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Canongate Classics
The Cone Gatherers
In the shadow of a war that rages through Europe, brothers Calum and Neil work to gather pine cones in the grounds of a Scottish estate. When Calum releases two mutilated rabbits from a snare, he comes face to face with Duror, the gamekeeper. In retaliation, in the depths of the wood, Duror lays a trap for the cone-gatherers.
Neil prophesises that forces of evil will encroach upon the harmony of their lives. It is a prophesy that comes true when Duror commits an act so brutal it destroys all sense of humanity in the once thriving wood. Powerful and unforgettable, Robin Jenkins' masterpiece is a haunting story of love and violence, and an investigation of class-conflict, war and envy.
Neil prophesises that forces of evil will encroach upon the harmony of their lives. It is a prophesy that comes true when Duror commits an act so brutal it destroys all sense of humanity in the once thriving wood. Powerful and unforgettable, Robin Jenkins' masterpiece is a haunting story of love and violence, and an investigation of class-conflict, war and envy.
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First published January 1, 1980
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About the author
Robin Jenkins
54 books34 followersAuthor 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 187 reviews
January 12, 2013
It’s easy to see why The Cone Gatherers is used as a set text for Higher English classes (in Scotland at least - I don’t know if this is the case elsewhere) - it’s a short but dense novel, heavy with symbolism, at times almost threatening to collapse under the weight of its symbolic and thematic density. It’s by no means a difficult read, just very intense….and pretty bleak, it must be said.
I’m not sure why, but reading this book felt a lot like reading a play. I don’t know if this was because so much of the action is driven by dialogue, or because many of the descriptive passages are written with such economy and concision that they could almost serve as stage directions. The narrative point of view shifts constantly, and we never really inhabit any of the characters, which heightens the sensation that we are spectators watching events unfold. The narrow confines of the setting (the wood, the estate, and the day trip to Lendrick that provides a brief respite from the oppressive atmosphere of those places) are easily imaginable as stage sets.
If the book reads like a play, then a lot of the action takes place off-stage. Two pivotal moments in the book happen out of the reader’s sight, Duror’s encounter with Lady Runcie-Campbell when she visits his wife, and the final confrontation between Duror and the two brothers. These scenes become all the more powerful because we are left to build them ourselves in our imagination. The character of Duror’s wife is case in point - she only actually appears once to the reader, yet she seems to haunt the book throughout, a dark, uneasy presence.
These distancing effects make for a powerful narrative, but also for what is my only criticism of the book, that I never really engaged emotionally with the characters. Otherwise, I’d definitely recommend this book as a haunting, powerful work, the type of book that lingers long in the memory.
I’m not sure why, but reading this book felt a lot like reading a play. I don’t know if this was because so much of the action is driven by dialogue, or because many of the descriptive passages are written with such economy and concision that they could almost serve as stage directions. The narrative point of view shifts constantly, and we never really inhabit any of the characters, which heightens the sensation that we are spectators watching events unfold. The narrow confines of the setting (the wood, the estate, and the day trip to Lendrick that provides a brief respite from the oppressive atmosphere of those places) are easily imaginable as stage sets.
If the book reads like a play, then a lot of the action takes place off-stage. Two pivotal moments in the book happen out of the reader’s sight, Duror’s encounter with Lady Runcie-Campbell when she visits his wife, and the final confrontation between Duror and the two brothers. These scenes become all the more powerful because we are left to build them ourselves in our imagination. The character of Duror’s wife is case in point - she only actually appears once to the reader, yet she seems to haunt the book throughout, a dark, uneasy presence.
These distancing effects make for a powerful narrative, but also for what is my only criticism of the book, that I never really engaged emotionally with the characters. Otherwise, I’d definitely recommend this book as a haunting, powerful work, the type of book that lingers long in the memory.
January 24, 2025
Brothers Neil and Calum are 'The Cone-gatherers' and they have been drafted onto a large Scottish estate belonging to the wealthy Runcie-Campbell family during WWII. Their job is to collect cones to aid replanting before the parent trees are chopped down to support the war effort. Most of the fit and able men are off fighting the war, leaving the estate in the hands of Lady Runcie-Campbell and her gamekeeper, John Duror.
