Ocak

by Robert Crichton, Fikret Arıt (Translator)

Kasabanın Sırrı ile tanıdığımız Robert Crichton, bu kez, bir ailenin yaşamını konu aldığı, The Camerons / Ocak’la çıkıyor karşımıza. Bir kömür kasabası, madende çalışan insanlar, kölelik anlayışının egemen olduğu bir düzen, insanca yaşama özlemi...Bütün bunların ustaca yansıtıldığı bir büyük roman Ocak.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Scotland, Historical

499 pages, Paperback

First published November 9, 1972

About the author

Robert Crichton was an American novelist known for both nonfiction and fiction. The son of writer and editor Kyle Crichton, he served in the infantry during World War II, was wounded at the Battle of the Bulge, and managed an ice cream factory in Paris before attending Harvard University on the GI Bill. His first book, The Great Impostor (1959), the true story of Fred Demara, was a bestseller and adapted into a 1961 film. He followed it with The Rascal and the Road, a memoir of his adventures with Demara. Crichton’s first novel, The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1966), about an Italian town resisting the Nazis, became an international bestseller and was adapted into a Golden Globe-winning film. His second novel, The Camerons (1972), drew on his Scottish great-grandparents’ lives and was also a bestseller. He published essays and magazine articles, including the notable essay "Our Air War." Crichton was married to documentary producer Judy Crichton and had four children.

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, Robert Crichton, why did you only write two novels? And why are they both so achingly perfect and so tragically out of print?

[Maria Lago · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aquí, gente con la que me sería imposible identificarme: gente con güevos.
Es como si los de Downton Abbey hubiesen nacido pobres, igual de fascinante.

[Dorcas]

So I'm pretty disappointed. The writing here is very good and the plot is excellent. Scotland, coal mines, illegal salmon fishing and kelp soup. What's not to love, right? But after reading about 200 something pages,I found I just wasn't enjoying the story anymore because of the strong profanity. "Pit talk". I was warned, (Thanks Diane!) but I was hoping it wouldn't be quite so excessive.

Be prepared for all the usual cuss words, religious and otherwise as well as F bombs aplenty.

If profanity doesn't bother you, the story itself is fascinating, and any sex is fade to black.

And by the way, if you're purchasing this book used, go for the hardback over the soft cover. The binding of the paperback cracks and falls apart. (I bought mine twice and it was the same with both of them, others here on GR have had the same issue).

[Deb Stokes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was a teenager when I read it. It sticks in my mind. Life isn't always fair and even during hardship there is still love of family to help you through. I want to read it again as a "grown up."

[Bettie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bettie's Books

[Çağakan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bir direniş, bir işçi romanı. Sosyalizm ve hukukun keşfi. Yaşar Kemal tadı var ama ötesinde daha başka... Üzerine söylenecek çok çok şeyi olan bir kitaptı benim için. Karakterlerin doğallığı ve hikayenin kuşatıcılığı ne büyüklükte evrensel bir roman okuduğunuzu gösteriyor size. Belki neredeyse yirmi yıl oldu Karamazov Kardeşler'i okuyalı ama sanırım modern bir klasik olarak bende belki de Dostoyevski'nin yanına koyabileceğim gönlümü fetheden bir kitap oldu "Cameronlar" ve o kadar çok satırın altını çizdim ki hem bir aforizmalar hem de tespit yığınağı oluşturdu dimağımda R. Crichton. Türk okurların bu yazarı ve eserlerini bilmemesi, kitabın sadece 70'li yıllarda çevrilip kalması gerçekten çok ilginç.
Bu kitabı bana Kızılbük, Datça'da sahilde tanıştığım o 60'lı yıllar devrimci hipi karizmasında 60'lı yaşların başında olan Ömer abi tavsiye etmişti bir gün batımı sohbetinde ki ona da buradan selamlarımı sunuyorum.
İyi bir roman, insanı ilahi bir gök içkisi gibi çarpıp yüceltiyor.
Belki bir ara altını çizdiğim satırları da buraya yazarım.

[Nicole Good · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have no idea why I like this book or to whom I would recommend it in particular. I just know that I love it and will likely read it again.

After passing it on to a friend, with no explanation, she reported back, "I have no idea why I couldn't put it down, but I couldn't... and I have no idea how to explain it to someone else."

