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grubstlodger 's review for:
Beside the Ocean of Time
by George Mackay Brown
Beside the Ocean of Time by George Mackay Brown is about Thorfinn, a young boy growing up on an Orkney Island in the 1930s. The reader is reminded every chapter that he is the most ‘idle and useless’ boy on the island who, instead of listening at school or developing practical skills daydreams events of the island’s past. The first half of the book allows the reader to explore these daydreams with him.
In these daydreams he travels with Vikings to Byzantium, fights alongside Robert the Bruce and sees the people of the island defend themselves in a structure called a Broch. Then the book turns away from Thorfinn and to the island itself, telling tales of past islanders hiding from press gangs and a strange take on the selkie myth. In some ways it’s more a collection of short stories loosely held together (and sometimes not) by the character of Thorfinn the daydreamer. I have to admit, I grew frustrated with the loose organisation of the book and found it a little rambling.
Even within chapters, the book meanders. There’s one which talks about the idiosyncrasies of the Laird, then the relationship between the Church and the island, then the idiosyncrasies of the Minister before being about a strange visitor to the pastor - who ends up Thorfinn’s lover at the end of the book. As I understand it, the book is using the daydreams and stories to ‘pickle’ elements of island life which are then wiped away by World War Two at the end of the book.
Thorfinn, returning from a prisoner of war camp finds himself on the now deserted island and uses it as inspiration for fiction, becoming a writer. The books he writes are essentially extended versions of the daydreams we have already seen.
Perhaps were I to encounter this at another time it would have seemed a beautiful and profound meditation on history and a lost way of life, however I found it a decent enough assemblage of ‘stuff’.
For a stranger take on folktales of a fictional Scottish island, I preferred Folk by Zoe Gilbert.
In these daydreams he travels with Vikings to Byzantium, fights alongside Robert the Bruce and sees the people of the island defend themselves in a structure called a Broch. Then the book turns away from Thorfinn and to the island itself, telling tales of past islanders hiding from press gangs and a strange take on the selkie myth. In some ways it’s more a collection of short stories loosely held together (and sometimes not) by the character of Thorfinn the daydreamer. I have to admit, I grew frustrated with the loose organisation of the book and found it a little rambling.
Even within chapters, the book meanders. There’s one which talks about the idiosyncrasies of the Laird, then the relationship between the Church and the island, then the idiosyncrasies of the Minister before being about a strange visitor to the pastor - who ends up Thorfinn’s lover at the end of the book. As I understand it, the book is using the daydreams and stories to ‘pickle’ elements of island life which are then wiped away by World War Two at the end of the book.
Thorfinn, returning from a prisoner of war camp finds himself on the now deserted island and uses it as inspiration for fiction, becoming a writer. The books he writes are essentially extended versions of the daydreams we have already seen.
Perhaps were I to encounter this at another time it would have seemed a beautiful and profound meditation on history and a lost way of life, however I found it a decent enough assemblage of ‘stuff’.
For a stranger take on folktales of a fictional Scottish island, I preferred Folk by Zoe Gilbert.