..in the old books' remarked a customer buying one of the local authors, Maurice Walsh. The customer is my age - maybe a bit older, although that impression could come from her style of dress and hair-do which are both very old fashioned, like her taste in books.
I don't agree with her (I tried reading Walsh once and he bored me to tears) but I do understand her. Why do I like some fictional books better than others? Because I like the world they create for me to live in. The style of the old stories (I haven't heard the word 'composition' used this way since I was at school myself) carries with it the ethos of the age it was written in. Walsh also sets many of his tales in ths part of the world and if they aren't set here the places he travels to are made to sound so similar as to be quite safe. It's reassuring. His stories are slight, the atmosphere - well in truth I can't remember it as anything but dull. On the other hand I am happy enough occasionally to read the books of Alexander McCall Smith. So the setting doesn't entirely explain why I fail to bond with Walsh, Buchan or Gunn. The writers that make the Scots feel cosy.
This interests me. Is it the style or is it the place? I've never read Lillian Beckwith - I just assumed she was a Scottish 'Miss Read' and dismissed her. Last week a lady bought one saying how much she likes them but that she supposed I wouldn't understand them because they are Scottish. The irony of this is that Beckwith was English and is thought by some Scots to be - well let me use the words of a Scottish Amazon seller: ' a ghastly, condescending Englishwoman.'
It's all in the eye of the beholder then.
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