Status Updates From The Golden Bird

Having just completed The Golden Bird, the first in this collection of two novellas, I am hooked on George Mackay Brown. I only discovered him on our recent travels to Orkney and what a find! I am entranced by the lyrical beauty of his prose. It carries me back to my childhood when I would spend hours engrossed in folktales from around the world. Why had I not come across Mackay Brown before? He is a treasure.

Skua

It was thought to be an unlucky thing to say good things at the cradle of a new child. To do so would enrage the trows, the ugly misshapen earth-spirits who moved through the valley about their secret ceremonies in winter and darkness.

The Golden Bird reads as a Scottish Torgny Lindgren.