| The Sun’s Net - George Mackay Brown |
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A reader coming to George Mackay Brown’s fiction for the first time would soon realise that he was also a poet. This is certainly true of The Sun’s Net, a collection of his short stories. As in his novels the pages are strewn with the kind of imagery only a poet’s eye would pick up.
Describing the passage of a ship he writes, “The prow smashed gently through the sea”, at the end of a harvest “The last of the oats went down with whispers of fulfilment”, a man runs across a field “his feet splashed with dew and the splendours of sunset”.
With another author such felicities could seem over ornate, even pretentious. The magic of George Mackay Brown is that he makes them seem the most apt and accurate way of describing things.
There are 10 stories here and this being Mackay Brown territory the background is invariably Orkney where, apart from brief absences, he spent all his life (he died in 1996).
For this reader one of the most perfect stories is also one of the shortest. “Silver” follows a theme typical of the writer, a journey on foot through an island. This time it is a young gauche fisher lad who, smitten by a girl he met at a dance, has summoned up the courage to pay her a call.
He carries three fine fresh fish which he will present to Anna but during encounters along the road his good nature persuades him to give away two of them. The high hopes that buoyed his footsteps turn out to be sadly misplaced.
The journey theme is borrowed from folktales and this is not the only tale with traditional roots. In “The Book of the Black Arts” a pub landlord accepts a book of devilish spells from a foreign seaman in exchange for whisky.
Possession of the book brings him prosperity but the day comes when he will do anything to get rid of it. It passes from hand to hand in a chain of ill fortune.
The events in “Perilous Seas” take place in 1724 on board a merchant ship in the Mediterranean. A far cry from Orkney but the link is soon apparent: one of the crew is the Orcadian John Gow. Mutiny is in the air and when it breaks out he is at the heart of it.
The following story sees Gow, now the Captain of a pirate ship, as he returns to Orkney where the islanders, unaware of his nefarious activities, welcome him as the local boy made good. Thora Gordon, daughter of a Hamnavoe (Stromness) merchant, falls in love with him, a liaison at first smiled on by her parents.
This tale is based on fact but has never been so beautifully told as it is here. Mackay Brown had a well-honed gift for dialogue and this is only one of the stories that would transfer well to the stage, making me wish he had written more plays than he did.
The Sun’s Net first appeared in 1976. This new paperback edition is a timely reminder of a unique talent. |
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