Between the acts.

My reading is always a bit behind the times (unless it’s the new Phil Rickman). This week my Red Cross trawl got me Damon Galgut ‘Small Circle of Beings’ a collection of short stories and one novelette published in 2005, and Kenneth Steven ‘A Highland Trilogy.’ Both took me out of my comfort zone (jolly, cosy, English crime like Agatha C, Agatha Raisin and Midsummer Murders) and both made me rather grumpy , for different reasons, but maybe also for the same reasons because by some bizarre coincidence the first story in Galgut’s collection and the first of the Highland Trilogy were stories of boys existing through the intensity of family life.

Calgut’s tale is narrated by the mother and is ostensibly her story, but the feelings of the boy are clearly audible . He’s quite undeniably an excellent writer. His style is sparse, distilled, like the very best cask strength single malt whisky (watch it - you’re on your way to Pseuds Corner here Carol!) Quite against my natural inclinations I was held from the first page. I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy the story because the very thought of my own childhood in family gives me asthma; I had to go on reading anyway . By the end I was wrung out, but satisfied.

The grump with Kenneth Steven was different. Firstly I was irritated by its publishing history. It was undertaken by the Scottish Cultural Press, presumably because his stories ‘preserve a lost way of life.’ This made me uncomfortable even before I started to read. If the limit of the remit of the Scottish Arts Council is, as it seems to be, to choose books reflecting the old ways of life in Scotland, their field is far too narrow and many good writers are going to be overlooked by them. We already have acclaimed authors preserving the old ways of life: George Mackay Brown, Jessie Kesson, Neil Gunn, George Macdonald, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Hugh Macdiarmid, to rush off a few obvious ones.

I wasn’t surprised therefore to experience the prose as naive and bumpy after the elegance of Damon Galgut, who could also be seen to be recording the old ways of life in South Africa, but his novel is so much more universal than that.

Perhaps I’m unfair. Stevens writes well enough, and for Scottish readers who are more comfortable with a novel solidly set in a Scottish landscape or cityscape then he’s probably a welcome addition to the fold. My views on the content of his novels are driven by my own dislike of maudlin longings for disappearing ways of life. Much of his experience resonates with my own upbringing, though that happened 700 miles away in the south of England. The predominance of religion is the worst thing I remember about my own childhood, The stagnating self-righteousness, and mindlessness of a church with a terror-inflicting message darkened my days too. I was luckier than Dan, the hero of the first novel, for though I had to go to Sunday School and to an evening service I was spared the dreadful Sabbaths spent indoors in a stuffy parlour, unused any other day of the week with only a Bible or Pilgrim’s Progress for company. I was at least allowed to read my own books and play outside in between these Chapel visits.

My childhood wasn’t quite so dreadful but still enough like this to make me gasp for air. The repressive, marrow-minded rectitude of these isolated people, evolved over generations, must have been well nigh unbearable, yet there was no possibility but bear it if you were born into the close-knit little communities. For example, Dan’s paternal grandparents disapproved of his mother because she painted - an unheard of frivolity in a wife. The days of a crofter’s wife were strictly delineated and any deviation to this routine would be seen as almost blasphemous. Is the passing of this circumscription of the spirit to be mourned? The men were rough and unable to show affection. It would be their habit to show pent-up emotion through their fists when they could hold it in no longer. Dan’s father was so unable to communicate that he had no close friends and could make no connection with his small son. Is this emotional stuntedness to be mourned?

The hatred of farmers for the creatures of the wild, their only ambition being to kill them and never mind how painfully, is this to be mourned?

I can’t believe Stevens truly regrets the passing of this way of life. He gives himself away time and time again with words that belie the superficial sentimentality.

The tale, once Dan leaves home, could be the tale of any young man born during the Great War , growing up in the Depression then being called up to fight in the 2nd World War, after which he has to deal - and his kinsfolk have to deal - with his nightmares and rages. Stevens catalogues more than the Scottish way of life; he details life at it was at a time of huge change . Agonising as the process proved to be for those living through it, it brought about a sort of cleansing which has lead to greater perspective, clearer sight, a freeing and recognising of emotions and, most important of all, a breaking down of inbred, religion-based superstition.