Night Falls on Ardnamurchan: The Twilight of a Crofting Family [Paperback]

Alasdair MacLean (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2011

SINCE ITS FIRST PUBLICATION in 1984, Night Falls in Ardnamurchan has become a classic account of the life and death of a Highland community. The author weaves his own humorous and perceptive account of crofting with extracts from his father's journal - a terse, factual and down to earth vision of the day-to-day tasks of crofting life. It is an unusual and memorable story that also illuminates the shifting, often tortuous relationships between children and their parents. Alasdair Maclean reveals his own struggle to come to terms with his background and the isolated community he left so often and to which he returned again and again. In this isolated community is seen a microcosm of something central to Scottish identity - the need to escape against the tug of home.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Marvellous; part elegy for a bitterly uneven marriage of man and nature, part excuse for unravelling his own roots' - Observer 'A master of elegant prose, and his book is a refreshing change from the usual diet of rural tales' - Sunday Tribune 'A brutally honest account of the author's family's attempt to come to grips with an unyielding earth' --The Scotsman

About the Author

BORN IN GLASGOW of Highland stock, Alasdair Maclean left school at fourteen to work in the Clydeside shipyards. National Service in the Merchant Marine followed and then service in the British and Indian Armies. He returned to Scotland to read English at Edinburgh University before returning home to Sanna in Ardnamurchan. A poet of some repute, this is his only book of non fiction.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Birlinn Ltd (June 1, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841581593
• ISBN-13: 978-1841581590
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 4.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,496,204 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Poet's View of a Dying Way of Life, July 28, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Night Falls on Ardnamurchan (Hardcover)

NIGHT FALLS ON ARDNAMURCHAN is hard to categorize--part musing, part straight biography, but with a sizable (and enjoyable) amount of autobiography thrown in as well. Publishing companies usually shy away from manuscripts that are hard for them to pigeonhole, but I guess Penguin just HAD to publish this one. It's that good.

Maclean, a poet by trade, brings his formidable powers of observation to bear on the scenery and lifestyle of the crofting community of Sanna on the Ardnamurchan Penninsula is the Western Highlands, the home of his crofter parents. Through inference and empathy, he delineates a hard way of life that was not without its own built-in rewards. He contrasts it with the easier life of those in suburb and city, never sentimentalizing the earlier way of living, but leaving us to draw the conclusion of which was the more satisfying way to spend one's days.

Maclean is intelligent and his prose is thought-provoking on nearly every page. He is occasionally exasperating and always highly opinionated--an individualist sometimes rugged, but more often all-too-humanly vulnerable. He is even at times a downright curmudgeon. But he is always a poet. This is a book to savor, to share, and to keep.