I read Scott's The Pirate for ATY 2019 topic 4: a book with a criminal character. Here's part of the Amazon review: The novel is set in Orkney and Shetland in 1689, and for the northern isles the 'Glorious Revolution' actually means the beginning of the cultural dominance of Scotland and the advent of English power. Scott draws heavily on the diary he kept on his tour round the lighthouses of Scotland in 1814. In both the diary and the novel he weighs the real need to improve the agricultural methods of this barely subsistence economy against the force of tradition and the human cost of rapid change. The plot hinges on an illicit relationship, and is driven by dark men twisted by their criminality, an obsessed woman searching for her lost son, and the murderous rivalry of two young men - a family tale which illustrates the uses and abuses of traditional lore, as well as Scott's extraordinary grasp of the literature of the north.
I'd wanted to read this book since I heard someone discuss it several years ago. It isn't one of Scott's best, but it's a good read nonetheless. It's a satisfying love story; includes several of the kinds of characters that Scott is well known for: comic, grotesque, eccentric; and has a fair - and interesting - dose of superstition. I found the historical aspects fascinating, both for its account of late 17th century Shetland, and for Scott's views on the period.
Non-Scots may find the dialogue a little daunting as a lot tends to be in dialect, but the edition I read had both explanatory notes and a glossary.
The novel is set in Orkney and Shetland in 1689, and for the northern isles the 'Glorious Revolution' actually means the beginning of the cultural dominance of Scotland and the advent of English power. Scott draws heavily on the diary he kept on his tour round the lighthouses of Scotland in 1814. In both the diary and the novel he weighs the real need to improve the agricultural methods of this barely subsistence economy against the force of tradition and the human cost of rapid change. The plot hinges on an illicit relationship, and is driven by dark men twisted by their criminality, an obsessed woman searching for her lost son, and the murderous rivalry of two young men - a family tale which illustrates the uses and abuses of traditional lore, as well as Scott's extraordinary grasp of the literature of the north.
I'd wanted to read this book since I heard someone discuss it several years ago. It isn't one of Scott's best, but it's a good read nonetheless. It's a satisfying love story; includes several of the kinds of characters that Scott is well known for: comic, grotesque, eccentric; and has a fair - and interesting - dose of superstition. I found the historical aspects fascinating, both for its account of late 17th century Shetland, and for Scott's views on the period.
Non-Scots may find the dialogue a little daunting as a lot tends to be in dialect, but the edition I read had both explanatory notes and a glossary.