Callum is a hunchback. His deformed body is an impediment on the ground but in the trees he’s agile and fearless. He is a sensitive soul with a compassion for all living creatures. His older brother Neil is his guardian, devoting his life to protecting Calum from insults and abuse. Removed from the destruction and bloodshed of the war, the brothers' oblivious harmony together becomes increasingly overshadowed by Duror's obsessive hatred.
The story follows Duror’s increasing antipathy towards these two outsiders with an inevitable outcome. Initially the origin of his hatred seems to be an incident when Calum released a rabbit caught in one of his snares. But as the story progresses we see a man whose anger has a deeper psychological origin.
The gamekeeper has long had an aversion to anything imperfect or deformed. His wife who has been confined to bed, with an unspecified illness, for most of their marriage. The sight of this needy woman is a daily reminder of how wretched his life has become.
He’s managed to keep his pent up detestation in check for years, but something he sees in the mild Calum triggers a release. Duror is horrified and appalled by Calum’s stunted body that so resembles a monkey “shuffling along, his hands close to the ground, his head without a neck … his shoulders humped so grotesquely’.” Duror evolves from being a bully into an irrational figure determined to destroy the cone gatherer.
"To pull the trigger, requiring far less force than to break a rabbit’s neck, and then to hear simultaneously the clean report of the gun and the last obscene squeal of the killed dwarf would have been for him, he thought, release too, from the noose of disgust and despair drawn, these past few days, so much tighter."
Not surprisingly in a novel which pits good against evil, 'The Cone Gatherers' is littered with Christian allusions. It’s clear that the forest is meant to be a Garden of Eden, a paradise treated with respect by Calum and Neil but corrupted by Duror’s foul hatred. But he's not the only one. Drip-fed poison by Duror Lady Runcie-Campbell comes to view Callum as an evil twisted creature not worthy of being regarded as a human. She callously wants to banish him her land so he can’t taint her son and heir.
The outside war is subtly introduced in various parts of the story and the reader is left in little doubt that the unfolding tragedy within the woods is being played out against the backdrop of an even more grotesque violence and loss of life.
Duror "had read that the Germans were putting idiots and cripples to death in gas chambers. Outwardly, as everybody expected, he condemned such barbarity; inwardly, thinking of idiocy and crippledness not as abstractions but as embodied in the crouchbacked cone-gatherer, he had profoundly approved."
There is a sense of inevitability about the ending which comes as no real surprise but with Jenkin's concise and neat prose Jenkins manages to maintain the suspense leaving you hoping to be proved wrong. Overall this is a fascinating and dark novel about attitudes to outsiders, class divisions and human nature. It is an immensely powerful examination of good and evil, and mankind's propensity for both, and whilst I'm not sure that enjoy is exactly the right word to describe my feelings towards it; it is certainly one that I would recommend.
Callum is a hunchback. His deformed body is an impediment on the ground but in the trees he’s agile and fearless. He is a sensitive soul with a compassion for all living creatures. His older brother Neil is his guardian, devoting his life to protecting Calum from insults and abuse. Removed from the destruction and bloodshed of the war, the brothers' oblivious harmony together becomes increasingly overshadowed by Duror's obsessive hatred.
The story follows Duror’s increasing antipathy towards these two outsiders with an inevitable outcome. Initially the origin of his hatred seems to be an incident when Calum released a rabbit caught in one of his snares. But as the story progresses we see a man whose anger has a deeper psychological origin.
The gamekeeper has long had an aversion to anything imperfect or deformed. His wife who has been confined to bed, with an unspecified illness, for most of their marriage. The sight of this needy woman is a daily reminder of how wretched his life has become.
He’s managed to keep his pent up detestation in check for years, but something he sees in the mild Calum triggers a release. Duror is horrified and appalled by Calum’s stunted body that so resembles a monkey “shuffling along, his hands close to the ground, his head without a neck … his shoulders humped so grotesquely’.” Duror evolves from being a bully into an irrational figure determined to destroy the cone gatherer.
"To pull the trigger, requiring far less force than to break a rabbit’s neck, and then to hear simultaneously the clean report of the gun and the last obscene squeal of the killed dwarf would have been for him, he thought, release too, from the noose of disgust and despair drawn, these past few days, so much tighter."
