Glitter of Mica

by Jessie Kesson

In the parish of Caldwell, in the heart of rural Aberdeenshire, life goes on much as it always has done for those who work on the land. Isolated and inward looking, it is a place where no one challenges the way things have always been, and everyone knows exactly where they stand in the local hierarchy.But up at Darklands farm change is in the air. Helen Riddel, daughter of the head dairyman, has been to university and seen what the outside world has to offer. Now she must choose between family ties and the chance of a new life away from the narrow confines of Caldwell.An unforgettable portrait of a world that has now vanished forever, Glitter of Mica is a moving evocation of a close-knit rural community in the first half of the 20th century.'One of the literary treasures of modern Scotland.' – WILLIAM DONALDSON'Jessie Kesson writes beautifully, her strong, delicate prose full of poetry and humour.' – DAILY TELEGRAPH

Genres: Fiction, Scotland, Literary Fiction, Classics

127 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Jessie Kesson, born Jessie Grant McDonald, was a Scottish novelist, playwright and radio producer.

Her first published story was in The People's Friend in the 1930s. She moved to London in 1949 and, while working in a variety of other jobs, began writing radio plays for the BBC. Much of her work has been autobiographical, capturing the speech and landscape of the north-east of Scotland, and evoking the inter-war years. Her novels include The White Bird Passes (1958), which tells of her destitute early years; Glitter of Mica (1963), set in the farming communities of Aberdeenshire; and Another Time, Another Place (1983), describing the effect on those communities of the arrival of Italian prisoners of war in the 1940s. A collection of short stories, Where the Apple Ripens, was published in 1985, and her work has been adapted for television and the cinema.

(http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages...)

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third novel I have read by Jessie Kesson. It tells the story of an isolated community in rural Scotland over a period of 30 years, mainly through the eyes of the head dairyman on one of the farms, Hugh Riddell. The novel does periodically switch to other points of view: to Hugh’s wife and daughter and other local residents. The community of Caldwell seems unchanging and insular, but modernity is creeping up. The setting is post Second World War, but the narrative is not really linear. There is a particular incident referred to near the beginning of the book and taking place near the end round which the whole thing revolves. There is a social hierarchy which the War has begun to loosen, but it is still there and Kesson is charting the start of its downfall.
At times the book feels as bleak as the landscape. There is the occasional flash of humour: “for she was a tight woman and had she been a ghost she would have grudged giving you a fright”. And the character of Sue Tatt brings a certain humour, but her portrayal is as poignant as it is amusing.
There are times when the dialect is a little difficult and for me I enjoyed Kesson’s other two novels I have read more. But if you like bleak then this may be for you!

[Fiona · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written observation of a small community in Aberdeenshire in the early 1960s. It is written in the third person but the narration flows effortlessly between characters, allowing us a glimpse of their innermost thoughts. It's a story of inner isolation, of desperate unhappiness in the face of the realisation that their lives have no potential other than to be eternally disappointed. Yet it isn't without humour, even if it's sometimes bitter.

I'll definitely read this again as it's so rich in detail and so acutely observed that I know I must have missed lots. Its value must also lie in its portrayal of a way of life that has now gone and will only be remembered by those of a certain age.

I love this description of early spring. Sue Tatt, the local 'woman of ill repute' and her daughter, Fiona, stood by their door watching the evening come down. You would never have thought that a moon on the wane like this would give such light. But with it was ground frost, and in your mind the promise of the lengthening nights. The quietness over it might well be known to the dead, where every sound was in itself an interruption, and lights snapped up like noise upon the landscape.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I am honest with myself I would love to give this book the Five Stars, because it suits me down to a T. I have to recognise, however, that a review is supposed to serve a certain function - to give other readers, who might be interested, an Honest idea of what the book is about, and the experience, the feeling of reading it.