[Stuart Bramhall · Rating 5 out of 5]

A carefully plotted, brilliantly crafted work of historical fiction set in the desperate poverty of a Scottish coal mining village. Like Denise Giardina's Storming Heaven, which also portrays the struggle of bitterly poor miners against the mine owner, Crichton has no difficulty making the romance of collective struggle come alive. Unlike the miners in Storming Heaven, Crichton's miners have no union support and must organize themselves to improve their starvation wages and incredibly dangerous working conditions. Crichton centers his plot around the strike organizer's strong willed indomitable wife Maggie, who has social ambitions and opposes the strike. The result is a fascinating clash of wills, in which Gillon ultimately prevails and Maggie finances the strike from housekeeping money she has scrimped and saved over more than 20 years. Crichton's second and last novel. I prefer it to the Secret of Santa Vittoria (Crichton's first novel which became a movie), as I feel the characters are stronger and better developed.

By Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall, author of THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY ACT: MEMOIR OF AN AMERICAN REFUGEE

[Miracle Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

So fucking beautiful and humanist and full of achy lucid wisdom you want to die. I loved this book almost as much as "The Secret of Santa Vittoria," which was one of the few books we had in my house growing up for some strange reason and which I therefore read over and over again. I think the readers of this century have a solemn obligation to resurrect Crichton's two novels and celebrate them. What could be more topical in 2019 than a labor struggle in a tiny coal mining town or an antifascist insurgency by a Machiavellian clown? But the plots of these novels don't matter as much as the quality of the writing and the magic of the storytelling. Are they sentimental garbage? Hell yeah they are. But trash like THIS--of this quality! of this accuracy! of this discipline! of this humanity! of this clarity!--is goddamn priceless, beyond literature, beyond normal criticism. I would gladly donate to a charity whose entire function was to buy Robert Crichton books and give them away to sad weirdos on the edge.

[Diane Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

First lines:

She was awake. Sound asleep one moment, her eyes wide open the next, staring up into the blackness of the ceiling. She didn't like the night, but she had forced her mind to wake her in the deepest part of it. In control, that was the main thing. It pleased her.

Maggie Drum wants an early start to the day as it's her 16th birthday and she is leaving home to find a husband. This is a very well written book with a lot of ups and downs. Lots here about the early days of coal mining in Scotland. That is coal mining in all of its dirty ugliness. I recommend this to people interested in historical fiction of Scotland.

[Rosina Lippi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Historical fiction set in a mining village in Scotland. Maggie, born into a family that has been digging coal for generations, wants more. The first step, she believes, is to find the right husband, and that means going elsewhere. On her sixteenth birthday she sets off for a resort town where she finds and beguiles an empoverished highlander who lives on kelpie soup and seaweed, but he's tall and blond and strong, and he can work. His name is Gillon Cameron.

She exacts a promise from him, that he'll come back home with her and take up coal mining until they've saved enough money to move on. Twenty years later, their five boys are now working in the mines along side Gillon.

Gillon is the most intriguing character here. He makes a life for himself, reads books about coal, comes to understand the geology, stumbles across a tiny and unvisited library and begins to read more widely. He gains the respect of the town and the miners, and he acts quickly and courageously to save the life of a young man caught underneath a slab of coal.

Little by little he comes to a place where he understands he has to challenge to mine owners, which puts him in direct opposition to Maggie, who is so focused on saving money that she can't bear the thought of any disruption. This is the heart of the story, and the resolution is not the one you might expect.

This is a first class historical novel, closely observed, excellent detail, but most of all, a story that works in all its parts.

[Cynthia Heinrichs · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book again after almost 20 years and loved it as much the second time. Crichton's examination of human nature and the interplay between those with power and those without is masterful. They only thing that disappointed me was that, in his changing focus from Maggie to Gillon to the family, I lost sight of Maggie too much. She was too far in the background, in my opinion. She was too strong a presence at the beginning to be pushed so far outside the main play. What I liked best was how immediate I found various scenes to be: Gillon going for the salmon, him preparing for and going to the lord's house, Maggie stealing off in the night on an errand that had me terrified for what she might do. The story is gripping and the backdrop of a Fife coalmine and the desperation of the people there too me to a world I never thought I might want to visit. Again.

[Allen Thomas]

Powerful novel brought to life through the complex lives of several characters, especially mother Cameron who we see mature from a sixteen year old who boldly leaves her bleak coal mining town and travel to the Scottish highlands to find her husband. Maggie Drum Cameron and her husband are almost opposites in personality but they share an iron resolve that supports their drive to rise above the dismal town devoted to 'hawking' coal and, and in doing so, they play a role in establishing the first miner's union in Scotand. The reader is carried beyond the superficial facts of the story by sharing the senses of the characters: their hopes and fears and loves and frustrations - all the fragile and proud feelings of the family.

