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Morning Tide
Twelve-year-old Hugh MacBeth lives in a small fishing village near Caithness at the end of the nineteenth century. He is becoming aware of his mother's worries that he and his brother will follow their father to sea, and is becoming to realise that the fishing industry is doomed to decline, a decline that will result in the death of his village. A lyrical and poignant novel, Morning Tide, describes how a young boy learns to become a man. It is a poetic testimony to the intensity of feeling in physical experience, the touch of the earth and the coldness of the sea, and in the need to be free. Sensitivity and wildness are pitted against the restrictions of family and social life, and it is more than a complete picture of childhood; unfolding into a set of values that speaks powerfully to the present.
213 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1931
8 people are currently reading
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About the author
Neil M. Gunn
63 books50 followersNeil Gunn, one of Scotland's most prolific and distinguished novelists, wrote over a period that spanned the Recession, the political crises of the 1920's and 1930's, and the Second World War and its aftermath. Although nearly all his 20 novels are set in the Highlands of Scotland, he is not a regional author in the narrow sense of that description; his novels reflect a search for meaning in troubled times, both past and present, a search that leads him into the realms of philosophy, archaeology, folk tradition and metaphysical speculation.
Born in the coastal village of Dunbeath, Caithness, the son of a successful fishing boat skipper, Gunn was educated at the local village primary school and privately in Galloway. In 1911 he entered the Civil Service and spent some time in both London and Edinburgh before returning to the North as a customs and excise officer based (after a short spell in Caithness) in Inverness. Before voluntary retirement from Government service in 1937 to become a full-time writer, he had embarked on a literary career with considerable success.
His first novel, The Grey Coast (1926), a novel in the realist tradition and set in Caithness in the 1920's, occupied an important position in the literary movement known as the Scottish Renaissance. His second novel, Morning Tide (1931), an idyll of a Highland childhood, won a Book Society award and the praise of the well known literary and public figure, John Buchan. The turning point in Gunn's career, however, came in 1937, when he won the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial prize for his deeply thought-provoking Highland River, a quasi autobiographical novel written in the third person, in which the main protagonist's life is made analogous to a Highland river and the search for its source.
In 1941 Gunn's epic novel about the fishing boom of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, The Silver Darlings, was widely acclaimed as a modern classic and considered the finest balance between concrete action and metaphysical speculation achieved by any British writer in the 20th century. It was also the final novel of a trilogy of the history of the Northlands, the other novels being Sun Circle (1933) on the Viking invasions of the 9th century and Butcher's Broom (1934) on the Clearances. In 1944 Gunn wrote his anti-Utopian novel, The Green Isle of the Great Deep, a book that preceded George Orwell's novel on the same theme, Nineteen Eighty-Four, by five years. The novel, using an old man and a young boy from a rural background as characters in a struggle against the pressures of totalitarian state, evoked an enthusiastic response from the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung.
Some of Gunn's later books, whilst not ignoring the uglier aspects of the modern world, touch more on metaphysical speculation in a vein that is not without humour. The Well at the Worlds End (1951), in particular, lays emphasis on the more positive aspects of living and the value of that approach in finding meaning and purpose in life. Gunn's spiritual autobiography, The Atom of Delight (1956), which, although similar in many ways to Highland River, incorporates a vein of thought derived from Gunn's interest in Zen Buddhism. The autobiography was Gunn's last major work.
In 1948 Gunn's contribution to literature was recognised by Edinburgh University with an honorary doctorate to the author; in 1972 the Scottish Arts Council created the Neil Gunn Fellowship in his honour, a fellowship that was to include such famous writers as Henrich Boll, Saul Bellow, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, Nadine Gordimer and Mario Vargas Llosa.