So, let's begin here, with a bit of the Scots vernacular and a "conversation" revealing a good deal about one of the central couples, husband and wife, Hugh and Isa Riddel:

You've just missed Helen," Isa Riddel informed him when he reached the house. "Charlie Anson was in by and took her up to see some Do that's on in his Youth Club the night. Oh and there was a man in the train the night," she gabbled, knowing that anything she said would be wrong, but always hoping to find something that would be right.
"Was there now?" Hugh Riddel spoke without looking at her. "Men are still allowed to travel by train. Or so I understand."
"But this was the Scholars' train," she explained.
"Oh! That's different, then. That would just have been about your mark, wouldn't it?" He looked at his wife now: her hands, without immediate task upon them, fumbled forlornly with the strings of her apron, and he felt his anger increasing. "Had the man gotten one eye then? Or three legs? Or a wooden cock, maybe? What to hell was so special about him?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing be it then. If there was nothing, let's just say nothing."

Hugh himself is having an affair with a woman in the village, Sue Tatt, but as you can see attacks his timid wife, with the accusation that she is looking; and he comments with scathing spite that the teenagers on the "scholar's train" are about her level - the reference is also to their "uppity" education, as Hugh sees it.

My heart goes out to Isa in that brief scene. She doesn't have a large part in the novel, and mirroring 'real-life' she is allocated a shadow-role; a minimal speaking-part. Frustratingly for myself and CanadianReader who shared the experience with me, we very much wanted to know more about Isa Riddel - and her daughter Helen, who although a central character is also more or less off-stage for most of the book. The central role is given to Hugh Riddel, and at first he seems like the usual male, a man eager to get on in the world, to prove himself and make his mark. But although the majority of the narration is through Hugh's perspective, we come to doubt his view on things. Hugh has severe blinkers - there are things he simply will not see.

And that is an interesting metaphor. Because I shared this reading experience through an open and honest discussion with Canadian I was able to expand my own blinkers - which I generally don't view as too narrow. Try the next paragraph for yourself my fellow reviewers and see what you make of it:

It was on the day Hugh Riddel had left school. The kind of day younger boys dreaded, when all the long-breeked scholars who were leaving set about them, sighting them. Whether by accident or design, Anson had been Hugh Riddel's victim; and Riddel's finding had rang out through the Free Kirk Wood. "Anson's got nothing. Charlie Anson's got damn all!" And, although the other young victims had got very little either, their persecutors had simply accepted the fact as but one more proof of their own approaching manhood. But not Hugh Riddel. Never Hugh Riddel. It seemed to Charlie Anson that, ever since, Hugh Riddel had gone on discovering him, had kept on proclaiming that he had got damn all.

That passage certainly explains the long-running enmity between the two main characters, Riddel and Charlie Anson, from school until 30 years later. It also sets Hugh in another example of bullying, which we've come to realise is his foremost guise. I read the passage and thought only that the older boys had humiliated the younger ones in some-way; name-calling, drawing attention to their poverty, gloating on their own release from the confines of school and schooling etc.

How does it seem to you? And I know it is a disembodied paragraph taken from the greater whole.

Here is Canadian's astute understanding of the passage:

Yes, Hugh is a bully. In a way, he’s the long-ago author of his own tragedy. Kesson is vague about what the older boys did to the younger, but it sounds as though it may have been some sort of sexual shaming.Pulling down the younger boys’ pants perhaps? What do they mean “got very little”? Reference to genitals? One more proof of their own approaching manhood?

It had never occurred to me that pants had been pulled down, exposing genitals. And the words Hugh uses to humiliate the younger boy, have a distinct double meaning: "Anson's got nothing." I just interpreted it to mean that as everyone knew Anson came from a very poor family, the son of a crofter.

I really had to think about that. On a second reading, Canadian's observations fit exactly. It is sexual. Sexual humiliation of the younger boys by the older ones. Why didn't I see that straight away? In the same way that Hugh is blind, I also have my blind spots. I was taught to have large blinkers around the whole topic of sex and sexual relations. In my family no-one talked about sex. No-one ever to this day talks about any aspect of sex - ever. No openness, no discussion, no problem solving, no experiences shared etc. In fact I remember a teacher in school, beingly acutely embarrassed as she explained the "sexual act" to us - all girls, in our Biology Class.

My point being that we all have blind-spots - and reading with another person, especially if you feel relaxed and respected in this person's company you will see many things you didn't know were there. I mean in the book and in myself. And this unsurprisingly is exactly what Kesson's book is about. There is no sharing in the Riddel family. Helen, the daughter keeps her thoughts strictly to herself. Even with her mother, she cannot share her new experiences, or even give valid reasons as to why she has dropped her degree course at the prestigious Aberdeen University. And there is no communication between father and daughter. Everyone in the town of Caldwell knows of the relationship between Helen Riddel and Charlie Anson, except Hugh Riddel.