Not surprisingly in a novel which pits good against evil, 'The Cone Gatherers' is littered with Christian allusions. It’s clear that the forest is meant to be a Garden of Eden, a paradise treated with respect by Calum and Neil but corrupted by Duror’s foul hatred. But he's not the only one. Drip-fed poison by Duror Lady Runcie-Campbell comes to view Callum as an evil twisted creature not worthy of being regarded as a human. She callously wants to banish him her land so he can’t taint her son and heir.
The outside war is subtly introduced in various parts of the story and the reader is left in little doubt that the unfolding tragedy within the woods is being played out against the backdrop of an even more grotesque violence and loss of life.
Duror "had read that the Germans were putting idiots and cripples to death in gas chambers. Outwardly, as everybody expected, he condemned such barbarity; inwardly, thinking of idiocy and crippledness not as abstractions but as embodied in the crouchbacked cone-gatherer, he had profoundly approved."
There is a sense of inevitability about the ending which comes as no real surprise but with Jenkin's concise and neat prose Jenkins manages to maintain the suspense leaving you hoping to be proved wrong. Overall this is a fascinating and dark novel about attitudes to outsiders, class divisions and human nature. It is an immensely powerful examination of good and evil, and mankind's propensity for both, and whilst I'm not sure that enjoy is exactly the right word to describe my feelings towards it; it is certainly one that I would recommend.
April 1, 2017
Seeds of evil...
Brothers Neil and Calum work as foresters in Ardmore in the Scottish highlands. Calum is a simple-minded but happy soul, his twisted, hunched back making him clumsy on the ground, but once he is climbing in his beloved trees he is agile and sure-footed. Neil, the older brother, has devoted his life to looking after Calum, resenting every slight and insult that's been directed at him far more than Calum himself. Now they have been sent to the estate of Lady Runcie-Campbell to gather cones from the trees in her woods, prior to the woods being chopped down as part of the war effort.
But Lady Runcie-Campbell's gamekeeper, Duror, has taken a strong dislike to them, especially to Calum. Partly this is because Calum's soft heart has led him to free animals caught in Duror's traps, but mainly it's an irrational horror of the stunted body and mind of the man, mirroring Duror's own stunted life, which has turned out so differently from what he expected. Duror's young wife whom he loved was struck by an unspecified illness three years after they wed, leaving her bedridden and obese. Now, twenty years on, she is needy and whiny, mainly because Duror makes it so plain that he can't bear to spend time in her company. Duror has buried deep within himself his resentment at the unfairness of his life, as he sees it, but something about the little hunchback Calum has triggered his pent-up anger, turning him into a malevolent, bullying monster.
The Second World War is happening in the background, so that this small community is missing young men. Lady Runcie-Campbell is only in charge because her husband is away in the army, and obviously, being a woman, she's not very good at man management. (Well, it was written in 1955.) She'd prefer not to know about anything that might disrupt her perfect lifestyle or prick her conscience, like the atrocious conditions the cone-gatherers are expected to live in, so leaves everything she can up to Duror. She is always striving to become a better Christian and wants her children to grow up with true Christian values. On the other hand, she has been tasked by her husband to make sure their son grows up to be a true aristocrat, confident in his superior breeding and properly haughty to the hoi-polloi. Lady Runcie-Campbell's own upbringing means she sees no problem in reconciling these things, but her son shows an irritating capacity to feel sympathy for the people she bullies and demeans.
As a Scottish classic, I tried hard to love this book, but failed, though I certainly didn't hate it either. It has an air of impending doom from the first pages, a tragedy so well signalled that the end is never really in doubt. This can work, so long as the journey is interesting enough. Here, while the writing is skilled and often very powerful, the characters never came to life for me, each feeling like a representative of an aspect of humanity that Jenkins wanted to show, rather than a truly rounded individual. It comments a little on the changing social order of the time, when the lower classes were no longer prepared to accept without criticism the inequality in society, nor to obey without question the orders of their social superiors. But it does it in a way that I found rather obvious, without nuance. There's a similar lack of subtlety in the direct comparison it draws between Duror's irrational hatred of the hunchbacked Calum and the atrocities carried out by the Nazis. I feel the author should sometimes leave the reader to do some of the work.