Born in the coastal village of Dunbeath, Caithness, the son of a successful fishing boat skipper, Gunn was educated at the local village primary school and privately in Galloway. In 1911 he entered the Civil Service and spent some time in both London and Edinburgh before returning to the North as a customs and excise officer based (after a short spell in Caithness) in Inverness. Before voluntary retirement from Government service in 1937 to become a full-time writer, he had embarked on a literary career with considerable success.
His first novel, The Grey Coast (1926), a novel in the realist tradition and set in Caithness in the 1920's, occupied an important position in the literary movement known as the Scottish Renaissance. His second novel, Morning Tide (1931), an idyll of a Highland childhood, won a Book Society award and the praise of the well known literary and public figure, John Buchan. The turning point in Gunn's career, however, came in 1937, when he won the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial prize for his deeply thought-provoking Highland River, a quasi autobiographical novel written in the third person, in which the main protagonist's life is made analogous to a Highland river and the search for its source.
In 1941 Gunn's epic novel about the fishing boom of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, The Silver Darlings, was widely acclaimed as a modern classic and considered the finest balance between concrete action and metaphysical speculation achieved by any British writer in the 20th century. It was also the final novel of a trilogy of the history of the Northlands, the other novels being Sun Circle (1933) on the Viking invasions of the 9th century and Butcher's Broom (1934) on the Clearances. In 1944 Gunn wrote his anti-Utopian novel, The Green Isle of the Great Deep, a book that preceded George Orwell's novel on the same theme, Nineteen Eighty-Four, by five years. The novel, using an old man and a young boy from a rural background as characters in a struggle against the pressures of totalitarian state, evoked an enthusiastic response from the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung.
Some of Gunn's later books, whilst not ignoring the uglier aspects of the modern world, touch more on metaphysical speculation in a vein that is not without humour. The Well at the Worlds End (1951), in particular, lays emphasis on the more positive aspects of living and the value of that approach in finding meaning and purpose in life. Gunn's spiritual autobiography, The Atom of Delight (1956), which, although similar in many ways to Highland River, incorporates a vein of thought derived from Gunn's interest in Zen Buddhism. The autobiography was Gunn's last major work.
In 1948 Gunn's contribution to literature was recognised by Edinburgh University with an honorary doctorate to the author; in 1972 the Scottish Arts Council created the Neil Gunn Fellowship in his honour, a fellowship that was to include such famous writers as Henrich Boll, Saul Bellow, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, Nadine Gordimer and Mario Vargas Llosa.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 30, 2024
Beautifully written, but with no real plot to speak of and some really expansive set-pieces, this felt much longer than its 255 pages.
April 17, 2021
"Everyone knows how your mother dislikes the sea. . . She would rather lose you to Australia, where you will live, even though she should never see you again--rather than that you should follow your father." (150)
Twelve-year-old Hugh MacBeth is the youngest child of a family in a Caithness fishing village. Set at the turn of the 20th Century, the younger generation is leaving the area to escape the danger, poverty, and long hours of fishing. A frightening incident involving boats of fishermen caught in the stormy sea trying to sail back to the harbor was vibrantly described. The natural world is shown with its beauty and its violence.
Written in lyrical prose, this is a coming-of-age story of the young boy. It's also a story of changing times in the Scottish Highlands. Will they lose the important oral traditions of passing down family stories, playing traditional songs, and memorizing poetry? There are many changes in the MacBeth family with Hugh seeing two siblings leave for Australia for better opportunities. Later, Hugh fears that his mother might not recover from a serious illness. "Morning Tide" is a quiet, beautifully written story set in northeastern Scotland where author Neil Gunn spent many years.
Twelve-year-old Hugh MacBeth is the youngest child of a family in a Caithness fishing village. Set at the turn of the 20th Century, the younger generation is leaving the area to escape the danger, poverty, and long hours of fishing. A frightening incident involving boats of fishermen caught in the stormy sea trying to sail back to the harbor was vibrantly described. The natural world is shown with its beauty and its violence.
