. . . IN THE HIGHLANDS SINCE TIME IMMEMORIAL

by Joanna Ostrow ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 27, 1970

Juxtaposing modern day Edinburgh with the feudal microcosm of a nearby crofting community, Miss Ostrow penetrates the ineluctable tragedy of a culture's demise. The Highlands' life, once distinguished ""with learning, with grace,"" erodes quietly under abandonment, emigration and decay. It's an old story, retold here via Callum and Mary MacDonald, an aging couple holding tight to a derelict croft in Croichan. Their half-Negro foster son Simon lives in a dingy Edinburgh flat with his white wife and their two children while Simon finishes graduate studies at the University. Mary writes that Callum has taken sick and must go into the hospital. In the clan code of the Highlands, Simon sublets his flat, takes a leave of absence and moves his family to the MacDonald croft for the long, lightless winter and wan spring. Until Callum's return, Simon and his wife Jenny struggle with the webbed communications of the local mentality--an onerous acceptance of medieval labor, abstruse humor and half-spoken allusions, their meanings lost in legend. The American graduate student who has taken Simon's flat with two ""salukis"" (an ancient breed of hunting dogs) contributes a feisty, momentous scene from the ""coursing"" season and his own brand of predatory analyses on the dying Celtic culture. What speaks through these muted exchanges, two chapters of which have already been heard in The New Yorker, is the collective Celtic voice, strangling itself in myriad sensitivities and obsolete modes. Only one American who sounds as Scottish as the others and Simon's limited four letter word vocabulary seem false.

Pub Date: March 27, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1970

Categories: FICTION