By Brian Toal
The Sound of Many Waters by Robin A. Crawford
‘A Journey Along the River Tay’ is the subtitle, but it doesn’t do it justice. It’s a journey through time, through culture, through changing populations, changing landscapes, changing outlooks and much more.
Beginning on top of Ben Lui on New Year’s Day, the trickle becomes a burn becomes a stream and eventually flows into a loch before joining with several other tributaries and hurtling through Dunkeld and down into Perth. ‘The river is engineered by clouds, geology, glaciers, Stevensons, salmon; these words channelled by publisher, churned through the editorial mill wheel, filtered by the publishing team until – purchased in a leap of faith (hopefully in a bookshop) – dipped into by you, the reader.’ This was indeed what happened as I browsed my new favourite bookshop in Gavin’s Mill.
There’s a great selection of Scottish non-fiction and this leapt out at me for several reasons: there’s a map at the start (tick), it’s Scottish (tick), it’s about the outdoors (tick), and it’s beautifully illustrated (tick). I bought this book before setting off on a train journey to Auld Reekie to see my eldest daughter (I’d already had my tea), and by the time I’d returned to the west, I was already in Perth, if you know what I mean.
Another wonderful aspect of the book is the author’s vivid descriptions of the river.
As a former student of the art college in Dundee, he certainly has an eye for the sublime and an ability to recreate for the reader the beauty and evanescence of the Tay.
‘The surface of the water has many forms. Its light and colours are not a uniform plane but multifaceted, contoured by wind, by flow, by bridge piers, rocks, stone beach, embankment wall, flood defence, island, weir – but not directly by tide, though a slackening beyond the city [of Perth] can affect it here.’ There are many more sumptuous descriptions, but Suzanne insists on 450 words. Fascinating also were the passages which explored the more esoteric connections between human and river.
‘At Castle Huntly the river is estuarine, merging fresh and salt water; it is a crossing place where offenders start to merge with civic society, mixing back in, sometimes seamlessly; sometimes there are ripples, lines of friction, whirlpools, waves, occasional breakers.’
By the time I’d reached Dundee and the sea, I was thoroughly hooked, like the fish and the whales caught by the Dundee fleet. ‘The river is not a single entity… but a continuous loop, with a beginning but no beginning, an end but no end. The river is a journey with a destination in the sea, but also a journey with no destination.’
Straad by Ken Cairnduff
Ken Cairnduff waited until he was almost 80 years old before releasing his debut novel, which goes to show you’re never too old to change. Indeed, change and opportunities are the central concerns of the novel which follows the lives and loves of Straad, as well as his coterie, as they negotiate the perilous journey into adulthood. Straad is originally from Ayrshire but moves to the west coast of Ireland as an itinerant salesman of various items from love beads to pub mirrors. Never really bothering the tax man, he moves from place to place, from hand to mouth, in and out of bars and scrapes, often relying on the kindness and generosity of others. Lots of drink is consumed. Then he meets Claradh and everything changes.
Their love affair dominates the novel, but she isn’t like other women: Claradh’s mother died when she was young and passed on the gift of knowing things and seeing things, which makes an already complicated situation even more so. In the words of the novelist himself: ‘I had the desire to put thoughts and feelings together and form these ideas into a novel which could be shared. To walk through this journey within all of us. “Straad” aims to give a different slant on the age-old question of what is important in life. Love? Money? Commitment?’ Of course, they’re not all mutually exclusive, but throughout the novel we’re confronted with the basic karmic tenet that our actions have consequences.
North Sun by Ethan Rutherford
The alternative title for the book is ‘The Voyage of the Whaleship Esther,’ and the novel follows the ship from New Bedford in Massachusetts to the whaling grounds in the Chukchi Sea. The voyage takes them the length of America, round Cape Horn and up through the Pacific and into the Bering Strait. However, this is not just a trip to slaughter whales and to gather their lucrative oil, boosting the profits of the wealthy Ashley family. No, there is a secret mission known only to Captain Arnold Lovejoy and the mysterious passenger, Thule.
The son-in-law of the Ashleys – Leander – has gone missing and was last seen wandering alone on the frozen Chukchi Sea, his ship crushed by the ice. Lovejoy has been tasked with getting the ship to the last known location of Leander in order for Thule to bring him back. But does he want to come back? Does he even want to be found? Has he turned his back on the Ashley’s and ‘gone native’? I thought I’d guessed the answer to these questions quite early on in the book, only to be thoroughly sideswiped.
Ethan Rutherford has been commended for his collections of short stories but this is his first novel. And what a magnificent debut it is. The descriptions are brutal, the treatment of the young boys on the ship is brutal, and the consequences of this treatment are brutal. ‘Moby Dick’ looks like a fairytale next to this novel.
