Electricity

by Angus Peter Campbell

‘In pencil-written and drawing-spattered notebooks intended for her Australian granddaughter, an elderly woman, now in Edinburgh, remembers and relives her Hebridean childhood. The community thus recreated is one where modernity – its emblem the Electricity of Angus Peter Campbell’s title – collides and overlaps with all sorts of linguistic, cultural and other continuities. But this is no sentimental or elegiac excursion into a long-gone past. What’s evoked here is a powerful sense of what it was, and is, to grow up amid family, neighbours and surroundings of a sort providing, for the most part, both security and happiness.’  JAMES HUNTER

Genres: Scotland

422 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 30, 2023

About the author

Angus Peter Campbell (b. 1952) is an award-winning Scottish poet, novelist, journalist, broadcaster and actor. He writes in Gaelic as Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul.

Reviews

[Gabrielle Wilcox · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an intentionally slow book, capturing the transition to electricity on a small island in Scotland. It was written as a reminiscence of a grandmother to her granddaughter about her childhood and the people in it.

The writing was so poignantly beautiful that I sometimes had to find a pen underline sections to share later because they were too gorgeous to keep to myself.

[Gabby Sharp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful book that transports you back to the quiet Hebridean childhood it describes. It isn’t a fast paced novel, and asks for patience and the ability to enjoy its descriptions of places and people; capturing the spirit of a different time. By the end of the book it’s characters were familiar and I was sad to finish it. It’s main character and narrator, Annie, or Gran, is full of the joy of life and her story captures both the thrill that a child takes in the smallest things, and the calm reflection of a woman recognising the inevitability of age and change. Would highly recommend.

[Thekirkiepirate · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first time I have encountered this author, and I thought this novel was okay, but nothing more than that.

It consists of a too-long letter from a grandmother to her grand-daughter about growing up in the southern Outer Hebrides around 70 years ago, that being the age of the narrator. The narrative infers that we are being told the story by a person at the end of life, which I do not feel is reflective of someone of that age.

The theme of electricity conveys the raft of changes that were happening in such a community at that time. I think that the author decided to write a slow paced novel to reflect the pace of life on the islands at that time. Unfortunately, this results in quite long sections of the book that I found, quite frankly, boring. Having said that, when the pace of the novel picks up - for example, when discussing the main character's brother's attempts to join the RAF - then it becomes much more engaging.

Although I saw the book through to its conclusion, it was not one that I looked forward to picking up.

[Carol Garland · Rating 5 out of 5]

A warm and gentle read. Taking the reader on a meandering, reflective journey and revisiting times gone by. Bringing together a sense of community, entwined with adventures, friendships, and love. Beautiful in its simplicity, and so clever as it flows like a river, on life's journey pulling at the heartstrings, and smiling at the goodness of life. Highly recommend. Touches the soul.
There are super hand drawings by the authors daughter and poetry.

[Dr. des. Siobhán · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really nice book about a Scotland long gone which experiences electricity for the first time. You meet a lot of people and while the story is framed by letters of a grandmother to her granddaughter telling her about the past, this is not really as important. Incorporation of Gaelic was quite well done, I enjoyed it. Just would've liked the story to be more focussed on something interesting, electricity is there of course, but for the grandmother's story to be a bit more interesting.

[Alberto Villaplana Vecina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recuerdos desde la infancia de la vida en comunidad en una pequeña localidad de las islas Hébridas. Se arranca en la época en la que se va a introducir la electricidad con un canto melancólico a la comunidad como núcleo vital y un recuerdo a quienes apostaron por lo original frente a la avalancha de la sociedad de consumo.