The Tin Kin - Softcover

Eleanor Thom

3.26

77 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0715639013 ISBN 13: 9780715639016

Publisher: Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd, 2010

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

When her aunt Shirley dies, Dawn finds herself back in her claustrophobic home town in Northern Scotland for the first time in years. She spends her days caring for her small daughter, listening to tapes of old country songs and cleaning Shirley's flat, until one day she comes across the key to a cupboard that she was forbidden to open as a child. Inside she finds an album of photographs, curling with age, shows a traveller community in the 1950s. A young couple pose on a beach, arms wrapped around each other; little girls in hand-me-down kilts reveal toothless smiles; and, an old woman rests her hands on her hips, her head thrown back in blurry laughter. But why has her aunt treasured these pictures secretly for so long? Dawn's need for answers leads her to a group of Travellers on the outskirts of Elgin. There she learns of a young man left to die on the floor of a cell, and realises that the story of her family is about to be rewritten...

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

'A powerful first novel... it conjours landscape by strength of voice, and its take on history is as bracing and cleansing as the local weather' -- Ali Smith. 'Elegantly observed, painstaking, tender and truthful. Luring the reader deeper with its gentle, unflinching sense of voice, this is a book that s beautifully realised, hugely rewarding' -- Janice Galloway. 'An elegant novel about love and loss, written in spare, lucid prose' --Alan Bissett

'Grit and candour... an expressive Scots voice that never slips into mere pastiche' -- Independent. 'Mixing pathos with lyrical joy in the small things, [Thom] employs an acutely sensitive reading of time and place... a living, loving reinterpretation of history shared with us' --Scottish Review of Books.

'Thoughtful, intelligent and well-structured book... offers a powerful insight into the way that tragic events from the past can reverberate into the future' -- Clare Morrall. 'Powerful and moving' --Sunday Herald. 'Her style is at once natural and impeccably honed so that the overall effect is of that kind of realism which tugs at the heart' --Candida Clark

About the Author:

Eleanor Thom won the New Writing Ventures Award in 2006 with a chapter of 'The Tin-Kin', her debut novel. Eleanor is a graduate of the Masters in Creative Writing at Glasgow University, and an Honorary Writer in Residence for the French Department. She was awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship and has been nominated for a Scottish Variety Award for Best New Scottish Writer 2010.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.