Novel
Highland River
Neil Gunn · 1937
Synopsis
Kenn is nine years old when he pulls a salmon heavier than himself out of the water, alone, at the bottom of a ravine, without knowing how he did it. The book then goes up the river from its mouth: each bend recalls an age of his life, school, poaching, the trenches of the Great War, the physics laboratory where he now works. Now a man, he returns to his home country and decides to walk to the source, which he has never seen.
Context
The novel appeared in 1937, the seventh by its author, and its success gave him enough confidence to leave the customs service and live by his pen. Its construction is what drew attention to it: the narrative goes up the course of a river instead of following the course of a life, and the ages return in gusts, like the salmon that returns to the place where it was born. The river is the Dunbeath, where a statue of the boy and the salmon has been raised in memory of the writer.
Who it is for
Three hundred pages in English, never translated. The narrative does not follow chronology and one must accept losing the thread of time, which is the subject.
Prizes and reception
James Tait Black Prize in 1937, and the book through which the Highlands entered the modern novel.