George Mackay Brown: The Life
*Starred Review* Vociferously admired by British poet laureate Ted Hughes and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney and an honored novelist, Brown (1921-96) is one of the great writers of the twentieth century least well known outside his homeland. His books appear in America not in domestic editions but as imported British products, as does this rainwater-fresh biography, a first book that has already garnered high praise from master literary biographer Claire Tomalin. Fergusson tells a quietly fascinating and moving story. The youngest of six children of a part-time postman and pieceworker, Brown was reserved from childhood. The adolescent onset of severe depression and, later, tuberculosis exacerbated his shyness and delayed the higher education he wanted until his 30s. He had begun writing, however, as a columnist in Orkney's newspapers, and even that early work, quoted liberally here, displays the clarity, precise imagery, and intimate and sympathetic perspective characteristic of the poetry and prose fiction that followed. If not for his strong sense of vocation, TB or the alcoholism triggered by his depression might have killed him. He triumphed over both, and his final decade was his most productive. Perhaps the best thing about the biography is that Fergusson's prose seems inspired by Brown's. It's simply beautiful.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.