Scottish Bookshelf
Angus Macdonald £8.99 BIRLINN
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The latest episode in Angus’s Ardnish series is a prequel. It flips between the homeliness of life in a remote Highland community and that of the baking hot African sun during the Boer War.
Two contrasting tales are told here: in one, residents struggle to eke out a meagre existence on small farms and crofts ever dominated by the vagaries of the climate and their livestock, and the other where people are battling for their lives in a very different way through horrors of war in a foreign country.
The hero Donald John Gillies lies on his deathbed where his thoughts flit between the here – 1944 – and the time of the Boer War in the early 1900s. He is in a contemplative mood and ruminates over various episodes of his life, and a nagging confession he is struggling to address before it’s too late.
The book unveils the severity and hardship endured by the Gaels. Many joined the extraordinary Lovat Scouts, leaving simple lives to travel to South Africa, often taking their workhorses or ponies with them.
With little training, they were ill-prepared for the misery ahead. Perhaps most affecting, are the chapters on the dire conditions of British concentration camps in South Africa. The few that emerged from them were deeply traumatised.
As well as being a love story, Ardnish is an essential piece of social history, particularly relating to the brave Lovat Scouts.
It is poignant due to its cast of real characters and interludes based on family letters that Angus has skilfully used to build his compelling narrative.
The author has a natural gift for storytelling, and his love of rural Highland life burns with passion from each page.
His earthy descriptions and dialogue transport the reader who can smell the peat fires, feel the ceaseless rain, the hardship, the shimmering African heat, and above all the heartache.
Angus has pulled off a hat-trick with another thoughtprovoking and mesmerising read.
“The author has a natural gift for storytelling”