Beside the Ocean of Time [Hardcover]

George MacKay Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1994

In this novel set on the fictitious island of Norday in the Orkneys, George Mackay Brown beckons us into the imaginary world of the young Thorfinn Ragnarson, the son of a crofter. In his day-dreams he relives the history of this island people, travelling back in time to join Viking adventurers at the court of the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople, then accompanying a Falstaffian knight to the battle of Bannockburn.;Thorfinn wakes to the twentieth century and a community whose way of life, steeped in legend and tradition, has remained unchanged for centuries. But as the boy grows up - and falls in love with a vivacious and mysterious stranger - the transforming effect of modern civilization brings momentous and irreversible changes to the island. During the Second World War Thorfinn finds himself in a German prisoner-of-war camp, and it is here that he discovers his gifts as a writer. Long afterwards he returns, now a successful novelist, to a deserted and battle-scarred island. Searching for the peace and freedom of mind he had in abundance as a child, he finds instead something he didn't even know he was looking for.; George Mackay Brown intertwines myth and reality to create a novel of deceptive simplicity. The story of Thorfinn and the island of Norday is a universal and profound one, rooted in the timeless landscape of the Orkneys, the inspiration of all his writing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Brown's sweet coming-of-age novel about a fantasy-prone adolescent growing up in the Orkney Islands just before WWII offers some moving passages and fine, delicate prose but is sabotaged by a paucity of plot and narrative drive. Thorfinn Ragnarson is the daydreaming son of a tenant farmer, avoiding both work and school despite the best efforts of family, friends and neighbors. Instead, the boy dreams up elaborate historical fantasies. In a series of odd yet intriguing chapters, Brown (Vinland) transforms Thorfinn into a Viking traveler, a freedom-fighter for Bonnie Prince Charlie and the colleague of a Falstaffian knight who participates in the Battle of Bannockburn. The author then hurls his protagonist into the future as Thor, who returns to the Orkneys as an adult and recalls his internment in a German POW camp, where he discovered his writing skills. Thor also reflects on the history of the islands, the links between dreaming and writing and the whims of fate. Brown's lyrical descriptions and gift for local color capture the flavor of the Orkneys (where he was born), but his thin and choppy story line undermines this otherwise worthwhile effort.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Guillermo Verdecchia is a writer, director, and actor whose work has been seen and heard across Canada and around the world. The author or co-author of, among auther works, Fronteras Americanas, The Noam Chomsky Lectures (with Daniel Brooks), and A Line in the Sand (with Marcus Youssef), he is a recipient of the Fovernor General’s Literary Award for Drama, a four-time winner of the Chalmers Canadian Play Award, as well as a recipient of Dora, Jessie, and sundry film festival awards.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Trafalgar Square; Reprint edition (June 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0719553687
• ISBN-13: 978-0719553684
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,142,259 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a worthy finalist for the 1994 Booker Prize, January 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: BESIDE THE OCEAN OF TIME (Hardcover)

George Mackay Brown placed an "idle, worthless child" in a boat to look at Time and mold and meld it with his young eyes. Thorfinn Ragnarson is the boy that sails in and out of his own world of Norday in the Orkney Islands of the 1930's. He takes the people of Norday and travels with them into ancestral pasts that far outstrip their solid, predictable day to day lives. When old Jacob Olafson dies, Thorfinn stops at the kirkyard on his way home from school. The Old Testament words, heard just the day before, ring with the gravediggers spade: "That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past." and Thorfinn builds a life for this old man. He brings baby Jacob across the sea to Norday, sees Jacob the young man board the Hudson's Bay ship, Windward, to journey to the "land of Eskimos and Indians" and return in ten years with an Indian wife. Real time runs its thread of laughter, solid Orkney logic and unexpected colour in the persons of Isa Esquoy, the small, constantly squeaking postmistress-storekeeper, Albert Laird, the joiner who crafts cradles and coffins, Mr. Simon, the droning, long-suffering schoolmaster and the Reverend Hector Drummond, a somewhat muddled minister whose mystery visitor, Sophie, appears in the homes of solitary folks and leaves a trail of laughter and love. Thorfinn, the adolescent, is stricken with an un-dying love for Sophie which surfaces only after the fields, barns and livlihoods of Norday are smothered under the necessary adjustments of war. Before that war, Thorfinn, the young man, still a solitary creature, had conjured the seal-people and spun love, marriage and dream-children from the sounds and silences of the sea. We thank you, George Mackay Brown, for those brief voyages that are the lives of men and for the whispers of melody from that "music that goes on and on, all the way from before the beginning till after the end."

5.0 out of 5 stars Beside the Ocean of Time, January 30, 2012

By 

Erling Aspelund - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Beside the Ocean of Time (Paperback)

Simply an oustanding book by George Mckay Brown just like his other books Magnus, Viking and Greenvoe. It is amazing e.g. how he spins a story around the old folktale "Woman and the sealskin". The best one of his collection and among the best I have read for a long time. Brown's love of Orkney shines though all his writings.

Erling Aspelund

3.0 out of 5 stars Good concept but thin plot, August 2, 2005

By 

Matthew S. LaBar (Piedmont, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: BESIDE THE OCEAN OF TIME (Hardcover)

Brown clearly set out with a purpose in mind with this novel, and accomplished it brilliantly. The representation of how life in the Orkneys remained unchanged for centuries until suddenly being completely uprooted was very well done. Even having no knowledge of the islands beforehand, I was able to picture them through Brown's descriptions. The masterly of the language is excellent, especially with a little flair of local dialects. Vnfortunately, the nature of Brown's purpose makes it difficult for a good plot to surround it, and the story is rather unrewarding. Early on there is an interest in what's going to happen, but as it unfolds it becomes somewhat "hmm," and no more. For this I gave it a tough rating, but I do recommend that people read it, regardless of personal interests because it does show an interesting aspect of life.

If you are like me and were drawn to this book because you heard that Thorfinn is FPP (has a fantasy prone personality), it may not be what you're looking for. The idea of Thorfinn being FPP seemed to be more to move the story and goal along, and I'm not sure if Brown actually had experience with the condition. It's possible that Thorfinn is not FPP but a kid who fantasizes a lot and outgrows it.