Lad's Love by S.R.Crockett reviewed by Cally Phillips

'Lad’s Love' (Volume 17 of The Galloway Collection' ) was first serialised in ‘The Lady’s Realm’ before being published in 1897 by Bliss, Sands & Co.  A contemporary review stated:  ‘It is far from being a commonplace romance. It is indeed an admirable example of the writer’s power to portray the life, character and goings on of country lads and lasses.’

We have seen some of these ‘domestic/rural’ stories before in Crockett’s collections such as ‘The Stickit Minister’ and ‘Bog Myrtle and Peat’ but this the first time Crockett has given novel form to this type of story. It falls somewhere between the history of ‘Lochinvar’ (published the same year) and the romance of ‘The Lilac Sunbonnet,’ but it offers the reader yet another kind of story.  It is told in the first person by Alec McQuhirr, son of Saunders who features in so many of Crockett’s short stories.  If you like it’s a sort of ‘spin off’ of the McQuhirr family saga.  And if you like the McQuhirr family, as I do, it’s a real treat of a novel.

The key setting is Nether Neuk , (a fictionalised version of the area around Crossmichael and Balmaghie) – and Whinniyliggate (a fictionalised version of Laurieston) and one might describe it as a tale of ‘the back end of the byre.’   As such it gives an insight into the lives of ordinary rural young Scots in Crockett’s time. There is earthy humour and couthy romance, and tricks and schemes as the lads try to ‘catch’ their lasses. 

Reading ‘Lad’s Love’ one has to understand that Crockett uses the word, and concept of ‘idyllic’ ironically. A failure to do this is partly what has seen such work misinterpreted as ‘kailyard’.  There is a lot more depth to the novel than such a dismissive categorisation suggests.  No, it is not a moral story of the heights of Henry James, but Crockett on his own admission wasn’t trying to write ‘novels of purpose,’  he was simply recording the way life was, as he saw it, in his own small part of Scotland.  As such it provides us with an interesting insight into domestic ritual, social status and expectations in the society of the day. 

Throughout we come across characters familiar to us from other of his works, and new characters as well. Rab Anderson is now father to ‘Hoolet’ and ‘the Deil,’ the children previously attributed to Sawny Bean in ‘A Galloway Herd.’  Crockett is happy to reuse material from previous serialisations and his original audience would have been just as happy to re-read these stories with variations.

Central to ‘Lad’s Love’ are the Chrystie family, and Alec’s prospective girlfriend (eventually wife) ,the redoubtable Nance Chrystie, is a brilliantly drawn picture of a feisty lass.  If you view rusticity and rural life as ‘nostalgic’ you may not get on with this, but if you enjoy reading about the lives of rural folk and their ‘little’ stories, you will love it. The characters are drawn with love and humour and even the collie dogs are given due credit. Add to that a plethora of interesting small detail, such as games of quoits, poaching,  the ‘Scotch’ marriage convention and the passing of seasons, and you have a novel that punches well above its weight.  This is at least as much a novel of rural social structures as it is a romance and it will appeal to readers of both types of story.

You can buy Lad’s Love in ebook format (Kindle or epub) from Ayton Publishing for £2.99 HERE (You can also buy it as an ebook from Amazon UK or US)

To buy the paperback copy in UK from Amazon click HERE  £8.99 and in the US $14.99 click HERE  

The Bookies Runner reviewed by Cally Phillips

The Bookies Runner by Brendan Gisby

The Bookie’s Runner

It’s not that I doubted the reviews. People whose opinion I respect have raved about this book. It’s not that I doubted Brendan’s talent – in one week I’ve consumed his short stories and family saga and been deeply moved by both.

It’s just that I couldn’t begin to imagine what one could write about such an ordinary dad. Brendan admits it, more than once ‘he was just my dad.’ Not a hero. Not unusual in any obvious way, ‘just my dad.’ So I found it hard to imagine what could make any book on the subject as good as people have said about it. That’s why I didn’t read it sooner. I should have.  I started reading. I was choked by paragraph 2. Lesson 2 learned. It’s not just what he writes about it’s how he writes. It’s brave, honest, open, poignant and compelling

By Chapter Two I already knew I had to give this my full and undivided attention – and expect to cry. And I don’t do crying. Especially not about fathers.  Having long since had mine abandon me, I tend not to think that fathers can be heroes.

