It's a while since I enjoyed a book so much. Beautifully written, honest about life experience and those inner levers that move us, the story of a search within the heart and mind, and out there on the moors of Assynt and around the Green Loch. It's also a memoir of Norman McCaig and that rich vein of mid to late 20th C Scottish poets whose work gives affirming depth and gently questioning pause to the experience of Scottishness.
What makes any one book especially enjoyable? If I start with this one, still fresh in my memory and much of its narrative drive and the sense of the characters still clear and defined, it has much to do with the writer's use of language. Other things, of course, matter. Content, structure, the pace and interest of the narrative drive, the attractiveness of the genre whether memorable memoir, perceptive life reflection, idiosyncratic tour guide, knowing and generous literary criticism - these are all important contributory factors.
But this book is well written. There are sentences that are all but unimprovable. There are longer descriptive paragraphs of landscape, or of observed human behaviour, or of remembered events that turned out to be life-changing, that invite the reader into areas of intimate experience and in which the writer trusts the reader to understand, or at least to respect what he is trying to put into words. All of this Greig does in this book, and to read it is to enjoy the use of words, to appreciate the necessary nuance and entrusted confidence required of a writer to bare his soul, and bear the consequences; that entrusted confidence has to find an answering sympathy from the reader, and when it does there is joy in the reading.
Woven into the narrative fabric of the book are episodes of Greig's own journey to the place where this book was written. These autobiographical reminiscences are neither self-indulgent nor superfluous. They are stranded together with recalled conversations with Norman MacCaig in Edinburgh, with the shared memories of the three friends who find their way to the Green Loch on a fishing quest, and with occasional poems and personal reflections of a writer at home with philosophy and with fly fishing and much in between.
But enjoyment of a book also has to do with its reflexive impact, with what it does to the reader. Reading at its best and most effective is a transformative experience of having our minds opened to new possibilities and perspectives; of being invited and at times compelled to think again about what we thought we were clear about; of being taken into confidence as someone tells us a truth they have found to be both new and necessary for a richer life; of being included in the story of three friends, their interwoven lives, and their hopes and failures, regrets and gratitudes.
In both these senses I enjoyed this book. The writing is warm and humane, learned without being fussy, moves easily from autobiography to landscape description, is written by a lover of Scotland and one who knows the feel of heather and hailstones, likes the taste of whisky and chocolate, is realistic about what a small country is and can be. Along the way Greig is disarmingly frank about his own journey through heather and hailstones in his personal life.
I bought it as a second-hand hardback and am glad of that, because there's something substantial in a HB book. It's a statement of intent to revisit a book made more durable to ensure the writing is protected and preserved for future reference. Often I compile my own index for a book I've read - this one has several page references well worth re-reading.
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