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The Grampian Quartet #1
The Quarry Wood
When Martha accepts a place at university, her decision is met with a mixture of hostility and pride by her uncomprehending family. This is the story of a young woman's journey to maturity and independence, struggling to cope with the intellectual and emotional challenges that surround her, at a time when such space was rarely given freely to women.
In The Quarry Wood, Nan Shepherd's subtle prose is matched with intense and memorable descriptions of the natural world, and a dry sense of humour. Ninety years after the first publication, it remains as fresh and original today.
In The Quarry Wood, Nan Shepherd's subtle prose is matched with intense and memorable descriptions of the natural world, and a dry sense of humour. Ninety years after the first publication, it remains as fresh and original today.
224 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1928
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About the author
Nan Shepherd
16 books240 followersNan (Anna) Shepherd was a Scottish novelist and poet. She was an early Scottish Modernist writer, who wrote three standalone novels set in small, fictional, communities in North Scotland. The Scottish landscape and weather played a major role in her novels and were the focus of her poetry. Shepherd also wrote one non-fiction book on hill walking, based on her experiences walking in the Cairngorms. An enthusiastic gardener and hill-walker, she made many visits to the Cairngorms with students and friends. She also travelled further afield - to Norway, France, Italy, Greece and South Africa. Shepherd was a lecturer of English at the Aberdeen College of Education for most of her working life.
Shepherd was a friend of the writers Agnes Mure Mackenzie and Neil M. Gunn and a mentor to Jessie Kesson.
Shepherd was a friend of the writers Agnes Mure Mackenzie and Neil M. Gunn and a mentor to Jessie Kesson.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 66 reviews
June 17, 2018
Nan Shepherd is best known for The Living Mountain, her uniquely personal book about The Cairngorms which is rightly regarded as a classic piece of nature writing. This 1928 novel was her first published work.
At its core is a rites of passage novel, told largely in Aberdeenshire dialect - this does make it quite difficult for a non-Scot to follow at times though many of the dialect words are explained in a glossary, in fact just reading the glossary shows how rich the dialect is.
The heroine Martha has to fight the limited expectations of her family and the close knit community in which there are very few secrets. I suspect a degree of veiled autobiography as the book is very strong on her hidden thoughts and motivations. She gains a place at university and is consumed by her thirst for knowledge, and is drawn to her friend's husband Luke.
I found it quite gripping and in places surprisingly modern, despite the setting and the language.
At its core is a rites of passage novel, told largely in Aberdeenshire dialect - this does make it quite difficult for a non-Scot to follow at times though many of the dialect words are explained in a glossary, in fact just reading the glossary shows how rich the dialect is.
The heroine Martha has to fight the limited expectations of her family and the close knit community in which there are very few secrets. I suspect a degree of veiled autobiography as the book is very strong on her hidden thoughts and motivations. She gains a place at university and is consumed by her thirst for knowledge, and is drawn to her friend's husband Luke.
I found it quite gripping and in places surprisingly modern, despite the setting and the language.
August 23, 2015
A complex novel this - both in its sociopolitical themes and in its humanity (which may explain some of the more negative reviews). The prose is wonderful, as is her ear for dialogue, and she offers no easy or trite ways out for her heroine. Most impressively done is her rejection of the traditional narrative arc of such a story, and her strongly feminist evocation of poverty and motherhood. Imagine a Scottish female Hardy with a willingness to make clear the flaws of men and the patriarchal norms, and you get close. Highly recommended.
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November 20, 2020I am impressed at the praise in some reviews and on the blurbs on the covers of this book, which having read the novel strike me as improbably brave. I would not say it is a bad, bad novel, but rather like Silesian station it lacks any sense of danger or difficulty. The dominant note is repression - sometimes the heroine has a burst of rage, or maternal love, or passion, but although she, Martha, is the viewpoint character she is so repressed that these outbursts and revelations effectively come from nowhere.
So I could say that if Shepherd's intention was to portray a repressed character, then she did it incredibly well, so well in fact, that it is hard to engage with the novel at all.
It might be the kind of thing that is called autofiction today (or was that yesterday?) and is based on Shepherd's own life. Girl in rural family studies hard, gets bursary, as a young woman goes to university in Aberdeen, graduates and becomes a teacher. All of this between the wars, but I fear I have made it sound far more exciting than it is, because perhaps you too have read other books or know a little history, or perhaps are simply wise in the ways of the world and can imagine, the struggles of the country girl to get space and time to study, the struggle in rural poverty and the expense of candles, books and papers, against this the love of learning but also the wrenching loss as education alienates the youngster from her mileau, the sharp excitement of being the first in her family to go to university - a struggle too to be allowed to go - or even to study when every penny is needed to keep the family going, the shock of knowledge and new ideas, mingling with different people, shifting in social class,having to study twice as hard to be taken half as seriously as any male student, the challenges of falling in love, the opportunities of becoming a teacher. But only a couple of these things feature at all and then are only dealt with fleetingly,the most space given to any of this is the excitement of entering university which gets an entire paragraph.
Martha early on decides not to go to teacher training college but to go to university which means that she would be studying for a year or two longer and not earning, her mother - understandably, is enraged but only for a couple of days and that is typical of this novel, there is the threat of conflict like storm clouds on the horizon but they are blown away before they get close enough to rumble. Instead Shepherd throws in some melodrama - late in the novel it turns out that there is a rumour that Martha has had a baby out of wedlock - but this doesn't harm Martha at all- she's not challenged to prove her virginity to the schoolboard or drummed out of Aberdeenshire for corruption of morals. And an elderly layabout witnesses her kissing a man in the early hours of the morning which he reports to another man who is intent on wooing Martha, but who Martha had already decided that she was not interested in marrying, it's just yawn, bad telenovella stuff, no jeopardy, it doesn't excite the reader, it's just boring.
The reason why I picked up this book was because I recognised the author's name as a great nature writer and I thought she'd be worth a punt - there is impressively little interest in nature in this book, my general observation from this novel is that interwar Aberdeeenshire was muddy.
