Greenvoe - Softcover

George Mackay Brown

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1846975050 ISBN 13: 9781846975059

Publisher: Polygon (An Imprint of Birlinn Limited), 2019

Synopsis

Greenvoe, the tight-knit community on the Orcadian island of Hellya, has existed unchanged for generations, but Operation Black Star requires the island for unspecified purposes and threatens the islanders' way of life. A whole host of characters - The Skarf, failed fishermen and Marxist historian; Ivan Westray, boatman and dallier; pious creeler Samuel Whaness; drunken fishermen Bert Kerston; earth-mother Alice Voar, and meths-drinker Timmy Folster - are vividly brought to life in this sparkling mixture of prose and poetry.

In the end Operation Black Star fails, but not before it has ruined the island; but the book ends on a note of hope as the islanders return to celebrate the ritual rebirth of Hellya.

About this title

Review:

'He transforms everything by passing it through the eye of the needle of Orkney' --Seamus Heaney

'Fine delicate prose' - Publishers' Weekly

'A precise, poetic and dazzling writer' - Guardian

'a poetic, distinguished and totally delightful Orcadian story... full of humour and sensitivity and of the unsentimental poetry of raw experience' --Sunday Times

'Brown is as connected to the world as any of us. He has retreated to a point where he can see the world in an internal reflection, a very clear and penetrating simplification that he could never have achieved in the midst of the hurly-burly' --Ted Hughes

About the Author:

George Mackay Brown (1921-96) was one of the twentieth century's most distinguished and original writers. His lifelong inspiration and birthplace, Stromness in Orkney, moulded his view of the world, though he studied in Edinburgh and later at Newbattle Abbey College. In 1941 he was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis and lived an increasingly reclusive life in Stromness, but he produced a regular stream of publications from 1954 onwards. These included A Calendar of Love (1967), A Time to Keep (1969), Greenvoe (1972), Hawkfall (1974), and, notably, the novel Beside the Ocean of Time (1994), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Saltire Book of the Year.

About this edition

• Publisher: Polygon (An Imprint of Birlinn Limited)
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1846975050
• ISBN 13: 9781846975059
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256