But this is Brendan’s story, not mine. And a fifteen year old Brendan narrates his thoughts on the longest bus journey on earth – his first day back at High School after the death of his father. Each chapter is another story in the course of his dad’s life and it works so well because the adult holds himself in the background, while offering a subtle awareness of the depths beyond the boy’s immediate grief. He shares the reflexive stance of the reader and draws our empathy not only to the boy but to the man the boy became.  It is man and boy telling the story.

The 15 year old feels raw emotion and unbridled hatred for a world which has treated his dad so unfairly and everyone (including himself) who has ever wronged his dad are the target of his furious grief.  The tribute to the adult is that he has channelled this into a story which is a true tribute to his father.

F.Scott Fitzgerald said ‘write because you have something to say, not because you want to say something.  Gisby wants to say something – boy and man – but he also HAS something to say. Something very important about human relationships and interaction. About truth and lies and trust and failure and love.

The boy experiences hopelessness and vows never to be as gentle and soft as his dad.

‘Who can you trust?’ is his dad’s poignant question and Gisby learns that you can’t trust anyone –except your dad. And without him, you have nothing left. I empathise with that feeling.

Structurally the work is understated but very clever. One doesn’t find out the full symbolic importance of the bus journey until well into the book and it hits one as yet another sideswipe. You want to go and wring the neck of the woman who cheats them at their gardening job. You want to hunt down the Bookie who cheats them (I hope this isn’t too much of a spoiler) It isn’t though because the episodes themselves, well written, remembered with the rawness of real emotion, are the stepping stones towards the greatness of the story which is a picture of how ‘ordinary’ people become what they are.  The hopelessness. The fierce determination not to be cheated or lied to or tramped on are vivid and real. After finishing this I have the deepest respect for Brendan Gisby. I mourn for the boy he was and the dad he lost and I hope that he got the life he deserved. He certainly deserves the utmost respect for being able to tell this story with the power of pain and vividness of emotion and yet all of that is controlled, constructed and managed with a level of reflective awareness that is little short of incredible.

Reviewed by Cally Phillips

The Next Stop is Croy by Andrew McCallum Crawford

The Next Stop is Croy and Other Stories by Andrew McCallum Crawford

Review by Bill Kirton

This is a short collection of six, easy to read stories which recount various incidents in the life of a young Scot. We see their surfaces, their separateness, but we're also made aware of the echoes between and the depths beneath them.

In a foreword, the author prepares us for the collection by reminding us that they’re stand-alone pieces which ‘in no way’ constitute ‘a novella or a novelette’. Equally, though, he acknowledges that strong links and themes run through them and the resultant grouping conveys very strongly their potential as a ‘continuous narrative’. The tantalising effect of the sequence is to make us want to know more of what happened between the episodes and events he chooses. As it is, we can enjoy each passage as a self-contained story but, simultaneously, we create our own version of how the relationships shifted and developed in the ‘gaps’.

They’re all told from the perspective of a single narrator, Alan, observing and experiencing the separation between his own lifestyle, choices and opportunities and those of his father. The language often seems to suggest confrontation and yet there’s no mistaking the tenderness, nostalgia and love that informs it. There’s an artlessness, a deceptive simplicity about many of the exchanges between Alan and his father when we hear the abruptness of the delivery, the seeming carelessness of the remarks and hidden accusations, and we know that both parties want to say other things, want to express the love that connects them. It’s a love that never gets articulated and yet it suffuses nearly all their contacts.

The writing is clever. There are no great tragic outpourings; tragedy is a very personal experience, marked by memories of seemingly trivial things – finding lost golf balls, sharpening a saw, cutting through a counter, sensing yet never penetrating a secret shared by two girls. But, when recollected, they have the resonance of major life events, signifying much more than their surface suggests. The stories convey the fragmentation of life, its refusal to cohere into a constant flow, the power of memories and the helplessness we feel before them.

The feeling which remains is that Alan is somehow lost in his own life. It’s failed to settle into the meanings he seeks for it, remaining instead as a collection of disconnected fragments, each consisting of elements which should draw them together. So in the end, we come to realise the artfulness of those claims in the foreword. Our lives consist of fragments – we can group and structure them to imply a significance but, in the end, the idea of a ‘continuous narrative’ is a myth. We need to live in and understand the moment. Above all, we need to be prepared to see the value of the trivial and tell the emotional truths which are the real driving force of our being.