To return to my "Honest Review" - here is a little more of the dialect. This time it is quite broad, a conversation between Hugh, and the crofter Dave Morrison:

"Well. What do you think the weather's going to do, Hugh?" the crofter asked him, searching the sky for the answer to his own question. "It's cold enough for a fall of snow," he said when he had found it, "but tight enough for the thaw to burst."
"You could be right," Hugh Riddel agreed. The acknowledgement easing him. "You've just got down from the hill then, Dave?"
"And not a bite on it," the crofter complained. "I'm thinking of moving the ewes down the morn; they're too near their time for a thaw to panic them, or a storm to bury them."
"Unchancy creatures sheep, Dave." The smile glimmered in Hugh Riddel's eyes. "If they're not riving themselves naked on old whin bushes, they're getting blind drunk on the young broom bushes. And if they don't panic in the thaw, they bury themselves in the snow. And if it isn't that, they go falling on their backs and die with their legs in the air, because the creatures haven't the balance to get themselves up again. "What you should have had, Dave", he suggested, his smile sounding in his suggestion, "is just a two three Highland stirks wintering away fine up on Soutar Hill yonder. Apprehensive enough creatures by nature, I'll grant you that. But sober in habit and, most important of all, Dave" - his smile widened into a grin - "with all yon fine bonnie hair happing their eyes, they see damn all to panic for. It must be a good thing whiles, just to be a Highland stirk."

Both Canadian and I condemned Hugh for his inability to speak or have a kind word for either his wife, daughter or for the men who work under him. He is respectful to Darklands, the Farmer, but this is the only scene when I see Hugh smiling, joking, waxing lyrical and full of fun - with someone he feels comfortable with.

A second thought - I think this might be one of those passages Canadian referred to as a bit tedious. But it's there to show that farming and knowledge of the animals is Hugh's natural forte. And more importantly I enjoyed this passage. I live in a farming community and I also live by keeping an eye on the weather. I literally count the days every time I see a forecast for rain - my trees, my trees! Additionally - my family background: both my parents come from farming stock - Scots and Irish. My Dad even kept Highland cattle, when he retired, so I know what Hugh means when he's talking about the placid stirks with their great fetlocks of hair. I loved this - the dialect, the farm talk, the jokey rivalry between the two men - one for sheep the other for cattle; and there is nothing of the mean bully, in Hugh's talk in this passage. He is also a poor, blinkered individual as we all are - and my background allows me to see that in Hugh.

So there we have it folks. Please read Jessie Kesson, a Scots writer, a little-known and underrated writer, with immense talent. I think Canadian and I are forever on a joint venture to promote the unheard and underrated. Five Stars for me - 3 or 4 for a city-dweller, possibly less for a reader with zero knowledge of the Scots dialect.

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Times They Are A-Changin'…

We meet cattleman Hugh Riddel as he looks out over the bleak landscape of Caldwell, in Aberdeenshire, to the hills beyond. He is remembering his past, both his childhood when his father first brought the family to the farm on which he now works, and the more recent past – last Friday, when he committed an act that shocked the community. We don’t immediately learn what this was. Instead, Kesson shifts through time, past and present, and allows us into the thoughts of various people whose lives have been affected in one way or another by Hugh and his act.

The book is set in roughly the same area of Scotland as Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song and shares many similarities with it. We are again in the midst of a farming community and seeing the ongoing process of change, though at a later period. Whereas Sunset Song deals with the period before and after the First World War, this one begins in 1939, though the ‘present’ of the novel is presumably contemporary to when it was written: the early 1960s. I say presumably because the timeline is extremely confusing and really doesn’t make sense. (Hugh was a schoolchild in 1939, when they came to the area, therefore no older than 14. But in the present – 1963 at the latest, since that was when the book was published – he has a twenty-five-year-old daughter. Make sense of that if you can – it defeated my arithmetical skills. To be clear, he was a respectably married man when his daughter was born, not a 13-year-old child.) This confusion was an irritant that kept distracting me from the story, since it made it very hard to work out where exactly in the past we were at different points.