The interesting feature about this novel is that much of the dialogue is written - I am not sure, maybe in Doric, possibly in Scots while the narration and speech of more educated characters (Martha, the Doctor, other students) is in standard English interpreted by maybe a half dozen non-English words, most used once. Martha herself code switches consciously speaking in Scots (or Doric) to her great Aunt when she wants to show she is on her side. I find this interesting, but the effect is alienating and devaluing, by implication you can't think in that language, nor does it have cultural value (or capital I suppose I need to say) , which I suppose is sad but true, equally it is sad but true in part because writers like Shepherd chose not to write the while thing in Doric (or Scots) although admittedly that would have excluded many potential readers .
Late in the book Martha exclaims to herself 'Good Lord!...Am I such a slave as that? Dependent on a man to complete me! I thought I couldn't be anything without him - I can be my own creator.' (p.184), as a reader I thought, at last - great tell us more, show us what you are going to create of yourself. But that's it the moment passes, the cloud has already gone, forgotten.
This is a first novel, I feel Shepherd wanted both to tell her own story, but shyly - without giving away too much about herself, so as a result it is a repressed little story, most of which is taken up by a great Aunt dying slowly of cancer - which is actually not bad with the ebbs and flows of someone dying and not dying, deciding what to be buried in and then improving for a while and so on. A repressed little story that is most interesting at the edges. As I recall from the Bible Martha was the one who was sour at doing all the housework while Mary was bumming about with Jesus living off welfare and handouts, maybe that is what this novel is all about. Martha has an outburst of rage against bastards, I felt the basis of this was that Martha's mother throughout the novel was taking various bastard children and bringing them up, ostensibly because she likes having a small child about to scrap out the bottom of the dirty pots and pans - there's a bit of jealously and anger at having to share her mother with other children. And perhaps all this studying which the author tells us was out of a desire for learning which one never feels is true is a struggle for attention from the parents - who at most are quietly satisfied at the daughter graduating and becoming a teacher.
Not a novel I would recommend anyone to seek out, unless they were keen on practising their Scots (or Doric).
So I could say that if Shepherd's intention was to portray a repressed character, then she did it incredibly well, so well in fact, that it is hard to engage with the novel at all.
It might be the kind of thing that is called autofiction today (or was that yesterday?) and is based on Shepherd's own life. Girl in rural family studies hard, gets bursary, as a young woman goes to university in Aberdeen, graduates and becomes a teacher. All of this between the wars, but I fear I have made it sound far more exciting than it is, because perhaps you too have read other books or know a little history, or perhaps are simply wise in the ways of the world and can imagine, the struggles of the country girl to get space and time to study, the struggle in rural poverty and the expense of candles, books and papers, against this the love of learning but also the wrenching loss as education alienates the youngster from her mileau, the sharp excitement of being the first in her family to go to university - a struggle too to be allowed to go - or even to study when every penny is needed to keep the family going, the shock of knowledge and new ideas, mingling with different people, shifting in social class,having to study twice as hard to be taken half as seriously as any male student, the challenges of falling in love, the opportunities of becoming a teacher. But only a couple of these things feature at all and then are only dealt with fleetingly,the most space given to any of this is the excitement of entering university which gets an entire paragraph.
Martha early on decides not to go to teacher training college but to go to university which means that she would be studying for a year or two longer and not earning, her mother - understandably, is enraged but only for a couple of days and that is typical of this novel, there is the threat of conflict like storm clouds on the horizon but they are blown away before they get close enough to rumble. Instead Shepherd throws in some melodrama - late in the novel it turns out that there is a rumour that Martha has had a baby out of wedlock - but this doesn't harm Martha at all- she's not challenged to prove her virginity to the schoolboard or drummed out of Aberdeenshire for corruption of morals. And an elderly layabout witnesses her kissing a man in the early hours of the morning which he reports to another man who is intent on wooing Martha, but who Martha had already decided that she was not interested in marrying, it's just yawn, bad telenovella stuff, no jeopardy, it doesn't excite the reader, it's just boring.
The reason why I picked up this book was because I recognised the author's name as a great nature writer and I thought she'd be worth a punt - there is impressively little interest in nature in this book, my general observation from this novel is that interwar Aberdeeenshire was muddy.
The interesting feature about this novel is that much of the dialogue is written - I am not sure, maybe in Doric, possibly in Scots while the narration and speech of more educated characters (Martha, the Doctor, other students) is in standard English interpreted by maybe a half dozen non-English words, most used once. Martha herself code switches consciously speaking in Scots (or Doric) to her great Aunt when she wants to show she is on her side. I find this interesting, but the effect is alienating and devaluing, by implication you can't think in that language, nor does it have cultural value (or capital I suppose I need to say) , which I suppose is sad but true, equally it is sad but true in part because writers like Shepherd chose not to write the while thing in Doric (or Scots) although admittedly that would have excluded many potential readers .
Late in the book Martha exclaims to herself 'Good Lord!...Am I such a slave as that? Dependent on a man to complete me! I thought I couldn't be anything without him - I can be my own creator.' (p.184), as a reader I thought, at last - great tell us more, show us what you are going to create of yourself. But that's it the moment passes, the cloud has already gone, forgotten.
This is a first novel, I feel Shepherd wanted both to tell her own story, but shyly - without giving away too much about herself, so as a result it is a repressed little story, most of which is taken up by a great Aunt dying slowly of cancer - which is actually not bad with the ebbs and flows of someone dying and not dying, deciding what to be buried in and then improving for a while and so on. A repressed little story that is most interesting at the edges. As I recall from the Bible Martha was the one who was sour at doing all the housework while Mary was bumming about with Jesus living off welfare and handouts, maybe that is what this novel is all about. Martha has an outburst of rage against bastards, I felt the basis of this was that Martha's mother throughout the novel was taking various bastard children and bringing them up, ostensibly because she likes having a small child about to scrap out the bottom of the dirty pots and pans - there's a bit of jealously and anger at having to share her mother with other children. And perhaps all this studying which the author tells us was out of a desire for learning which one never feels is true is a struggle for attention from the parents - who at most are quietly satisfied at the daughter graduating and becoming a teacher.
Not a novel I would recommend anyone to seek out, unless they were keen on practising their Scots (or Doric).
