After the Dance: Selected Stories of Iain Crichton Smith

by Iain Crichton Smith, Alan Warner

As a child Iain Crichton Smith was raised speaking Gaelic on the island of Lewis. At school in Stornoway he spoke English. Like many islanders before and since, his culture was two languages, two histories entailing exile, a central theme of his stories in both tongues. His divided perspective delineated the tyranny of history and religion, of the cramped life of small communities; and gave him a compassionate eye for the struggle of women and men in a world defined by denials. Iain Crichton Stories proves that big themes - love, history, power, submission, death - can be addressed without the foil of irony and acquire resonance when given a local habitation and a voice that risks pure, humane, impassioned speech.

Genres: Short Stories, Scotland

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2013

About the author

Iain Crichton Smith (Gaelic: Iain Mac a' Ghobhainn ) was a Scottish man of letters, writing in both English and Gaelic, and a prolific author in both languages. He is known for poetry, short stories and novels.

He was born in Glasgow, but moved to the isle of Lewis at the age of two, where he and his two brothers were brought up by their widowed mother in the small crofting town of Bayble, which also produced Derick S. Thomson. Educated at the University of Aberdeen, Crichton Smith took a degree in English, and after serving in the National Service Army Education Corps, went on to become a teacher.

He taught in Clydebank, Dumbarton and Oban from 1952, retiring to become a full-time writer in 1977, although he already had many novels and poems published. He was awarded an OBE in 1980.

Reviews

[Fiona]

Six of the stories in it are on the Scottish exam syllabus, so I knew I'd have to get a copy to read at some point - I put it off, and put it off, until the day I was meant to be teaching in the afternoon. Went into town in the morning, into every bookshop I could find, and none of them had it. Not the big chains, not the academic bookshops, not the independents or second hand ones. I must have gone into seven or eight bookshops. All sold out. Because it's early March and the exams are coming up! Good luck teaching that lesson: what damned luck. The poor kid will just have to have another hour of Carol Ann Duffy and like it.

Had lunch at the National Museum. Went into their bookshop because a) I was looking for a good primer on pre-Union Scottish history (anyone know of one? I've still not found one) and b) it's a bookshop inside a museum; it's practically illegal for me not to.

And there were four - count them, four - copies of this book.

So here we are.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful collection! And beyond a poem or two, my first Iain. So I wasn't too sure what to expect but I was absolutely loving this within ten minutes. 4.5. Candidly, incredible - all I think fulfil the criterion I tend to apply to a short story: is it a palpable dream?

Sebald came to mind. Part of the literary-practical talent at work here is the way ICS weaves parallelisms into the stories, the awareness of multiple levels of figurative-literal schemes that resembles more a cinematic logic than a literary.

It seems to me that the selection here is ordered in such a way that the first half hits harder than the second. The Play, The Telegram, The Mess of Pottage, The Painter being particular favourites of mine which all land early - my primary criticism here would seem to be directed at the editor then. I enjoyed some of the laters, such as An American Sky, The Maze, The Wedding, but others felt a little redundant in a collection which has this absolute brilliance. I want to see The Telegram performed onstage. I want to live The Play. I want to see an entire series with noir film adaptations birthed from Pottage. But stories like The Bridge and The Hermit felt content to pass by.

I leave eager for more. There is genius at work here, despite my gripe at the editor. And somehow Iain feels an approachable soul which may be a quality rarer than brilliance. WSG has it. Gertrude Stein perhaps, maybe Gogol... it's a rare quality in a writer. I look for more.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

What Joyce did for Irish inner life in The Dubliners Crichton Smith does for rural Scottish quotidian in After the Dance, especially the period of the Clearances which over a period of 50 years from 1790 or so chased share croppers from Scotland's lush highland hills to its inhospitable rocky coast replacing the farmers with more lucrative and amenable sheep. Great though sad introduction to the Highlands.

[Karen Koppy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the author. And the Scottish Isles. He writes in a compassionate way to illustrate the complexities of living in these almost primitive villages. I particularly liked The Telegram, The Play, The Button, The Painter, Mother and son, TheWedding, and The Maze. And of course the Murdo stories. So humorous.

[Tony Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of short stories