Otherwise, it’s an excellent picture of the changing times, and how conditions for farmers and their employees changed during and after the Second World War. In 1939, farm workers were still hired for a year, with no job security beyond that, and since they lived in tied cottages, when they lost their job they also lost their home. Hugh’s young life was that of an itinerant, since his father was an unreliable worker. But during the war, the government ruled that farm workers, as with other reserved occupations, should “Stand Still” – i.e., stay in their jobs. This fundamentally changed the farm workers’ lives, giving them a new stability which was further developed by the increased unionisation and improved labour laws after the war. Kesson also showed how this affected perceptions of class, as having stronger rights lessened the need for displays of deference. With Hugh’s daughter, Helen, we also see that by this time it is easier for a child from a working-class background to go on to higher education, so long as they can win a bursary. And this leads the young to leave rural areas for professional jobs in the towns – a problem that is still prevalent in Scotland’s rural communities.

All this is background to the story, but helps to explain and give depth to the characters. Kesson shows a deep divide between men and women, their relationships seeming almost entirely transactional – for men, a wife is a repository for lust, generally resented when once that lust has cooled, and for women, a husband is a provider and a respectable route to motherhood, and sometimes someone to fear. Love doesn’t seem to exist, for our characters, at least. It’s a cold, bleak view of human relations, which, while certainly recognisable, seems somewhat exaggerated. The only warm character is Sue Tatt, a woman of easy virtue, who enjoys men and has had more than her fair share of them, including many of her neighbours’ husbands.

The story too is bleak. Because of the time-shifting, we know that it’s going to end badly and we gradually have a good idea of what must have happened ‘last Friday’, so there’s very little sense of climax when we finally get there. However there is a sense of inevitability – the characters’ pasts and personalities all leading to a foreseeable end. Toxic masculinity is in full play, but this is not a feminist text – the women don’t come out of it much better than the men.

There’s an interesting thread running through it where Kesson, through Hugh, is interrogating the work of Robert Burns and the truth and mythology of his life. As with much of the rest of the book, it is Burns’ relationship with sex that seems to interest Kesson most, and his inability to find a woman who could both satisfy his earthy, rural tastes and hobnob comfortably with the great and the good who lionised him. As Kesson puts it, “To have one foot on the front step of the castle, and the other trailing behind on the dunghill, and never both together, was just about the loneliest thing that could ever befall a man, and the woman wasn't born who could have bridged this gap with Burns. But, mind you, that had never prevented Burns from searching for her, and even glimpsing her fleeting reflection in the faces of all women; personifying her in the love songs he wrote to all the Peggies, Marys, Jeans and Nancys, for they but fuelled some flame already lit.” Hugh also draws attention to Burns both criticising the rich and powerful and kowtowing to them – wanting to be accepted by them, but still wanting to be the ploughman poet. This seems to mirror the post-war desire of the working-classes to make their own way up through the social ranking, while despising those who had already got a few rungs up the ladder. Interesting, and I wished she’d expanded on it.

And I think that sums up my feeling about this short novella-length book as a whole. It left me unsatisfied as I felt there was far more to say on each of the themes, while the story itself was too slight and rather underdeveloped. However, her writing, while not always elegant, has an earthy quality which matches the subject matter well and I found it a thought-provoking and interesting read.

[Nathalie (keepreadingbooks) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"When you were aware of spring at all, it was in some sudden thaw and in your hearing; when hillside burns broke off from mother peaks, and, in an anger of anonymity, roared down to swell the River Ruar, and share its name."

One of the issues with me and this book was that it was written in Scottish English, with Scottish turns of phrase and sayings and so on, which meant that I – probably because I’m a non-native English speaker – had trouble understanding certain passages. Sometimes it was too much work, so I just skimmed it until another sentence that made sense came along. However, this was also part of its charm and I learned a lot about the language. Some words are entirely different from English, for example: kent, yon, outwith, whiles etc. (respectively, known, that/those, outside, sometimes).