May 31, 2021
i found this book profoundly beautiful in parts & infinitely (and weirdly i suppose) affirming in some womanly or spinsterish or quiet way. perhaps it is a five star read and not a five star book? i dont think it's that ~good but at the same time my experience with it was kinda breathtaking.
lonely passionate women forever
lonely passionate women forever
May 28, 2012
Fired up with enthusiasm by her beautiful and lyrical work about the Cairngorms, “The Living Mountain”, I rapidly made an order through ABE for her trilogy of novels and waited with eager anticipation. The result when it arrived was interesting, but a little disappointing.
The novel is on a small scale, focused on a farming community & centring on Martha who we meet at the age of nine, and whose initial appearance in the first sentence is to give her great aunt something of kicking. By the end of the novel we leave a mature young woman in her twenties, ready to take up what possibilities life has to offer her, although what direction she will take is left something of an open question.
Martha is the child of Emmaline, who has alienated her family with their pretensions to social position and respectability, by marrying Geordie, a none-to-bright, but good natured farm worker & small-holder. There is however, one exception among the aunts, the delightfully individual Aunt Josephine, who acts as a kind of patron and mentor to Martha in her efforts to achieve a university education.
Despite the fact that the main narrative thread is Martha’s story, she does not play the traditional role of a central character in the fullest sense. Shepherd takes an equal interest in many other characters and happenings. In fact she does not take us through a smoothly designed plot at all e.g. Aunt Josephine takes Martha to spend time at her home, delivering her from the ill-ordered home she lives in & from the very unpredictable Emmaline. The child is cleaned up, re-clothed, given an attractive room, and settles into her delightful new home. But then she breaks away from the standard “child saved from difficulties storyline” For no clear reason Aunt goes off on some unspecified trip & Martha is left to return home to resume her old life. Then we skip and find to begin a new chapter & suddenly we are dealing with Martha at the age of 18.
Overall her individual narrative style appears to be an attempt to reflect something of the randomness & untidiness of events in life, and of our perceptions of them.
She is careful in her story not to mete out what might seem appropriately just deserts to characters e.g. both the bitter male village gossip & mischievous-maker and to the arrogant & ultimately faithless beau of Martha, remain in character, rather than being given some kind of comeuppance.
A number of characters are delightfully drawn. For instance Emmaline is short-tempered & unjust, she is slovenly about the house, she over relies on Martha to fill the gaps she leaves in her own & the families care, but she is also quick to defend her family in strident terms, she constantly takes in waifs & strays – particularly fatherless children & those who are excess to their own families resources. Her talk is forthright. This is all brought out through small-scale & sketchy little incidents, rather than through any prolonged reflection on the character.
Aunt Josephine is an absolute delight who brings a freshness & individuality in her views of the values & ways of the community she lives in. Her dealings with the rest of the family and then with her cancer are founded on her love of life, her great capacity for affection where she chooses to bestow it, and on her insistence on doing things the way she chooses.
Shepherd’s descriptions of natural things, especially weather conditions, is concisely & beautifully done, as would be expected from the quality of writing in The Living Mountain.
The overall design of the book reminded me of one of those Ruskin sketches where there are parts of the picture drawn in beautiful detail, but where there are large sections of the piece that have the lightest of sketch lines as well as large areas of blank white onto which the rest are set.
Much of the dialogue in the book is written in the dialect of the area. She is able to differentiate this very effectively in her portrayal of the different characters – some speaking a much broader version than others. However, a minor irritation was the lack of a suitably detailed glossary. The one included at the back of this was very poor. Often I found words & phrases that I could interpret without help included in the glossary. Whereas others which I really needed a glossary for were absent.
The other two novels in the trilogy remain to be read. At this moment they are calling much less insistently than a number of other books.
The novel is on a small scale, focused on a farming community & centring on Martha who we meet at the age of nine, and whose initial appearance in the first sentence is to give her great aunt something of kicking. By the end of the novel we leave a mature young woman in her twenties, ready to take up what possibilities life has to offer her, although what direction she will take is left something of an open question.
Martha is the child of Emmaline, who has alienated her family with their pretensions to social position and respectability, by marrying Geordie, a none-to-bright, but good natured farm worker & small-holder. There is however, one exception among the aunts, the delightfully individual Aunt Josephine, who acts as a kind of patron and mentor to Martha in her efforts to achieve a university education.
Despite the fact that the main narrative thread is Martha’s story, she does not play the traditional role of a central character in the fullest sense. Shepherd takes an equal interest in many other characters and happenings. In fact she does not take us through a smoothly designed plot at all e.g. Aunt Josephine takes Martha to spend time at her home, delivering her from the ill-ordered home she lives in & from the very unpredictable Emmaline. The child is cleaned up, re-clothed, given an attractive room, and settles into her delightful new home. But then she breaks away from the standard “child saved from difficulties storyline” For no clear reason Aunt goes off on some unspecified trip & Martha is left to return home to resume her old life. Then we skip and find to begin a new chapter & suddenly we are dealing with Martha at the age of 18.
Overall her individual narrative style appears to be an attempt to reflect something of the randomness & untidiness of events in life, and of our perceptions of them.
She is careful in her story not to mete out what might seem appropriately just deserts to characters e.g. both the bitter male village gossip & mischievous-maker and to the arrogant & ultimately faithless beau of Martha, remain in character, rather than being given some kind of comeuppance.
A number of characters are delightfully drawn. For instance Emmaline is short-tempered & unjust, she is slovenly about the house, she over relies on Martha to fill the gaps she leaves in her own & the families care, but she is also quick to defend her family in strident terms, she constantly takes in waifs & strays – particularly fatherless children & those who are excess to their own families resources. Her talk is forthright. This is all brought out through small-scale & sketchy little incidents, rather than through any prolonged reflection on the character.
Aunt Josephine is an absolute delight who brings a freshness & individuality in her views of the values & ways of the community she lives in. Her dealings with the rest of the family and then with her cancer are founded on her love of life, her great capacity for affection where she chooses to bestow it, and on her insistence on doing things the way she chooses.
Shepherd’s descriptions of natural things, especially weather conditions, is concisely & beautifully done, as would be expected from the quality of writing in The Living Mountain.
