Hellfire And Herring: A childhood remembered [Hardcover]

"'A requiem which will first rend, and then refresh, even the most hurt of human hearts' The Times 'A rare insight into a man's passionate, all-consuming love for his wife, and a heart-breaking meditation on grief' Guardian 'A truly mesmerizing and beautiful book' Scotland on Sunday 'The most remarkable book I've ever read... about the thing which you hope isn't going to happen' John Bayley"

'a glowing and beautiful memoir... an astonishingly vivid world,
richly recalled...poetry leaks from Rush's pen at every turn'

'A generous, mythic, deeply pagan book... a vital work of regional
literature, a work with salt water in its veins'

'The tone is baroque, self-consciously, poetically literary,
deeply allusive, emotionally raw, sensual and brutally, bravely honest'

'a writerly writer, with a vivid turn of phrase'

'The scent of God...the air was impregnated with him and his mint-sweet and moth-ball evangelists. Just as it was with herring, as you might expect in a fossilised fishing-village on Scotland's repressed east coast where fishing was an act of faith and not yet a computer-science industry designed to suck the last drops of life out of the sea.' A vivid and moving account of the author's upbringing in the 1940s and 1950s in the little fishing village of St Monans. Rush returns decades later to rediscover his childhood, and offers a frank account of how it was for him. This evocation of a way of life now vanished demonstrates the power of the word to bring the past timelessly to life. Rush writes of family, village characters, church and school; of folklore and fishing, the eternal power of the sea and the cycles of the seasons. With a poet's eye he navigates the worlds of the imagination and the unknown, the archetypal problems of fathers and sons and mother love, and the inescapability of childhood influences far on into adult life. You can download a PDF extract from the book below. Download Extract (168kb PDF file)

Christopher Rush was born in St Monans and for thirty years taught literature in Edinburgh. His books include A Twelvemonth and a Day (recently listed as one of the 100 greatest Scottish books ever) and the highly acclaimed To Travel Hopefully. He now lives near his childhood home.