From the blurb I had expected something entirely different, namely a small novel that focused on Helen Riddel, daughter of a head dairyman, and her experiences, thoughts, and opinions. In fact, after having read it, I’m not entirely sure the writer of the blurb has read the book. Helen is certainly not the main character, and the story is not about her being ‘able to cut her family ties to embrace a new life away from the narrow confines of Caldwell’. I would argue that it is perhaps the opposite – she has tried to embrace a life away from it but over the years realised that Caldwell is to be treasured for its community, traditions, and habits. Still, she is not the main focus. No one really is, though Hugh Riddel, her father, comes close.

The story jumps from character to character, something happening in one character’s tiny story that naturally leads to the next. In fact, this short read could be regarded as a series of small character-portraits that put together paints an image of the Scottish countryside, the changes it undergoes as modernity slowly seeps into every corner of the country, as well as the unfolding of events that lead to the book’s climax – which is actually already alluded to in the first few pages, though nothing definitive is revealed until the end. I thought it worked quite beautifully.

I enjoyed briefly getting to know each of these somewhat peculiar characters, without lingering long enough to be bored. The narrator fleetingly touches upon the issues at the heart of the characters’ existence, and you get a tiny glimpse of something at their very core, something that could be explored further. But then you are pulled away, sweeping on to the next link in the chain. There is a certain charm in this, and it gives the reader plenty of opportunity to think for themselves. There is no certain conclusion to any of the habits and thoughts we so momentarily get acquainted with, though we get an idea of where it is going and why. It reminded me of the short story genre in this way, and it is well done. At the same time, I wouldn’t have minded it being longer than it is. Mainly because I like really being invested in the world of the novel I’m reading, and you don’t have enough time or material to do so here.

Overall, it was a lovely reading experience, and I enjoyed reading some Scottish literature while visiting Scotland!

/NK

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The life of a small, insular community in a rural parish, Caldwell, in Aberdeenshire is vividly brought to life in this short novel which recounts the fortunes of the Riddel family, in particular Hugh Riddel, the head dairyman at Darklands farm, and his daughter Helen, who has been away to University and seen life beyond the limited horizons of the village but still has to somehow find a place for herself within it. It’s an evocative portrait of a vanished world and it is obvious that the author was well-acquainted with the life she describes, but overall I found it the least successful of the three Jessie Kesson novels I have recently read. (The White Bird Passes and Another Time, Another Place are the other two and I very much enjoyed them) This one seems a bit too remorselessly bleak and the characters far less sympathetic, particularly the two main male protagonists. The narration is episodic, more a series of vignettes than a sustained narrative, and it’s sometimes difficult to pin down the time-frame. Nevertheless, the story is a moving one, and the fate of Helen Riddel inevitably arouses the reader’s sympathy.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was acc really good and I feel bad giving it only 3 stars. I struggled with it having such a small scope and it being so much in dialect (not that that’s bad just that I didn’t understand it). Super interesting passages on place and on slippery language. ‘Glitter of mica’ is the best title of a book I’ve ever heard which is why I picked it up and also was lovely to read something Scottish in Scotland. Deffo something to be said that I can’t quite be arsed to articulate about scale, psychogeography, transgressions etc etc.

[Fee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a surprising wee novel. Set in a farming community in the northeast of Scotland in a period spanning from pre-war to the 1960s, I’d expected something charming but probably, to be honest, a bit twee. What I got instead was a perfectly framed snapshot of the lives of the inhabitants of a small village, one that didn’t shy away from the intimate and often uglier sides of life. The interior monologues of these characters were vivid, raw, and relatable, and much less prudish than I’d anticipated. Jessie Kesson’s turn of phrase is just gorgeous, her writing almost stream of consciousness esque in parts, and the circling path of the narrative is cleverly crafted. I note in a few reviews this book is cited as Jessie’s weakest work, so I’m very much looking forward to reading more by her.

[Dianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed her portrayal of male female relationships and the Scots terror of overweening-pride!

[CanadianReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glitter of Mica was my introduction to the novels of mid-twentieth-century Scottish writer, Jessie Kesson. It’s a novel I admired rather than enjoyed. Set in 1959, mostly in the fictional village of Caldwell (with some scenes occurring in the city of Aberdeen), the story revolves around Hugh Riddel, the head dairyman of a large farm called Darklands.