The overall design of the book reminded me of one of those Ruskin sketches where there are parts of the picture drawn in beautiful detail, but where there are large sections of the piece that have the lightest of sketch lines as well as large areas of blank white onto which the rest are set.
Much of the dialogue in the book is written in the dialect of the area. She is able to differentiate this very effectively in her portrayal of the different characters – some speaking a much broader version than others. However, a minor irritation was the lack of a suitably detailed glossary. The one included at the back of this was very poor. Often I found words & phrases that I could interpret without help included in the glossary. Whereas others which I really needed a glossary for were absent.
The other two novels in the trilogy remain to be read. At this moment they are calling much less insistently than a number of other books.
January 28, 2022
Wow wow wow. This may be the most underrated book in Scottish Literature. This is Sunset Song written from the perspective of a woman four years before Sunset Song was published. The fact that Nan Shepherd does not get half of the credit that Lewis Grassic Gibbon does is frankly criminal.
The Quarry Wood follows Martha Ironside, a young woman who is struggling to find her place in the world. She battles with her conflicting emotions and intellectual challenges in this novel of identity, maturity and independence.
I was completely captivated by this novel. From the poetic prose to the engaging dialogue and the vivid portrayal of everyday life and language in a flourishing North East farming village in the 1920s. Also loved the fact that I was reading about the university buildings that I visit daily.
10/10 best book I’ve been assigned on my Masters course so far.
The Quarry Wood follows Martha Ironside, a young woman who is struggling to find her place in the world. She battles with her conflicting emotions and intellectual challenges in this novel of identity, maturity and independence.
I was completely captivated by this novel. From the poetic prose to the engaging dialogue and the vivid portrayal of everyday life and language in a flourishing North East farming village in the 1920s. Also loved the fact that I was reading about the university buildings that I visit daily.
10/10 best book I’ve been assigned on my Masters course so far.
June 2, 2022
4.5 , sexy rustic intellectual coming of age rural scottish living into city uni life, sounds familiar xxxx
November 21, 2018
Coming from the North-East of Scotland and having just visited it again after many years away, this book grabbed me hard, in a way that is sure to be lasting. Much of the dialogue is in the Doric, the dialect of Scots spoken in the countryside there, and its sounds and words got back inside my head, until I started thinking and speaking to myself in that idiom. The distinctiveness of the Doric is brought into sharp contrast by Shepherd's at times ironic use of dignified English language to comment on the psychological states of the protagonists. The social attitudes -- on the negative side, the nosiness and the ambivalent attitudes to learning and self-improvement, especially of girls; on the positive side, the kindness that would lead a married couple to take in and welcome illegitimate children -- were very recognizable from my childhood. So, too, was the conspiracy of silence about sexuality and relationships: the main character Martha had "given love and had received only adoration", and it takes time for her to reach a state where she "had no more fear of what love might do to her".
March 12, 2025
She makes herself up, she makes herself up.
Cycling to university in an Aberdonian February and knowing that the whole world is her own body extended and multiplied endlessly; loving (not adoring) with all that danger, peeking for a moment back to her tangled, broken open self and chuckling at what she finds. A short book about being alive and growing up and about the weather, which describes nothing at all. A plotless book about someone smart, passionate and restrained with a plain raw face.
Cycling to university in an Aberdonian February and knowing that the whole world is her own body extended and multiplied endlessly; loving (not adoring) with all that danger, peeking for a moment back to her tangled, broken open self and chuckling at what she finds. A short book about being alive and growing up and about the weather, which describes nothing at all. A plotless book about someone smart, passionate and restrained with a plain raw face.
December 11, 2023
When the character is the author…
Martha, daughter of a ploughman and a woman who married beneath her in social class, loves learning. She wants to go to University but her mother thinks that’s a waste of time when she could be earning a wage to help out the family. But her father sticks up for her and when she wins a bursary her mother comes round. We will see her slowly rising beyond her class and reaching that uncomfortable halfway point when one is betwixt and between, somewhat estranged from one’s roots but not fully accepted by those born into better circumstances.
Set in the years following the First World War, it’s a rather trite and unoriginal coming-of-age tale, and I fear I found Martha so intensely unlikeable that I couldn’t get up any sympathy for her very low-key trials and tribulations. A major part of the problem is that it seems very clear that Shepherd is using Martha to tell Shepherd’s own story, and this meant that my dislike of the character soon became dislike of the author. Never a recipe for reading success!
There is a lot of dialect in the book, especially in the early parts when Martha is still part of her family’s community. The dialect in question is Doric – spoken in the North-East of Scotland and nearly as unfamiliar to this Glaswegian as it would be to any non-Scot. Shepherd uses it very well and there is a glossary to help, but I still found it made the reading experience quite tough going. Shepherd is best remembered now for The Living Mountain, a classic of nature writing about the Cairngorms in her Grampian homeland, which I haven’t read. I therefore expected some wonderful descriptions of the natural world in this one but, while that aspect is there and lifts the book a little, I was somewhat underwhelmed – my expectations were clearly too high.
The story itself is minimal and doesn’t show Martha in a good light. She doesn’t seek education for any practical purpose – she has no desire to do great things or help people or educate others. She just loves learning for learning’s sake, and that makes her come over as both selfish and intellectually snobbish. This translates into her emotional life, which is mostly non-existent until she develops a passion for her best friend’s husband. But, of course, passion amongst the superior educated people of her new world is an exalted thing, full of poetry and classical references, with none of the sweatiness and grunty rutting of those working-class animals she has left behind. You can tell she really annoyed me, can’t you? It’s not the characterisation that is the problem – it is in fact an excellent picture of a low-level, self-absorbed narcissist. No, the problem is that Shepherd doesn’t seem to realise that’s what she is; indeed, seems to find her both interesting and admirable, and doesn’t challenge her sense of superiority or intellectual snobbery in any way. This is not a self-reflective novel – if anything it’s a self-justification.
Even the love affair is a damp squib that ignites no passion in the story. Most of it is imaginary, but that doesn’t absolve Martha from her utter carelessness towards the happiness of her best and only friend. The most successful part of the book and the only part that comes close to raising the emotional temperature above lukewarm is the long lingering death from cancer of Martha’s Aunt Josephine and Martha’s involvement in her care. But even here, while Aunt Josephine displays stoicism and courage and keeps up her interest in those around her even while in extreme pain, Martha is inwardly whingeing about how hard it is for her – for Martha, that is, not for Josephine. After Josephine's eventual death, the story basically peters out into an ending so forgettable that I've forgotten it.
