The Silver Darlings
10 best books like The Silver Darlings (Neil M. Gunn): Docherty (Coronet Books), The Sea Road, The Lighthouse Stevensons: The extraordinary story of the building of the Scottish lighthouses by the ancestors of Robert Louis Stevenson, Paradise, Electric Brae, Buddha Da, Magnus, No Mean City, Consider the Lilies, A Scots Quair: Sunset Song, Cloud Howe, Grey Granite
| Author | William McIlvanney |
| ISBN | 0340407573 |
His face made a fist at the world. The twined remnant of umbilicus projected vulnerably. Hands, feet and prick. He had come equipped for the job.
Newborn Conn Docherty, raw as a fresh wound, lies between his parents in their tenement room, with no birthright but a life's labour in the pits of his...
| Author | Margaret Elphinstone |
| ISBN | 1841951765 |
A haunting, compelling historical novel, The Sea Road is a daring retelling of the 11th-century Viking exploration of the North Atlantic from the viewpoint of one extraordinary woman. Gudrid lives at the remote edge of the known world, in a starkly beautiful landscape where the sea is the only connection...
| Author | Bella Bathurst |
| ISBN | 0006530761 |
I for one had no idea that the 14 lighthouses dotting the Scottish coast were all built by the same Stevenson family that produced Robert Louis Stevenson, Scotland's most famous novelist. But Bella Bathurst throws a powerful, revolving light into the darkness of this historical tradition.
Robert...
| Author | A.L. Kennedy |
| ISBN | 1400079454 |
Hannah Luckraft sells cardboard boxes for a living. Her family is so frustrated by her behavior they can barely stand to keep in touch with her. Each day is fueled by the promise of annihilation, the promise of a reprieve, the paradise that can only be found in a bottle. When Hannah meets Robert, a kindred...
| Author | Andrew Greig |
| ISBN | 0571212859 |
What a wonderful book this is, one of those that lingers with you long after you’ve finished reading it. It’s got a deep melancholy running through it but also lots of passion, love, and light(ish)-hearted comment on Scotland’s east/west divide. Author Andrew Greig has published books on mountaineering,...
| Author | Anne Donovan |
| ISBN | 1841954519 |
Anne Marie's dad, a Glaswegian painter and decorator, has always been game for a laugh. So when he first takes up meditation at the Buddhist Center, no one takes him seriously. But as Jimmy becomes more involved in a search for the spiritual, his beliefs start to come into conflict with the needs of his...
| Author | George Mackay Brown |
| ISBN | 0862418143 |
Seamus Heaney once remarked that George Mackay Brown passed everything “through the eye of the needle of Orkney”, those remote islands north of Scotland where he was born and spent his life. This observation is certainly true of Magnus. The novel treats of aristocratic ambition, rousing...
| Author | A. McArthur |
| ISBN | 0552075833 |
No book is more associated with the city of Glasgow than No Mean City. First published in 1935, it is the story of Johnnie Stark, son of a violent father and a downtrodden mother, the 'Razor King' of Glasgow's pre-war slum underworld, the Gorbals. The savage, near-truth descriptions, the raw character...
| Author | Iain Crichton Smith |
| ISBN | 0753812932 |
The Highland Clearances, the eviction of crofters from their homes between 1792 and the 1850s, was one of the cruellest episodes in Scotland's history. In Consider the Lilies, Iain Crichton Smith captures its impact through the thoughts and memories of an old woman who has lived all her life within...
| Author | Lewis Grassic Gibbon |
A Scots Quair is revolutionary—innovative in its form, deft and humorous in its use of the Scots language, courageous in its characterization and politics. Central to the trilogy is Chris Guthrie, one of the most remarkable female characters in modern literature. In Sunset Song, Gibbon's finest...
Michael Pendreich is curating an exhibition of photographs by his late, celebrated father Angus for the National Gallery of Photography in Edinburgh. The show will cover fifty years of Scottish life but, as he arranges the images and writes his catalogue essay, what story is Michael really trying...
| Author | George Douglas Brown |
| ISBN | 1419166867 |
Published in 1901 and described by George Douglas Brown as a brutal and bloody work , this bestselling classic was a furious response to what Brown called sentimental slop the representation of Scotland as a cozy rural idyll. It is probably semi-autobiographical Brown was illegitimate and rejected...
| Author | Robin Jenkins |
| ISBN | 1841955922 |
It’s easy to see why The Cone Gatherers is used as a set text for Higher English classes (in Scotland at least - I don’t know if this is the case elsewhere) - it’s a short but dense novel, heavy with symbolism, at times almost threatening to collapse under the weight of its symbolic and thematic density....
| Author | Kevin MacNeil |
| ISBN | 0141021608 |
‘Fuck everyone from Holden Caulfield to Bridget Jones, fuck all the American and English phoney fictions that claim to speak for us; they don’t know the likes of us exist and they never did. We are who we are because we grew up the Stornoway way. We do not live in the back of beyond, we live in the very heart...
It is the early 1970s in the Highlands of Scotland and for 16-year-old Simon Crimmons there's really not much to do. He can hang around with his pals or his first-ever girlfriend, Nikki, he can dream about a first motorbike to get him out of the Port and among the hills, but in truth he's going nowhere.
The...
| Author | Gavin Francis |
| ISBN | 1846970784 |
The stark, vast beauty of the remote Arctic Europe landscape has been the focus of human exploration for thousands of years. In this striking blend of travel writing, history and mythology, Gavin Francis offers a unique portrait of the northern fringes of Europe. His journey begins in the Shetland...
This is the world of universal future war. Faced with the threat of bombs, bacteriological warfare and poison gas, a married couple whose pacificism complels them to opt out of 'civilisation', take to the hills to live as fugitives in the wild.
Plainly and simply told, Wild Harbour charts the...
| Author | John Prebble |
| ISBN | 0140028374 |
In the terrible aftermath of the moorland battle of Culloden, the Highlanders suffered at the hands of their own clan chiefs. Following his magnificent reconstruction of Culloden, John Prebble recounts how the Highlanders were deserted and then betrayed into famine and poverty. While their chiefs...
The Redemption of Alexander Seaton
| Author | Shona MacLean |
| ISBN | 1847245056 |
This was a solid and enjoyable historical mystery set in Scotland in 1626. The main hero, Alexander Seaton, is a disgraced would-be minister of the Church of Scotland who is obsessed with guilt and tormented by his lack of faith. He's certainly a compelling character and I grew to like him more and more...
| Author | Compton Mackenzie |
| ISBN | 0140292985 |
The ancient clan spirit is not yet dead in the Scottish highlands, with Donald MacDonald of Ben Nevis ruling the roost at wild, craggy Glenbogle Castle. Woe betide those who trespass on this Chieftain's kingdom...
So when a hapless bunch of Sassenach hikers invades the glens, camping on Ben...