Elsewhere, religious symbolism abounds in an Old Testament, Garden of Eden corrupted by nasty humanity kind of way, but it's all a bit simplistic – the good people are so very innocent, and the bad people are hissably dastardly villains. There's an odd episode in the middle when the brothers visit the nearby town, where everyone is preternaturally nice to them, in too stark contrast to the evil that surrounds them in the woods. It reminded me a little in tone of Of Mice and Men – the book that taught me how easily pathos can turn to bathos if an author isn't careful. Jenkins narrowly avoids bathos, but in the process he also loses the emotionalism, the light and shade, that might have lifted this book above being a simple allegory of good and evil. My lack of belief in the characters as people meant that the long-anticipated tragic ending left me disappointingly unmoved, despite my admiration for the prose. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Brothers Neil and Calum work as foresters in Ardmore in the Scottish highlands. Calum is a simple-minded but happy soul, his twisted, hunched back making him clumsy on the ground, but once he is climbing in his beloved trees he is agile and sure-footed. Neil, the older brother, has devoted his life to looking after Calum, resenting every slight and insult that's been directed at him far more than Calum himself. Now they have been sent to the estate of Lady Runcie-Campbell to gather cones from the trees in her woods, prior to the woods being chopped down as part of the war effort.
But Lady Runcie-Campbell's gamekeeper, Duror, has taken a strong dislike to them, especially to Calum. Partly this is because Calum's soft heart has led him to free animals caught in Duror's traps, but mainly it's an irrational horror of the stunted body and mind of the man, mirroring Duror's own stunted life, which has turned out so differently from what he expected. Duror's young wife whom he loved was struck by an unspecified illness three years after they wed, leaving her bedridden and obese. Now, twenty years on, she is needy and whiny, mainly because Duror makes it so plain that he can't bear to spend time in her company. Duror has buried deep within himself his resentment at the unfairness of his life, as he sees it, but something about the little hunchback Calum has triggered his pent-up anger, turning him into a malevolent, bullying monster.
Hidden among the spruces at the edge of the ride, near enough to catch the smell of larch off the cones and to be struck by some of those thrown, stood Duror the gamekeeper, in an icy sweat of hatred, with his gun aimed all the time at the feeble-minded hunchback grovelling over the rabbit. To pull the trigger, requiring far less force than to break a rabbit's neck, and then to hear simultaneously the clean report of the gun and the last obscene squeal of the killed dwarf would have been for him, he thought, release too, from the noose of disgust and despair drawn, these past few days, so much tighter.
The Second World War is happening in the background, so that this small community is missing young men. Lady Runcie-Campbell is only in charge because her husband is away in the army, and obviously, being a woman, she's not very good at man management. (Well, it was written in 1955.) She'd prefer not to know about anything that might disrupt her perfect lifestyle or prick her conscience, like the atrocious conditions the cone-gatherers are expected to live in, so leaves everything she can up to Duror. She is always striving to become a better Christian and wants her children to grow up with true Christian values. On the other hand, she has been tasked by her husband to make sure their son grows up to be a true aristocrat, confident in his superior breeding and properly haughty to the hoi-polloi. Lady Runcie-Campbell's own upbringing means she sees no problem in reconciling these things, but her son shows an irritating capacity to feel sympathy for the people she bullies and demeans.
As a Scottish classic, I tried hard to love this book, but failed, though I certainly didn't hate it either. It has an air of impending doom from the first pages, a tragedy so well signalled that the end is never really in doubt. This can work, so long as the journey is interesting enough. Here, while the writing is skilled and often very powerful, the characters never came to life for me, each feeling like a representative of an aspect of humanity that Jenkins wanted to show, rather than a truly rounded individual. It comments a little on the changing social order of the time, when the lower classes were no longer prepared to accept without criticism the inequality in society, nor to obey without question the orders of their social superiors. But it does it in a way that I found rather obvious, without nuance. There's a similar lack of subtlety in the direct comparison it draws between Duror's irrational hatred of the hunchbacked Calum and the atrocities carried out by the Nazis. I feel the author should sometimes leave the reader to do some of the work.
He had read that the Germans were putting idiots and cripples to death in gas chambers. Outwardly, as everybody expected, he condemned such barbarity; inwardly, thinking of idiocy and crippledness not as abstractions but as embodied in the crouchbacked cone-gatherer, he had profoundly approved.
Elsewhere, religious symbolism abounds in an Old Testament, Garden of Eden corrupted by nasty humanity kind of way, but it's all a bit simplistic – the good people are so very innocent, and the bad people are hissably dastardly villains. There's an odd episode in the middle when the brothers visit the nearby town, where everyone is preternaturally nice to them, in too stark contrast to the evil that surrounds them in the woods. It reminded me a little in tone of Of Mice and Men – the book that taught me how easily pathos can turn to bathos if an author isn't careful. Jenkins narrowly avoids bathos, but in the process he also loses the emotionalism, the light and shade, that might have lifted this book above being a simple allegory of good and evil. My lack of belief in the characters as people meant that the long-anticipated tragic ending left me disappointingly unmoved, despite my admiration for the prose. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
February 6, 2013
The cone-gatherers of the title are two labourers on a Scottish estate during the Second World War, who spend their days gathering pine-cones from the treetops so that the forest can be replanted after being cut down for lumber to help the war effort. A job so unexpected and remote from modern-day life that it sometimes felt like reading about men in a sci-fi novel performing some incomprehensible and repetitive task on an alien world.
It's very efficiently written, with not a word or comma wasted. The setting is so isolated and self-contained, and the characters so richly symbolic, that the novel teeters on the edge of allegory – and there is also a looming sense of disaster that meant I wasn't quite sure, as I read it, if I was really enjoying the experience. But there are many deep, lapidary sentences in here to mull over, and the layers of symbolism can't fail to set off at least a few interesting chains of thought. As I read the final extraordinary line of the book, I suddenly realised I was extremely moved by it.
It's very efficiently written, with not a word or comma wasted. The setting is so isolated and self-contained, and the characters so richly symbolic, that the novel teeters on the edge of allegory – and there is also a looming sense of disaster that meant I wasn't quite sure, as I read it, if I was really enjoying the experience. But there are many deep, lapidary sentences in here to mull over, and the layers of symbolism can't fail to set off at least a few interesting chains of thought. As I read the final extraordinary line of the book, I suddenly realised I was extremely moved by it.
July 24, 2025
(3.5) Rightly likened to Of Mice and Men, this is an engrossing short novel about two brothers, Neil and Calum, tasked with climbing trees and gathering the pinecones of a wealthy Scottish estate. They will be used to replant the many woodlands being cut down to fuel the war effort. Calum, the younger brother, is physically and intellectually disabled but has a deep well of compassion for living creatures. He has unwittingly made an enemy of the estate’s gamekeeper, Duror, by releasing wounded rabbits from his traps. Much of the story is taken up with Duror’s seemingly baseless feud against the brothers – though we’re meant to understand that his bedbound wife’s obesity and his subsequent sexual frustration may have something to do with it – as well as with Lady Runcie-Campbell’s class prejudice. Her son, Roderick, is an unexpected would-be hero and voice of pure empathy. I read this quickly, with grim fascination, knowing tragedy was coming but not quite how things would play out. The introduction to Canongate’s Canons Collection edition is by actor Paul Giamatti, of all people.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
November 16, 2019
This book is on the Scottish high school curriculum and I see from the reviews that pretty much every teenager who had to read and write essays on it hated it. I can see why; it is not exactly a fast-paced, page-turner but the underlying richness of the book more than makes up for it.
This is a battle between good and evil set within a stunningly beautiful Scottish landscape (Eden?) with its themes of disgust and fear of anyone who is different, no matter how innocent, and the appalling impact of actions that are founded on intolerance. I read it as an allegory of WW2, which plays out in the distant background. Jenkins sets this against the hypocrisy of the appearance of Christian values and high-society decency whilst hatred and ‘othering’ simmers under the surface. Yet it is the target of this hatred, the deformed and ‘simple-minded’ Calum, who most exemplifies a message of compassion and love for all. In our increasingly intolerant society, it is surprisingly contemporary.
A brief review cannot do this book justice for it is full of angles and symbolism (sacrifice, destruction, fascism, regeneration and redemption) with well-defined characters, not least the monstrous, complex gamekeeper, Durer, whose storyline Jenkins only concludes on the very last page of the book.
This book will be on my mind for some time. It made Robin Jenkins famous back in the 1950s and I will explore more of his work.