When I wrote my notes for this at the time I was reading (a couple of months ago), I ended by saying that I would give it a generous 4 star rating. However, the process of writing this review has made me realise that I found very little in the book to make it worth the effort of tolerating Martha's extreme unlikeability, so I'm downgrading it to 3. And sadly, it's not one that I would really recommend.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Martha, daughter of a ploughman and a woman who married beneath her in social class, loves learning. She wants to go to University but her mother thinks that’s a waste of time when she could be earning a wage to help out the family. But her father sticks up for her and when she wins a bursary her mother comes round. We will see her slowly rising beyond her class and reaching that uncomfortable halfway point when one is betwixt and between, somewhat estranged from one’s roots but not fully accepted by those born into better circumstances.
Set in the years following the First World War, it’s a rather trite and unoriginal coming-of-age tale, and I fear I found Martha so intensely unlikeable that I couldn’t get up any sympathy for her very low-key trials and tribulations. A major part of the problem is that it seems very clear that Shepherd is using Martha to tell Shepherd’s own story, and this meant that my dislike of the character soon became dislike of the author. Never a recipe for reading success!
There is a lot of dialect in the book, especially in the early parts when Martha is still part of her family’s community. The dialect in question is Doric – spoken in the North-East of Scotland and nearly as unfamiliar to this Glaswegian as it would be to any non-Scot. Shepherd uses it very well and there is a glossary to help, but I still found it made the reading experience quite tough going. Shepherd is best remembered now for The Living Mountain, a classic of nature writing about the Cairngorms in her Grampian homeland, which I haven’t read. I therefore expected some wonderful descriptions of the natural world in this one but, while that aspect is there and lifts the book a little, I was somewhat underwhelmed – my expectations were clearly too high.
The story itself is minimal and doesn’t show Martha in a good light. She doesn’t seek education for any practical purpose – she has no desire to do great things or help people or educate others. She just loves learning for learning’s sake, and that makes her come over as both selfish and intellectually snobbish. This translates into her emotional life, which is mostly non-existent until she develops a passion for her best friend’s husband. But, of course, passion amongst the superior educated people of her new world is an exalted thing, full of poetry and classical references, with none of the sweatiness and grunty rutting of those working-class animals she has left behind. You can tell she really annoyed me, can’t you? It’s not the characterisation that is the problem – it is in fact an excellent picture of a low-level, self-absorbed narcissist. No, the problem is that Shepherd doesn’t seem to realise that’s what she is; indeed, seems to find her both interesting and admirable, and doesn’t challenge her sense of superiority or intellectual snobbery in any way. This is not a self-reflective novel – if anything it’s a self-justification.
Even the love affair is a damp squib that ignites no passion in the story. Most of it is imaginary, but that doesn’t absolve Martha from her utter carelessness towards the happiness of her best and only friend. The most successful part of the book and the only part that comes close to raising the emotional temperature above lukewarm is the long lingering death from cancer of Martha’s Aunt Josephine and Martha’s involvement in her care. But even here, while Aunt Josephine displays stoicism and courage and keeps up her interest in those around her even while in extreme pain, Martha is inwardly whingeing about how hard it is for her – for Martha, that is, not for Josephine. After Josephine's eventual death, the story basically peters out into an ending so forgettable that I've forgotten it.
When I wrote my notes for this at the time I was reading (a couple of months ago), I ended by saying that I would give it a generous 4 star rating. However, the process of writing this review has made me realise that I found very little in the book to make it worth the effort of tolerating Martha's extreme unlikeability, so I'm downgrading it to 3. And sadly, it's not one that I would really recommend.
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March 17, 2023
3.5 stars. i did enjoy marthas journey in life and she was a girlboss pussy queen slayer but holy shit did my brain hurt while reading this
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November 20, 2022Bestimmt n gutes Buch wenn Mans versteht
February 10, 2020
One must not throw away a fact. Knowledge grew sweeter the more one ate of it. Sharp-flavoured too, though, acrid at times upon the palate.In this bildungsroman, Martha embarks upon a journey of education, infatuation and a quaint life between passion and duty. Martha was an interesting character, I was intrigued to find her not liking children, for the short while that lasted. Her refusal of marriage was progressive, though perhaps somewhat tainted by her saint-like purity.
Shepherd's strengths are within her descriptions of nature, I think I could've read a book simply about her travels through Scotland. As much as I liked it, though, my edition did not have a great reference for the Scots words interspersed throughout the story, and the thick accents written out for most of the characters were, at times, indistinguishable to me from wild keysmashes (which is in part a fault on my end but nevertheless quelled my enjoyment of the story).
January 9, 2024
Poetic prose, that makes the landscape of Scotland come to life. It's easy to liken this novel to Jane Eyre or a less modern Sally Rooney book but I think it's easier to love Martha than the other main characters.
November 7, 2017
From a young age Martha Ironside loved books, so much so she kicked her great-aunt Josephine for taking her from them. Her mother - a looker in her youth - had married (beneath her the aunts said) her father for love. But Martha is an Ironside and takes after him in looks. In Aunt Josephine’s words she is “'as ugly a little sinner as ye’d clap e’en on in a month o’ Sabbaths.'” And it is true that, “'Men have decreed rights to beauty that reason need not approve.'” Not that it matters to Martha as she knows what she wants - to go to University and become a teacher. Perhaps surprisingly it is her father who is the one eager not to deny the child her further education.
At university Martha is attracted to and a little intimidated by people who cleave to the life of the mind, the seemingly confident Lucy Warrender, and Luke, who is married to Martha’s friend Dussie. Her interest in Luke eventually develops into something deeper but can never be fulfilled. Yet their one close, more or less innocent, encounter in the Quarry Wood late at night will later give rise to gossip. Luke and Dussie remain Martha’s friends but have by that time long moved to Liverpool to avoid any possibility of blandishment.
