Dunbeath publisher proud to host works by Dunbeath author Neil M Gunn
Dunbeath-based publisher Whittles has just released reprints by the much-lauded Caithness author Neil M Gunn – The Other Landscape and The Lost Chart.
The books have been out of print for a number of years and Whittles says it is delighted to see the work of the prolific local writer back on the shelves once again.
Unlike most of Gunn's novels, The Lost Chart is set in a city – the city of Glasgow and its sea approaches. The choice of background for the story is not the only departure from Gunn's usual approach to his novels – the book is also a thriller.
The story unfolds in a social ambience of fear and speculation within which certain sinister political forces are at work. Nuclear war is a possibility, if not a certainty. Shipping executive Dermot Cameron gets involved in a street brawl, loses the chart of the approaches to a remote Hebridean island and finds himself in a tussle between the British Secret Service and a locally-based communist fifth-column. The plot turns almost exclusively on the date of a looming crisis, and the imminence of that date pervades the thoughts and feelings of those in conflict with a locally-based sinister and elusive enemy.
This timeless work has a remarkable relevance to the events of today. When it was written in 1949 there was an uneasiness in the West regarding changes to the 'old order' of society and the decline in certain moral standards and spiritual beliefs. Today the problems facing humanity have not changed. The threatening political situations in the Far East, Middle East and Eastern Europe and the concomitant danger of nuclear warfare are all too evident. Against such a background, the way of life on the remote Hebridean island depicted by the author has an almost irresistible appeal.
ISBN 978-184995-584-3 198 × 127mm 256pp paperback £9.99 from Whittles Publishing.
Gunn wrote over a period of 30 years, starting in 1926 and ending in 1956 with his so-called spiritual autobiography The Atom of Delight. Two years before this he penned his last novel, The Other Landscape, the setting being the east coast of Scotland's most northerly mainland county. This provides the perfect backdrop for a fishing hotel and its English residents, the local ghillies who served them, and a solitary white house near the cliffs in which the occupant, a man from the south, lives alone.
Life in the hotel is lightened on a more mundane level by two incidents, both directly relating to a retired military officer-cum-diplomat called the Major. A false alarm over a drowning incident and a fire in his bedroom, both of which end happily, but with a damaging loss of face for the Major and much amusement for the guests and staff at the hotel.
Juxtaposed with the sporting life at the hotel, and in a subtle way connected to it, is the fate of the solitary and bereaved occupant of the white house. The shadow of death, both present and past, hangs over the house and blends with the palette of second sight and the strong phenomenon of 'recurrence' when patterns of events inexplicably repeat themselves.
ISBN 978-184995-585-0 198 × 127mm 288pp paperback £9.99 available from Whittles.
Both books are available from Whittles Publishing, Dunbeath, Caithness, Scotland, UK. KW6 6EG. T: +44(0)1593-731 333; E: info@whittlespublishing.com
They can be ordered online at: www.whittlespublishing.com
These novels will be of special interest to all those who enjoy classic Scottish fiction, good writing, and collectors of the work of Neil Gunn.
About the author: Neil Gunn was a prolific novelist, critic and dramatist who emerged as one of the leading lights of the Scottish Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. With over 20 novels to his credit, including The Silver Darlings, Highland River, Second Sight, The Shadow and Half-Light and other short stories, Gunn was arguably the most influential Scottish fiction writer of the first half of the 20th century.
