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Greenvoe
Greenvoe, the tight-knit community on the Orcadian island of Hellya, has existed unchanged for generations. However, a sinister military/industrial project, Operation Black Star, requires the island for unspecified purposes and threatens the islanders' way of life. In this, his first novel (1972), George Mackay Brown recreates a week in the life of the island community as they come to terms with the destructiveness of Operation Black Star. A whole host of characters - The Skarf, failed fishermen and Marxist historian; Ivan Westray, boatman and dallier; pious creeler Samuel Whaness; drunken fishermen Bert Kerston; earth-mother Alice Voar, and meths-drinker Timmy Folster - are vividly brought to life in this sparkling mixture of prose and poetry.
256 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1970
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668 people want to read
About the author
George Mackay Brown
183 books101 followersGeorge Mackay Brown, the poet, novelist and dramatist, spent his life living in and documenting the Orkney Isles.
A bout of severe measles at the age of 12 became the basis for recurring health problems throughout his life. Uncertain as to his future, he remained in education until 1940, a year which brought with it a growing reality of the war, and the unexpected death of his father. The following year he was diagnosed with (then incurable) Pulmonary Tuberculosis and spent six months in hospital in Kirkwall, Orkney's main town.
Around this time, he began writing poetry, and also prose for the Orkney Herald for which he became Stromness Correspondent, reporting events such as the switching on of the electricity grid in 1947. In 1950 he met the poet Edwin Muir, a fellow Orcadian, who recognised Mackay Brown's talent for writing, and would become his literary tutor and mentor at Newbattle Abbey College, in Midlothian, which he attended in 1951-2. Recurring TB forced Mackay Brown to spend the following year in hospital, but his experience at Newbattle spurred him to apply to Edinburgh University, to read English Literature, returning to do post-graduate work on Gerard Manley Hopkins.
In later life Mackay Brown rarely left Orkney. He turned to writing full-time, publishing his first collection of poetry, The Storm, in 1954. His writing explored life on Orkney, and the history and traditions which make up Orkney's distinct cultural identity. Many of his works are concerned with protecting Orkney's cultural heritage from the relentless march of progress and the loss of myth and archaic ritual in the modern world. Reflecting this, his best known work is Greenvoe (1972), in which the permanence of island life is threatened by 'Black Star', a mysterious nuclear development.
Mackay Brown's literary reputation grew steadily. He received an OBE in 1974 and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1977, in addition to gaining several honorary degrees. His final novel, Beside the Ocean of Time (1994) was Booker Prize shortlisted and judged Scottish Book of the Year by the Saltire Society. Mackay Brown died in his home town of Stromness on 13th April 1996.
He produced several poetry collections, five novels, eight collections of short stories and two poem-plays, as well as non-fiction portraits of Orkney, an autobiography, For the Islands I Sing (1997), and published journalism.
Read more at:
http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org....
A bout of severe measles at the age of 12 became the basis for recurring health problems throughout his life. Uncertain as to his future, he remained in education until 1940, a year which brought with it a growing reality of the war, and the unexpected death of his father. The following year he was diagnosed with (then incurable) Pulmonary Tuberculosis and spent six months in hospital in Kirkwall, Orkney's main town.
Around this time, he began writing poetry, and also prose for the Orkney Herald for which he became Stromness Correspondent, reporting events such as the switching on of the electricity grid in 1947. In 1950 he met the poet Edwin Muir, a fellow Orcadian, who recognised Mackay Brown's talent for writing, and would become his literary tutor and mentor at Newbattle Abbey College, in Midlothian, which he attended in 1951-2. Recurring TB forced Mackay Brown to spend the following year in hospital, but his experience at Newbattle spurred him to apply to Edinburgh University, to read English Literature, returning to do post-graduate work on Gerard Manley Hopkins.
In later life Mackay Brown rarely left Orkney. He turned to writing full-time, publishing his first collection of poetry, The Storm, in 1954. His writing explored life on Orkney, and the history and traditions which make up Orkney's distinct cultural identity. Many of his works are concerned with protecting Orkney's cultural heritage from the relentless march of progress and the loss of myth and archaic ritual in the modern world. Reflecting this, his best known work is Greenvoe (1972), in which the permanence of island life is threatened by 'Black Star', a mysterious nuclear development.
Mackay Brown's literary reputation grew steadily. He received an OBE in 1974 and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1977, in addition to gaining several honorary degrees. His final novel, Beside the Ocean of Time (1994) was Booker Prize shortlisted and judged Scottish Book of the Year by the Saltire Society. Mackay Brown died in his home town of Stromness on 13th April 1996.
He produced several poetry collections, five novels, eight collections of short stories and two poem-plays, as well as non-fiction portraits of Orkney, an autobiography, For the Islands I Sing (1997), and published journalism.
Read more at:
http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org....
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews
October 11, 2024
An incredible portrait of rural Orkney life in the mid-twentieth century, which somehow – in the way of all great art – turns its hyper-specificity into something universal.
A poet's first novel, this reminded me quite a lot of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood. It is, similarly, first and foremost a loving sketch of a community, of which over the course of the novel we get to know almost every member. The cast list can seem bit daunting at first, but the pay-off is considerable.
And like Thomas, Brown takes a poet's care over word-choice, metaphor, imagery. The book is very beautifully written and free from any cliché – a refined form, perhaps, of the islanders' own speech, which is said to be ‘slow and wondering, like water lapping among stones’. Brown is equally adept at economic precision (‘cadences of piercing melancholy and valour: a bagpipe’) as at long, dreamy passages of descriptive colour:
The ‘sinister military-industrial project’ which is misleadingly mentioned on the back cover does not actually impose until the final chapter, whereupon the novel takes on a slightly different tone (somewhat reminiscent of Halldór Laxness's The Atom Station). But for Brown this is used to make a specific point – not just about the destructiveness of modern life, but about its ultimate transience.
The setting of Hellya is a fictional island, which Brown had used in his poetry before he came to write this novel – and the village of Greenvoe itself borrows elements of his native Stromness, but is smaller and more rural. It is deliberately abstracted and symbolic. The Neolithic stone circles and cairns that must once have crowded the British Isles are still a very prominent part of the modern Orkney landscape, and so the past is much more present in these little islands than it is elsewhere. One character recites Orkney history aloud to drinkers in the local pub; the local ferryman reads the Orkneyinga Saga. Brown describes is as ‘a haunted island’.