Martha’s post university life as a teacher in a school twelve miles from her home is complicated by the growing infirmity of Aunt Josephine who is reluctant to take a woman in to look after her. Martha steps into the breach, bicycling back and forward each day. The arrival from South Africa of Roy Rory Foubister, the son of the man who disappointed Aunt Josephine long ago, stirs up both memories and hopes for Aunt Josephine.
Another of the aunts, Jeannie, is all too recognisably self-righteous. “She had carried her habit of bigotry from her religion into the minutest affairs of daily life; and surer every hour of her own salvation, grew proportionately contemptuous of the rest of mankind.”
The Quarry Wood is told in English larded with Scots words but, as the phrase quoted in the earliest paragraph above demonstrates, the dialogue presents us with unapologetic, uncompromising North East of Scotland dialect. Shepherd’s fine descriptions of landscape are entirely at one with the traditions of the Scottish novel. Her evocation of weather, though, is exceptional.
At university Martha is attracted to and a little intimidated by people who cleave to the life of the mind, the seemingly confident Lucy Warrender, and Luke, who is married to Martha’s friend Dussie. Her interest in Luke eventually develops into something deeper but can never be fulfilled. Yet their one close, more or less innocent, encounter in the Quarry Wood late at night will later give rise to gossip. Luke and Dussie remain Martha’s friends but have by that time long moved to Liverpool to avoid any possibility of blandishment.
Martha’s post university life as a teacher in a school twelve miles from her home is complicated by the growing infirmity of Aunt Josephine who is reluctant to take a woman in to look after her. Martha steps into the breach, bicycling back and forward each day. The arrival from South Africa of Roy Rory Foubister, the son of the man who disappointed Aunt Josephine long ago, stirs up both memories and hopes for Aunt Josephine.
Another of the aunts, Jeannie, is all too recognisably self-righteous. “She had carried her habit of bigotry from her religion into the minutest affairs of daily life; and surer every hour of her own salvation, grew proportionately contemptuous of the rest of mankind.”
The Quarry Wood is told in English larded with Scots words but, as the phrase quoted in the earliest paragraph above demonstrates, the dialogue presents us with unapologetic, uncompromising North East of Scotland dialect. Shepherd’s fine descriptions of landscape are entirely at one with the traditions of the Scottish novel. Her evocation of weather, though, is exceptional.
July 1, 2019
Capital-r-Romantic coming-of-age in the north-east of Scotland. I fit three out four of its demographics (Doric speakers, Aberdeen students, de novo idealist, but not a woman), but this still didn't leave much impact. It is lovely to have a personal literature for your specific time and place - elsewhere for people like me there's half of Canongate and Carcanet. But still.
It catches the excitement of going to uni from the middle of nowhere, after being starved of ideas:
But the gasping forbidden love at the heart of the book is too bland to carry it. Also I hated the Doric being italicised; it felt like a stage wink.
It catches the excitement of going to uni from the middle of nowhere, after being starved of ideas:
The grey Crown, that had soared through so many generations above the surge and excitement of youth, had told her that wisdom is patient and waits for her people... In the long Library too - where thought, the enquiring experiencing spirit, the essence of man's long tussle with his destiny, was captured and preserved: a desiccated powder set free, volatile, live at the touch of a living mind - she learned to be quiet... They might clutch at her, these dead men, storming and battering at the citadel of her identity...
The thought... liberated. She walked in a company.
There flocked in their hundreds her fellow-students, grave, gay, eager, anxious, earnest, flippant, stupid, and humble and wise in their own conceits, dreamers and doers and idlers, bunglers and jesters, seekers of pleasure and seekers of wisdom, troubled, serene, impetuous, and all inquisitive...
But the gasping forbidden love at the heart of the book is too bland to carry it. Also I hated the Doric being italicised; it felt like a stage wink.
December 22, 2014
Interesting story, at times it is beautifully written when the landscape is being described, but it feels lacking the rest of the time.
A lot of the conversation in this book has been written with a thick Scottish accent and was fascinating to read, at times I had to get my wife to translate some parts but overall I managed to follow it ok.
I only read this book as I wanted to read the living mountain but the library only had this book by Nan Shepherd. I am glad I gave it a go as it hints at the living mountain as being a very good book.
A lot of the conversation in this book has been written with a thick Scottish accent and was fascinating to read, at times I had to get my wife to translate some parts but overall I managed to follow it ok.
I only read this book as I wanted to read the living mountain but the library only had this book by Nan Shepherd. I am glad I gave it a go as it hints at the living mountain as being a very good book.
October 13, 2015
Martha Ironside lives in a small farming community but manages to carve a different path as a university trained teacher, although one who is travelling 8 miles each way to school while looking after two invalids in the evenings and weekends at one point. I found it a fascinating story of a girl growing up to be a woman and how life is strange. I only found the glossary of dialect words at the back once I'd read the book, so I had to muddle through the words, but that wasn't too much of a barrier really. The close observation of life made this for me.
January 17, 2023
Beautiful account of a young girl’s maturity and understanding of life, her lust for a different life from those around her and yet love of the land and it’s characters. Even though I have lived in this area for many years the Aberdeenshire dialect was at times difficult to understand and made slow reading. Brilliant, evocative, powerful and yet most tender relationships show Nan Shepherd’s mastery of story storytelling.
December 11, 2019
Well I gave it a good go. I really did!
The Scottish dialect in this is way too distracting, even to get going!! And I'm good at understanding Scottish accents!!! I just felt like I was forced to read it in a different style than usual and couldn't give my full attention to the story.
Never mind Nan, your mountain book will remain an all time favourite of mine!
The Scottish dialect in this is way too distracting, even to get going!! And I'm good at understanding Scottish accents!!! I just felt like I was forced to read it in a different style than usual and couldn't give my full attention to the story.
Never mind Nan, your mountain book will remain an all time favourite of mine!
