From Publishers Weekly
Originally published in Scotland in 1934, this tale by the author of the well-received books Morning Tide , chronicles the demise of Scotland's highland culture. A marvel of rich language and mythic storytelling, the book is set in the early 19th century and centers on the figure of Dark Mairi, a widow and healer in a small, close-knit community. Dark Mairi and her neighbors have lived and worked on the Riasgan estate for generations when the absentee landlord evicts them to make room for herds of sheep. In prose heavily laced with Gaelic language and poetry, Gunn depicts the rustic Highlanders in the fundamental human business of love and hate, birth and death. Unfortunately, he tends to proselytize when outlining the political and economic forces underlying the mass expulsion of Highland tenant farmers and his portrayals of the landlord and others involved in the dirty business of dispossession verge on caricature of the villainous. Yet he writes with a fierceness that inflames this personal story of one poor, simple woman and her neighbors in a shattering epic of social destruction. Gunn died in 1973.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Gunn, who died in 1973, wrote more than two dozen novels (e.g., Morning Tide, LJ 1/93); Butcher's Broom was originally published in Scotland in 1934 and is now receiving its first U.S. publication. The novel is set during the Highland clearances of the early 19th century, when landowners evicted their tenants to make way for flocks of sheep. Gunn focuses a loving eye on the culture of the Highland Gaels, demonstrating in heartrending detail the effect of the clearances upon the crofters. With a lush style reminiscent of the Romantics themselves, Gunn ennobles the crofters and stirs the reader's wrath against the sheer inhumanity of the whole clearance movement, which literally destroyed lives for the sake of "progress." Though the density of his prose can often be a challenge, Gunn nevertheless has written a stirring, rewarding, and passionate tale. Recommended for large fiction collections.
- Dean James, Houston Acad. of Medicine/Texas Medical Ctr. Lib.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
