Young Art and Old Hector (Paperback)
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A classic of Scottish Highland literature, told in episodic form.
When the sheer intensities of family life become too much for eight-year-old Art, it is to Old Hector that he turns for comfort. Thwarted from fulfilling his burning desire to go to the River, he seeks out the old man who can still poach a salmon with the best when he chooses. Through Old Hector's tales and his own experiences, Young Art gradually learns about the painful business of growing up.
Young Art and Old Hector shows Neil Gunn's artistry at its very best; above all, his genius for clothing a simple story of Caithness crofter-fishermen in the rich garb of myth. It is also one of the finest evocations of childhood ever written, conveying all the magic and misery and the bursting joys of being a small boy in the great and mysterious world.
Reviews for Young Art and Old Hector
Times Literary Supplement
The Scotsman
Neil M. Gunn
Neil M. Gunn was a Scottish novelist, critic and dramatist. Born in the northernmost county of mainland Scotland in 1891, he began his career as a customs and excise officer and spent sixteen years working at the Glen Mhor Whisky Distillery. He wrote prolifically throughout his life, authoring over twenty novels, essays and works of non-fiction. In 1937 he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Highland River. Gunn is regarded as one of the most important Scottish authors of the early twentieth century and a leading light of the 'Scottish Renaissance' of the 1920s and 30s. He died in 1973.
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