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The Gathering Night (2012)

by Margaret Elphinstone(Favorite Author)

3.44 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1847672884 (ISBN13: 9781847672889)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Canongate UK

review 1: An excellent and extremely rare example of fiction set in Prehistoric Britain - very few people (especially archaeologists) are brave enough to give it a go. This book is very well researched and the world-view that Elphinstone has created for the Mesolithic inhabitants of the Scottish Isles is brilliantly and realistically formed. I particularly admire her abandonment of and optimistic and ultimately feminist tendency to create an egalitarian Eutopia in which both genders existed in equality within prehistory.
review 2: Margaret Elphinstone has written a convincing account of what life might have been like in the Mesolithic era in Scotland. This era encompassed six thousand years of human occupation from the last Ice Age until the agricultural revolution of a... moreround 4000BC. Not much is known of Scotland's hunter-gatherers, but Elphinstone drew parallels from Inuit, Native American and Sami traditions. Hunter-gatherer cultures share spiritual practices which show their deep relationship to their land. "People could make decisions about their lives, just as we do, based on social and spiritual considerations, and not just the material imperatives of where and how to find the next meal." The one definite historic event of the time was a tsunami that struck the east coast of Scotland following an underwater landslide off the coast of Norway in about 6150BC. The plot of the story is woven from this event as the people try to make sense of it. This was an interesting historical read. less

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