Sitting
somewhere after ‘The House with the Green Shutters’ and before the 1980’s
explosion of hard/cool Scottish writers, ‘The Ripening Time’ is a forgotten
gem. As it its author. In his day Alastair Mair published more than ten
novels with mainstream publishers but today you’re hard pressed to find any of
his work outside of specialist second hand shops. And so it’s a brave and
worthy task that his daughter Catherine Macleod has undertaken in epublishing a
revised/adapted version.
I have to say that I enjoyed the novel as revised/adapted, but
that I also felt I had to read the original. Which I did. In a second
hand hardback copy which had stamped on the inner ‘Kirkcaldy District
Libraries’ DISCARD. (Shame on you Fife County Libraries!) obtained online
for twice the price of the ebook.
‘The Ripening Time’ strikes home most clearly as an honest,
real, uncompromising account of the lives of working class Glaswegians in the
early 1960’s. Gentle brutality and emotional numbness are key features of the
work. The dominance of the post war working class mother is greatly in evidence
in all her guises. Tom’s mother is a throwback to an earlier time – she raises
a polite and inoffensive boy quite unable to distinguish desire from
duty. His mother in law represents the worst of the new aspirations of
the working class as they seek middle class comforts. And his wife takes the dominance
of the female to a whole new and awful (yet very real) level. Men are
very much seen as the victims in this world. It places me in mind of ‘Men
Should Weep,’ by Ena Lamont Stewart but gives a man’s view of the domestic hell
that was endured by many.
The original novel has a level of dourness and despondency and a
disillusion and despair which accurately invokes a working class male
perspective. It is characterised by a ‘lack’ of all kinds of things – and
it may be these perceived ‘lacks’ that MacLeod sought to deal with. In
doing so however, and in recontextualising the novel for a new generation and
adding a framing device which favours a more female perspective and an outside
view of the life of the central character Tom, it takes away as much as it gives.
Most notably this is in the repression which seeps through the original and is
replaced by more graphic sex (well written though this is) replacing the
stifling passiveness of the original with a more aggressive interpretation
of repression.
Sexual repression is important to this novel. Working
together with the nature/nurture symbolism which runs throughout, Mair has
something different and important to say about the relationship between
domestic power as dominance and how such a pattern makes nurturing
relationships impossible. It’s D.H.Lawrence without the release.
MacLeod’s adaptation adds that Laurentian level (admirably) but I feel takes
something fundamental away from the truth of the novel in the process.
In an age where sex is still largely repressed and denied, the
discovery of the orgasm transforms lives, giving an understanding of love which
inevitably has repercussions on relationships founded on more traditional or
aspirational bases. A retrospective view of this inevitably tells us something
different than the original. It’s not better, it’s not worse, but it is
quietly and significantly different.
Tom’s ‘ripening’ occurs on every level throughout the novel and
the symbol of the greenhouse is extremely clever and rings very true. A man
may hide in his shed, but in his greenhouse he can create a whole new world
away from the dominance of women. And the creation is not just about
power, it’s about nurture, something that is lacking in the post war urban
working class environment Tom grows up in.
In this revised edition Catherine MacLeod recontextualises the
novel for a contemporary audience. As such she does a very good job. It’s
highly readable and challenging at the same time. But it does make you want to
read the original, and I’m glad I did. It also makes you want to read
more work by Alasdair Mair as well as more by Catherine Macleod.
As a writer the idea that someone might adapt/revise or
recontextualise my work is somewhat shocking. As a reader I don’t feel
that the work needed an ‘overhaul’ of any kind. Simply republishing it as it
was would have worked perfectly well for me, but then that’s the choice of a
publisher. And if someone was to adapt this work, I feel at least that
Alasdair’s daughter has more right than any to undertake this task. If I
owned the rights to Alasdair Mair’s work I would republish it all in ebook
format, just as it is. It’s more than worth it.
If you’re looking for an
easy read this isn’t it. By that I mean it is compelling, awful in its
dissection of human relationships and dramatic in the most domestic of ways. It
is excellent. It is uniquely Scottish, one might even say uniquely Glaswegian
but it holds a universality as well in that it reaches out to debate the human
condition and the pain of life when love is subordinated to power and natural
desire is turned into material aspiration. Whichever (or both) way you
choose to read this story, I really think it’s a story worth reading. The
original just tips it for me, precisely because it is original and therefore is placed firmly
in and of its time. But without the ebook I’d never have found the
original. That’s food for thought.
Available on Amazon in Kindle format
Find out more about Catherine MacLeod
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