IF J.M.Coetzee was my childhood literary hero then George Mackay Brown is my adult one. I can’t even recall precisely how or when I first came across his work, but it was years before my first visit to Orkney. I remember scouring second hand bookshops around London and its environs for copies of his short stories and novels which, during the 1980s, were mostly out of print. His stories of gentle, hard-working farming folk, content with simple living, in tune with nature’s rhythms, acted like a calming balm on my frazzled, unhappy soul. Their integrity and timelessness sang out to me from the pages in a way that was at once immediate and remote and quietly thrilling. They made my feelings of alienation towards London and my life and work there somehow bearable. Other tales, with supernatural elements based on Orkney folklore and customs, were perhaps a tad more ‘spirited’, but they were no less consoling for all that.
Since coming to Orkney and
familiarising myself with his stomping grounds and his beautiful
poetry I have become passionately interested, not only in Brown’s
creative output, but also his life and the place he occupies in
Scotland’s literary canon. I have come to realise that we share a
great deal in our outlook on the world.