For this writer, one feels, ‘traditional’ community life is valuable not for the sake of conservatism, but because of its connections with the past – and, indeed, with the future, for as the ending of the book makes clear, while the modern world can be stupid and destructive, it too is also a temporary thing. You're left with a sense of circularity and healing, and of pleasure at being in such good company.
A poet's first novel, this reminded me quite a lot of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood. It is, similarly, first and foremost a loving sketch of a community, of which over the course of the novel we get to know almost every member. The cast list can seem bit daunting at first, but the pay-off is considerable.
And like Thomas, Brown takes a poet's care over word-choice, metaphor, imagery. The book is very beautifully written and free from any cliché – a refined form, perhaps, of the islanders' own speech, which is said to be ‘slow and wondering, like water lapping among stones’. Brown is equally adept at economic precision (‘cadences of piercing melancholy and valour: a bagpipe’) as at long, dreamy passages of descriptive colour:
In the endless bestiary of the weather the unicorns of cloud are littered far west in the Atlantic; the sun their sire, the sea their dame. Swiftly they hatch and flourish. They travel eastwards, a grey silent stampeding herd. Their shining hooves beat over the Orkneys and on out into the North Sea. Sometimes it takes days for that migration to pass. But many are torn on the crags and hills, and spill their precious ichor on the farm-lands. Crofters wake to cornfields and pastures extravagantly jewelled.
The ‘sinister military-industrial project’ which is misleadingly mentioned on the back cover does not actually impose until the final chapter, whereupon the novel takes on a slightly different tone (somewhat reminiscent of Halldór Laxness's The Atom Station). But for Brown this is used to make a specific point – not just about the destructiveness of modern life, but about its ultimate transience.
The setting of Hellya is a fictional island, which Brown had used in his poetry before he came to write this novel – and the village of Greenvoe itself borrows elements of his native Stromness, but is smaller and more rural. It is deliberately abstracted and symbolic. The Neolithic stone circles and cairns that must once have crowded the British Isles are still a very prominent part of the modern Orkney landscape, and so the past is much more present in these little islands than it is elsewhere. One character recites Orkney history aloud to drinkers in the local pub; the local ferryman reads the Orkneyinga Saga. Brown describes is as ‘a haunted island’.
For this writer, one feels, ‘traditional’ community life is valuable not for the sake of conservatism, but because of its connections with the past – and, indeed, with the future, for as the ending of the book makes clear, while the modern world can be stupid and destructive, it too is also a temporary thing. You're left with a sense of circularity and healing, and of pleasure at being in such good company.
February 12, 2015
One of my all-time favourite books. The first time I picked it up I thought it was dull. I am so glad I gave it a second chance. Some years later I discovered my neighbour was a boy in the village Greenvoe is based on. He remembered GMB but just as a one of the regular old blokes who drank a lot and chatted to the fisherman at the harbour. He was amazed he was famous enough for me to rever his writing! My neighbour is now a good friend and I often wonder if he is in one of GMB's books.
I should add that this book did actually change my life. GMB describes the affect the coming of television had on the lives of the children in the village. They stopped playing and the whole atmosphere changed. So our children have grown up with no tv.
I should add that this book did actually change my life. GMB describes the affect the coming of television had on the lives of the children in the village. They stopped playing and the whole atmosphere changed. So our children have grown up with no tv.
December 30, 2014
The events of the synopsis and back cover blurb don't actually take place until the sixth and final chapter. The rest of the novel is the story of the day-to-day life of a tight-knit community where typical characters abound. Much of it wouldn't be out of place on Sunday night television such as "Hamish Macbeth", though there are some more sinister moments.
I'd had the book for about six and a half years before reading it as I was rarely in the mood for what I thought it would be. I was braced for a fairly tough story all the way through. But instead I found something different which I'd long sought: peaceful accounts of day to day work that were involving and very readable (not brain-stretching like David Foster Wallace's chronicles of the mundane). And what's more these are set in a beautiful place. The first 200 pages of the book is calm, entertaining and thoughtful, but with sinister interpolations that stop it being impossibly chocolate box (or maybe shortbread-tin) perfect.
The synopsis no doubt stops the wrong people picking it up, as readers seeking only the initial story would find the ending acutely upsetting and quite out of keeping with what they expected. It certainly isn't fun to read, but things do turn out ok for some characters; it's not a holocaust as I had suspected it would be.
It's simply that if you read only the inside of the book with no prior information about its contents, you would expect a story of its type to have a happy ending - but it doesn't.
Just as a few films and TV series have certain scenes or episodes I watch several times a year, whilst the rest of the story isn't so much to my taste, I think I'll be coming back again and again to the first part of Greenvoe as it's vivid evocation of a simple existence to which I often wish I could escape.
I'd had the book for about six and a half years before reading it as I was rarely in the mood for what I thought it would be. I was braced for a fairly tough story all the way through. But instead I found something different which I'd long sought: peaceful accounts of day to day work that were involving and very readable (not brain-stretching like David Foster Wallace's chronicles of the mundane). And what's more these are set in a beautiful place. The first 200 pages of the book is calm, entertaining and thoughtful, but with sinister interpolations that stop it being impossibly chocolate box (or maybe shortbread-tin) perfect.
The synopsis no doubt stops the wrong people picking it up, as readers seeking only the initial story would find the ending acutely upsetting and quite out of keeping with what they expected. It certainly isn't fun to read, but things do turn out ok for some characters; it's not a holocaust as I had suspected it would be.
It's simply that if you read only the inside of the book with no prior information about its contents, you would expect a story of its type to have a happy ending - but it doesn't.
Just as a few films and TV series have certain scenes or episodes I watch several times a year, whilst the rest of the story isn't so much to my taste, I think I'll be coming back again and again to the first part of Greenvoe as it's vivid evocation of a simple existence to which I often wish I could escape.