Written in lyrical prose, this is a coming-of-age story of the young boy. It's also a story of changing times in the Scottish Highlands. Will they lose the important oral traditions of passing down family stories, playing traditional songs, and memorizing poetry? There are many changes in the MacBeth family with Hugh seeing two siblings leave for Australia for better opportunities. Later, Hugh fears that his mother might not recover from a serious illness. "Morning Tide" is a quiet, beautifully written story set in northeastern Scotland where author Neil Gunn spent many years.
September 7, 2018
Very difficult to review this. As a novel, I don't know that the plot is satisfactory, but as for the writing itself, the themes and the scenes - 5* all the way. Gunn is a newfound favorite for me. I can only think to describe his work as having elemental themes - how the individuals who live from the earth, or in this case, the sea, have very little "skin" between themselves and the world. I mean, nature and the elements are their life, which is as obvious a statement as you can get, but is lost on most of us who have 10,000 distractions battering us from within and without at any given moment. Gunn is masterful at taking us into a world we no longer possess. His description of a violent storm and the villagers congregating on the seashore in desperation to catch a glimpse of their fishermen, fathers and sons and brothers, as they try to make shore without being crushed by the waves, is as close to being there as I can imagine.
..."As the boats came nearer a silence fell on everyone and the bodies grew still. The first great relief was passing into the menace of the the harbour bar. The storm leapt alive again, its thunder pounding on the beach, its drift stinging eyes that stared with unwinking fixity. The women had drawn a little nearer the knot of men by the breakwater, and their wide skirts flapped in the wind below faces hooded and peaked by tight-drawn shawls. They looked like a group caught in a grey dawn of history, or legend, their separateness from the men fateful and eternal."
The book is written from the perspective of the youngest son of a fisherman's family, and his vulnerability and impressionable nature seem to me what takes it from a good story to a great one. His developing sense of family and brotherhood, of what it means to be a full human being - well, the events of life work on him in a similar way as the waves and storm did on his father and brother. We stand on the shore, desperately hoping he will come through.
..."As the boats came nearer a silence fell on everyone and the bodies grew still. The first great relief was passing into the menace of the the harbour bar. The storm leapt alive again, its thunder pounding on the beach, its drift stinging eyes that stared with unwinking fixity. The women had drawn a little nearer the knot of men by the breakwater, and their wide skirts flapped in the wind below faces hooded and peaked by tight-drawn shawls. They looked like a group caught in a grey dawn of history, or legend, their separateness from the men fateful and eternal."
The book is written from the perspective of the youngest son of a fisherman's family, and his vulnerability and impressionable nature seem to me what takes it from a good story to a great one. His developing sense of family and brotherhood, of what it means to be a full human being - well, the events of life work on him in a similar way as the waves and storm did on his father and brother. We stand on the shore, desperately hoping he will come through.
February 3, 2015
Beautifully written, quietly moving account of life in a fishing village. Somehow reflects the brooding intensity of the sea itself, which features heavily as its own kind of character. The novel's opening scene, of a young boy skating the immensity of an ebb tide, searching for bait oysters, is a prelude for its general tone: innocence on the edge of some vast, destructive, silencing presence. Gunn pays attention to things that matter, like the curl of a wave and the heft of contraband salmon. For readers that care about these things, and the people who live among them.