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I've often said, the good thing about re-reading a book after many years is that one often remembers nothing about the book other than that they enjoyed it and thus are drawn to read it again. That's the case with THE CAMERONS and myself. And exactly 40 years later I'm enjoying it all over again.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

i read the um...reader's digest version...and loved it so much that when i saw it in the boy scout op shop i grabbed it to read in the "not-quite-so-well-edited" version. looking forward to it.

[Shan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as child, and it awakened in me an awareness of other places and ways of being.

[Chris Gleck]

This book was written in 1978 and was a bestseller at the time. I am not sure how I acquired this book, but clearly the title was the appeal. The story was based on the author's grandparents' experiences. An interesting insight into how hard the miners' lives were in Scotland in the late 19th century. The book ends with his grandparents' family emigrating to the US, but does not cover anything that happens once they arrived here. Another old-style, yellowed paperback that was recycled except for the cover. I framed the cover since it included the Cameron tartan.

[Shaun Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it. A bit like "100 Years of Solitude" but in Scotland.

[Mike Manson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply put, probably the best book I have ever read. I'm pretty sure about my own rating, I read it three times and am considering a fourth and as you might guess, my paperback copy is getting a bit tattered. For those of us who despise unions or associations or any other worker group who band together, this book might change your mind, or at least you'll be somewhat educated as to the reasons for unions. I have read somewhere (maybe on a web search) that Crichton was planning to write a sequel with the Camerons who were on their way to North America when this novel ended. Unfortunately, Crichton died at 68 years of age in 1993 at the age of 68. Considering The Camerons was published in 1972, I wonder why he never finished that up. I guess we'll never know.

[Adeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find that very few people who aren't Scottish can write Scotland well and avoid the 'cutesy' trap (my pet peeve). Robert Crichton is one of them, and this book is a wonderful read.

Crichton does a great job at conveying mining life in Fife (including the language), creating excellent characters and bringing up thoughtful discussions around socialism, miners' strikes and the Highland Clearances. No wonder it was a bestseller when it came out.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Lowland Scottish coal miner's daughter comes of age and goes north to get herself a Highlander. She does. Thirty years later I still vividly remember the story and the characters. That's gotta count for something.

[RoseMarie · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading The Secret of Santa Vittoria I wanted more by RC. Page turning historical fiction.

[Razvan Banciu · Rating 3 out of 5]

First of all, it's more than interesting that an American writer (Robert Crichton was born in New Mexico and grew up in New York), has chosen such a subject for this novel: the story of a Scottish girl, in a poor mining town in Scotland. One of the explanations is that Robert's father was a miner to, the other is that his great-grandparents were from a Scottish coal mining family.
So he knows a thing or two about life in such places, as he tells us the story of Maggie Drum, a sixteen y. o. girl who wants to work hard in order to escape from poverty. Nice written, but sad enough in order to be not my cup of tea...

[Shalina Rankin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book immensely. Though I have to admit it stressed me out, because I grabbed it from the thrift store based on the cover and a very quick glance at the first few paragraphs of the synopsis. As a Rankin I know quite a bit about my Scottish ancestry and the Highlands and have even lived in Scotland for a short period of time. Since, I am currently living through the collapse of an Empire, on the edge of Revolution and have a Revolutionary spirit that drives me crazy I just wanted an entertaining mindless read about people living in Scotland to take my mind off of all of that. I definitely should have know better :)

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that my husband has read and these are his thoughts on the book.
What a powerful story. As I know Scotland very well it was easy to follow where he was and heading to.
Yes there is no love wrote about, but you get the feeling during his days love was a difficult emotion to have.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone to enjoys this style of writing. Powerful and makes you think how lucky we are today.

[Theresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably 3.5 stars.
It took me a while to get into the book. Still unclear when the book took place late 1800’s, I think.
What a bleak world, no one holds hands, or kisses or hugs. They are living on the edge of starvation.
Maggie is a very determined, single-minded person. She wanted out of poverty but really only knew one way to do it, sacrifice everything and everyone. Her children seemed like a means to an end.
Gallon mostly seemed bewildered.

[Umair Sial · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't exactly love the start of the book. I felt it started slow even though the story progressed well. The characters were portrayed in a way that you either rooted for them or hated them. The dream of Maggie to be better was imparted into the children and though one of them doesn't live to see it, they're highest aspirations were surpassed in the end.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this when I was in high school and really liked it. I'm not sure I would rate it as highly now. I can't remember if it was a good period fiction novel, or bordering on pulp fiction, and not sure whether I'd have known the difference at that age. I like to think it was the former.

[Colleen Borodula · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved the book. I couldn't put it down

[Anne Lind · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scottish coal mining family becomes involved in unionization. Strong characters in Maggie and Gillon Cameron.