A Book of Death and Fish by Ian Stephen
As Peter MacAulay writes his will, he reflects on his life and how world events filter through to his home, Stornoway. He reveals his passions for history, engines and fish, and witnesses changing times and things that dont change in the Hebrides. Its about stories, a litany of small histories witnessed during one very individual lifetime.
It is a Waterland for the Outer Hebrides..it's a major landmark in fiction of the islands...it's a landmark in Scottish literature and contemporary fiction more broadly...makes cunning shifts into para-memoir, pseudo-biography, hints of the documentary, but it's always mobile, always moving. Line for line, the voice was so lively, so inventive, that I relished each paragraph ... Story within story, concentrically nested, or maybe hung like hooks on a line to catch the readers... It's a bright and vivid and true book, and a work of literature, unmistakably. -- Robert Macfarlane.
It's absorbing and riveting. There's not a single paragraph in A Book of Death and Fish when we are not engaged by the vigour and jump and insistence of his voice.
Stephen brings a contained concentration and intensity to his chapters that is mesmerizing and true in a deeper way.
Dense, compelling and wildly idiosyncratic, it's a novel that splits the form open like a fresh catch, glistening and raw and singing with the sea. -- Kirsty Gunn
A Book Of Death And Fish may well take its place beside Moby-Dick...It will, I suspect, be one of those books I will not put down all my days. -- Candia McWilliam
A fine, far-reaching and and sensitive book.
An excellent, enjoyable and engaging read.
Ian Stephen has excavated the life and the places that he knows to write a big, sprawling kaleidoscopic and often brilliant book. It is an heir to Neil Gunn as well as to Kevin MacNeil's 'The Stornoway Way'. -- Roger Hutchinson * West Highland Free Press *
It's absorbing and riveting. There's not a single paragraph in A Book of Death and Fish when we are not engaged by the vigour and jump and insistence of his voice.
Stephen brings a contained concentration and intensity to his chapters that is mesmerizing and true in a deeper way.
Dense, compelling and wildly idiosyncratic, it's a novel that splits the form open like a fresh catch, glistening and raw and singing with the sea. -- Kirsty Gunn
A Book Of Death And Fish may well take its place beside Moby-Dick...It will, I suspect, be one of those books I will not put down all my days. -- Candia McWilliam
A fine, far-reaching and and sensitive book.
An excellent, enjoyable and engaging read.
Ian Stephen has excavated the life and the places that he knows to write a big, sprawling kaleidoscopic and often brilliant book. It is an heir to Neil Gunn as well as to Kevin MacNeil's 'The Stornoway Way'. -- Roger Hutchinson * West Highland Free Press *
Ian Stephen is a writer, storyteller, artist and sailor from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. His prose, poetry and drama has been published around the world and garnered several awards, including the Robert Louis Stevenson Award. He was the first artist-in-residence at StAnza, Scotland’s annual poetry festival.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781908643971 |
| ISBN 10 | 1908643978 |
| Title | A Book of Death and Fish |
| Author | Ian Stephen |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Saraband |
| Year published | 2015-06-18 |
| Number of pages | 480 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |