50 years a reader |
An exploration of half a century of reading. |
BOOK 1. This month, and it was a pleasure, I re-read 'The Hill of the Red Fox' by Allan Campbell McLean. I was in quite serious trepidation before reading it because I was worried it wouldn't live up to my remembered expectation. How wrong I was! If you take the very best of 'Kidnapped' and add in the very best of 'The Thirty Nine Steps' and have a 12 year old hero at the time of the Cold War, believe me, you will not be disappointed! I first read this book in my teenage years. Allan Campbell McLean came to our school to give an author talk in either 1975 or 76. So that will be when I first read it. The copy I now have is one I bought in 1988, so I'm guessing I re-read it then. As is my want, I read all of his children's fiction including 'Master of Morgana,' 'The Silver Trumpet' Ribbon of Fire' and 'The Year of the Stranger.' None of them disappointed. And at the time I think I liked others better than 'The Hill of the Red Fox.' In the early 1990's I found and read what I thought was his only adult novel 'The Islander' and early in my screenwriting career I wrote a screenplay version of it - but never had the money or the temerity to approach his agents asking for 'an option.' More recently I picked up a copy of his other adult novel 'The Glasshouse' which I have to confess I haven't read yet - there's one for my March reading list - It is described as 'a vivid and terrifyingly realistic novel. For the prisoners their stay is a nightmare of physical and mental torture. For the staff an unrivalled opportunity to be brutish and brutal.' The New Statesman called it 'A hard, truthful novel about a closed society.' Also from the 'blurb' I discover the following: Allan Campbell Mclean was born in 1922. He served for four years in the Western Desert during the war and in 1945 he experienced 56 long days in the glasshouse. His novel The Islander won the Frederick Niven Award in 1962. He was a committed Labour Party member and lived for a time in Inverness. He died in 1989. Checking out the cover of the 70s edition I had, I note that it was a TV series, and checking online reveals that yes, it was out in 1975. I suppose he must have been on some kind of promotional tour when he came to visit our school. He certainly made an impact on me. He wasn't the first 'real writer' I met (when I was eleven my Latin teacher wrote a book set in 18th century Edinburgh) but he certainly made a big impression on me. I suppose it was his very 'normalcy' that made me think it was possible for an ordinary person to become a writer. All that mattered was that you cared about stories. And he must have been around the same age that I am now when I met him. That's food for thought. During this year I will definitely re-read all his books. I'm sorry I never caught up with him again to tell him what an impact that school visit had. When looking for a cover image for this piece I came across a whole wheen of different covers over the years. The most recent one is by Kelpies. If you ever wonder what the impact of a cover on a book is - look at the images below and think which of these would make you want to read the book (Given that the books are pitched for the 10+ market, I wonder if you will pick the one that would have been in print when you were the appropriate age!)
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AuthorIn 2016 I will have been reading for 50 years. I'm going to celebrate this by reading even more and sharing what I'm reading. Archives
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