August 27, 2022
Like Highland River, this is a tale steeped in Gunn’s experience of growing up in the coastal village of Dunbeath in Caithness. The viewpoint character is Hugh MacBeth, youngest son of the family but old enough to be tasked with collecting mussels with which to bait his father’s fishing nets. Part One is a slow unfolding of the realities of living slightly away from the small community but nevertheless enmeshed in it and displays a deep knowledge of the fishing life and empathy for a child on the cusp of early manhood. Hugh’s sister Grace has been away working in a city but recently returned home. He is mildly disturbed by meeting her walking along the road one evening with Charlie Chisholm, with whom his other sister, Kirsty, apparently has an understanding. His father is an accomplished seaman but his mother is opposed to any venturing out in boats by his elder brother Alan, since the McHughs’ other son, Finlay, had drowned several years before. The dramatic climax comes when Alan has offered to take a place in another man’s boat due to a crewman’s indisposition. A storm brews up shortly after the boats are out and a magnificently described passage shows us the perils of trying to make safe harbour in a raging sea and the fears of the women – and men – on the shore. Alan’s boat grounds just outside the harbour mouth but lines cast out from the shore help all to safety. In the meantime Hugh’s father’s boat appears doomed to all the observers when it materialises out of the rolling swells. Yet he times the approach and angle to the small harbour entrance to catch a wave surging into its shelter.
Part Two sees Hugh’s initiation into the company of older men and involvement in a ploy to poach salmon from the upper reaches of the local river, on the return from which he overhears Kirsty and Charlie Chisholm having a serious conversation about their relationship. By this time Alan has resolved to make a life for himself in Australia, an outcome which his mother much prefers to a life on the boats even though she is unlikely ever to see him again.
Hugh’s interactions with his peers and elders and theirs with him and each other are all firmly rooted. Understated love, minor betrayals, low-key heroism, the exigencies of a hard life (when doctors are only available by calling at their houses and even then may be out on a call) are all implied rather than underlined. This is a fine novel.
Part Two sees Hugh’s initiation into the company of older men and involvement in a ploy to poach salmon from the upper reaches of the local river, on the return from which he overhears Kirsty and Charlie Chisholm having a serious conversation about their relationship. By this time Alan has resolved to make a life for himself in Australia, an outcome which his mother much prefers to a life on the boats even though she is unlikely ever to see him again.
Hugh’s interactions with his peers and elders and theirs with him and each other are all firmly rooted. Understated love, minor betrayals, low-key heroism, the exigencies of a hard life (when doctors are only available by calling at their houses and even then may be out on a call) are all implied rather than underlined. This is a fine novel.
November 30, 2024
Neil Gunn erzählt die Geschichte des Fischerssohn Hugh. Gerade zwölf Jahre alt steht er quasi zwischen den Welten. Auf der einen Seite geniesst er immer noch eine unbekümmerte Kindheit, auf der anderen Seite werden ihm die Geschehnisse um ihn herum immer mehr bewusst. Er kann sich nicht mehr so unbeschwert wie früher über viele Dinge freuen, hat aber auch noch nicht genug Erfahrung, die vielen neuen Eindrücke zu verarbeiten, die auf ihn einstürmen.
Die Geschichte beginnt als Hugh am Strand Muscheln für seinen Vater sammelt die dieser als Köder braucht. Anfangs sammelt er sie noch spielerisch, aber plötzlich wird ihm die Bedeutung seiner Arbeit bewußt und er bemüht sich so viele der größten Muscheln wie möglich zu sammeln. Auch als ihn seine Freunde zum Fußballspielen abholen wollen und sich über seinen Eifer lustig machen arbeitet er weiter, obwohl es ihm wegen ihrer Spötteleien keinen Spaß mehr macht und er eigentlich lieber mit seinen Freunden spielen würde...
Dieser Konflikt zieht sich durch die gesamte Erzählung. Hugh hat immer mehr das Gefühl, dass er es niemandem mehr recht machen kann. So sieht er die Tatsache, dass sein ältester Bruder und seine Schwester auswandern wollen als großes Abenteuer an. Trotzdem kann er sich nicht mit seinen Geschwistern freuen, denn er sieht auch den Schmerz, den sie seinen Eltern dadurch bereiten. Aus lauter Trotz verschläft er so fast den Abschied.
Während er in der Schule immer noch wie ein Kind behandelt wird übernimmt er nach dem Weggang der Geschwister und der Abwesenheit seines Vaters die Rolle des Mannes im Haus. Diese Rolle wird ihm fast zu viel als seine Mutter schwer erkrankt und er die ganze Verantwortung tragen muss...
