It took me time to get into "Butcher's Broom", but I am pleased I persevered. It is a powerful evocation of the destruction of a Gaelic speaking community, an extraordinarily vivid description of the privations of their lives, privations which made the community bonds so important. I will be unable to pass the tumbled-down ruins of an old croft in the Highlands without reminding myself of the humans that were torn from the land. The people have lone since gone, but there remains a problem today, when major land-owners such as the zealous conservation NGOs make decisions in London about the more remote parts of Scotland, with little appreciation of the consequences to the communities living there (as described in "Isles of the west : a Hebridean voyage", by Ian Mitchell. 2001). ( )

Since a very enjoyable read of 'The Silver Darlings', another historical Neil Gunn novel has been a mini-ambition, and 'Butcher's Broom' was to be the one. I've walked the landscape a lot, read Prebble and Hunter, and steeped myself a fair bit in the Clearances and emigration history, so I was looking forward to Gunn's poetic prose, evocative landscapes and dialogue styles to explore it all once again. As ever, Et in Arcadia Ego, but what struck me most about the novel was the shifting tensions between the strath's native characters. This is no idyll even before the factor, Heller (Sellar) come striding in with Irish troops and then with Scots and torches. The shame that's felt, the weakness, particularly in the men when reading about this period, together with the unquestionable injustice, both from the stealing of the land and the promises made as those enlisted went to fight in the Napoleonic and American wars, are all here in Gunn's depiction. Out of his remarkably evocative landscape with its wet, its darkness and its hard toil for meat, grain, vegetable and peat - and Dark Mairi's lichen dyes and potions - shine occasional lights in the form of ceilidh fires and the odd lazy summer day. And within this strath through its seasons are the people, coming and going, to hardship and back, looking after each other in lean times, laughing, preaching, praying, dancing and working. What I was surprised by were the tensions, between family members, and from household to household, as characters like Davie glowered and threatened to leave, or Elie bravely or meekly accepted her fate with Rob. Seonaid and Murdoch are a light in the dark, and in her own way Dark Mairie bringing colour with her lichens, but it's not enough for this community under such pressures from princes, so I found myself feeling the shame and the helplessness, occasionally energised with the characters by the story-telling and the words of the preacher or the Drover, and mildly incredulous at the community's head-in-the-sand summer before the violent eviction. The ending is perfect, both brutal and loving, resilient and powerless, and a fitting union of tragic-hopeful homecoming and violent-peaceful death. I'll be back to Gunn, for 'Highland River' or 'Sun Circle' some time soon I expect. ( )

Evocative would be the word, I think. Gunn treats the story of evicted crofters here with a very emotional and gut-wrenching, close lens. I think it was excellently done, weaving together drastically different viewpoints to highlight the tragedy and the inevitability of the change in society that resulted in many of the Clearances. Some beautiful prose in here, and some that I just let wash over me, like Lewis Grassic Gibbons', meaning it was a little too far from my experience to understand the dialect, but I just kept going... and was rewarded with a satisfying, if not happy, conclusion. ( )