Poor Angus

by Robin Jenkins

“A blackly comic romp” of art, ambition, and sexual politics in the Scottish “a remarkable novel…written with the lightest of touches” (The Sunday Times, UK).   Struggling painter Angus McAllister has returned to the idyllic Hebridean island of his birth in the hope that it will inspire him to create his masterpiece. But soon, his privacy is invaded by Janet, a visitor with relatives on the island, who has decided that an affair with an artist would be the simplest way to incense and recapture her husband, a golf-fanatic devoid of imagination. So begins an irresistible story of comic lightness and serious implications; a tale told with Jenkins’s characteristic ironic wit that explores the attitudes of men and women to sex and relationships, and which focuses on the psychology of the artist and the justification, if any, for art.“Poor Angus is a strange, wonderful love story [and] Jenkins a remarkable writer whose gentlest touch induces the greatest of pleasures.”—The Times, UK

Genres: Literary Fiction, Fiction

219 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Author of a number of landmark novels including The Cone Gatherers, The Changeling, Happy for the Child, The Thistle and the Grail and Guests of War, Jenkins is recognised as one of Scotland's greatest writers. The themes of good and evil, of innocence lost, of fraudulence, cruelty and redemption shine through his work. His novels, shot through with ambiguity, are rarely about what they seem. He published his first book, So Gaily Sings the Lark, at the age of thirty-eight, and by the time of his death in 2005, over thirty of his novels were in print.

Reviews

[Jack Deighton · Rating 3 out of 5]

After a sojourn in Basah in the far East, painter Angus McAllister has returned to his Hebridean roots on the island of Flodday, whose only drawback is that the local women refuse to pose for him.
Janet Maxwell has temporarily left her philandering husband and sought refuge with her brother, the owner of Flodday’s hotel. She is pulling pints in the bar when she and McAllister meet. Eager to incite her husband’s jealousy, she conceives the idea of living at McAllister’s house Ardnave, as his housekeeper. Janet is originally from Skye and has second sight. When she enters McAllister’s living room she immediately feels a tragedy will occur there. This, combined with McAllister’s possession of a blowpipe spear, means Chekhov’s dictum about the gun on the wall will most likely come into play. Brought up a Wee Free, Janet has particular ideas on sex as being a sacrament; an attitude her husband finds both ridiculous and irritating.
Janet also foresees the arrival at Ardnave of a woman and her daughter. This will turn out to be Fidelia Gomez, one of McAllister’s former lovers in Basah, a devout Catholic who could not contemplate divorce from her husband, and her child Letitia. However, she is preceded at Ardnave by the Australian Nell Ballantyne, another of McAllister’s lovers. Such goings-on with three married women eventually occupying the same household, none of them the wife of the owner, set many tongues wagging.
These complications to Angus’s life all take place in Part One. Part Two sees the entry of Janet’s and Nell’s husbands, both golf nuts, and the demand by Fidelia’s to have custody of Letitia which precipitates the novel’s rather sudden climax.
This examination of Hebridean life, the locals’ gossip, the minister’s censure, the frustration and delay incurred by everything being shut on a Sunday reads as being somewhat traditional. Nevertheless, the hotel owner’s daughters are amused by the minister’s reference to God knowing everything since, “It didn’t matter if God knew your secrets. He could be trusted not to clype.”
The novel was first published in 2000 but has the feel of having been written earlier. Yet I suppose it was 25 years ago now.
Poor Angus is not quite perhaps as serious a book as some that Jenkins has written but is still accomplished.

[Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a humourous read, and having just travelled to the Western Isles I enjoyed the description of the landscape, although I'm not qutie sure why Andrew Marr thinks the author is 'the best kept secret in modern British literature'. Similar to Kingsley Amis, I felt

[Jayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read

[Eylül Çetinbaş · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poor Angus was one of the best books I have ever read. It was a superb book! (No matter it got me shocked greatly) and made me a Robin Jenkins fan now!

[Andrew Scott]

I'm a great fan of Robin Jenkins' novels, but this wasn't in his top ten, much lighter than his best.