April 19, 2021
To me, it was a very good story with very interesting views on identity and this sense of belonging in society and with someone. I appreciated the protagonist, Martha Ironside, who was more observant than talkative. This latter point made me relate to her so many time. Also, there are certain themes that, I think, a lot of its readers will relate to one at least once when reading this book: a complicated love. And when I say that, I don't mean a love triangle that goes wrong or something else, but really this idea of love awareness and struggle to cope with feelings that come along with it. Authors talk a lot about people who fall in love, about how both love interest come to love each other and, sometimes, only sometimes, they happen to have a happy ending. Shepherd does that too, in a way, but I think that what is even more tragic in this book is that those lovers keep missing each other and, in the end, they let each other go, definitely. And we don't speak enough about those lovers, those who keep missing each other and eventually give up on an impossible love.
Enough of love, let's talk about what I didn't like or, rather than disliking it, made this reading a struggle and hold me to appreciate fully this story. It's really a hassle to say that because IT IS a very important point in the story and in the building of each character's personality and identity, but I really struggle with the transcription of the Scottish dialect here. Although there was a glossary in the end, I'm not the kind of readers who enjoy being cut in its reading to check upon a word, especially if I don't know the story and if I'm suddenly taken into it (emotionally I mean). So yes, I wouldn't say in what a bad point but, for a non native speaker who already struggles with old English, it was really complicated.
On the whole, I still think this book was too slow paced for me. Only reading fast paced books in my free time, those 200 pages felt way too long and I struggled to reach the end. Sometimes I would start reading, and 2 hours later I would only have read 20 pages – I hate that feeling of not progressing.
It was a good reading. Is it a book that I will read twice? I don't think so. But discovering Shepherd through my English course was a great opportunity.
Enough of love, let's talk about what I didn't like or, rather than disliking it, made this reading a struggle and hold me to appreciate fully this story. It's really a hassle to say that because IT IS a very important point in the story and in the building of each character's personality and identity, but I really struggle with the transcription of the Scottish dialect here. Although there was a glossary in the end, I'm not the kind of readers who enjoy being cut in its reading to check upon a word, especially if I don't know the story and if I'm suddenly taken into it (emotionally I mean). So yes, I wouldn't say in what a bad point but, for a non native speaker who already struggles with old English, it was really complicated.
On the whole, I still think this book was too slow paced for me. Only reading fast paced books in my free time, those 200 pages felt way too long and I struggled to reach the end. Sometimes I would start reading, and 2 hours later I would only have read 20 pages – I hate that feeling of not progressing.
It was a good reading. Is it a book that I will read twice? I don't think so. But discovering Shepherd through my English course was a great opportunity.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 21, 2020
This is a Scottish book, written by a Scotswoman nearly 100 years ago. The story was at times difficult in reading due to the Scottish Brogue in the dialogue. The rest of the passages were plain enough English to read, but the conversations were tricky. There was a glossary provided at the back of the book, but not all of the words were listed. Many words were contractions, so as to get the feel of the speakers, yet it was at times nearly indecipherable. Generally though it did not pose too big of a problem, as it can be figured out what was being said, more or less.
The story line isn’t all that unique. Here we have a young woman from a poor family that is smart and goes on in her education. Of course she has difficulty with that, as it wasn’t done very much during this time.
Our heroine, Martha struggles. First she feels as an outsider due to her poverty. At home she is chided for being above the rest of her family. Martha manages to continue, having a good friend, who happens to be married. They help her navigate the intellectual world. About the time Martha gets her teaching degree she realizes she’s in love with her best friend’s husband, Luke. Then the misery starts. Fortunately life has a way of bringing her more work than one should be able to manage. For Martha caring for her ill aunt, teaching the wee ones, and taking care of her mother’s house left her little time to ruminate about Luke.
One aspect makes me wonder, Martha’s mother liked to take in young babies, barins. I didn’t understand in the beginning, but near the end it made clear that these barins that were took in were from unwed mothers.
I was interested in a Scottish story, particularly from a while back. Here is a well written book that fits that, if you can manage with the accented words. This book is the first in a series. Don’t think I’ll read all four, but I may try the last, The Living Mountain.
The story line isn’t all that unique. Here we have a young woman from a poor family that is smart and goes on in her education. Of course she has difficulty with that, as it wasn’t done very much during this time.
Our heroine, Martha struggles. First she feels as an outsider due to her poverty. At home she is chided for being above the rest of her family. Martha manages to continue, having a good friend, who happens to be married. They help her navigate the intellectual world. About the time Martha gets her teaching degree she realizes she’s in love with her best friend’s husband, Luke. Then the misery starts. Fortunately life has a way of bringing her more work than one should be able to manage. For Martha caring for her ill aunt, teaching the wee ones, and taking care of her mother’s house left her little time to ruminate about Luke.
One aspect makes me wonder, Martha’s mother liked to take in young babies, barins. I didn’t understand in the beginning, but near the end it made clear that these barins that were took in were from unwed mothers.
I was interested in a Scottish story, particularly from a while back. Here is a well written book that fits that, if you can manage with the accented words. This book is the first in a series. Don’t think I’ll read all four, but I may try the last, The Living Mountain.
June 14, 2024
I found this book on a list of great Scottish novels. Published in 1928, it's set in and near Aberdeen, where the author lived all her life. The story focuses wholly on Martha (Mattie) Ironside, a girl from a poor but stable family, from her schoolgirl days until she finds her feet as an adult after graduating from university. It's a challenging read because all the dialogue is Scots dialect, and the brief glossary at the end of the book doesn't include all the words. With effort, I got the hang of it and relied less on the glossary as I went on, but it wasn't easy.
I enjoyed the story (mostly) and liked Mattie quite a lot, but I kind of lost the pace near the end and felt less invested as it became clear that Mattie wasn't going to experience more changes in this part of her life. I probably did the book a disservice with that assumption, because by the end Mattie has really taken stock of herself and is an independent, confident adult, self-sufficient, and probably headed for a very satisfying life on her own terms — but I felt so impatient with her elderly great-aunt's long illness (as Mattie looks after her), and I never really embraced the aspects of the story that involved Mattie's mother taking in random children. Mattie has no siblings, but her mother collects local children who (ones supposes) are unwanted by their own families, or whose mothers can't look after them. They live in Mattie's family home, sometimes several at a time, and are a constant annoyance to Mattie in combination with her mother's slovenly housekeeping.
Distinguishing the familiar story of a bookish, intellectual girl who emerges from a humble background are evocative descriptions of Scottish landscape and weather; sharp characterizations of the people who surround Mattie; a pair of romances that could hardly be more different from each other; the gradual mastering of the forces impacting the course of her life.
