Synopsis
Twelve-year-old Hugh MacBeth lives in a small Scottish fishing village near Caithness at the turn of the century. As he begins to realize his mother's sadness and fear that he and his brother will follow their father to sea, he also sees for the first time that his family is being sundered by economic circumstances. And he must cope with the knowledge that not only his mother but also the village may be dying. Poetic and poignant, Morning Tide is the story of a young boy learning what it means to be a man. Neil Gunn is a dealer in joys and the miracles of boyhood. His youthful characters, such as Hugh the fisherman's son, are intense beings wrapped up in the delights of physical experience - the ecstasy of running, touching, feeling the earth and the cold of the sea - and in the undeniable need to be free. In this combination of sensitivity and wildness jealously defended against the restrictions of family and social life, Neil Gunn shows us more than a picture of childhood; he unfolds a set of values that speak as clearly and confidently to the present as to the turbulent 1930s when this book was first published.
Publishers Weekly
Widely praised in his native Scotland, Gunn (1891-1973) has been overlooked in the canon of world literature, an injustice that may be redressed by his American publisher's commendable program of U.S. reprints. His sixth novel to be released in the States by Walker (after Young Art and Old Hector ) sensitively and poetically evokes life in a Scottish fishing village and a closely knit family as seen through the eyes of 12-year-old Hugh MacBeth. Like Thomas Hardy and William Faulkner, Gunn is a masterful storyteller who captures the particular ethos of a bygone world in his characters and settings. He mingles sense and sensibility in his descriptions of such key moments as the return of fishing vessels after a violently stormy night and the final supper before Hugh's older brother leaves for Australia; his perceptive portrayal of Hugh's confused feelings of love, anger and fear of his mother's possible death is equally fine. In the hands of this masterful writer, a simple story becomes a flash of poetry, at once violent and gentle, poignant in its tone and unique in its narrative. ( Feb. )