. The beast squealed. It ran and staggered, and the blood welled out of it. It stood still then shook its head in a sad puzzled way. Blood spattered on the paving stones.”

There’s a stylistic echo of the sagas in that as well, but mostly I just find it a deeply affecting telling of death.

Anyway if you don’t want to just take my word for it and feel you want to read for yourself I’ve acquired a copy to give away. If you’re interested leave a comment (and if commenting on blogger proves difficult an email will do just fine – details are in the profile box) Always assuming that more than one person shows an interest (actually hoping that at least one person shows an interest because I’m very enthusiastic about this book and want to share it) then I will pick a name out of a hat next Wednesday and post on Thursday...

Apologies for the lack of a proper picture, blogger's just not having it tonight.

The Masked Fisherman – George Mackay Brown

(And other things)

It’s been a long week, and with more training in the offing next week is likely to feel longer. This time I’m off to a golf course somewhere outside of Reading for three nights. Days will be spent incarcerated indoors learning the professional equivalent of sucking eggs. Nights I can at least read, unless I’m forced to socialise with colleagues (small talk with strangers or reading? It’s a choice that will bring out my inner misanthrope every time.)

Three nights is longer than expected so I’m wondering exactly what to take to read – I have a pile of tempting things and a pile of things I feel I should read but which will require more effort. Still I have twenty four hours to decide, a possible trip to the book farm tomorrow - so plenty of potential for impulse purchases, and will have to walk past (into) Foyle’s at St Pancras on my way to the course...

So: ‘The Masked Fisherman’. I was reading this whilst waiting for ‘The Chapel at the End of the World’ to arrive partly to get me in the mood, partly because I find myself drawn to Mackay Brown as the seasons turn, and by the by in direct contradiction to my assertion that Orkney isn’t always grey, the cover of this book is exceptionally monotone, also a lot of the stories take place in the dark of winter –and yet I still find it somehow uplifting. I’m going to quote the back cover blurb at this point as its apt and in Mackay Brown’s own words: “Many of the stories in this book are set in winter, round about the solstice and Christmas and New Year. In the north, winter has always been the time for storytelling... Winter, season of storm and dearth, is still a might quickener of the imagination.”

In the past I’ve struggled with Mackay Brown’s novels, but I can’t think of a better short story writer (plenty that are as good, but no one to beat him). ‘The Masked Fisherman’ has encouraged me to try again (I my well take him away with me to see what he makes of the Reading golf course) but there’s a magic in these short stories that I think comes partly from their brevity. This was a grand collection to get me in the mood for ‘The Chapel at the End of the World’; they share many of the same themes – patience, acceptance, endurance, hope, faith, timelessness – the sort of thing I feel in need of to get me through the last few weeks of winter.

There is always a cycle of tide and season in Mackay Brown’s writing, never more than in this collection which is what makes the dead of winter seem so hopeful – winter means spring is on its way; the light of a single candle is a forecast of the sun to come. I have to slow down to read these and feel my way into his sense of time; ease myself into a rhythm controlled by light, dark, storm and calm.

I’m aware that I’m not expressing myself very well here – the charm with Mackay Brown is that he does – the images he creates on the page, with really astonishing economy, are vivid before me as I read them. I don’t consider any bookshelf well dressed without at least one volume of his stories up there. Even if the subject isn’t your cup of tea he should be read for the style, and if I manage to convince at least one person of that I’ll be very happy.

The Chapel At The Edge Of The World

I’ve only visited the Italian Chapel on Orkney once – and that was almost twenty years ago but it’s a place that makes an impression. I tried to find some decent pictures of the chapel to decorate this review with, but none of the one’s I found on line came anywhere near to doing it justice. (Highland Park whisky used to have a decent one on their website, but it’s gone now.)

The thing about the chapel is that outside it really is just Nissan huts with a cement facade. It’s a pretty facade, but it doesn’t really prepare you for what’s inside. When you step through the door though you leave Orkney and enter Italy; the Chapel boasts some really impressive trompe l’oeil – at seventeen I’d never seen anything quite like it – and nor have I since, but sadly it seems you have to go and see it – I can’t show you.

Anyway all this and more was at the back of my mind when I picked up Kirsten McKenzie’s book. Reviews have been mixed, or at least mixed enough to make me think twice about buying so I phoned the nice people at John Murray and pushed my luck for a copy. They very kindly promised to oblige and I waited hopefully, sadly no book appeared so I phoned again and they obliged again. I have long held dark suspicions of my posty – an unnaturally cheerful man who whistles whilst he works, it’s disarming but sinister (in my opinion) but second time round the book arrived and even better proved to be worth the wait.

‘The Chapel At The Edge Of The World’ is Kirsten McKenzie’s debut novel which I think shows, but she’s definitely a writer worth watching. This is one separated couple’s war – Emilio sets off to fight and soon ends up a prisoner first in North Africa and later On Orkney. Rosa left at home has a slightly more eventful time fending off amorous Nazis and almost accidentally becoming involved with the resistance.

Emilio deals with imprisonment by ignoring it and trying to ignore news of the war – instead as an artist he immerses himself in creating the chapel, and holding on to the idea of all he’s left behind in the hope that it will still be there when he returns. Rosa says goodbye without any real expectation of getting Emilio back assuming he will be lost either to another woman, to a wider experience, or possibly killed. What she isn’t really prepared for is what happens – his being taken prisoner which leaves her in a sort of limbo for the duration of the war. To say much more would be to give too much away about Rosa but her part of the story is excellent; I like that it’s the woman who has gone to war here – or at least had the war come to her, whilst the man stays locked up, uncomfortable but basically safe. It’s an effective role reversal and makes a nice change from reading about life for the girls left behind on the home front.

Emilio’s story I had a bit more trouble with. I think McKenzie does a convincing job on the P.O.W experience but I felt she got a bit carried away with the greyness of it all – to the point that it started to niggle. Everything about Orkney is grey in this book – over four years it seems never to be summer – just one endless grey winter. The sky is grey with stars, the Aurora creates a kind of grey dawn, the long summer nights (on a rare appearance) are grey, and the ground is covered in dead grey heather. I get it, I really do, I believe in the grey, I’ve seen the grey, I feel the grey, but I also know the aurora as a great sweeping curtain of billowing coloured light (not at all grey) and I’m not having a sky greyed by stars either. The sun does shine in the north albeit rarely and the insistence on grey seems heavy handed – more obvious perhaps because the rest of the book is so spot on. Still it’s a tiny niggle about an otherwise absorbing read. The Orkney side of the story although fictionalised closely follows actual events and the Italian half reads as equally likely. I think this is a more than promising debut – I await McKenzie’s next novel with interest, she’s certainly challenged my prejudice against contemporary writers. (A quick look on amazon suggests that book number two is a ship board romp with pirates and a strong female lead – normally I’d be suspicious but as ‘The Chapel At The End Of The World’ was so good I’m actually enthusiastic. Both books have fantastic cover art too.)