Customer Reviews

For the Islands I Sing: An Autobiography

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GM Brown did not wish this book to be published until after his death. The book makes it clear that he was a person who did not like to talk about himself. He was a self-effacing and extremely humble genius. I am not suprised that several readers had trouble finding Brown here. Brown sought most of all to be a member of his community in Stromness. He was a writer by trade as others were fishermen or cobblers. Brown's observations on life in Orkney and the cycles of History are what make this book so rewarding. Readers looking for heavy self-exploration or a confessional type work will be dissappointed. As was the reader looking for a description of Orkney life. This is Brown's life and observances and influences laid out for those of us who love his work. I, for one enjoyed being able to hear Brown's reminiscences and ideas. This is wonderful reading and necessary for those who want added insight into Brown's work and philosophy. Honest, humble and powerful. A fitting final work from one of the 20th century's greatest writers.

I too failed to find GMB in his autobiography, and I had read some of his fiction and poetry first. Reading this book you learn of some things that happened to GMB, but you never end up feeling like you got to know the man at all. His style of writing in this autobiography is consistent with his style of writing fiction, but it's less satisfying in the context of autobiography.

The cover of this book describes it as an Autobiography but it is more of a collection of jottings in which MacKay Brown tells us exactly what he chooses to and refuses to allow us more than the wee-est of peeps into what he really thinks.

No harm in that and he is honest enough to admit that he was a very strange character indeed who lived with his mother in a council house in Orkney for most of his life, apart from several years in Edinburgh, and never formed a stable relationship with a woman.

"I never fell in love with anybody, and no woman ever fell in love with me," as he puts it. He then adds somewhat unconvincingly: "I used to wonder about this gap in my experience, but it never unduly worried me."

He also had serious problems with tuberculosis and submitted to Scotland's main illness, i.e. alcoholism although he survived them both.

At the same time, he misses the opportunity to share his experiences with the leading figures in the Scottish literary revival.

He socialized with writers like Hugh MacDiarmid whom he memorably describes as the "great king of Scottish letters" and "a kilted man with a terrier-head".

He drops a few comments on poets like Sydney Goodsir Smith and Norman MacCaig. However, we can only sigh in frustration at what we could have learned about this crowd of literary talent who gathered at the Abbotsford pub or Milne's Bar in Edinburgh all those decades ago.

I was quite interested in his comments on how he eventually converted to Catholicism from Presbyterianism, a road seldom travelled, particularly in the west coast of Scotland where I come from and where, alas, sectarianism is still rife.

Otherwise, much of his comments and views on literature and modern life are rather banal, apologetic and of little interest.

Having said that, I am sure admirers of MacKay Brown will enjoy this work.

There is a biography of him by Maggie Fergusson which fleshes out his bond with a woman in Edinburgh called Stella Cartwright whom he mentions in this book, thereby casting doubt on his claim never to have had any romantic relationship.

I could not with any certainty find Brown in these pages. Having never read his poems, stories, or novels, I didn't have any preconceived notion for whom I was looking. But I think I only got fleeting glimpses, and I am not sure of whom. I know I didn't find Orcadians, for whom I was definitely looking. So I will try a book of his verse, a collection of stories, and a novel. If I don't, I will be left with the impression of a somewhat self-absorbed, more than somewhat lazy, bit more than average talent.