Reading Projects [28]: Scotland

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Started O Caledonia (1991), by Elspeth Barker (b. Edinburgh, 1940)¹ —her only novel. A day later, saw it named among the “duds” a Substacker listed (she was rating the 70 books she read for her MFA). Others in the dud pile: Ottessa Moshfegh, Lorrie Moore, Daphne du Maurier, Clarice Lispector, and Miriam Toews’ novel, All My Puny Sorrows (in my Hall of Fame). I left a note (unreplied to, natch), not arguing about her views (a fool’s errand), instead bringing up the question: What does it mean when you don’t like what so many other serious readers do? If you’re a grab-something-to-read-on-the-plane kind of reader, fine, no problem. But if you’re a practitioner of writing yourself, that’s not enough. You need to ask why. Maybe your reactions are partly extra-literary? Maybe your radical sensibility is white hot, and you’re all fuck this bougie crap! On the other hand, maybe some of your receptors are plugged, and you’re not hearing the full broadcast—you’re skimming across the top of the stuff others consider sublime.²

Anyway, Scotland.

As it happens, I contain a few wee strands of Scots DNA myself [third great-grandmother, Wilmena Waddle, b. 1813, Roxburghshire—in the Borderlands]. I’ve always favored the northern edge of things—granite, sweaters, moody sky. And though my wife has lately termed me a homebody, I did actually spend a month at Hawthornden Castle, a writer’s retreat outside Edinburgh in the early aughts.

So, below, a sampler of Scottish writing and a challenge. I’ve read maybe a third of them [*]—faithful readers of this Substack will recognize James Kelman’s novel, How Late It Was, How Late and a few others.

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If you don’t do Spotify, this may not play (I hope I’m wrong). Lately, I’ve collected music I’d call NeoScotlandTrad—familiar-ish instrumentation and tunes, but infused with bass and drums and new ideas—think Dropkick Murphys with less in-your-face-ness.

Here’s a link to a playlist:

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1.

19th Century Classics:

• *Treasure Island, Robt. Louis Stevenson (1883)

• Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor, R. D. Blackmore (1869)

• *Miss Marjoribanks, Margaret Oliphant (1866)

• *The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, James Hogg [published anonymously] (1824)

• *Waverly, Sir Walter Scott (1814)

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1900s:

• Our Fathers, Andrew O’Hagan (1999)

• Trumpet, Jackie Kay (1998)

• So I Am Glad, A. L.Kennedy (1995)

• Morvern Callar, Alan Warner (1995)

• *How Late It Was, How Late, James Kelman (1994)³

• *Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh (1993)

• Swing Hammer Swing!, Jeff Torrington (1992)⁴

• *O Caledonia, Elspeth Barker (1991)

• The Trick Is To Keep Breathing, Janice Galloway (1990)

• The Living Mountain [nonfiction], Nan Shepherd (1977)⁵

• *The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark (1961)

• The Cone-Gatherers, Robin Jenkins (1955)

• Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon (1932)⁶

• Imagined Corners, Willa Muir (1931)

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2000s:

• John of John, Douglas Stuart (2026)

• *Case Study, Graeme Macrae Burnet (2021)

• How to Be Both, Ali Smith (2014)

• *The Panopticon, Jenni Fagan (2012)

• The Memory of Love, Aminatta Forna (2010)

• An Oidhche Mus do Sheòl Sinn, Angus Peter Campbell (2003)

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Speculative/Sci-fi:

• *In Ascension, Martin MacInnes (2023)

• The Growing Season, Helen Sedgwick (2017)

• *Life After Life, Kate Atkinson (2013)⁷

• Any Human Heart, William Boyd (2002)

• *Under the Skin, Michael Faber (2000)

• Consider Phlebas, Iain M. Banks (1987)

• *Lanark, Alasdair Gray (1981)

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Thrillers/Crime/Mysteries/Horror:

• Raven Black, Ann Cleeves (2016)⁸

• *Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2007)

• *The Cutting Room, Louise Welsh (2002)

• A Place of Execution, Val McDermid (1999)

• Garnethill, Denise Mina (1998)

• Knots And Crosses, Ian Rankin (1987)⁹

• The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks (1984)

• Laidlaw, William McIlvanney (1977)

• The 39 Steps, John Buchan (1915)

• *The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1902)

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2. The Reading Project/Challenge:

This is where I pretend you’re looking for a “reading project” or “challenge” and you pretend you’ll take me up on it [or any of its thirty-odd siblings—list linked on home page menu bar], and thank me heartily for the deep dive.

OK, got that out of the way.

The rules:

Over the net six months, read (at least) six books from today’s post. As follows:

• One from the Classics

• One from the 1900s

• One from the 2000s

• One Speculative

• One Crime/Mystery/Horror

• At least one more.

[Feel free to substitute a different book by the same author.]

Extra Credit: In 1977, Northwest poet, Richard Hugo (one of my long ago mentors at the University of Montana), spent half a year living on the Isle of Skye, and in 1980 published The Right Madness on Skye (nominated for the Pulitzer in poetry).