This is a battle between good and evil set within a stunningly beautiful Scottish landscape (Eden?) with its themes of disgust and fear of anyone who is different, no matter how innocent, and the appalling impact of actions that are founded on intolerance. I read it as an allegory of WW2, which plays out in the distant background. Jenkins sets this against the hypocrisy of the appearance of Christian values and high-society decency whilst hatred and ‘othering’ simmers under the surface. Yet it is the target of this hatred, the deformed and ‘simple-minded’ Calum, who most exemplifies a message of compassion and love for all. In our increasingly intolerant society, it is surprisingly contemporary.
A brief review cannot do this book justice for it is full of angles and symbolism (sacrifice, destruction, fascism, regeneration and redemption) with well-defined characters, not least the monstrous, complex gamekeeper, Durer, whose storyline Jenkins only concludes on the very last page of the book.
This book will be on my mind for some time. It made Robin Jenkins famous back in the 1950s and I will explore more of his work.
October 17, 2012
Unfortunately this was on our required reading list at school and I must admit that I hated it then and I still hate it now (9+ years later). The story is grim and dull with everything related to symbolism, thus making it difficult to enjoy. The characters are often irritating at times and I found the whole story line boring.
I wonder if I had read it on my own and wasn't aware of the symbolism if I would have enjoyed it more . . . some how I doubt it.
I wonder if I had read it on my own and wasn't aware of the symbolism if I would have enjoyed it more . . . some how I doubt it.
March 1, 2015
i had to read this for higher english because it is FULL of religious symbolism and that's what english teachers love. it's also dull with no likeable characters. this book is the worst and that's not just because i had to write essays about it.
September 21, 2023
*WARNING: RANT*
Glad to see all the other 1 star reviews are also people who were forced to read this steaming pile of shite that calls itself a book for their higher English. This book represents to me everything that was terrible at that time, especially when I was promised Shakespeare by my teacher.
No one character in this book is well written, developed past their 2 dimensional archetype prisons, nor likeable in the slightest. The only character I had any sympathy for was Neil, he had to put up with the most shit, and maybe Peggy, who’s crime is being fat and chronically ill.
Lady Runcie-Campbell is a classic example of moral exceptionalism- “I can’t be bad if I’m a Christian??” she says as she stands in her stately mansion while everyone around her suffers the actual effects of the war. Boring, self-centered, unlikeable.
Callum. I don’t know if I’ve seen such a ridiculous portrayal of disability in a text I’m meant to take seriously since reading this book. He’s physically disabled, therefore must be mentally disabled, therefore must be and innocent creature of god who can do no wrong and has zero personality past his disabilities? Yikers if I’m honest.
Finally, we get to Duror. Holy cow. What a ham fisted, over the top, nonsensical portrayal of evil. A caricature beyond even humour. I’m fairly certain I actually had to write my exam essay on why he’s sympathetically evil- he hates his wife for being ill and murders his dogs in cold blood? Then shoots Callum for what, also being disabled? “He represents Hitler!” Wow,, really?? I simply couldn’t have put that together by the amateurish rhyming of “fuhrer” and his so-cartoonishly-evil-its-almost-funny scheming and muttering.
I’m so glad I no longer have to be in that classroom reading out paragraph after paragraph of this horrible horrible book but I will never be free of the cursed knowledge that I read it multiple times. I hope with the dissolution of the SQA it will finally be taken off the curriculum.
0/5 if I could.
Glad to see all the other 1 star reviews are also people who were forced to read this steaming pile of shite that calls itself a book for their higher English. This book represents to me everything that was terrible at that time, especially when I was promised Shakespeare by my teacher.
No one character in this book is well written, developed past their 2 dimensional archetype prisons, nor likeable in the slightest. The only character I had any sympathy for was Neil, he had to put up with the most shit, and maybe Peggy, who’s crime is being fat and chronically ill.
Lady Runcie-Campbell is a classic example of moral exceptionalism- “I can’t be bad if I’m a Christian??” she says as she stands in her stately mansion while everyone around her suffers the actual effects of the war. Boring, self-centered, unlikeable.
Callum. I don’t know if I’ve seen such a ridiculous portrayal of disability in a text I’m meant to take seriously since reading this book. He’s physically disabled, therefore must be mentally disabled, therefore must be and innocent creature of god who can do no wrong and has zero personality past his disabilities? Yikers if I’m honest.