As the novel opens, the reader learns that Hugh has acted in a dramatic and shocking way. Before revealing what he has done, the author moves backwards in time to provide details about her main-character’s early years as the only child of an itinerant Scottish farm worker—a “cottar”—and his wife.

The Scottish farm-labour system is described in some detail and reminded me of the practices Thomas Hardy describes in The Mayor of Casterbridge and Far From the Madding Crowd. For that matter, Kesson’s chorus of labourers nattering on about other people also put me in mind of the rustic set that populate a number of Hardy’s novels, though Kesson’s characters seem more censorious by a long shot than his—but perhaps my memory serves me poorly. Although it’s been many years since I read The Mayor of Casterbridge, it also struck me that Kesson’s protagonist, Hugh Riddel, is temperamentally cut from the same cloth as Hardy’s mayor, Michael Henchard. Both are angry men, obsessively fixated on another ambitious man. Impassioned, prideful, and ruminative, both are also shown to be the makers of their own tragedies. In Hugh’s case, his brutal bullying of the younger Charlie Anson in childhood and his ongoing contempt for the adult Anson—though seemingly warranted, as the man is indeed a scoundrel—comes back to bite him. Anson achieves revenge by becoming sexually involved with—and impregnating—Hugh’s daughter.

In Hugh Riddel’s father’s time, if farm workers were fortunate enough to be considered reliable and competent, the farmer might ask them to stay on year after year. Others, like the unlucky Riddel Sr. (who was known to pilfer from his employer), were silently let go and had to find new situations at the hiring market on one of two “term days” each year. The loss of a job was serious business for agricultural labourers, for it also meant the loss of a home, as a cottar was assigned lodging on his employer’s property. Part of his fee—pay—included foodstuff.

We are told that in 1939, Hugh’s father was taken on at Darklands, a large mixed farm in a bleak area of Aberdeenshire. There he finally proved his worth and was named head cattleman. With the advent of World War II, conditions improved markedly for farm labourers, who were declared essential workers and not sent off to war. Job security greatly increased and term days became a thing of the past. Hugh has reaped the many benefits of all this change. Now—with his parents gone, two decades after his family’s arrival at Darklands—he is head dairyman, making almost ten times as much money as his father. He has a day off a week, a weekend off a month, and will even receive a pension.

Still, Hugh is a dissatisfied, intensely angry man, one with an ever-recurring pain and no one in whom he can “confide . . . [his] deeper agony.” Evidently commanding and intelligent, he chafes against the hypocrisy and rigidity of Caldwell’s social hierarchy. Nowhere, writes the author, is “‘keeping one’s proper place’ so strictly adhered to as in our shire.” Kesson’s characters do no end of talking and gossiping about her main character and his family (his wife, Isa, and 25-year-old daughter, Helen) whom they regard as having gotten well above themselves, the ultimate sin.

Hugh’s marriage is one source of his disappointment and resentment. He doesn’t merely dislike his wife, Isa, he feels rage towards her for her sexual coldness. Sex is only “bequeathed [by her] from duty” and is as “cold as charity.” “Your hunger for it left you altogether,” he broods, “and appetite itself turned to distaste, so that even if it were offered to you now, you couldn’t stomach it.” He suspects that his might be a common enough plight among his fellows; however, for him it’s “beyond enduring.”

According to the conservative standards of the time, Hugh’s wife, Isa, is ostensibly a proper and respectable partner—“a quiet decent lass” in his mother’s words—but he has learned that “a good wife could bind you prisoner forever, with the swaddling bands of her goodness.” As a boy, he’d been certain he “would grow much greater than the man he had become”; the pleasures of manhood anticipated in youth have not materialized. He ends up seeking the services of the local prostitute, Sue Tatt, who lives alone with her children, the progeny of different fathers. Kesson’s humorous and colourful depiction of this woman is generous indeed, likely springing from the author’s experiences with and love for her own single mother, who took to prostitution. I thought the author’s description of Sue’s charms were somewhat indulgent, and I did not find this character to be fully credible. However, I’ll grant that it’s easier for Sue to sympathize with the rough men of Caldwell than it is for the wives who have to live with them.

