News of the Dead

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News of the Dead - Five Books Expert Reviews News of the Dead - Five Books Expert Reviews

Interestingly the book had me thinking about faith also and how it is important especially when faced with the prospect of death or loss. How someone dies two deaths; one when their soul leaves this earth and one when their name is said for the last time. The only way to preserve someone’s legacy is to write it down. To pass on long after even you have left this earth. To ensure you leave your mark in this world. I’ve been thinking about it for about five years, so it’s taken a while for it to come together. I wanted to write a novel that was set in one place, but that took place over a huge amount of time. So I invented this glen, Glen Conach, which is, in my head, not far from where I live. There are three stories going on: the story of Conach himself, an 8th-century Christian missionary to the Picts who becomes a hermit in the glen; then a story set in the early 1800s, where Charles Gibb comes to the big house in the glen to look at this manuscript about the life of Conach; and finally a modern story narrated by a woman called Maya, one of the oldest residents of the glen in the year 2020. Robertson’s novel is a much slower burn, but still deeply satisfying. His fiction has often explored the past to great purpose, as in his magnificent The Land Lay Still , about the making of modern Scotland, or the slavery-themed Joseph Knight . Here, though, the focus is on nothing less than on the nature of history itself: its gaps, deliberate myths, accidental lies and time-honoured fictions. While Rizzio is all flashing blades and double crosses, in News of the Dead whole weeks go by in which a mildly dodgy scholar employed by a slightly eccentric laird does little more than go about his business of translating a medieval document about an eight century local holy man. By the end of the novel, though, all these threads through time weave together in a profoundly moving way: think of the end of Middlemarch , transpose it to an Angus glen, and you won’t be too far wrong. Judge for yourself at the end of the month, when it is Radio 4’s Book of the Week.We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview. Welcome to the Siren Book Club! Whether you’re looking for your next steamy romance, an excuse to cry ugly tears or want to be whisked away to a new magical realm, we have something for you. All the characters you’ll meet along the way are strong women who know what they want. Whether it’s reclaiming […] I don't see a lot of decent Scottish fiction. I don't know if it's just not there, or I've just not noticed it. You get a few thrillers, and there's been the odd notable one (your Shuggie Bains and My Bloody Projects) but there aren't many. And this is a very Scottish book - in a good way. Catholicism hasn’t, however, been completely banished: people like Will’s mother still attend clandestine masses. Mary, Queen of Scots has stayed loyal to the Old Religion and although she has abdicated the Scottish throne, stands a chance of taking over the English one. Meanwhile, Esme Stuart, James VI’s mentor, makes no bones about being a Catholic, and may even be plotting a Counter-Reformation. Scotland looks like being Protestant, but what kind of Protestant: Puritan or humanist? And could it not just as easily be Catholic, English (like the 1574 troops pulling the cannon to lay siege to the Castle) French (like the Queen) or (a bit of a push, this) British?

What I’m reading: James Robertson - Penguin Books UK

Isobel McDonald is Curator of Social History at Glasgow Museums. Having originally studied archaeology at Edinburgh University, she had expected to go into fieldwork, however a chance conversation with a friend about job opportunities at the British Mu … I interview James about his bok in the first episode of The Big Scottish Book Club which you can view on BBC iPlayer or follow this link:These stories are gathered by an anonymous monk and written into a book which remains in the glen, first in the abbey and then, following the reformation, in the big house where it is kept in the library by the laird and his family. Of course, the monk wrote in Latin and this is the first translation because the stories would have been told in Gaelic. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Charles Gibb arrives at Glen Conach House to produce a copy of the Latin and to translate the book into English and to provide himself with free board and accommodation for as long as he can stretch it out. It is through Gibb that we meet the inhabitants of the Glen, the Laird and his wife, their daughter Jessamyne, the minister, the teacher, the Laird’s mother and many others. We do not meet Sandy, the laird’s son, because he is a captain in the army, involved in the Napoleonic War. He has just survived the Retreat to Corunna when this part of the story begins. In ancient Pictland, the Christian hermit Conach contemplates God and nature, performs miracles and prepares himself for sacrifice. Long after his death, legends about him are set down by an unknown hand in the Book of Conach . It's like some beautifully ornate kist or jewel-box that for most of the encounter you admire for its own sake, only to find a key, near the end, that opens onto even more treasure Gavin Francis Hidden in the breath-taking mountains of wild Scotland, Glen Conach is the home of secrets and stories, of fables and folklore. Over hundreds of years, three lives are woven together. In ancient Britain, the hermit Saint Conach performs impossible miracles, which survive as legend in 'The Book of Glen Conach'. Generations later in the nineteenth century, the book is rediscovered by charlatan Charles Gibb, who hustles his way into the big house at the heart of the village.