Butcher's Broom (Modern Scottish Classics)
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Review
You might know the story of the Highland Clearances, but Gunn makes you feel them too, feel the pain. --Glasgow Evening Times
Modern Scottish fiction reaches its highest peak in the novels of Neil M. Gunn... he transcends regionalism and acquires universality. --The Scotsman
Gunn has given us a wonderful body of work... the greatest in Scottish literature since Sir Walter Scott. --Neil MacDiarmid
Modern Scottish fiction reaches its highest peak in the novels of Neil M. Gunn... he transcends regionalism and acquires universality. --The Scotsman
Gunn has given us a wonderful body of work... the greatest in Scottish literature since Sir Walter Scott. --Neil MacDiarmid
'The Scotsman'
Modern Scottish fiction reaches its highest peak in the novels of Neil M. Gunn... he transcends regionalism and acquires universality.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Anyone who wants to understand the main corpus of Gunn's novels should start here, for the inhumane evictions that we know as the Clearances remained at the back of his mind as he wrote of the generations who followed, particularly in "The Silver Darlings".
He shows how the Highlanders were betrayed by the greed of the Scottish aristocracy, the callousness of Parliament, and by a system of law which was created and enforced by the rich for their own benefit; betrayed too by the Church, which preached a message of punishment for sin and a humble acqiescence.
The general mood of the novel is increasingly sombre and tragic, yet, amid all their suffering, Gunn's crofters come alive in their painstaking toil, their practical caring for one another, and their celebration of life itself. His descriptions of the landscape and the patient suffering of the womenfolk are reminiscent of Hardy at his most powerful, and his heartfelt sympathy for this suffering generation is expressed in prose which rises at times to the level of poetry.
"Butcher's Broom" deserves to be given a place among the most significant works of modern British literature, and should be read by anyone who seeks to appreciate something of the price which was paid for the defeat of Napoleon and the strength of the British Empire.
He shows how the Highlanders were betrayed by the greed of the Scottish aristocracy, the callousness of Parliament, and by a system of law which was created and enforced by the rich for their own benefit; betrayed too by the Church, which preached a message of punishment for sin and a humble acqiescence.
The general mood of the novel is increasingly sombre and tragic, yet, amid all their suffering, Gunn's crofters come alive in their painstaking toil, their practical caring for one another, and their celebration of life itself. His descriptions of the landscape and the patient suffering of the womenfolk are reminiscent of Hardy at his most powerful, and his heartfelt sympathy for this suffering generation is expressed in prose which rises at times to the level of poetry.
"Butcher's Broom" deserves to be given a place among the most significant works of modern British literature, and should be read by anyone who seeks to appreciate something of the price which was paid for the defeat of Napoleon and the strength of the British Empire.
0 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Butchers Broom is a long-winded and rather turgidly written novel about the tragic clearances in the Highlands. Well-meaning, it attempts to fictionalise the 19th-century lives of Highlanders, of which the author, Neil Gunn, is well informed, but his out-of-date language, his laboured style, his efforts to make descriptions poetic, all fail to convince or enrapture.
In fact I gave up on this novel, and although it was probably well-received and well considered when it was published, I think this kind of book has had its day and I would rather read a straightforward history of the clearances than a characterless novel.
In fact I gave up on this novel, and although it was probably well-received and well considered when it was published, I think this kind of book has had its day and I would rather read a straightforward history of the clearances than a characterless novel.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
Sweeping the Highlands of Scotland
7 Jan 2008
Format:Hardcover
Neil M. Gunn's narrative prose describes the lives of the people in the Strath of Kildonan during the Highland Clearances in 1813. The characters, Dark Mairi of the Shore, her grandson Davie, the lovely Elie and their neighbors live and love as their ancestors have for hundreds of years. Their keen sense of humor, attachment to the land and struggles to thrive are mixed with Gunn's thought provoking descritions of the land and people. "...sea-water readily curls over and breaks on the shore of the mind" gives us a glimpse of Mairi, who had been born by the sea, but now lives in the Strath (valley). Davie's clowning and joking with Colin, Elie's lover, creates "...a moment of divine ease when live bubbles up clear at the source." Their daily life is interrupted by progress as the man who owns the whole of Sutherland, an Englishman who married a Scottish Countess, plans to "improve" his property by raising sheep for wool and meat. There is no room for thousands of sheep and hundreds of people, so the people must go.
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