The Dark of Summer (Audible Audio Edition) Eric Linklater Gerard Doyle Audible Studios Books
Download As PDF : The Dark of Summer (Audible Audio Edition) Eric Linklater Gerard Doyle Audible Studios Books
In the early years of the Second World War an army officer is sent to the Faroe Islands to investigate rumours of a collaboration with the Nazi regime in Norway. What he finds changes lives, not least his own. No one who listens to this audiobook will forget the frozen corpse tied to a chair in an icehouse guarded by two drunken seamen, or the raging storm which batters their, ship as they carry the body to Shetland. That's just the beginning. As the tale takes grip, the reader becomes haunted, just as the characters are haunted by a sense of guilt and betrayal.
One of the finest of Linklater's later, deeper, darker novels, The Dark of Summer combines national and family histories as it sets out to understand the past, redeem the corrosion of memory and find meaning in a world of divided loyalties.
Eric Linklater (1899-1974) wrote scores of novels for adults and children. He was also a journalist in India, commander of a wartime fortress in the Orkney Islands, and rector of Aberdeen University.
The Dark of Summer (Audible Audio Edition) Eric Linklater Gerard Doyle Audible Studios Books
This is a book that starts slowly, building to an interesting climax. Pay close attention to the first vignette in the book -- it is key to understanding subsequent chapters. The writing evokes the bleak landscape of the northern British Isles, giving it a beauty and grace which is quite illuminating. Several interesting plot devices are used, and I really enjoyed how the book was tied together.A great read, well worth the time.
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The Dark of Summer (Audible Audio Edition) Eric Linklater Gerard Doyle Audible Studios Books Reviews
This review is for the Audible recording, not the book itself. The Audible narrator is very skillful, with great diction, accent, and expression. The book itself (perhaps because I heard, rather than read it) seems too full of digressions and authorial asides that interfere with the story. The story itself is complex, with back-story and front-story narratives; this sort of material does not readily lend itself to an audio presentation. That said, I still feel that some aspects of this novel are unduly Expressive, rather than narrative.
This is a novel from a different era and conventions change, for instance, away from scene-setting and character elaboration. Even so, I still think that “The Dark of Summer” is a misconceived novel, with the result that some accomplished writing – for instance, a description of travelling by train in wartime -- is largely wasted. I’d even go so far as to suggest that “Quisling Calling” would be a better title for a novel that retained and concentrated upon the intriguing spy story set in and off Shetland during the Second World War, when a puppet government in Norway under Vidkun Quisling became a just-possible focus for an alliance between countries and regions on the “territorially ambiguous” North Atlantic fringes of Europe, from Tromso to Rejkavik to the Faroes. There is genuine tension in this section of “The Dark of Summer”, in some ways reminiscent of Erskine Childers’ novel of 1903, “The Riddle of the Sands”, with its warning of the then only possible invasion of Britain by a Germany on the rise. “The Dark of Summer” catches the historical moment of the months after the blitz when the legacy of Dunkirk was heavy on the country’s mind. On the edges of the UK, the situation threw up some radical figures, notably Mungo Wishart, the possible spy, whom the hero, Tony Chisum is sent by “London” to investigate.
The weakness of Eric Linklater’s odd, even bizarre, and now almost entirely overlooked novel is its focus on Chisum, who is also the narrator. He is passive and self-blaming beyond all pretence at English self-deprecation or as a consequence of having only one arm. As a result, the chapters that follow him after he leaves Shetland in add nothing to the historical events of the war, for instance, the El Alamein and Italian campaigns. Nor do they add to an appreciation of Chisum, with the result that it is difficult to care when awful events occur and easy to laugh when he seeks to recover his life by returning to Shetland and clumsily attempts to kiss the daughter of Mungo Wishart, dressed in a rubber fishing suit. By that point the thematic opposition which interests Linklater – between men of purpose and men of feeling – has been lost.
Eric Linklater (1899-1974) had the kind of life that now seems impossibly generalist, serving in the Black Watch in the last years of World War One; travels in India; an academic in Aberdeen and then in the US; twenty-plus novels, including some children’s fiction; and lots of non-fiction, especially when he became interested in Scotland’s culture and politics (he was a Scottish Nationalist); and Rector of the University of Aberdeen. Perhaps it isn’t surprising that “The Dark of Summer” touches on so much that is still of considerable interest that it is overwhelmed as a novel.
A great adventure story that takes the reader from the early days of World War II to the early post-War years, beginning and ending on the Faeroe Islands. Linklater's writing is evocative of John Buchan.
Just ok.
Historically informative........somewhat tedious narrative...made me skip pages.....but fulfilling ending that gave meaning to the whole narrative. Years ago sailed over the Orkney and Shetland Islands. Guess that is what kept me reading when the story got sluggish. Good read.
Eric Linklater wrote some stories that were moody-like the Dark of Summer.
He belongs on the rank of the giants of literature. This is one of his best .
This is a deceptively impressive novel. The first half of the book is rather confusing, with an idyllic love story combined with a complicated account of a small HMS vessel travelling in the Faroe Islands in WW2, looking for traitors, both British and Norwegian. Miraculously, when the vessel returns to the Shetland Isles (the farthest Northern territory in the UK and the site of her most important naval base), the story takes life. A connected local 18C family account in a book of criminality, sexuality and betrayal is captivating. The vocabulary used is poetic, excessive and marvellous. From there, the reader's interest in the protagonist is captured, as he grows in a rather unexpected mid-level military career via Korea to find happiness in a far-flung and isolated part of Scotland. Read it.
This is a book that starts slowly, building to an interesting climax. Pay close attention to the first vignette in the book -- it is key to understanding subsequent chapters. The writing evokes the bleak landscape of the northern British Isles, giving it a beauty and grace which is quite illuminating. Several interesting plot devices are used, and I really enjoyed how the book was tied together.
A great read, well worth the time.
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