Finally, we get to Duror. Holy cow. What a ham fisted, over the top, nonsensical portrayal of evil. A caricature beyond even humour. I’m fairly certain I actually had to write my exam essay on why he’s sympathetically evil- he hates his wife for being ill and murders his dogs in cold blood? Then shoots Callum for what, also being disabled? “He represents Hitler!” Wow,, really?? I simply couldn’t have put that together by the amateurish rhyming of “fuhrer” and his so-cartoonishly-evil-its-almost-funny scheming and muttering.
I’m so glad I no longer have to be in that classroom reading out paragraph after paragraph of this horrible horrible book but I will never be free of the cursed knowledge that I read it multiple times. I hope with the dissolution of the SQA it will finally be taken off the curriculum.
0/5 if I could.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 28, 2022
Damn them cones got done gathered
November 1, 2020
I love a book of less than 250 pages (this has 220). It just feels right. Like a 90 min film or an album that will fit on one side of a C90. It seems to foster books that are just as powerful and memorable as any 700 page epic, through carefully chosen words and beautifully crafted sentences. I won't divulge the plot but this is a truly wonderful book. No wasted words. The arc of the plot is just right and the sense of time and place is incredible.
An added bonus. Quite near the end the phrase 'pillows and prayers' is used. I've had a good search around and I can't find any other reference to this phrase besides the title of the Cherry Red Records compilation of the same name from 1982, that famously sold for "no more than 99p" and featured songs by Tracy Thorn, Felt, The Nightingales, Ben Watt and Eyeless in Gaza, amongst others. Even if it's not true, I'm determined to now believe that the title of this album, that holds such a special place for many of us of my generation, is a reference to The Cone Gatherers (originally published in 1955).
Read this book.
An added bonus. Quite near the end the phrase 'pillows and prayers' is used. I've had a good search around and I can't find any other reference to this phrase besides the title of the Cherry Red Records compilation of the same name from 1982, that famously sold for "no more than 99p" and featured songs by Tracy Thorn, Felt, The Nightingales, Ben Watt and Eyeless in Gaza, amongst others. Even if it's not true, I'm determined to now believe that the title of this album, that holds such a special place for many of us of my generation, is a reference to The Cone Gatherers (originally published in 1955).
Read this book.
August 30, 2012
I didn't find this novel very exciting and at first I didn't think that I liked it at all. However, I found that I couldn't forget about it for weeks after i had read it. Jenkins' description of the setting is a little tedious if you aren't in the mood for it, but the way the characters are portrayed is exquisite and I found myself deeply invested in their lives towards the end of the novel.
February 10, 2021
Bad
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 4, 2024
Shit with a capital S!
October 25, 2024
Haunting, thought provoking, sad. Reminded me of Of Mice and Men. Bet English teachers have a ball with this one.
Themes: Good/evil, purity/innocence, religion, nature, war, class, physical/mental disability, equality
Themes: Good/evil, purity/innocence, religion, nature, war, class, physical/mental disability, equality
February 26, 2022
Really enjoyed this and can see why it’s a classic text for English classes.
The focus on class against the WW2 backdrop really shows the inequality of the time.
The focus on class against the WW2 backdrop really shows the inequality of the time.
February 29, 2024
Enjoyed it much more as an adult than I ever did as a teenager in school. Lots I remembered but equally lots I had forgotten about it.
August 28, 2024
love the vibes that Jenkins paints Scotland with whether visual or historical or even ... spiritual ? Regardless been a while since I read something with such good catharsis. Read if u like books!
December 13, 2024
Don't read the introduction first as it tells you too much about what's going to happen in the book.
January 14, 2009
This book would be the perfect pick for a book club. The story isn't adventurous or even particularly exciting, but it's chock full of things to think about. It screams for discussion. When I finished the last sentence I just wished I knew someone else in this world who had read it so I could talk about it with them. Woah, what was that about? The main themes are fairly obviously hatred and innocence, but there's so much depth to it. The story is set on a large Scottish estate during WWII. On this estate is a large wood that is slated to be chopped down in the Spring, it's lumber to be used in the war effort. As such, two men have been hired to climb to the top of the trees and collect cones for seed to replace the forest once it has been felled. All the able-bodied men are off at war so the cone-gatherers are a middle-aged rheumatic and his younger brother, a simple-minded hunchbacked dwarf. The cone-gatherers' low station in society along with the younger brother's deformities inspire hatred and love in those around them. This shares many similarities with Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, but is also quite different. The depth is amazing and worth the read just for that. The ending, the fate that awaits innocence, is shocking--perhaps foreseeable, but shocking just the same.