Read it.

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3. Selected Works by the Same Writers

William Boyd:

• An Ice-Cream War (1982)

James Kelman:

• Translated Accounts (2001)

A. L. Kennedy:

• Day, (2007)

• Paradise (2004)

Sir Walter Scott:

• *Ivanhoe (1819)

• The Heart of Midlothian (1818)¹⁰

• Rob Roy (1817)

• *Guy Mannering (1815)

Ali Smith:

• The Seasonal Quartet: Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer: (2016–2020)

• *Hotel World (2001):

Muriel Spark:

• *The Driver’s Seat (1970)

• *The Girls of Slender Means (1963)¹¹

R. L. Stevenson:

• *Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)

• *Kidnapped (1886)

Douglas Stuart:

• Shuggie Bain (2020)

Irvine Welsh:

• Porno (2002)

• Glue (2001)

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4.

• https://thescottian.wordpress.com/2024/06/20/ranking-the-waverley-novels/

• https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-36940688

• https://thegreatestbooks.org/the-greatest/fiction/books/written-by/scottish/authors/since/1900

• https://www.penguin.co.uk/discover/articles/seven-scottish-classics

• https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/articles/25-memorable-scottish-novels-for-adults-from-the-past-25-years

• https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/scottish-booker-prize-nominees

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_literature_in_the_nineteenth_century

• https://fivebooks.com/best-books/landmark-scottish-literature-james-robertson/#book-67553

• https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/book-lists/14-page-turning-scottish-sci-fi-fantasy-and-horror-books

• https://booksfromscotland.com/

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1. Elspeth Barker: She was married to the poet George Barker, quite a bit older, who had a long-term affair with poet Elizabeth Smart, who wrote about it in the cult classic, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (1945). Do yourselves a favor and read about the three of them.

[Oh, and while you’re at it, check out the Robert Lowell/Elizabeth Hardwick/Caroline Blackwood triad. Whoo.]

2. Sublime: This same week I read a post that called Gatsby “so bo-ring!”

3. Kelman: Also mentioned this in Sixes [5].

4. Torrington: Glasgow, the 60s, factory. From Booklist:

• "The standard of Torrington's writing is so high that for once one is not ashamed to compare an unknown novelist to authors who are justly famous. That wag Joyce is the truest neighbor, though contemporaries Pynchon and Rushdie will do in a pinch: like all three, Torrington has a beautifully barbed wit and a fabulous ear for language, enough to send the sentences tumbling over one another in a symphony of belly laughs and brays or, where things are bleaker and more sarcastic, in a sort of muffled thudding like the dropping of shoes. . . . Writers this good, writing in the English language, can almost be counted on the fingers of one hand."

5. Nan Shepherd: This was written in the 40s, only published thirty years later. It’s considered the last volume of The Grampian Quartet. The others are fiction:

• The Quarry Wood (1928)

• The Weatherhouse (1930)

• A Pass in the Grampians (1933)

  

6. Sunset Song: First novel in trilogy, A Scots Quair.

7. Atkinson: English by birth, but went to uni in Scotland and lives in Edinburgh. She’s written “straight novels” but the ones listed here represent her speculative side—Life After Life and its companion novel, A God in Ruins (2015)—and her crime fiction—Case Histories introduces her Edinburgh detective, Jackson Brodie (to date there are six Brodie novels).

8. Cleeves: As you likely know, two of her police procedural series became classics in British crime TV: Vera (with the incomparable Brenda Blethyn), set in the Northumberland area of England, and Shetland (set in the Shetland Archipelago). FYI: the Orkneys are the ones closest to the northern tip of Scotland, the Shetlands the farther-out ones. The Shetland police in the show are based in the small city of Lerwick. I assiduously practiced saying the name the way detective Jimmy Perez does: Lih-tick. I still love saying it. Lih-tick, Lih-tick.

Raven Black is the first of the Shetland series.

9. Rankin: First of the Inspector John Rebus novels.

10. Heart of Midlothian: a) “Midlothian” is the region of the lowlands around Edinburgh. b) Scotland’s two major cities each have a “Catholic” team and a “Protestant” team [they play in the Scottish Premiership], thus: Glasgow has Celtic and Rangers, Edinburgh has Hibernians (aka Hibs) and the Heart of Midlothian (aka Hearts). Celtic (pronounced Sel-tic, like the Boston Celtics) and the Hibs were founded by Scotland’s many Irish emigrés—if you see Celtic out of context you’d swear they were an Irish team. c) I attended a Hearts/Celtic match in Edinburgh that went into stoppage time 1-1; seconds before the final whistle a Hearts player hooked a long shot into the net; everyone (including me) streamed out of Tynecastle Park ecstatically gobsmacked.

11. The Girls of Slender Means: Stark wrote a bunch of short novels; The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is the one most-often touted, but they’re all good. I like this one, about a rooming house for working women (there’s a bit of sardonic/black humor at the end). When you go looking for which Spark novel people recommend, you find people picking a dozen different titles.

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