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I enjoyed the story (mostly) and liked Mattie quite a lot, but I kind of lost the pace near the end and felt less invested as it became clear that Mattie wasn't going to experience more changes in this part of her life. I probably did the book a disservice with that assumption, because by the end Mattie has really taken stock of herself and is an independent, confident adult, self-sufficient, and probably headed for a very satisfying life on her own terms — but I felt so impatient with her elderly great-aunt's long illness (as Mattie looks after her), and I never really embraced the aspects of the story that involved Mattie's mother taking in random children. Mattie has no siblings, but her mother collects local children who (ones supposes) are unwanted by their own families, or whose mothers can't look after them. They live in Mattie's family home, sometimes several at a time, and are a constant annoyance to Mattie in combination with her mother's slovenly housekeeping.
Distinguishing the familiar story of a bookish, intellectual girl who emerges from a humble background are evocative descriptions of Scottish landscape and weather; sharp characterizations of the people who surround Mattie; a pair of romances that could hardly be more different from each other; the gradual mastering of the forces impacting the course of her life.
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July 24, 2021
3.5 stars. I wanted to like this more given the subject matter of a young girl from a poor background heading to university between the wars, but I found it quite hard going. The ‘descriptive’ writing is absolutely beautiful (as you may expect from someone most famous for her nature writing) but most of the dialogue is written in the local Aberdeenshire dialect and, not spotting the glossary at the back until very late on, I found some of it completely incomprehensible and this lack of understanding formed a real barrier between me and the characters. The storyline also wasn’t quite what I was expecting - there are the odd gems of really insightful comments on the role of women and education, but most of it is about her falling in love and her day to day, fairly humdrum life caring for a sick aunt, rather than the thrill of university and the creation of a new life for herself (although in retrospect maybe this was the point...).
Reading this review back it is a lot more negative than I felt reading the book. It’s definitely worth a read, especially if you are interested in female writers of the time. It is well written and the dialect issue won’t be one that everyone has (I also really appreciate books that include the ‘reality’ of local dialect so find it hard to criticise a book on those grounds). I will also definitely be trying another of her books, but with next time with different expectations.
Reading this review back it is a lot more negative than I felt reading the book. It’s definitely worth a read, especially if you are interested in female writers of the time. It is well written and the dialect issue won’t be one that everyone has (I also really appreciate books that include the ‘reality’ of local dialect so find it hard to criticise a book on those grounds). I will also definitely be trying another of her books, but with next time with different expectations.
October 25, 2023
You either read it as an expression of love to the Scottish people and their ways and dialect, or a primal scream of protest against how many young women have struggled to overcome the peculiar deadly grip a Scottish upbringing has on your verra soul. As one of them, I reread this every few years as a therapeutic exercise and to refresh my grasp of Lowlands vernacular. I usually need something bracing afterwards to clear my head, and lacking the sleeting rain on my face of a five mile walk in one of the shires, usually go out to pull a few weeds and mutter under my breath about it all. Shepherd is not really known in North America, what a shame - this book really explains so much about a certain kind of Scottishness. I didn't find it humorous when I was younger but now I think of it as a sort of Cold Comfort Farm starring Caledonian peasantry and intelligentsia. At least I'm trying to!
November 19, 2024
The writing in this novel is exquisite, accomplished, effortless. I feel the book should be on a literature curriculum at university level and may be it is. It is hard to believe that she is a sort of 'forgotten' and not more well-known writer. She is truly gifted fiction and non-fiction writer.
Very interesting main character, like I have never encountered before. The dialect is impossible to read, which I had to skip a lot of the time, but I understand why it is there. The story is somewhat unfinished, but also finished in ways readers might not wish or expect.
If you are curious about this writer's other work apart from her now famous nature memoir, I would highly recommend it for the language and writing style in general.
Very interesting main character, like I have never encountered before. The dialect is impossible to read, which I had to skip a lot of the time, but I understand why it is there. The story is somewhat unfinished, but also finished in ways readers might not wish or expect.
If you are curious about this writer's other work apart from her now famous nature memoir, I would highly recommend it for the language and writing style in general.
October 12, 2021
Nan Shepherd is famous for her superb book ‘The Living Mountain’, rightly classed as a nature classic, but she also wrote 3 novels, this being her first, and a book of poetry. I was delighted when I discovered the novels had been reprinted shortly after her portrait was used on the Scottish £5 note in 2016. The Goodreads blurb for the book is pretty accurate for once, and the novel is an enjoyable enough read, made somewhat difficult by the extensive use of Aberdeen Scottish dialect in the dialogue. There is a useful glossary at the end of the book, but as I discovered, there are many omissions.
August 13, 2021
This book had been sitting on my shelf for quite some time, and as I have read most of the "important" Scottish novels, I thought it was time to read this one. It was actually quite disappointing. A good part of it is written in Doric, which is fine, but the rest is rather verbose and pompous with a lot of descriptions of the emotions of the rather repressed central character. The passages describing the natural world are beautiful, as is to be expected from this author, but as a novel, it doesn't come together for me.
October 2, 2023
Nan Shepard is the highlight of Scottish modernism. I want to force her books on everyone. She's single handedly reshaped the way I engage with and enter into the natural world. This primarily came about when I read The Living Mountain but now, this too, has changed me. It has broadened my vision of, and my love for, Creation. I loved Martha's story and her spiritual fire. I see a lot of myself in her - that unquenchable hunger for knowledge is a hunger I've known for a long time. What a beauty this book is (even if I struggled with the dialect at times).
September 11, 2025
Valuable as a a snapshot in time and for sociopolitical themes which certainly transcend the times..the depth of observation and the compelling heroine transcend the plot which after all is loosely woven...one can not help but realise there must still be such families...
A senior emergency physician once reminisced about how they grew up in a council house with 11 siblings and had to share a room with 4... Beautifully written with strong sense of place and the characters well drawn and spring to life...
A senior emergency physician once reminisced about how they grew up in a council house with 11 siblings and had to share a room with 4... Beautifully written with strong sense of place and the characters well drawn and spring to life...
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