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The Saga of "Ring of Bright Water": The Enigma of Gavin Maxwell
 
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The Saga of "Ring of Bright Water": The Enigma of Gavin Maxwell (Paperback)

by Douglas Botting (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 624 pages
  • Publisher: Neil Wilson Publishing; 2nd Revised edition edition (9 Aug 2004)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1897784856
  • ISBN-13: 978-1897784853
  • Product Dimensions: 19.5 x 13.1 x 3.7 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 71,684 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #46 in  Books > Poetry, Drama & Criticism > History & Criticism > Novels & Novelists > 20th Century
    #76 in  Books > Biography > Historical > 1901 Onwards
    #86 in  Books > History > Britain & Ireland > Scotland

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Product Description

Product Description
A masterful portrait of one of Scotland's greatest natural history writers.

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3 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Paradise Lost, 5 Jan 2001
By A Customer
I knew this book was something special when I found my husband, for whom I had bought it, trying to watch football and read at the same time. A book about an otter-obsessed author didn't sound like a thrill a minute. But try "The Saga of Ring of Bright Water: The Enigma of Gavin Maxwell" by Douglas Botting, and try putting it down. This is a deeply moving book that will stays with you for a long time.

He was a strange man: a thwarted romantic whose lonely childhood bred a sense of adventure leading him to pursue endless avenues in search of fulfilment. Like all romantics, he had problems with real life: always short of money and spending it when he could in the pursuit of hair-brained business adventures and face saving luxuries. He was a homosexual who was drawn to women, hoping desperately that marriage would bring him security and happiness, but his ultimate inability to sustain a fully adult relationship destroyed it and corroded many of his friendships.

Douglas Botting was living at Sandaig, the Highland home which Maxwell unforgettably renamed Camusfearna (Gaelic for the bay of the alders) when "Ring of Bright Water" was written. His ability to capture in a few words the dreamlike essence of the place shows Maxwell's influence. In this biography, you long to have met Gavin Maxwell but constantly wish that he had grown up. He was an often intensely trying man who could also show great generosity of spirit: much loved by the youths who helped him sustain Camusfearna, but despotic enough to eventually drive them away.

Botting recreates the Camusfearna legend unsentimentally, but his affection for both the man and the place succeeds in making you long to be in the pitch-pine panelled kitchen-living room, beside the fireplace with the Latin inscription "It is no will-o'-the wisp that I have followed here". The idyll wasn't to last. Maxwell couldn't have made up a more affecting story and in the end it's unbearably sad.

I had no interest in otters or Gavin Maxwell before I read "The Saga of Ring of Bright Water". My husband has taken me to Camusfearna and returned to the football. I keep a pebble from the beach in my purse to remind me of a magical story.

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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars unforgettable and moving, 10 Jan 2001
By A Customer
I read this book about 7 years ago and know that it will be on my book shelf for as long as I have a bookshelf, it's one of those reads you feel that you've lived through some how. It's just very affecting, captivating sad and frustrating as are all stories about complicated, creative, flawed people such as Gavin Maxwell. It is also beautifully and vividly written.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Powerfully readable biography of a flawed genius, 13 Aug 2008
By Withnail67 (UK) - See all my reviews
  
Gavin Maxwell was probably born out of his time, and is perhaps closest to Victorian polymaths like Richard Burton or renaissance men like Sir Walter Ralegh. Like me, you probably have a childhood reading of 'Ring of Bright Water' filed away somewhere, and have a sketchy image of Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna in the 1968 film.

This book evocation of a Scottish idyll and a singular account of a unique relationship with a wild animal are the starting points for Botting's biography which takes the reader by surprise on so many points. Maxwell is such a bizarre, troubled and compelling figure, his management of his affairs so disastrous, the cast of his friends and acquaintances so diverse, the book is driven forward chapter after chapter. Botting is careful with his own relationship with Maxwell, and sensitively charts the relationship Maxwell had with the poet Kathleen Raine. The result is a book that revolves with planet-like poise and grace around its central figure, his work, his landscapes and those who loved him without causing undue disturbance to them.

An excellent example of the biographer's art.
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