George Mackay Brown - Greenvoe

* Spoilers*

George Mackay Brown (1921-1996) was Orkney's foremost poet and novelist. By the time he published Greenvoe, his first novel, he was well known for poetry and short stories. Living relatively reclusively in Stromness his novel is soaked through with a sense of Orkney. His fictional community of Greenvoe is on the fictional island of Hellya, it stands in for a myriad of island and remoter communities. 

Greenvoe is a small fishing community. It is shot through with the class differences that are usually ignored when novelists write about Scotland. This is not an idyllic village, rather its one where rich and poor live cheek by jowl, jealousies, adulteries and disagreements fester and those higher up the wealth ladder sneer down at those below. At the top of the food chain is the laird in the "big house", his beautiful daughter visits from the Scottish mainland, triggering lust and jealousies. But there are other visitors - including the Asian travelling clothing salesman, who is met with interest, custom and poverty - while offering his own sharp commentary on Greenvoe's inhabitants. 

Much of the book deals with these characters in passing, the hard-drinking Tommy who beachcombs for a living, the ferryman Ivan Westray, described as a "ladies man" in the book's blurb but who is much nastier than that, and most interestingly Skarf, a Marxist and failed fisher who is writing a history of the island and whose prose entertains the drinkers in the hotel bar. Skarf is fascinating because through him Brown links the deep history of Orkney with contemporary events. There's continuity between the too. 

Despite Skarf's politics, I was most interested by the elderly Mrs Mckee, who is only on the island because of the irresponsible behaviour of her alcoholic son Simon, the local minister. Mrs McKee is drowned in anxiety and sorrows, reliving her past life immersed in her own petty guilts. Through her we learn of the tragic backstory to her son, but her own life - restrained by the limitations of class and wealth.

But these intricately drawn lives, woven together so skilfully by Brown, are town apart in barely a week as the secret "Black Star" project arrives on the island. Like so many Scottish people before them, the community is broken apart and scattered, for the interests of a small minority. 

Greenvoe's greatness lies in the portrait of a town in tension with itself, pulled back and forth by the petty ruptures and interests of different individuals, and their own histories, lies and prejudices. Brown demonstrates a clever eye for moralistic shopkeepers and cheating publicans. But none of his characters are innocent, they're all flawed. Their tragedy is that they're victims of circumstances not of their choosing. Skarf understands that.