While Kesson’s aggrieved protagonist is impressively represented, it’s to the author’s credit that Isa and Helen, Hugh’s despised womenfolk, are equally well portrayed. In a skillfully rendered scene in which Isa journeys home by train to Caldwell from Aberdeen, the author highlights in a few strokes the loneliness and emotional poverty of Isa’s marriage. Sitting across from a commercial traveller, the woman engages in a conversation with him. Kesson observes: “she hadn’t spoken so freely to anyone in years—and the man a complete stranger to her at that. The very realisation brought her to a sudden silence. The wonder was the man was sitting there listening, as if all she said was sensible enough, and even waiting for her to go on.” Later, Isa attempts to tell her husband about the man on the train, “knowing that anything she said would be wrong, but always hoping to find something that would be right.” In the end, she evidently apprehends how it is with her husband and herself: “All his attitude and actions [were] that [sic] of a man who was isolated within himself. An isolation as complete as her own.”

Early in the novel, Hugh reflects that he’d never once heard his father use the word “love”. There’s certainly nothing to suggest that the word has ever crossed Hugh’s lips either. His disdain for Helen rivals his contempt for Isa. He displays not an ounce of affection for the young woman. A promising student, Helen had received a bursary to attend university, but she disappointed Hugh by failing to earn a degree, settling instead for a diploma in social science. Now twenty-five, she is a social worker at a youth centre in Aberdeen, travelling home on weekends and, for a time, spouting sociological jargon that only enrages her father. It’s unclear if Hugh simply finds Helen’s talk pretentious or if there’s a deeper resentment of the young woman for having raised herself above him, underscoring his unacknowledged feelings of inferiority. Whatever the case, Hugh can’t believe he’s produced such an unsatisfactory specimen. He knows nothing of Helen’s disillusionment with her work or her own sense of isolation and disappointment.

When he happens upon his daughter in flagrant delicto with the opportunistic and exploitative upstart, Charlie Anson—a “weasel” for whom Hugh feels the utmost contempt—Hugh’s simmering rage comes to a head. To say his reaction—fuelled by shame, disgust, and rivalry—is dire would be an understatement. Intrapersonally blind, he apparently never grasps that he is the author of his own misfortune.

For me, Kesson’s novel, while insightful and stimulating, was less than a pleasure. I found the Scottish dialect hard going at times, and I made frequent use of the online Dictionaries of the Scots Language website. There’s no question that Kesson excels at revealing character through realistic dialogue and gossipy conversations, but I admit to sometimes finding them tedious. Kesson leavens the grimness of her content, particularly in the middle section, with dollops of humour and irony; however, the conclusion of the novel, after Hugh Riddel’s violent act—the culmination of years of hatred for another man, is indeed bleak. I can’t say I enjoyed being in the protagonist’s head.

I read this novel with my Goodreads friend, Laura, and I thank her for her always stimulating comments and for additional information about the Scottish educational system. Sharing the novel with her was an enriching experience.

Rating: a solid 3.5, rounded down.

[Jack Deighton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Glitter of Mica is another tale of life in rural Scotland, in the parish of Caldwell, somewhere north and east of Aberdeen. This short novel is similar in some respects to Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song in that the shadow of change hangs over the town and it begins with a recitation of the area’s history. The pre-Second World War past of protagonist Hugh Riddel is gone into as the son of an itinerant fee’d farm hand who could never settle and was never retained until he came to Darklands and cemented his place as a Dairyman. The main thrust of the book is, though, set in the post war period.

The narrative structure is not linear, Kesson adopts a variety of viewpoints to tell her tale delineating life and attitudes in Caldwell through the eyes of Hugh, his wife Isa, his daughter Helen, Sue Tatt (the local woman of easy virtue) and the upstart Charlie Anson. Moreover in its first few pages the book’s defining moment is referred to as being in the very recent past with most of the narrative then circling round and leading up to that point.

The sense of social hierarchy being breached is never far away, the awareness that an increase in equality had come with the war but was still thought unseemly highlighted by the reactions to Hugh’s recent “Address to the Ladies” at a Burns Supper. Yet class differences still prevail. ‘If you’re poor you’re plain mad. If you’re rich they’ve got an easier name for you. A Nervous Breakdown.’

As an exemplar of a certain kind of Scottish fiction this would be hard to beat. It is worth reading for itself though.

