The Stornoway Way
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Product Description
About the Author
Kevin MacNeil was born and raised on the Isle of Lewis. He was British Council Writer in Residence at Uppsala University, Sweden, 2002-3 and inaugural Iain Crichton Smith Writing Fellow in the Scottish Highlands. His poetry has been translated into 10 languages and he has performed his English and Gaelic work in places as diverse as Columbia, Malta, America, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Sweden and the Czech Republic. He has also written for radio, television and film. This is his first novel.
A lyrically powerful and no-holds-barred exploration of contemporary life in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The novel is rendered by means of a multiplicity of arresting narrativve voices, shared between the author and his pseudonymous compatriot 'R. Stornoway'.
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First Sentence
Once, when I was younger than I should have been, I made myself useful by taking Joe Idea, Karen Neònach, Jimmy 'the Tongue from Tong' and Eilidh - seadh,* Pink Panther Eilidh - for a spin down the Bràigh. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Once, when I was younger than I should have been, I made myself useful by taking Joe Idea, Karen Neònach, Jimmy 'the Tongue from Tong' and Eilidh - seadh,* Pink Panther Eilidh - for a spin down the Bràigh. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If anyone thought that Scottish Gaelic culture is all romantic and other worldly - then reading this would give them a hint of an insight into the realities of island life. It is a funny, sad account - but all too real. His Gaelic subnotes are funny - but you are never quite sure who he is taking the -you know what - out of: no one, you, himself, island life, life. His description of Bongilees is a sad jewel of truth. Theab mi mo mhun a chall! But they all get a going at - even the "Gaelic mafia" and the Leodhasach danger of the Curam.
Reading it, it is all too easy to fall into thinking this is a persons genuine account and not a fictious character - or is it? I am sure there are loads on Lewis who are trying to work out who is who and who has said what to whom- as is the norm.
Romanticised, droopy tourist will get a better indication what goes on in real life there by reading this - but also those who think Lewis is just the religously narrow of view will see that there is more behind the scene. Those who have moved there and have no understanding of the culture, interest in it or hostility to it etc etc - get a going and many a truth told
Oh - and loved the description of the Mod - too true!
Reading it, it is all too easy to fall into thinking this is a persons genuine account and not a fictious character - or is it? I am sure there are loads on Lewis who are trying to work out who is who and who has said what to whom- as is the norm.
Romanticised, droopy tourist will get a better indication what goes on in real life there by reading this - but also those who think Lewis is just the religously narrow of view will see that there is more behind the scene. Those who have moved there and have no understanding of the culture, interest in it or hostility to it etc etc - get a going and many a truth told
Oh - and loved the description of the Mod - too true!
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Kevin MacNeil is a genius writer. No showing off here - just genuine lightning bolts of startling imagination. His writing is simultaneously evocative and funny, melancholy and cheery, heart-warming and utterly devastating. The nearest parallel is probably Alan Warner but - like most parallels - it's misleading. MacNeil is his own man. Looking forward to his next book unless he decides to change career and become a deep-sea diver.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a near word-perfect and marvellously cadenced tale of contemporary Hebridean life. A fresh, witty and sometimes quite dark novel, every sentence in it sings with verbal ingenuity. (One person is described pithily as 'a fine doorful of a woman', Calvinism is akin to looking at the world through 'morose-tinted spectacles', a concerned letter 'magic-carpets through the letterbox', an aborted child's 'mouth is the unkissed stamp on the condolence card no one knows to send' - and that's just through flicking through the book at random. This book is loaded with pitch-perfect phrasing and even some neat invented words like 'gloominous'). Very few contemporary novels achieve the verbal energy expressed and sustained in this amazing novel.
Narrow-minded people might not enjoy this book, but open-minded readers of literary fiction will love it. It is a funny, heart-breaking, lyrical novel that has moved me to tears each of the three times I have read it. Right now it is a cult classic - in time it will, I think, be regarded as a masterpiece of 21st century Scottish literature. If you like edgy, well-crafted, supremely moving literary novels then this is for you.
Narrow-minded people might not enjoy this book, but open-minded readers of literary fiction will love it. It is a funny, heart-breaking, lyrical novel that has moved me to tears each of the three times I have read it. Right now it is a cult classic - in time it will, I think, be regarded as a masterpiece of 21st century Scottish literature. If you like edgy, well-crafted, supremely moving literary novels then this is for you.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Huge let down
I found this book a huge disappointment. Having grown up 'the Stornoway way' I thought this book gave an unbelievably biased view of growing up in Lewis. Read more
Published 21 months ago by D. Morrison
Enjoyable
This book was extremely amusing, especially if you know people from Lewis. Although it would still be funny if you didn't.
Published on 22 May 2009 by Laura Mackechnie
A report on the ceremonial burning of this book....
I wasn't going to buy this book. Stornoway pub culture didn't appeal to me. From reading the reviews I was disappointed that the author of the sublime 'Love and Zen in the Outer... Read more
Published on 28 Jan 2008 by Alastair McIntosh
Wanted to love it, doesn't live up to the hype.
Read it twice, and although there are some fantastic poetical descriptions, and little gems of dialogue that made me laugh out loud, it was pretty predictable and didn't seem to... Read more
Published on 20 Jan 2008 by Niseach
Virtuoso writing
This book has and is a mixture of everything. It is haunting, beautiful, gritty and hilarious. A true Scottish cult classic by a master of the written word. Read more
Published on 22 Sep 2007 by Eilidh Lee
Just tries too hard
I really wanted to like this book, given its subject matter and slant on life, but in the end I just couldn't. Read more
Published on 3 Sep 2007 by N. Davidson
Witty, poetic, dark, realistic...genius.
A bestseller in Scotland and a cult classic in discerning places elsewhere. Read this book if you love intelligence, humour (some of it quite dark), poetic but realistic writing... Read more
Published on 29 April 2007 by nevermind
The Stornoway Way
Mawkish, self-pitying rubbish littered with clunky metaphors and dreadful adolescent dream sequences. Read more
Published on 23 Feb 2007 by A. Ronan Breslin
Way to good
Actually, not really. I thought this was an average book that I never got into due to the lack of narative. Read more
Published on 23 Jan 2007 by Bob
martin monkey nuts rules!
this book is a bit of a hebridean rant but it's funny and sad and poetic and a joy to read. the whole martin monkey nuts chapter had me falling off my seat laughing, but then it... Read more
Published on 16 Aug 2006 by fran the man
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