December 19, 2011
This is a fragmented, elemental, mystical first novel. You can tell that Mackay Brown had a pedigree as a poet and short story writer before this. Greenvoe is really a series of interwoven shorter pieces, including the final dystopian chapter, stitched together with gorgeous visions of the Orkney land and seascape. It can feel a little uneven at times, with traditional linear narrative and stream of consciousness, observations of nature and snippets of play scripts, but that doesn't make it any less arresting or beautiful. Certainly confirms for me that I must read everything Mackay Brown wrote.
December 10, 2016
I had read and enjoyed some of his short stories, but this, his first novel, is extraordinary. The plot summary is somewhat misleading, as for about 2/3 of the book it is a fascinating and beautifully rendered portrait of an Orkney community, warts and all. The plot twist and its faster, which many writers would have spent most of the book on, is a short, sharp shock, as it would have been to the islanders itself, and the incredibly moving ending brings all the strands together. Makes me want to 're-read it, to read more of his work, and return (yet again) to Orkney. And press this book upon friends and strangers.
June 7, 2016
All of George Mackay Brown's works are steeped in the cultures and traditions of his native Orkney Islands, and this, his first novel, is no exception. The community of Greenvoe and the island of Hellya are fictional composites but the lifestyles and experiences he describes are real if somewhat caricatured - Mackay Brown writes with warmth and humour and his background as a poet is often apparent.
January 26, 2020
Hm, this read is going to stay with me long after turning the final, unsettling pages.
Poetic, mystical and disturbing, 'Greenvoe' tells the story of a doomed community. The narrative follows its inhabitants who are at once fable-like and touchingly real, and at times wanders off into the mists of a character's mind, before circling back, like a ghostly cormorant, to the daily hubbub of Greenvoe.
Is the decline of the island due to Operation Black Star? Or, as the operation only arrives in the final chapter, does the blame lie elsewhere? "It was obvious, of course - even the Welfare Officer admitted that - that the village was moribund in any case, a place given over almost wholly to the elderly, the famous, the physically inept. Black Star merely accelerated the process." And yet there is a sense of injustice. The lives and stories of the islanders accrue, story stacked upon memory upon experience, creating a rich, resonant swansong.
There are many 'moribund' towns and villages in Scotland. Land bought, sold, bulldozed in the name of 'progress'. Is it necessary? What real, long-term benefit do incoming mega-corporations bring to the community? And why are communities themselves complicit in the slow, sad death of an ancient way of life? 'Greenvoe' seems to rail against blind progress (which takes in Reformed religion, too) and celebrates poetry and song as the shared art that ties communities to each other and the land they inhabit.
It's a layered, dreamy, clever novel. Probably, I'm only scratching the surface of its depths. All the more reason dive deeper with future rereads.
Poetic, mystical and disturbing, 'Greenvoe' tells the story of a doomed community. The narrative follows its inhabitants who are at once fable-like and touchingly real, and at times wanders off into the mists of a character's mind, before circling back, like a ghostly cormorant, to the daily hubbub of Greenvoe.
Is the decline of the island due to Operation Black Star? Or, as the operation only arrives in the final chapter, does the blame lie elsewhere? "It was obvious, of course - even the Welfare Officer admitted that - that the village was moribund in any case, a place given over almost wholly to the elderly, the famous, the physically inept. Black Star merely accelerated the process." And yet there is a sense of injustice. The lives and stories of the islanders accrue, story stacked upon memory upon experience, creating a rich, resonant swansong.
There are many 'moribund' towns and villages in Scotland. Land bought, sold, bulldozed in the name of 'progress'. Is it necessary? What real, long-term benefit do incoming mega-corporations bring to the community? And why are communities themselves complicit in the slow, sad death of an ancient way of life? 'Greenvoe' seems to rail against blind progress (which takes in Reformed religion, too) and celebrates poetry and song as the shared art that ties communities to each other and the land they inhabit.
It's a layered, dreamy, clever novel. Probably, I'm only scratching the surface of its depths. All the more reason dive deeper with future rereads.
April 6, 2017
Greenvoe covers a lot of the same ground as Beside the Ocean of Time, but I don't think it's either as ambitious, or as focused, as the later work. At times it seemed unsure whether it was pitching for warm Under Milk Wood territory or something bleaker. Not top marks then, but still, beautiful poetic-prose and profound sense of place and time. The later section dealing with 'Operation Black Star' was genuinely uncanny.
July 27, 2025
Ambientato nell'immaginaria Greenvoe, cittadina dell'isola Hellya nelle Orcadi, G.M. Brown ci descrive in modo realistico lo scorrere del tempo e la vita dei pochissimi abitanti di questa cittadina costiera. I personaggi sono descritti in modo reale, sono personaggi vivi, ognuno con il proprio carattere, vizi e virtù. A lettura finita avrei voluto ricominciare il libro pentita di averlo letto troppo velocemente. Sentivo già la mancanza dei personaggi e avrei voluto ci fosse qualcuno che mi raccontasse come era proseguita la loro vita.
In apparenza succede ben poco su questo isolotto: ci sono un paio di pescatori, il prete e sua mamma, un traghettatore, un solo negozio che funge anche da ufficio postale, lo scemo del villaggio, la famiglia benestante che vive lontano dalle altre abitazioni, una maestra, tantissimi bambini e un paio di altri personaggi. La vita scorre lenta e tranquilla tra i pettegolezzi di paese e alcuni screzi di poca importanza finché un giorno arriva sull'isola una persona misteriosa che occupa una stanza all'ultimo piano dell'unico albergo dell'isola. Cosa vorrà? E cosa farà tutto il giorno in quella stanza d'albergo non uscendone mai? Poche settimane dopo il suo arrivo sull'isola inizia un trambusto che sconvolgerà la vita di Greenvoe e dei suoi abitanti. Gli abitanti, abituati ad accogliere e accettare tutti, a creare comunità senza escludere nessuno (nemmeno lo scemo del villaggio), a vivere lentamente seguendo i ritmi della natura, non riescono a capire lo svolgersi veloce degli avvenimenti che condurranno a un radicale cambiamento della loro vita.
Nessuno si era interessato alle loro piccole e quasi insignificanti vite. Nessuno, quindi, si era preso la briga di spiegare loro cosa sarebbe successo. Eppure, è proprio in quella apparente insignificanza che si nasconde la loro vita; una vita reale, preziosa e unica, di cui però il personaggio misterioso non tiene conto perché nel nome del progresso si possono ignorare questi quattro isolani considerati ignoranti e di nessun valore.
G.M. Brown riesce a fare un ritratto magistrale degli abitanti di Greenvoe e della loro vita. Dimostra che ogni vita è importante, ha un suo intrinseco valore e merita di essere rispettata.
In apparenza succede ben poco su questo isolotto: ci sono un paio di pescatori, il prete e sua mamma, un traghettatore, un solo negozio che funge anche da ufficio postale, lo scemo del villaggio, la famiglia benestante che vive lontano dalle altre abitazioni, una maestra, tantissimi bambini e un paio di altri personaggi. La vita scorre lenta e tranquilla tra i pettegolezzi di paese e alcuni screzi di poca importanza finché un giorno arriva sull'isola una persona misteriosa che occupa una stanza all'ultimo piano dell'unico albergo dell'isola. Cosa vorrà? E cosa farà tutto il giorno in quella stanza d'albergo non uscendone mai? Poche settimane dopo il suo arrivo sull'isola inizia un trambusto che sconvolgerà la vita di Greenvoe e dei suoi abitanti. Gli abitanti, abituati ad accogliere e accettare tutti, a creare comunità senza escludere nessuno (nemmeno lo scemo del villaggio), a vivere lentamente seguendo i ritmi della natura, non riescono a capire lo svolgersi veloce degli avvenimenti che condurranno a un radicale cambiamento della loro vita.
Nessuno si era interessato alle loro piccole e quasi insignificanti vite. Nessuno, quindi, si era preso la briga di spiegare loro cosa sarebbe successo. Eppure, è proprio in quella apparente insignificanza che si nasconde la loro vita; una vita reale, preziosa e unica, di cui però il personaggio misterioso non tiene conto perché nel nome del progresso si possono ignorare questi quattro isolani considerati ignoranti e di nessun valore.
G.M. Brown riesce a fare un ritratto magistrale degli abitanti di Greenvoe e della loro vita. Dimostra che ogni vita è importante, ha un suo intrinseco valore e merita di essere rispettata.
April 7, 2018
I was given this book as a present and had no idea what it was about. Luckily for me, I read Ali Smith's illuminating introduction before starting. I suspect that if I hadn't, I might not have stuck with Greenvoe through to its startling conclusion. If you've read any summaries of Greenvoe and are expecting it to be a dystopian nightmare, be prepared to wait quite a while before reaching this part of the story. Having read Aonghas Phàdraig's Memory and Straw recently, I can see similar themes in the two books - memory, myth, place, near-caricatures of people we all know from our own lives, and the fundamental themes of our place in history and belonging.
Some of writing is so poetic and beautiful and you can lose yourself in the theatre of the language.
Highly recommended.
Some of writing is so poetic and beautiful and you can lose yourself in the theatre of the language.
Highly recommended.
June 14, 2012
This Scottish classic weaves the lives of the inhabitants of the fictional Hellya Island through multiple narratives and styles. Although the people of Greenvoe are not the most sympathetic of characters, they are highly entertaining in their idiosyncrasies, making this book a wonderful slice of Scottish life. Written in the 1970s, this book harkens back to the Highland Clearances when many Scots were forced to move and predicts current times when governments buy out people and move them off their ancestral land. However, Brown does not generate much pity for his characters even when the sinister government project Black Star takes over their lives. This book is worth reading for its beautiful, lyrical writing and for its depictions of Scots as complex people driven by their inner demons, like everyone else on this planet.
March 11, 2016
A week in the lives of the multifarious inhabitants of a fictional community on a tiny Orkney island. A novel I’d never heard of, first published in 1972, picked for discussion at a literature group I belong to. In her introduction to the 2004 Polygon edition, Ali Smith omits to say how funny it is. Indeed she’s at pains to emphasise that it is ‘a profoundly bleak novel’. So I began reading with considerable prejudice, intending to get a flavour and to stop after 30 pages or so. Instead I was soon completely beguiled. I smiled constantly and laughed out loud at least twice. A wonderful book, with lots of compelling storylines ranging in scope from high farce to gifted poetics, but never feeling pretentious.
August 21, 2022
Enigmatic. An authentic and poetically written depiction of a remote community, with rich characterisations and back stories occupies the large part of this novel. This sets up the horror of the rapid destruction at the hands of an anonymous organisation (Black Star), which itself ends as an abandoned project. The theme seems to be the capacity of modern humans to destroy generations of history and society in needless ambition, and without care. However, we are left with a sense of optimism as there is hope of regeneration. The writing is very picturesque, and includes many new words (both new to me, and new to the dictionary!). I've always meant to read one of this author's books, and am glad I got around to it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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October 1, 2014First read George Mackay Brown's Greenvoe in the '70's - and it became a much loved part of my life - a Scot 'exiled' in Lancashire. Eventually I found Yorkshire and a new (old) copy of 'Greenvoe' thru Abebooks...
It really is poetry and the man was a master storyteller....
It really is poetry and the man was a master storyteller....
August 9, 2012
The fictitious community at its most fascinating. Mystical, poetic and precise, GMB brings characters together in a consistently revealing way.
October 23, 2025
Thirty years ago, I became acquainted with the work of Orkney poet and novelist George Mackay Brown and I have been fascinated by him ever since. His writing conjures up the remote beauty of the islands, but his genius is for moving backward and forwards in time, describing the haunted landscape of Orkney as a living force in the lives of its inhabitants. The ruins of Pictish battlements and burial mounds, ancient stone circles, and the unchanged seasonal rhythms of farmers and fishermen create a cyclical rather than linear sense of change. Like his mentor, the great Scottish poet Edwin Muir, Brown believed human experience is best understood by charting the repeating patterns of myth rather than accumulating the vast details of history. Or perhaps, as Aristotle says in chapter nine of the Poetics, he believed that poetry is of graver import than history.
