At The Loch Of The Green Corrie

Description

'I should like you to fish for me at the Loch of the Green Corrie,' MacCaig commanded months before his death. 'Go to Lochinver and ask for a man named Norman MacAskill - if he likes you he may tell you where it is. If you catch a fish, I shall be delighted. If you fail, then looking down from a place in which I do not believe, I shall be most amused.' The quest sounds simple and irresistible, but the loch is as demanding as it is beautiful. In the course of days of outdoor living, meetings, and fishing with friends in the remote hill lochs of far North-West Scotland, the search broadens. The waters of the Green Corrie finally reflect personal memoir, joy and loss, poetry, geology, land ownership in the Highlands, the ambiguous roles of whisky, love and friendship. At the Loch of the Green Corrie is a richly atmospheric narrative, a celebration of losing and recovering oneself in a unique landscape, the consideration of a particular culture, and a homage to a remarkable poet and his world.

Reviews

'Consistently well written, sometimes dazzlingly so' - Independent. 'Moving and utterly memorable, a triumph' - The Times. 'If you have a desire to luxuriate in the most beautiful use of the English language borne along by the love of one gifted poet for a recognized master of melancholy, then this is the book for you. It most certainly is the book for me' - Billy Connelly. 'A ruminative, beautifully written book that is at once a biography of MacCaig, an account of a journey in North West Scotland and a captivating memoir of Greig's life as a poet, Himalayan climber and fisherman' - Sunday Times. 'It is completely absorbing ... and the intense self-scrutiny is matched by landscape writing worthy of Stevenson himself. Over and over, Grieg makes place into an event in its own right' - Guardian.

Author description

Andrew Greig is the author of six acclaimed books of poetry, two Himalayan mountaineering expedition books, and five novels including That Summer, When They Lay Bare, In Another Light (Scottish Book of the Year) and Romanno Bridge. His last non-fiction book, Preferred Lies, is already seen as a contemporary classic. A full time writer, he lives in Orkney and Edinburgh, with his wife, the novelist Lesley Glaister.