REVIEWS OF GEORGE MACKAY BROWN: THE LIFE
 

‘George Mackay Brown was one of the finest poets and prose writers of the second half of the twentieth century … He deserves a good biography and has got a magnificent one; sympathetic, affectionate, but not glossing over his weaknesses. It is written with intelligence and understanding, and I don’t see that it could possibly have been better done. Those who know and love his work will find it enthralling; others who read it will surely be drawn to the work.’

                                      Allan Massie, Daily Telegraph, 22.4.06

‘This subtle, sensitive, beautifully-written biography is a superb example of an author wholly in tune with her subject. Maggie Fergusson has absorbed George Mackay Brown, just as she has absorbed the very fabric of his Orcadian background. She understands the man and is profoundly responsive to his work, while yet maintaining the essential detachment that enables her to see her subject clearly … She has achieved, too, that most difficult feat when writing of a writer, that her own language makes a pleasing parallel to his.’

                                      Selina Hastings, Sunday Telegraph, 23.4.06

‘Insightful and clear-eyed ... His world, in all its wondrous ordinariness, has been brought beautifully to life by Maggie Fergusson’s painstakingly faithful labour of love. “George strikes me as one who followed his true course” says Seamus Heaney in the introduction. “He didn’t fail himself.” Nor, in this exquisite and consistently illuminating book, does she.’

                                      Sean O’Hagan, Observer, 16.4.06

‘Outstanding… This is an extraordinarily good book: it is sensitive, witty and has an excellent sense of the vitality of the apparently unimportant details that make up lives and characters. Fergusson also vividly depicts the grand, austere, treeless topography of Orkney – without which the life of George Mackay Brown cannot be imagined or understood.’

                                      Lucy Lethbridge, New Statesman, 27.3.06

‘It is a measure of the quality and worth of Maggie Fergusson’s biography that I was utterly absorbed, informed and deeply moved by what it reveals. She believes his life was “unusual and brave and fruitful”, and I came away seeing why.’

                                      Andrew Greig, Scotsman, 15.4.06

 ‘If, when the awards are being given out, this biography is not somewhere in the mix, the literary world should initiate its own form of steward’s inquiry. This is a truly magnificent achievement… One sign of an outstanding biography is when those who knew – or thought they knew – the subject find surprises and fresh illuminations on nearly every page. This beautifully written book evokes both Orkney and the spirit of its master story teller with a delicate yet unostentatious skill that is the literary equivalent of perfect pitch.’

                                      Ron Ferguson, Herald, 8.4. 06

‘In Maggie Fergusson, Mackay Brown has had the good fortune to find the biographer with whom every writer should be blessed. She writes lucidly, with restraint and without sentimentality. Her affection and sympathy for her subject shine through but she never shirks from showing his darker side. He was a deeply troubled man cursed with melancholia whose legacy was prose and poetry of luminous virtuosity. If there is a better biography of a 20^th century Scottish writer, I look forward to reading it.’

                                      Alan Taylor, Sunday Herald, 2.4.06

‘Sensationally good … If there has been a modest renaissance in Scottish writing and publishing over the last twenty years, the revival has been strong in fiction and verse, weak in non-fiction, and almost negligible in biography. Fergusson has corrected all of that with one masterly book.’

                                      Roger Hutchinson, West Highland Free Press, 7.4.06

‘Strangely, this is what I would call an inspiriting story, not a depressing one, despite the lows, the loneliness and the drinking; and it is very well told.’

                                      P.J. Kavanagh, Tablet, 8.4.06