First published in 1972, Greenvoe was the first of Brown’s novels and covers a single week in the life of a doomed community on the fictional island of Hellya. Brown was less interested in creating a narrative arc than in evoking the deeply flawed, but somehow beautiful lives of those who remain on Hellya, years after it had ceased to function as a community. There is Alice Voar, the mother of seven children by seven different fathers whose beauty and prolific fecundity draw men to her almost against their will. Elderly Elizabeth McKee, the widowed mother of the island’s Presbyterian minister, spends her days in an imaginary courtroom filled with prosecuting attorneys and witnesses who recount, in excruciating detail, her small but damning sins. Her brilliant but alcoholic son Simon, sent to Hellya because his drinking made him unfit for a more conventional parish, hides his addiction in plain sight but seems an appropriate shepherd for a flock made up of adulterers, gossips and petty cheats.
Among the other characters is the large and sometimes hysterically combative Ellen Kerston who struggles to rear her children as her lazy, resentful, and deceitful husband drinks away the proceeds of his occasional lobstering in the local bar. Ivan Westray is the devastatingly handsome but cruelly misogynistic ferryman whose boat, the Skua, provides the main link between Hellya and the outside world. And finally, there is the Skarf, perhaps the most autobiographical character in the novel, whose irascible personality, radical politics, and poetic renderings of the island’s history and culture fascinate the locals as they drink counterfeit whiskey at the island’s only hostelry.
But as the reader comes to know and even like these strange and eccentric folk, the mysterious activity of a nameless visitor to Hellya begins to cast an ominous shadow over the whole community. In an epistolary narrative section, an Indian peddler named Dewas Singh describes a chance encounter with the mystery guest. Typing tirelessly at his desk which is neatly ordered with piles of notecards, the man appears to be compiling a highly detailed bureaucratic study that will threaten the very existence of what remains of Greenvoe. Mindlessly intent on his notes and calculations, the man doesn’t see Singh at all but instead stares through him at dates on a calendar before returning to his typewriter. “He is a bureaucrat,” Singh writes. “He is Western man arriving at a foreseen end. I see it now. He rules the world with a card index file.”
Brown’s decision to place these words, not in the mouth of an islander, but rather in the letter of a man familiar with the faceless cruelty of British colonial bureaucracy, is a powerful statement about internal forms of colonialism that were transforming the traditional life of remote places like Orkney into something “uniform” and “tasteless”, a society where “hands cannot have enough of possessing.” The wondrously eccentric, if tainted, faces of the islanders are to be replaced by “a rigid unseeing mask” carved from “the same precise mould and gazes.” The inhabitants of Hellya, he seems to say, are utterly powerless to stop a process that will pitilessly sweep their community and their culture away without a single look back. The worship of “the Word” will give way to the worship of “the Number”.
It would be easy enough to dismiss Brown as nostalgic or naively conservative in his embrace of Orkney’s ancient cultural traditions, but it would be an oversimplification of his vision. He is ruthlessly skeptical about modern shibboleths of progress, technological or otherwise, but this novel suggests belief in a deeper dynamic of life, death, and resurrection that prevents the permanent erasure of any human culture or tradition. In the words of a strange island harvest ritual performed in stages throughout the book, “we have brought life and blessing to the kingdom of winter . . . however long it endures, that kingdom, a night a season or a thousand ages. The word has been found. Now we will eat and drink together and be glad.”
First published in 1972, Greenvoe was the first of Brown’s novels and covers a single week in the life of a doomed community on the fictional island of Hellya. Brown was less interested in creating a narrative arc than in evoking the deeply flawed, but somehow beautiful lives of those who remain on Hellya, years after it had ceased to function as a community. There is Alice Voar, the mother of seven children by seven different fathers whose beauty and prolific fecundity draw men to her almost against their will. Elderly Elizabeth McKee, the widowed mother of the island’s Presbyterian minister, spends her days in an imaginary courtroom filled with prosecuting attorneys and witnesses who recount, in excruciating detail, her small but damning sins. Her brilliant but alcoholic son Simon, sent to Hellya because his drinking made him unfit for a more conventional parish, hides his addiction in plain sight but seems an appropriate shepherd for a flock made up of adulterers, gossips and petty cheats.
Among the other characters is the large and sometimes hysterically combative Ellen Kerston who struggles to rear her children as her lazy, resentful, and deceitful husband drinks away the proceeds of his occasional lobstering in the local bar. Ivan Westray is the devastatingly handsome but cruelly misogynistic ferryman whose boat, the Skua, provides the main link between Hellya and the outside world. And finally, there is the Skarf, perhaps the most autobiographical character in the novel, whose irascible personality, radical politics, and poetic renderings of the island’s history and culture fascinate the locals as they drink counterfeit whiskey at the island’s only hostelry.
But as the reader comes to know and even like these strange and eccentric folk, the mysterious activity of a nameless visitor to Hellya begins to cast an ominous shadow over the whole community. In an epistolary narrative section, an Indian peddler named Dewas Singh describes a chance encounter with the mystery guest. Typing tirelessly at his desk which is neatly ordered with piles of notecards, the man appears to be compiling a highly detailed bureaucratic study that will threaten the very existence of what remains of Greenvoe. Mindlessly intent on his notes and calculations, the man doesn’t see Singh at all but instead stares through him at dates on a calendar before returning to his typewriter. “He is a bureaucrat,” Singh writes. “He is Western man arriving at a foreseen end. I see it now. He rules the world with a card index file.”
Brown’s decision to place these words, not in the mouth of an islander, but rather in the letter of a man familiar with the faceless cruelty of British colonial bureaucracy, is a powerful statement about internal forms of colonialism that were transforming the traditional life of remote places like Orkney into something “uniform” and “tasteless”, a society where “hands cannot have enough of possessing.” The wondrously eccentric, if tainted, faces of the islanders are to be replaced by “a rigid unseeing mask” carved from “the same precise mould and gazes.” The inhabitants of Hellya, he seems to say, are utterly powerless to stop a process that will pitilessly sweep their community and their culture away without a single look back. The worship of “the Word” will give way to the worship of “the Number”.
It would be easy enough to dismiss Brown as nostalgic or naively conservative in his embrace of Orkney’s ancient cultural traditions, but it would be an oversimplification of his vision. He is ruthlessly skeptical about modern shibboleths of progress, technological or otherwise, but this novel suggests belief in a deeper dynamic of life, death, and resurrection that prevents the permanent erasure of any human culture or tradition. In the words of a strange island harvest ritual performed in stages throughout the book, “we have brought life and blessing to the kingdom of winter . . . however long it endures, that kingdom, a night a season or a thousand ages. The word has been found. Now we will eat and drink together and be glad.”
May 2, 2022
Of George Mackay Brown, a native of Stromness in Orkney, Wikipedia says “he is considered one of the great Scottish poets of the 20th century.” He nevertheless also wrote plays and prose. This novel, Greenvoe, is in the list of 100 best Scottish Books. While showing many of the characteristics of Scottish writing - the descriptions of landscape and, here, seascapes, a sense of things lost, the pervasiveness of Calvinism - Greenvoe is also distinctly Orcadian.
The novel is set mainly in the titular village on the fictional island of Hellya and follows the lives of its inhabitants over the course of six days, focusing on each in turn. Over time this builds up into a convincing portrait of the village and island life but one of the drawbacks of Brown’s approach is that before we have had the opportunity to get to know them well we are thrown over twenty named characters in the first few pages thus making keeping track difficult to begin with.
The population includes three fishermen, the wastrel Bert Kerston whose wife Ellen feels much put-upon; Samuel Whaness, married to Rachel who bemoans her childlessness and The Skarf (always capitalised) who tells stories of the island’s history in the hotel bar every night. There is a concupiscent ferryman, Ivan Westray; hotel-keeper Bill Scorradale, who substitutes the whisky; an alcoholic minister, Simon McKee, whose mother, racked with guilt, daily imagines her trial on various charges; the local posh girl, Inga Fortin-Bell, home for the holidays; shopkeeper Joseph Evie and his wife Olive; the frustrated schoolmistress Miss Inverary; Alice Voar, “Every man in Hellya has lain with her,” the mother of seven children (each with a different father); elderly Ben and Bella Budge; meths drinker Timmy Folster; and a mysterious hotel guest who sits typing away all day in his room. On the third day the travelling salesman Johnny Singh arrives to make the annual rounds. This section, entirely narrated from his point of view in the form of a letter to his uncle Pannadas - the usual salesman - gives an additional perspective. In it he says, “The island is full of ghosts.” This is a foreshadowing. For like many classic Scottish novels Greenvoe is an elegy. The island life shown here is on its way out - and not merely due to the Government project, Dark Star, which arrives to hollow out the land and cover it with wire fencing. Each chapter of the book (bar the last) covers a single day and ends with a description of the (all different) initiation rites of the Ancient Mystery of The Horsemen.
In her introduction Ali Smith suggests that the core of the book is in the one character who never sets foot in Greenvoe, Mrs McKee’s niece Winifred Melville, who has an illegitimate child, refuses to marry the father, becomes a Catholic and makes a living writing novels. This would be to neglect how much island life itself is a pervasive aspect of the narrative, the almost impossibility of true privacy, the inability to avoid gossip, the depredations of the modern world.
To my mind it is Mrs McKee herself who is the fulcrum. In one of his perorations her imaginary prosecutor (in fact Mrs McKee’s conscience) tells us, “'Become a Catholic,' said Aunt Flora. 'What’s good about that? If you ask me it’s worse than the illegitimate child.' Hers is, thank God, the authentic, affirming voice of religious Scotland.” Describing an incident in which Mrs McKee allowed Winnie to shelter from the rain in a Catholic Church he adds, “Mrs McKee - whose hand plucked an innocent girl out of a Highland rainstorm into - Lord have mercy on this poor Scotland of ours - the abode of The Scarlet Woman.” She it was too who introduced her son to drink by way of a medicinal toddy. Such are the scars Calvinism inflicts on the true believer.
Yet Brown also tells us, “The essence of love is pain; deep in the heart of love is a terrible wound.” Perhaps it is this pain, this wound, that Calvinism seeks, on our behalves, to avoid. Literature (thankfully?) does not.
The novel is set mainly in the titular village on the fictional island of Hellya and follows the lives of its inhabitants over the course of six days, focusing on each in turn. Over time this builds up into a convincing portrait of the village and island life but one of the drawbacks of Brown’s approach is that before we have had the opportunity to get to know them well we are thrown over twenty named characters in the first few pages thus making keeping track difficult to begin with.
The population includes three fishermen, the wastrel Bert Kerston whose wife Ellen feels much put-upon; Samuel Whaness, married to Rachel who bemoans her childlessness and The Skarf (always capitalised) who tells stories of the island’s history in the hotel bar every night. There is a concupiscent ferryman, Ivan Westray; hotel-keeper Bill Scorradale, who substitutes the whisky; an alcoholic minister, Simon McKee, whose mother, racked with guilt, daily imagines her trial on various charges; the local posh girl, Inga Fortin-Bell, home for the holidays; shopkeeper Joseph Evie and his wife Olive; the frustrated schoolmistress Miss Inverary; Alice Voar, “Every man in Hellya has lain with her,” the mother of seven children (each with a different father); elderly Ben and Bella Budge; meths drinker Timmy Folster; and a mysterious hotel guest who sits typing away all day in his room. On the third day the travelling salesman Johnny Singh arrives to make the annual rounds. This section, entirely narrated from his point of view in the form of a letter to his uncle Pannadas - the usual salesman - gives an additional perspective. In it he says, “The island is full of ghosts.” This is a foreshadowing. For like many classic Scottish novels Greenvoe is an elegy. The island life shown here is on its way out - and not merely due to the Government project, Dark Star, which arrives to hollow out the land and cover it with wire fencing. Each chapter of the book (bar the last) covers a single day and ends with a description of the (all different) initiation rites of the Ancient Mystery of The Horsemen.
In her introduction Ali Smith suggests that the core of the book is in the one character who never sets foot in Greenvoe, Mrs McKee’s niece Winifred Melville, who has an illegitimate child, refuses to marry the father, becomes a Catholic and makes a living writing novels. This would be to neglect how much island life itself is a pervasive aspect of the narrative, the almost impossibility of true privacy, the inability to avoid gossip, the depredations of the modern world.