May 22, 2015
I studied this novel for higher English. The first time I read it, I found it dull but nooooooo I was being a fool this book is magic it takes words, it manipulates even the ugliest words, and it makes them loveable and appealing I was in a trance I was completely taken away by the whole concept OR SHOULD I SAY CONCEPTS because the book represents so much it has so many symbols and themes and what I truly love is unlike so many modern tales, we are not given these hidden messages on a plate with a bow attatched. Theyre implicit, they cant be taken in all different sorts of ways. I fell in love with every character. Even the bad ones, even the most purest and evil and callous of characters Ive ever came across. This book is underrated. Its not a classic, its above all the classics, people should be singing this story every christmas: it should be a global treasure. Theres something realistic amongst this fable, see if you can find it
August 7, 2009
This novel deals with the story of two brothers on a remote Scottish island during the Second World War. They gather cones for the war effort and the novel deals with among other things the perceptions others have of them, in particular the views of the local gamekeeper who is disgusted by one of the brothers who is a hunchback and has learning difficulties. Comparisons can be made to "Of Mice and Men", which does slightly overshadow the story, but the well-drawn characters in particular the character of the local landowner whose portrayal in the novel as a person who defies the aristocratic stereotype led me to appreciate that this neglected classic is worth reading in its own right. It is not so much that I learned anything new from this book; it was more as if I was watching the lives of people unfold people who I could care about and a world I could immerse myself.
December 13, 2015
I was completely delighted with this book. Nature descriptions were lovely and evocative and provided a great interpretative backdrop to a story about a failing society. From the first moment, I loved Calum and Neil, and I detested Lady Rancid-Camel more with every sentence I read about her. Her smug self-righteousness was so irritating, and to think that this callous and arrogant woman considered herself a paragon of Christian virtue who stands out from the rest of her ilk, that really gives you something to think about. I wonder if it is true that these aristocrats really think they are a superior type of people, rather than just an arbitrarily privileged group. If it is, then that is too bizarre for words. Anyway, I was very charmed by the way the author mirrors and interweaves motifs and themes, and the moral questions he raised. An all-round excellent novel.)
August 17, 2019
Despite being somewhat depressing, I liked this book. I'm not sure if it makes the classics, but the writer clearly has a unique voice. I like the way the character weaves and the way that classism, and sex are addressed in making characters that aren't flat. Any who, I would give this a read for sure.
April 8, 2013
I had to read this for school when I was a lad. I didn't much enjoy the experience. Even at that age, despite having never read it, the book struck me as a poor man's Of Mice and Men.
July 13, 2025
A Scottish “Of Mice and Men.” Pretty bleak, though refreshing that everyone other than the Lady of the house and the gamekeeper are full of sympathy and respect for the bothers. The episode in Lendrick is very enjoyable. The similarity between Mrs Duror and Calum is interesting - I should read it again, especially the implied meeting between the Lady and Mrs D. Very dialogue heavy, with an awkward mix of simple/bland and overly symbolic
November 17, 2022
It’s not my usual type of reading but it was a set book for Higher English, which I’m doing this year so I had no choice. I appreciated the talent of the writer but there were a lot of plot holes and an unsatisfying ending which I didn’t really understand.
August 25, 2023
The theme of this novel is social class in Scotland around the time of the second world war. Almost everything that happens in the story is bleak, but that is not my main issue with the book. I found the book unsettling because many of the characters' thoughts and reactions to events are bizarre and inexplicable. There are a lot of biblical allusions, but these appear to serve little purpose. Overall, I would say that it's worth a read, and it's mercifully short. So give it a go; perhaps you'll pick up on whatever it is that I missed.
October 19, 2018
halfway through it, intend to finish it
February 15, 2024
It covered interesting social aspects but I struggled to engage with the characters like I have with other books
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