Generations later, in the early nineteenth century, self-promoting antiquarian Charles Kirkliston Gibb is drawn to the Glen, and into the big house at the heart of its fragile community. The only copy of this book is kept in the library of the laird of Glen Conach, until it is destroyed by fire centuries later. Excerpts from the translated version of the book are included within the novel. These two quotes sum it up: ‘The story of a quiet unnoticed place where there are few people, fewer memories and almost no reliable records - a place such as Glen Conach…when you return to the present it may seem fact and fiction were never that discrete from one another after all.’

Book review: News of the Dead, by James Robertson - The Scotsman

As I was reading, I felt that the stories took a long time to get going, and was waiting to see how they were related. They were, however, separate stories but with the link that they all happened in the same glen, and the remoteness of the glen had an influence on each story. The message I took from the book, is that history is made by everyone, not just through official records, but also spoken stories and folklore, and personal diaries and memories. There is no real way of proving which is the correct version, but everyone is involved, and everyone contributes to the history of where they live.I liked that about the book: it's place, and it's description. And I like stories which, without being too prescriptive about it, interlink a few different things. I also like historical fiction. There’s a lot to enjoy in Greig’s novel (Romance! Witchcraft! Golf! Theology! Reivers! High politics! Assassinations!) but for me none of it would work if it hadn’t already passed what I shall call the Hilary Mantel Uncertainty Test. It’s quite simple. Does the book make the past feel as alive and uncertain as the present? Remarkably – and wonderfully – all three of this crop of Scottish novels do just that.

James Robertson Something happened here: the fiction of James Robertson

Speaking to Baxter by Loch Lee in the film, Robertson says, “You come to a place like this and you find that your fiction is echoing things that really did happen.”

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Robertson is telling us many things as he weaves his tale round the various inhabitants of the glen over the last thousand or so years. He is telling us that the oral tradition is important. Of course, some details have been forgotten, some details embellished and some invented. The mythology of our past forms us as much as the actual events. We were not witnesses of the actual events. We have to rely on documents which may or may not be accurate. Oral accounts can be lost, unless they are recorded at which point, they become a document.

News of the Dead by James Robertson | Waterstones News of the Dead by James Robertson | Waterstones

In ancient Pictland, the Christian hermit Conach contemplates God and nature, performs miracles and prepares himself for sacrifice. Long after his death, legends about him are set down by an unknown hand in the Book of Conach . A good story… had to have some element of truth in it, even if he had made it up or stolen it. If it did not have that truth, even if it was the best tale of them all, it would fail.”

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Interestingly the book had me thinking about faith also and how it is important especially when faced with the prospect of death or loss. How someone dies two deaths; one when their soul leaves this earth and one when their name is said for the last time. The only way to preserve someone’s legacy is to write it down. To pass on long after even you have left this earth. To ensure you leave your mark in this world. To each and every one and to all creatures of all kinds, a place of refuge and tranquility is assigned; and if that place be found in this life then blessed is the finder, and if not be found then hope itself is the name of it, and the only door that closes upon hope is called death.’ This book is set in one of the Angus glens and tells three different stories set in in different times, one at the time of the arrival of Christianity in Scotland, the second in the early 1800's, and the third in the present day. To tell the story of a country or a continent is surely a great and complex undertaking; but the story of a quiet, unnoticed place where there are few people, fewer memories and almost no reliable records - a place such as Glen Conach - may actually be harder to piece together. The hazier everything becomes, the more whatever facts there are become entangled with myth and legend. . .'

News of the Dead - Kindle edition by Robertson, James News of the Dead - Kindle edition by Robertson, James

The book is written from three perspectives and over three timescales; Maja in the current day, William Gibb in the early 1800s and the story of Saint Conach from a monk from ancient Pictish times. As we weave in and out of each of these stories, we are sometimes told the same story a few times from each perspective, showing how much a tale changes each time it is relayed. There aren't enough stars for this book--it is beautiful, playful and profound. Historical fiction that plays with the idea of history itself. The three stories are quite different. In the early Middle Ages in Pictland, there’s the Christian hermit, Conach, whose signs and miracles performed in Glen are made legendary through ancient writings in a text known as “The Book of Conach.” Generations later in the 19th century, an antiquarian called Charles Kirkliston Gibb, is drawn to Glen Conach to transcribe and translate The Book of Conach, and in turn is taken into the grand home of the Baron of Glen Conach and his frenzied household. And then there’s the present-day reflections of Maja, an elderly woman who has lived in the Glen for most of her life and her relationship to a young boy, called Lachie, who claims to have seen a ghost. News of the Dead is certainly far from dull and the author manages to pull off several different styles, including passages in Scots dialect for the stories told by the irrepressible and accommodating Geordie Kemp, who never likes to disappoint a listener. I don't see a lot of decent Scottish fiction. I don't know if it's just not there, or I've just not noticed it. You get a few thrillers, and there's been the odd notable one (your Shuggie Bains and My Bloody Projects) but there aren't many. And this is a very Scottish book - in a good way.Not sure why that matters either but there is a real sense of place to this book. I'd describe it as a set of stories around a fictional, very remote Glen near Forfar, and it's history and legend. And it's also about history, and what that means: what we can read and trust, and what we read and have to decide if we trust or not. Gibb keeps his head down translating the Book of Conach and shows his face at mealtimes. After a while he becomes fond of the Baron and his family – his wife Margaret, his daughter Jessie – and deceives them to extend his stay. But when Jessie rumbles him, he finds himself under her sway and faced with an offer he is unable to refuse. Deep down, I knew that Henry VIII couldn’t possibly have died while jousting because it was only 1536 and he still had another four and a half wives to go, but such was the clarity of Mantel’s depiction of the scene and the confidence of her writing from within Cromwell’s skull that it excised this knowledge from my own. The king had indeed been seriously wounded – so much so that it altered his whole character – but he was merely unconscious, not dead. Cromwell, taking command of the scene, shouted out the news. ‘“Long live the king!” Thomas bellows (thinking “God save Thomas Cromwell”).’