Present Books Concering Orkney
| Original Title: | Orkney |
| ISBN: | 1619021196 (ISBN13: 9781619021198) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Somerset Maugham Award (2014), Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize (2013) |
Amy Sackville
Hardcover | Pages: 253 pages Rating: 3.45 | 855 Users | 150 Reviews
Particularize Epithetical Books Orkney
| Title | : | Orkney |
| Author | : | Amy Sackville |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 253 pages |
| Published | : | April 2nd 2013 by Counterpoint |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Cultural. Scotland. Contemporary. Literary Fiction. Novels |
Commentary Toward Books Orkney
Following her wonderful debut, The Still Point, Sackville returns with a strangely beautiful short novel about love and sex and obsession. A literature professor marries his prize student, a woman forty years his junior, and at her request he takes her to the sea for their honeymoon. He is embarked on his life’s work, a book about enchantment-narratives in literature, most all of them involving strange girls and women, but soon finds himself distracted by his own enchantment for his new white-haired young wife.They travel to the Orkney Islands, the ancient Mesolithic and Neolithic site north of the Scottish coast, “the Seal Islands,” a barren place of extraordinary beauty. And as the days of their honeymoon pass his desire and his constant, yearning contemplation become his normality. His mysterious bride becomes his entire universe.
He is consumed.
Rating Epithetical Books Orkney
Ratings: 3.45 From 855 Users | 150 ReviewsEvaluate Epithetical Books Orkney
I was given Orkney when I returned from a trip to the Orkney Islands. Indeed, it appears from the Acknowledgments that Sackville and I actually visited one of the same outlying northerly islands, Westray (which is truly stunning). There are some moments of beautiful description in this novel, both of the landscape and the Orcadians who make their home in the islands. But that's about all there is. The novel is sort of a meditation on love and longing and a bunch of other things that bored me toThere's no doubt this book is beautifully written but the storyline of two unlikeable guffs on their honeymoon on a remote Orcadian island just bored me to tears. There is something so creepy and unsettling about a 40 year age gap for a start, I then got so fed up of being force fed imagery and alliteration of the sea. It dragged in for page after page. And lastly I am just sick of reading about islanders being portrayed as suspicious grotesque old goats swaddled in bundles of cloth and
Perhaps appropriately for a book so wound up in literature and story telling, all the while I was reading I was reminded of other books. So if you like this (and I loved it, for the atmosphere and slowly growing sense of menace and all the playful listings of colours), you might like any of these books...Possession - firstly the preoccupation with mythic Victorian literature that runs through both books, and also the academic romanceLolita - Orkney is perhaps Lolita if Humbert had liked just
This was so beautiful. Lush and haunting writing, it felt like reading a fairytale.
What a haunting, dream-like little novel The title alone won me over: the Orkney Isles are a place I long to visit with every fiber of my being, so any story set there is sure to interest me, even more so when it seems to be a long, poetic rambling about the strangest of honeymoonsRichard is a sixty years old English professor, a specialist of the strange women to be found in fairy and folk tales. He marries one of his student, a woman forty years younger than him, who requests that their
The language is beautiful, but the plot is lacking. And, though the language is vivid, it's evoking the same feelings and images over the entire book.This does envelop the reader in the island and the narrator's mind, but it also seems limiting. The poetry wasn't enough to overcome the predictability of the plot--most of the book is the older male narrator staring out the window at his youthful bride, who in turn stares into the sea. The characters are mysteries, especially the wife, which
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