To my mind it is Mrs McKee herself who is the fulcrum. In one of his perorations her imaginary prosecutor (in fact Mrs McKee’s conscience) tells us, “'Become a Catholic,' said Aunt Flora. 'What’s good about that? If you ask me it’s worse than the illegitimate child.' Hers is, thank God, the authentic, affirming voice of religious Scotland.” Describing an incident in which Mrs McKee allowed Winnie to shelter from the rain in a Catholic Church he adds, “Mrs McKee - whose hand plucked an innocent girl out of a Highland rainstorm into - Lord have mercy on this poor Scotland of ours - the abode of The Scarlet Woman.” She it was too who introduced her son to drink by way of a medicinal toddy. Such are the scars Calvinism inflicts on the true believer.
Yet Brown also tells us, “The essence of love is pain; deep in the heart of love is a terrible wound.” Perhaps it is this pain, this wound, that Calvinism seeks, on our behalves, to avoid. Literature (thankfully?) does not.
November 8, 2025
A remarkable regional novel in a mythic attire. The characters are fablelike types: the gossiping woman, the drunkard, the voluptuous seductress, the spinster schoolteacher, the village idiot, the local "intellectual"... Everybody is defined by one dominant trait, often with moral overtones, yet none feel merely symbolic. Their drunkennesses, selfishnesses, self-delusions, and maliciousnesses are not abstract, instead they are grounded and recognizable, and therefore as ugly and depressing as their non-fictional realizations. The island’s life is coarse, repetitive, and small.
The language is bare and rhythmic. Most striking device are the repetitions. As the waves of the sea repeat, so do the days repeat, the sentences repeat, the situations repeat. No pastoral celebration of simple island virtue; instead a quiet reckoning with human limitation. There is no one to admire, no relationship to celebrate, no hope of better future to be found. And yet somehow the novel never turns cynical. I did not end with dejection about human evil, but with grief for the bleakness human life.
Greenvoe finds meaning in the bleakness I think. A steady gaze at the worn surfaces and misery of communal life which teases out the residue of the sacred within.
The language is bare and rhythmic. Most striking device are the repetitions. As the waves of the sea repeat, so do the days repeat, the sentences repeat, the situations repeat. No pastoral celebration of simple island virtue; instead a quiet reckoning with human limitation. There is no one to admire, no relationship to celebrate, no hope of better future to be found. And yet somehow the novel never turns cynical. I did not end with dejection about human evil, but with grief for the bleakness human life.
Greenvoe finds meaning in the bleakness I think. A steady gaze at the worn surfaces and misery of communal life which teases out the residue of the sacred within.
June 25, 2018
There are rough edges around this, Brown's first novel, but -- by the book's end -- you have travelled successfully to his preferred destination: a mythic vision of human community and historical inhabitation of the remote Orkney islands.
I found the fractured, multiply-styled narrative particularly compelling as a chamber in which to voice the community's own plurality of stories. And, as many here have noted, the shocking emergence of modernity's resource extraction apparatus is only a sensational conclusion to the village's tales, and not the central narrative contention in these pages.
Some of the more pronounced elements have dated: the chapter voiced by the Indian salesman toes a very thin line, while a scene of sexual assault plays perhaps too fast and loose with apologizing for toxic masculinity. Nevertheless, Brown's inclusive vision is stronger for considering gendered relationships, racial prejudice, and communal relationships such as those produced by difference, and his narratives sides always with its characters amid their struggles and complexities.
There is much here of love, but most of all, Brown's sweetbitter love. A novel to enjoy many times over.
I found the fractured, multiply-styled narrative particularly compelling as a chamber in which to voice the community's own plurality of stories. And, as many here have noted, the shocking emergence of modernity's resource extraction apparatus is only a sensational conclusion to the village's tales, and not the central narrative contention in these pages.
Some of the more pronounced elements have dated: the chapter voiced by the Indian salesman toes a very thin line, while a scene of sexual assault plays perhaps too fast and loose with apologizing for toxic masculinity. Nevertheless, Brown's inclusive vision is stronger for considering gendered relationships, racial prejudice, and communal relationships such as those produced by difference, and his narratives sides always with its characters amid their struggles and complexities.
There is much here of love, but most of all, Brown's sweetbitter love. A novel to enjoy many times over.
March 25, 2025
I adore Beside The Ocean of Time, George Mackay Brown's valedictory novel and a similar, and similarly autobiographical, concept, albeit it has a happier ending — shaped no doubt by its author's life experiences and increasingly Catholicised inner life.
But this, I must concede, is better. It's tortured and desperate and almost gothic at times (the travails of poor Mrs McKee twist her into a kind of Mrs Havisham figure) but it's always borne on the breast of the Orkney-forged cadence that carries GMB's short stories and which unites myriad interpersonal stories with a deep familiarity with the landscape and the threat of its ruin. I think it was written at the peak of his writing abilities — soon after his landmark short-story collecting A Time to Keep — and it has aged tremendously well. In fact, I think GMB is someone who should have particular relevance when we look at the climate emergency. His work presages the disaster facing island communities. He is not without hope, despite the bleakness of his depression.
I think Greenvoe is an exemplary novel, forever readable, forever both compulsive and compelling. A classic of contemporary Scottish ficti0n.
But this, I must concede, is better. It's tortured and desperate and almost gothic at times (the travails of poor Mrs McKee twist her into a kind of Mrs Havisham figure) but it's always borne on the breast of the Orkney-forged cadence that carries GMB's short stories and which unites myriad interpersonal stories with a deep familiarity with the landscape and the threat of its ruin. I think it was written at the peak of his writing abilities — soon after his landmark short-story collecting A Time to Keep — and it has aged tremendously well. In fact, I think GMB is someone who should have particular relevance when we look at the climate emergency. His work presages the disaster facing island communities. He is not without hope, despite the bleakness of his depression.
I think Greenvoe is an exemplary novel, forever readable, forever both compulsive and compelling. A classic of contemporary Scottish ficti0n.
May 27, 2021
Written in the 1970s and set just a decade or so before that (though it could be any time in the last century, time has in effect stood still), this is the story of a small Orcadian village, the only community on the tiny fictitious island of Hellya, told over 5 successive days, each day with a chapter.
All members of the community are represented, from the wild misogynistic ferryman to the cunning and cruel children and the raucous patrons drinking and singing in the Scorradale Inn. It is an interlinked series of tales with the backbone of one fisherman (turned writer)’s narration; The Skarf reads the history of his island to his neighbours in the bar one evening.
But there’s a sad and deep sixth chapter, as Hellya meets its destiny, forced by foreign influence into being spoilt and robbed.
Evident as in all his work, are Mackay Brown’s descriptions of simple island life through his hypnotic prose, which verges at times into poetry. The last four pages are particularly powerful and needed, from me at least, a slow re-read.
All members of the community are represented, from the wild misogynistic ferryman to the cunning and cruel children and the raucous patrons drinking and singing in the Scorradale Inn. It is an interlinked series of tales with the backbone of one fisherman (turned writer)’s narration; The Skarf reads the history of his island to his neighbours in the bar one evening.
But there’s a sad and deep sixth chapter, as Hellya meets its destiny, forced by foreign influence into being spoilt and robbed.
Evident as in all his work, are Mackay Brown’s descriptions of simple island life through his hypnotic prose, which verges at times into poetry. The last four pages are particularly powerful and needed, from me at least, a slow re-read.
June 4, 2023
Having seen a BBC Alba documentary on this book, I was keen to read it and am very glad that I did.
Although the narrative considers the effect of a sinister military installation on a remote community, much of the book paints a picture of life on the island prior to the development, which only appears at the end. He paints a compelling picture of those who inhabit the inland, as well as some of their lives on the mainland. Woven through this is a secret society.
As would be expected from this author, the book is beautifully written, poetic at times. This caused me to reflect on how many edits/re-writes he had to do.
An interesting and thought-provoking book examining an inter-woven rural community and what happens when it is ripped apart. In some ways it reminded me of the 1980's film 'Ill Fares the Land' regarding the degradation of the St Kildan community.
Although the narrative considers the effect of a sinister military installation on a remote community, much of the book paints a picture of life on the island prior to the development, which only appears at the end. He paints a compelling picture of those who inhabit the inland, as well as some of their lives on the mainland. Woven through this is a secret society.
As would be expected from this author, the book is beautifully written, poetic at times. This caused me to reflect on how many edits/re-writes he had to do.
An interesting and thought-provoking book examining an inter-woven rural community and what happens when it is ripped apart. In some ways it reminded me of the 1980's film 'Ill Fares the Land' regarding the degradation of the St Kildan community.
February 28, 2020
Like Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge this book is filled with quirky characters. Unlike Olive Kitteridge, this book's characters are neither memorable nor engaging. In fact, the entire book is a tortuous drag through the minutiae of boring lives in a boring village in the Orkney Islands. No, wait - something does happen - a construction project displaces all the inhabitants of the island and then construction ceases (it seems). But this occurs in the last quarter of the book and neither the reason for the construction project nor the reason for it ceasing is described in any great detail. A terrible waste of time. More fun cleaning out the attic or practicing scales on the piano. Avoid.
August 18, 2021
Greenvoe is probably a book I would not have read, had it not been for the fact that I needed to read something Scottish for a book group! I was ready to abandon it after 40 pages, and then suddenly, the characters started to gel, and the writing became charming.
The book entails one week in the life of inhabitants of a small Orkney island. Like any island community (mine included), there are oddballs, meanies, off-balanced folk, which makes the meandering story that much more intriguing.
The final chapter is a shock, but creates a conclusion that makes sense.
Recommended, but the reader might need to be tenacious!
The book entails one week in the life of inhabitants of a small Orkney island. Like any island community (mine included), there are oddballs, meanies, off-balanced folk, which makes the meandering story that much more intriguing.
The final chapter is a shock, but creates a conclusion that makes sense.
Recommended, but the reader might need to be tenacious!
September 14, 2024
An interesting find of a book. I bought it in Scotland on my yearly trip. Buying a book has become a tradition to bring with me. This book is full of beautiful writing. It is very raw, realistic and alive, as if you are there with the people on the page. I annotated it a lot. Some stunning language used and observations is superb. I loved all the characters and I also loved the God thread weaved through the narrative in a wonderful way. It is just one of those rare finds of a book, different writing like nothing else I had read before.
February 8, 2018
George Mackay Brown's work is a pleasure to read. Stark and beautiful, it is prose that reads like poetry. In this wrenching tale, the Orcadian landscape and seascapes swirl, alive as each finely-hewn character at the heart of a vanishing way of life. This work is extraordinary, and inspired another extraordinary work of art in turn, Peter Maxwell Davies's "Black Pentecost," for mezzo-soprano, baritone, and orchestra. Dive deeply into both. The rewards are many.
February 17, 2020
The majority of the book plays as a slow, building narrative which creates the punch of the final chapters. I love the mundanity of normal life. Mackay Brown is the king of writing about such. I see other reviews about his writing saying that it's is boring and 'about nothing'. How incredibly shallow. His stories have meaning for the people in the story. Interact with the feelings of the characters and put a little work into understanding the book and it's context.
The final few chapters made me feel such incredible emotion. An amazing book.
The final few chapters made me feel such incredible emotion. An amazing book.
September 2, 2021
Another rather odd but very worthwhile read. You have to take a slight step back as the narrative style chops and changes somewhat, and with no real explanation given for Operation Dark Star it felt more like a fable than I had expected, but still a beautifully wrought, atmospheric description of a dying rural community before its sudden demise at the hand of a shady and sinister development. Another author I’m looking forward to reading more of..
March 24, 2024
A deep immersion into a fictional Orkney village in which you'll get to know each of the inhabitants to the core. Witty and beautiful, this book makes me proud of Scottish literature. I'll want to re-read it in the future as there were too many characters to really grasp the fullness of each in one read. Thank you Jessie, the accordion player from Papa.
November 28, 2016
What a disaster of a book. After reading his other book - Beside the Ocean of Time which I enjoyed this was a big disappointment.
The two stars are for the few enjoyable parts in the book but on the whole it was dire.
I see it has an average score of 4.02 but I didn't get it despite all the hype.
The two stars are for the few enjoyable parts in the book but on the whole it was dire.
I see it has an average score of 4.02 but I didn't get it despite all the hype.
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