[Martin Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though, come to think of it, man, being animal, was subject to the habit of his body from the moment of its possession. Even the foal that died within an hour of being born could in its final death throe still lash out and image for an instant some long-legged lifetime.

My second read by Jessie Kesson this year. Glitter of Mica succeeds in offering a compelling slice of life depiction of life in rural Aberdeenshire in the first half of the twentieth century. However, it suffers a little from its meandering plot - it's a short but not a tight novel. Tightened up, this would be excellent.

The narrative is claustrophobic, as the inhabitants of Caldwell are drawn in and constrained by their passions as well as the past. Kesson's prose is often spectacular and the story is presented subtly and realistically throughout. I really admire her writing for that. The ending is tragic and perhaps feels inevitable, though it still feels a little rushed due to the novel's otherwise meandering plot.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve only recently discovered the works of the 20th century Scottish author Jessie Kesson. This is the third of her novels I have read. I didn’t find this one as strong as the other two. Perhaps it’s because those I have read cover similar themes.

This one was published in 1963 and is set in the fictional parish of Caldwell, in the not-fictional county of Aberdeenshire. The lead character is a dairyman called Hugh Riddel, and we are told fairly early on, that there has been an incident in the community recently, involving Hugh. This isn’t really a plot-driven novel, and the structure is non-linear, but it does tell of the events leading up to the incident, and also examines the nature of this inward-looking rural community. Although Hugh Riddel is the protagonist, the perspective occasionally shifts to that of secondary characters.

They are, on the whole, a hard-bitten lot, worn down by poverty and hard work. Hugh’s father was also a farmworker, and prior to WW2 such men had a total of two days a year off work, the “end of term days” (the days when their six-monthly contracts ended). The men go into “town”, (the nearby city of Aberdeen), and Hugh recalls his father returning from those days.

“God! But what a difference a drink and a day off had made to the man. Hard to reconcile the dour everyday father of the fields and byres with the huge genial man who stood swaying and singing in the doorway, flanked by his fellow farm-workers on Term Nights.”

There’s some good descriptive writing, with elements of humour. On the day the farmworkers go to Aberdeen, Kesson describes how the market-stall women, “big bosomed, blonde, and honey-mouthed,” try to tempt the naïve country lads into buying their wares;

“And teasingly, with bits of fripperies, would confront the lumbering red faced men, whose hands had seldom fumbled anything finer than flannelette. ‘This pair should fit your best lass, Jock. Think of the fun you’ll have fitting them on her. Come, buy—for love’s sake!”

Kesson’s novels feature the contrast between the conservative sexual morality of rural communities of the period, and the behaviour of young people within it; young people who have little in the way of either money or free time and who look for enjoyment in about the only way they can. Once a girl is pregnant she must be married, and once a couple are married they must put up with each other for the rest of their lives;

“In all their years in Caldwell, now, had any one of them ever known of a farm-worker, or even a farmer for that of it, going and getting divorced? Nor was it their religion which imposed this attitude upon them, for there wasn’t a Catholic within fifty miles of them.”

Kesson lived amongst these communities and her observations of them are sharp. On this occasion though, I felt that some of the dialogue seemed a bit forced. The non-linear format may not be to everyone’s taste. It means that the book needs to be read carefully, so although it’s a novella, you can’t really speed through it. Still a good read, but I am maybe finding her books a bit samey.

[Graeme · Rating 5 out of 5]

Personal quests for security, status and emotional fulfillment in a changing rural society have tragic consequences for the Riddel family. With this novella, Jessie Kesson succeeds admirably in her own quest for "the sma perfect".

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing is really quite incredible in this book (many parts were mesmerising) but I found it too much of a struggle to read. I blame lockdown for making it hard for my brain to engage with Scottish dialect and depressing narrative.

[julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book itself I really enjoyed. However Jenni Fagan's introduction thoroughly spoiled it by giving away the major event in detail. Would have been much better as an afterword so as not to spoil the story.

[J.U. Flint · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt this story was a bit disjointed. I think it would have worked better as a play.

[Talea · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a hard book to read. It’s got a raw honesty that draws you in though and keeps you there until the end.

[Jeanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scottish, very time specific, Scottish circumstances post-World War II. Slow, odd, though, likable.