Der Autor zeichnet ein sensibles Bild des Jungen an der Schwelle zum Erwachsenwerden. Der anfangs unbeschwerte Junge wird immer nachdenklicher und kann seine inneren Konflikte oft nur schwer ertragen. Ab und zu blitzt noch der "alte" Hugh auf, der mit seinen Freunden spielt oder sich auch mit ihnen prügelt. Am Ende des Buchs bekommt man einen Ausblick auf den Mann, der er einmal sein wird auch wenn er in eine ungewisse Zukunft hineinwächst.
Die Geschichte beginnt als Hugh am Strand Muscheln für seinen Vater sammelt die dieser als Köder braucht. Anfangs sammelt er sie noch spielerisch, aber plötzlich wird ihm die Bedeutung seiner Arbeit bewußt und er bemüht sich so viele der größten Muscheln wie möglich zu sammeln. Auch als ihn seine Freunde zum Fußballspielen abholen wollen und sich über seinen Eifer lustig machen arbeitet er weiter, obwohl es ihm wegen ihrer Spötteleien keinen Spaß mehr macht und er eigentlich lieber mit seinen Freunden spielen würde...
Dieser Konflikt zieht sich durch die gesamte Erzählung. Hugh hat immer mehr das Gefühl, dass er es niemandem mehr recht machen kann. So sieht er die Tatsache, dass sein ältester Bruder und seine Schwester auswandern wollen als großes Abenteuer an. Trotzdem kann er sich nicht mit seinen Geschwistern freuen, denn er sieht auch den Schmerz, den sie seinen Eltern dadurch bereiten. Aus lauter Trotz verschläft er so fast den Abschied.
Während er in der Schule immer noch wie ein Kind behandelt wird übernimmt er nach dem Weggang der Geschwister und der Abwesenheit seines Vaters die Rolle des Mannes im Haus. Diese Rolle wird ihm fast zu viel als seine Mutter schwer erkrankt und er die ganze Verantwortung tragen muss...
Der Autor zeichnet ein sensibles Bild des Jungen an der Schwelle zum Erwachsenwerden. Der anfangs unbeschwerte Junge wird immer nachdenklicher und kann seine inneren Konflikte oft nur schwer ertragen. Ab und zu blitzt noch der "alte" Hugh auf, der mit seinen Freunden spielt oder sich auch mit ihnen prügelt. Am Ende des Buchs bekommt man einen Ausblick auf den Mann, der er einmal sein wird auch wenn er in eine ungewisse Zukunft hineinwächst.
November 22, 2021
It’s alright. Bit twee and the brother sister relationships scream incest !!!!!!
Much ado about nothing. Family get panicked by large waves and loud storms. Two siblings emigrate to Australia, mother weeps. Mother falls ill. All this with a shit load of words between.
Really not to my taste. If you live coastal you may get a greater appreciation from the story.
Much ado about nothing. Family get panicked by large waves and loud storms. Two siblings emigrate to Australia, mother weeps. Mother falls ill. All this with a shit load of words between.
Really not to my taste. If you live coastal you may get a greater appreciation from the story.
July 30, 2021
It is strange, rereading something important from adolescence. How I imagined the characters, for example, I realise had as much to do with me putting myself in the syory, and nothing, or almost nothing, to do with how they are described in the book. I remember finding the first half to two thirds as dull, almost incomprehensible, whereas now I realise they are part of the whole. Ostensibly about a small Scottish fishing community, and the heritage of constant near life and death experiences on the family, you can feel Gunn reaching towards a discussion, rather than an explanation, of sensory and emotional experience.
April 9, 2017
A novel structured around a few simple but poignant events. An insight into a Highland/coastal way of life as perceived by a 12 year-old boy. Poetic in places with a focus on feelings, expressions and the relationships between family members.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews