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Bezig met laden... In Another Light (editie 2005)door Andrew Greig
Informatie over het werkIn Another Light door Andrew Greig
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3218543.html My father was born in Penang, now in Malaysia, in 1928, and this book is about a middle-aged Scotsman tracing the history of his own father's time in Penang at almost exactly the same time. So there was a lot of personal interest in it for me. The narrative cuts back and forth between 2004 Britain (mostly Orkney with bits of London and elsewhere) and 1930s Malaya, both of them vividly portrayed - one certainly gets a sense of Penang as a colonial outpost with much restrained ferment (and Orkney as a much more unbuttoned island community). Both father and son have romantic intrigues and dilemmas, and several plot strands are brought together very satisfactorily at the end. All the characters are Scottish, English or local to Penang (so no Irish like my grandfather or Americans like my grandmother), but on the other hand the narrator's father's specialisation is obstetrics, which is rather relevant for my family in this case. I picked up this book having enjoyed two of Andrew Greig's books about climbing. As ever, Greig's prose is a delight to read. The novel is divided between the lives of a father and son. The father's tale covers time that he spent in Penang in the 1930s, and the son's tale covers a year that he spends in Orkney. The chapters are short, and the novel skips rapidly between the father's tale and the son's. Perhaps inevitably, I found one story far more engrossing than the other. For me, the father's adventures in Penang were the parts that I looked forward to most, and I found the father a more likeable character. Whilst I wouldn't say that I disliked the son - Eddie - I was definitely less interested in the plot that surrounds his half of the book. Although the plot for the Orkney parts of the book didn't really grab me, the depiction of Scottish island life and the description of the scenery in this part of the world is extremely good. Greig captures the wildness and the claustrophobia of Orkney very well. Overall, an enjoyable read. For a few days after I finished In Another Light was loath to start reading anything new. I wanted to savour the characters and the world that Andrew Greig created, and for them to stay fresh in my mind for as long as possible. Greig alternates between two story lines – one set in Orkney early in the 21st century about a middle-aged engineer who is recovering from some sort of brain seizure, while the other delves into the engineer's family history and the time his father spent as an obstetrician seventy years earlier in Penang. In Another Light is a beautiful, fascinating read and I would highly recommend it. The depiction of Penang in 1930 is wonderful, the Scottish sections have glorious descriptions of the human and natural landscapes and above all his characters, the subtleties of their relationships and the ebbs and flows of love and friendship. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Andrew Greig is a storyteller and a poet, and in this new novel both strands of his talent combine to create an enchanting tale set in two very different worlds. In the early nineteen thirties, an ambitious young Scotsman sets out on the long sea voyage to Penang, eager to take up his post running a maternity hospital in the colony, and eager for the new opportunities that will open up for him there. He very quickly makes the acquaintance of two sisters, both very beautiful young women, one looking for a husband, the other married. In the confines of the ship, when conventional morality is shelved for the duration, the seeds of a scandal which will rock the close island community of Penang are sown. Seventy years later, forty-something engineer Edward Mackay, recuperating from illness on the wild isolated island of Orkney, begins to unravel the story of a man he thought he knew: his father, the respectable Doctor Alexander Mackay, now years dead after a long and blameless career. What he discovers astonishes him, and begins to shed light on his own existence. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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The story alternates between Penang and the Orkneys, and it's the Orkneys which come alive in the portrayal. Penang is much hazier.
The men in the book are more vividly drawn than the women, but the tale is involving from the start. I was always eager to carry on reading until the final pages, when coincidence piled on coincidence. A disappointing end to a finely written book. ( )