Fifty years ago Gavin Maxwell went to live in an abandoned house on a shingle beach on the west coast of Scotland. A haven for wildlife - he named his home Camusfearna and settled there with the otters Mij, Edal and Teko. "Ring of Bright Water" chronicles Gavin Maxwell's first ten years with the otters and touched the hearts of readers the world over, brilliantly evoking life with these playful animals in this natural paradise. Two further volumes followed bringing the story full circle telling of the difficult last years and the final abandonment of the settlement. For the first time the entire trilogy is available in a single narrative in this beautifully presented book.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Gavin Maxwell's trilogy is essential reading" - Sunday Herald"
About the Author
Gavin Maxwell was born in 1914. In 1945 he bought the small Hebridean island of Soay and tried to establish a shark fisher. This resulted in his first book Harpoon at a Venture. His other books include Ring of Bright Water, which sold more than a million copies, The Rocks Remain, The House of Elrig and Raven Seek Thy Brother. Gavin Maxwell died in 1969.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic.,
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This review is from: Ring of Bright Water Trilogy (Paperback)
The story captures the essence of the Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland. The beauty and the brutality. The second and third books in the trilogy provide an honesty that leaves you with a respect for and a desire to know more about a man who lived this remarkable life. You will of course fall in love with the otters who allowed people to share their lives for better and for worse.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Deeply Affecting,
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This review is from: Ring of Bright Water Trilogy (Paperback)
A difficult book (or trilogy of abridged books) to review, this - I suppose I should start by conceding that, despite the dark moments, the catastrophes, the sadnesses, the nature red in tooth and claw moments and the man blood-stained with gun and whatever comes to hand moments, this trilogy made me laugh out loud with joy and merriment more than any book I can remember reading since adolescence. The writing is superbly Thoreauvian at its best, particularly the descriptive passages of natural landscapes and, of course, otters! Maxwell doesn't pack the Transcendentalist reflective heft of Thoreau (What writer does?). But this is a good thing. I can't imagine Thoreau falling in love with an otter and writing so deftly about both them and his feelings toward them.
Indeed, reading this book is more than a little like riding an emotional rollercoaster. But it is not in any way what is called "sentimental" - a word which, in so many cases, is simply what those lacking in emotional depth are wont to term the writings of those who possess such depths. The writer is an Oxford-educated stylist and man-of-learning whose love for the natural world and the wild creatures that inhabit it is deep and abiding. What else can I say? Well, there is a philosophical subtext here. On the first page, Maxwell writes that, "I had yet to learn that happiness can neither be achieved nor held by endeavour." Happiness is something one encounters - A hard lesson, but one which the reader (this one, in any event) feels he has learned, along with Maxwell, at the end.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hollow Ring,
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This review is from: Ring of Bright Water Trilogy (Paperback)
I first thought that the title " Ring of Bright Water " ( taken from a poem ) was a reference to the author`s love of Mij , his second otter. But, from a line in the book he indicates it to be a love of nature/life his home in the wilds of Scotland and its animal inhabitants. I rate the trilogy (edited version) higher than the unedited first volume as it is free of most of the unnecessary descriptive details of the landscape, and also because Gavin learned to better provide safety for his animal friends ( tho he does take part in a hare hunt, really unforgiveable ). That said the pages are crammed with the miserable deaths of many animals under his " care ", and they all seem to take place when he is away. All this leads up to ultimate disappointments and disaster despite massive efforts to set things right by the author and for me it shows most of all that life and the force behind it ( the underlying reality ) is indifferent to suffering. Never has a voice spoken to me across time and space as has that of Gavin Maxwell. The books leave me distressed.
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