Butcher's Broom [Hardcover]

Neil M. Gunn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1994

Butcher's Broom is one of Gunn's epic recreations of a key period in Scottish history, the Highland clearances of the nineteenth century. Gunn captures the spirit of Highland culture, the sense of community and tradition, in a manner that speaks to our own time. At the centre of the novel is Dark Mairi who embodies what is most vital and lasting in mankind, whose values encapsulate what was lost in Scotland to make way for progress while her land was cleared to make way for wintering sheep.

The weaving of traditional ballads with the lives of Gunn's characters evokes the community that must be destroyed. Elie lost among strangers with her fatherless child while Seonaid defies the invaders, fighting them from the roof of her croft. This is among the most moving of Gunn's works and establishes the belief in a transcendent spirituality that would be so dominant in his later work.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Originally published in Scotland in 1934, this tale by the author of the well-received books Morning Tide , chronicles the demise of Scotland's highland culture. A marvel of rich language and mythic storytelling, the book is set in the early 19th century and centers on the figure of Dark Mairi, a widow and healer in a small, close-knit community. Dark Mairi and her neighbors have lived and worked on the Riasgan estate for generations when the absentee landlord evicts them to make room for herds of sheep. In prose heavily laced with Gaelic language and poetry, Gunn depicts the rustic Highlanders in the fundamental human business of love and hate, birth and death. Unfortunately, he tends to proselytize when outlining the political and economic forces underlying the mass expulsion of Highland tenant farmers and his portrayals of the landlord and others involved in the dirty business of dispossession verge on caricature of the villainous. Yet he writes with a fierceness that inflames this personal story of one poor, simple woman and her neighbors in a shattering epic of social destruction. Gunn died in 1973.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Gunn, who died in 1973, wrote more than two dozen novels (e.g., Morning Tide, LJ 1/93); Butcher's Broom was originally published in Scotland in 1934 and is now receiving its first U.S. publication. The novel is set during the Highland clearances of the early 19th century, when landowners evicted their tenants to make way for flocks of sheep. Gunn focuses a loving eye on the culture of the Highland Gaels, demonstrating in heartrending detail the effect of the clearances upon the crofters. With a lush style reminiscent of the Romantics themselves, Gunn ennobles the crofters and stirs the reader's wrath against the sheer inhumanity of the whole clearance movement, which literally destroyed lives for the sake of "progress." Though the density of his prose can often be a challenge, Gunn nevertheless has written a stirring, rewarding, and passionate tale. Recommended for large fiction collections.
- Dean James, Houston Acad. of Medicine/Texas Medical Ctr. Lib.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 429 pages
• Publisher: Walker & Co (March 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802712916
• ISBN-13: 978-0802712912
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,994,764 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Sweeping the Highlands of Scotland, January 7, 2008

By 

Eleanor A. Gunn (McMinnville, Oregon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Butcher's Broom (Hardcover)

Neil M. Gunn's narrative prose describes the lives of the people in the Strath of Kildonan during the Highland Clearances in 1813. The characters, Dark Mairi of the Shore, her grandson Davie, the lovely Elie and their neighbors live and love as their ancestors have for hundreds of years. Their keen sense of humor, attachment to the land and struggles to thrive are mixed with Gunn's thought provoking descritions of the land and people. "...sea-water readily curls over and breaks on the shore of the mind" gives us a glimpse of Mairi, who had been born by the sea, but now lives in the Strath (valley). Davie's clowning and joking with Colin, Elie's lover, creates "...a moment of divine ease when live bubbles up clear at the source." Their daily life is interrupted by progress as the man who owns the whole of Sutherland, an Englishman who married a Scottish Countess, plans to "improve" his property by raising sheep for wool and meat. There is no room for thousands of sheep and hundreds of people, so the people must go.