Robin Jenkins (1)Besprekingen

The Changeling, by Scottish author Robin Jenkins (1912-2005) is an unsettling novel. I would dearly love to give a copy of it to every politician around the world who is turning a blind eye to poverty. Without a single sentimental word, Jenkins depicts the soul-destroying misery of childhood privation and dispenses with firm authority any fantasies of well-intentioned but useless help.

Charles Forbes is a middle-aged teacher in Glasgow. He's a well-meaning and kindly fool, mocked behind his back and protected at home by his tolerant wife Mary and his children Gillian and Alistair. And when he takes it into his head to Do a Good Deed for one of the slum children he teaches, he compares himself to the Good Samaritan.

Though no one would belittle the benevolence of the Good Samaritan, in one respect he was lucky: he was alone with his conscience and his neighbour in trouble.

There were, for instance, no business or professional colleagues to warn against the folly of interference, and no wife to cherish him for his altruism but also to shrewdly point out the likely repercussions. Those voices Charles Forbes had to heed on the occasion when he, too, decided not to pass by on the other side. (p.1)

His benevolent intentions are prompted by an essay by Tom Curdie. A bright child, whose academic ability transcends the appalling circumstances of his home life in the slums of Donaldson St, Tom has written a beautiful essay about the sea, and Mr Forbes is transfixed when Tom tells him that he has never seen the sea.

And from this scene the reader gets a first intimation of the complexity of this child character. When he says that he just made up his composition, and the disdainful class sneers at him like so many little Columbuses with the marvels and avarice of oceans in their eyes...he had lied. And he lied because he knew that they, and the teacher, were greedy for it. (p.2)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/05/17/the-changeling-1958-reissued-1989-by-robin-j...

I really enjoyed Poverty Castle by Jenkins last year, so I've been looking forward to reading more from this much overlooked author.

If you've not read anything by Jenkins before I wouldn't recommend starting with this novel necessarily. It's naive in its idealised romanticism between a member of the traveling community and a devout Christian man soon to embark on his theological training, and could be accused of straying too far into the realms of the romance genre. However, having said that I have to admit that I enjoyed this novel. It was a straightforward page-turner that didn't require me to overly engage my brain, which is just what I need at the moment as work has my brain somewhat pickled.

From the two books of Jenkins' that I've read to date I would say he's a pastoral writer who searches for the absolute goodness and truth in his characters. One could therefore argue that his novels are missing some of the dramatic tension that comes with the inevitable flaws in human beings, but there's something charming about his 'Little House on the Prairie'-esque feel good approach. There's never a bogeyman around the corner and his characters won't let you down, so you can journey around the Scottish countryside with him at ease without holding your breath.

The Pearl-fishers felt a little too wholesome, and I would have enjoyed a little sprinkle of jeopardy somewhere, but to give Jenkins some credit I think he wanted to give a glass half full portrayal of people from different backgrounds coming together, and to highlight the injustice of prejudice. Trying to achieve this with flawless characters didn't feel very credulous, however.

3 stars - Enjoyable, but this is not a novel to dwell on too much.

A beautiful little rural tragedy, set on an estate in the west of Scotland during World War II and exploring complicated issues of social class, religion, different kinds of relationships with nature, and the way we deal with illness and disability in ways that are both very specific to the time and place and deeply universal. I was expecting it to be a kind of Scottish Of mice and men, and it was in a way, but deep down it reminded me more of someone like Kawabata, in the way the writing forces you to pay enormous attention to small details of social expectation and landscape.

The language is important as well, though, very poetic in places, and carefully graded in its Scottishness according to the character who is giving the point of view. Scots words appear in the text in an undemonstrative, matter-of-fact way wherever they do the job better and more precisely than their Standard English counterparts would, and it’s up to the reader to know what they mean.

I must read more by this man!

Robin Jenkins was a prolific Scottish writer whose work spanned five decades. Although he achieved critical acclaim with The Cone-Gatherers, despite his impressive literary output he struggled to get published at various points in his writing life, and his previous books went in and out of print. Having experienced Jenkins' writing for the first time with Poverty Castle (which isn't one of his better known books), I'm calling this out as an absolute travesty. Shame on those UK publishers for denying this wonderful writer the success he deserved!

Poverty Castle takes the form of a novel within a novel, although the story of the novelist writing the book is a light touch, taking up a small percentage of the novel. That being said, it adds depth of poignancy to the overall story that is brilliant in both its subtly and gentleness. The writer (semi-autobiographical, by all accounts) is an elderly Scottish author who has struggled with writing success yet can't live without it. He knows he is writing his last novel, and is fixated with writing one "that is a celebration of goodness, without any need of irony". His long-suffering wife is exasperated by how much the book is taking out of him, yet despite herself slowly becomes equally charmed and beguiled by his characters.

The characters in question are the enigmatic Sempill family who are middle-class by birth but recent acquirers of a bequeathed fortune. With a charming, idealist father and ethereal mother who is obsessed with giving her husband a son, the five daughters are brought up in a self-sufficient Eden with a strong sense of social justice and encouragement to voice their opinions. With little to test their true moral fibre whilst they remain cocooned in their own idyll, as they grow older and inevitably flee the nest the writer calls into question whether their magnetic and radiating presence comes from an authentic goodness, or is ultimately a product of wealthy privilege and their own self-importance / self-delusion.

I hugely enjoyed the writing in this book. It pulled me in from the first sentence and kept me there until the last. Why I am the only person on LT to have reviewed this book is beyond me. If you enjoy old fashioned writing such as Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle then I think you'll enjoy this one.

I'll definitely be seeking out more of Jenkins' work. In the meantime, here's a great article that provides an interesting angle on the problem of being Robin Jenkins:

https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2009/11/goodness-in-a-fallen-world-the-fat....

4.5 stars - perhaps this book doesn't deserve for me to have fallen for it as much as I did, but Jenkins charmed me with his own old-fashioned goodness.½

Opening among the tenement buildings of 1950s Glasgow, the story begins with well-meaning but slightly comical schoolmaster Charlie Forbes determining to do something for one of his charges. 13-year old Tom Curdie is possessed of a fierce intelligence, but his unsavory 'home' has propelled him into theft.

Resolving to invite him along on a family holiday to Bute, Forbes has to contend with a negative wife, critical mother-in-law and his own two jealous children.
But will this glimpse of a respectable home truly improve the child, or make it impossible to go back to the old life?
Skilful character portrayals.½

Beautifully written tragedy of class and human infallibility , of idealism and violence, of good Vs evil.

WWII and two brothers are brought to gather pine codes, the precious seeds needed when the trees are felled for the war effort. Calum with his physical and mental disabilities has a childlike innocence and deep empathy for all in nature, he is at home here whilst the protective Neil rails against their lot, the dank hut they have been banished to given to them on the say so of the gamekeeper whose hates Calum with a passion, for the disabilities he displays, and becomes slowly and devastatingly sworn to destroy him.

Drawing inevitable comparisons to Steinbeck’s of Mice and Men this Scottish classic is a compelling read, not just for the writing that draws deftly its many weighty themes together but also for the story that draws you even though doom overshadows at every point and doesn’t quite follow the path you think. From the tight knots we wrap ourselves from Christian duty to class ridden protocols. From the tragedies which eddy out and break men. From the kindness and hope, not just from childlike Calum but from the conscientious objectors. Endurance and sacrifice are cut to display different facets and whilst the overarching theme of good Vs evil no character falls thinly into either. Underpinning this all is the beauty of the Scottish setting in all its harsh glory: the loch and forest jewels amongst human detritus.

It’s a sad mesmerising book, relevant but capturing a lost time & I, for one, highly recommend it.

The cone-gatherers of the title are two labourers on a Scottish estate during the Second World War, who spend their days gathering pine-cones from the treetops so that the forest can one day be replanted after being cut down for lumber to help the war effort. A job so unexpected and remote from modern-day life that it sometimes felt like reading about men in a sci-fi novel performing some incomprehensible and repetitive task on an alien world.

It's very efficiently written, with not a word or comma wasted. The setting is so isolated and self-contained, and the characters so richly symbolic, that the novel teeters on the edge of allegory – and there is also a looming sense of disaster that meant I wasn't quite sure, as I read it, if I was really enjoying the experience. But there are many deep, lapidary sentences in here to mull over, and the layers of symbolism can't fail to set off at least a few interesting chains of thought. As I read the final extraordinary line of the book, I suddenly realised I was extremely moved by it.½

First published in 1960 and set in Afghanistan at the time the Americans and Russians were both trying to influence the King, a British diplomat sets off to find two friends who have got themselves misplaced in one of the hairier regions of this already hairy country.
A beautifully written evocative book (smell the dust, witness the corruption, feel the hospitality).
Robin Jenkins is one of the best recent Scottish writters. Brilliant

OK, not great.
Somewhat dated (written in the 60's?) and at the same time, rather timeless.
Angus is a painter living in the outer Hebredian island of Flodday. Just having returned from Basha in Malyasia, his life comes haunting back to him in the form of Janet - a woman who has second sight and who recently left her husband when she caught him in flagrente.
Robin in a good writer, with wonderful descriptive narrative about the beauty of the island and the inner workings of the characters, I just can't say I cared that much.½

This book would be the perfect pick for a book club. The story isn't adventurous or even particularly exciting, but it's chock full of things to think about. It screams for discussion. When I finished the last sentence I just wished I knew someone else in this world who had read it so I could talk about it with them. Woah, what was that about? The main themes are fairly obviously hatred and innocence, but there's so much depth to it. The story is set on a large Scottish estate during WWII. On this estate is a large wood that is slated to be chopped down in the Spring, it's lumber to be used in the war effort. As such, two men have been hired to climb to the top of the trees and collect cones for seed to replace the forest once it has been felled. All the able-bodied men are off at war so the cone-gatherers are a middle-aged rheumatic and his younger brother, a simple-minded hunchbacked dwarf. The cone-gatherers' low station in society along with the younger brother's deformities inspire hatred and love in those around them. This shares many similarities with Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, but is also quite different. The depth is amazing and worth the read just for that. The ending, the fate that awaits innocence, is shocking--perhaps foreseeable, but shocking just the same.½

Set in the highlands of Scotland during the second world war, two brothers, one with learning difficulties, who are employed by the forestry service, are sent to a highland estate to gather cones for seeds. Although they are accepted by most of the working community the gamekeeper develops a pathological hatred of them and ends up killing one of them. There is also contrast between the accepting attitude of the majority of the community and the prejudice of the estate owner's wife who is in charge while her husband is away in the army.
Excellent read (could be a bit less wordy)

A beautiful book, a simple tale elegantly told . Some of the readers in my book group found his sparse writing a bit disconcerting and the plot a bit Mills and Boonish but the writing is far better that in the average M and B and ,as can also be said of a children's book, there is nothing wrong in a well written well plotted romance, especially when there is a strong moral message in the story.
Simply an overlooked gem of Scottish literature.

This book highlights the need for power & control. It shows how societies clash and how innocence is destroyed.

I read this book as a teenager and it will always stay with me. It would be in my recommendations to read if I was to ever make a list.

I read this when I was about 18 or 19 and I thought it was excellent, one of those books that stays with you forever and changes your thought patterns for the better - or at least makes you want to try.