Robin Jenkins (1) (1912–2005)

The Changeling, by Scottish author Robin Jenkins (1912-2005) is an unsettling novel. I would dearly love to give a copy of it to every politician around the world who is turning a blind eye to poverty. Without a single sentimental word, Jenkins depicts the soul-destroying misery of childhood privation and dispenses with firm authority any fantasies of well-intentioned but useless help.

Charles Forbes is a middle-aged teacher in Glasgow. He's a well-meaning and kindly fool, mocked behind his back and protected at home by his tolerant wife Mary and his children Gillian and Alistair. And when he takes it into his head to Do a Good Deed for one of the slum children he teaches, he compares himself to the Good Samaritan.

Though no one would belittle the benevolence of the Good Samaritan, in one respect he was lucky: he was alone with his conscience and his neighbour in trouble.

There were, for instance, no business or professional colleagues to warn against the folly of interference, and no wife to cherish him for his altruism but also to shrewdly point out the likely repercussions. Those voices Charles Forbes had to heed on the occasion when he, too, decided not to pass by on the other side. (p.1)

His benevolent intentions are prompted by an essay by Tom Curdie. A bright child, whose academic ability transcends the appalling circumstances of his home life in the slums of Donaldson St, Tom has written a beautiful essay about the sea, and Mr Forbes is transfixed when Tom tells him that he has never seen the sea.

And from this scene the reader gets a first intimation of the complexity of this child character. When he says that he just made up his composition, and the disdainful class sneers at him like so many little Columbuses with the marvels and avarice of oceans in their eyes...he had lied. And he lied because he knew that they, and the teacher, were greedy for it. (p.2)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/05/17/the-changeling-1958-reissued-1989-by-robin-j...… (plus d'informations)

I really enjoyed Poverty Castle by Jenkins last year, so I've been looking forward to reading more from this much overlooked author.

If you've not read anything by Jenkins before I wouldn't recommend starting with this novel necessarily. It's naive in its idealised romanticism between a member of the traveling community and a devout Christian man soon to embark on his theological training, and could be accused of straying too far into the realms of the romance genre. However, having said that I have to admit that I enjoyed this novel. It was a straightforward page-turner that didn't require me to overly engage my brain, which is just what I need at the moment as work has my brain somewhat pickled.

From the two books of Jenkins' that I've read to date I would say he's a pastoral writer who searches for the absolute goodness and truth in his characters. One could therefore argue that his novels are missing some of the dramatic tension that comes with the inevitable flaws in human beings, but there's something charming about his 'Little House on the Prairie'-esque feel good approach. There's never a bogeyman around the corner and his characters won't let you down, so you can journey around the Scottish countryside with him at ease without holding your breath.

The Pearl-fishers felt a little too wholesome, and I would have enjoyed a little sprinkle of jeopardy somewhere, but to give Jenkins some credit I think he wanted to give a glass half full portrayal of people from different backgrounds coming together, and to highlight the injustice of prejudice. Trying to achieve this with flawless characters didn't feel very credulous, however.

3 stars - Enjoyable, but this is not a novel to dwell on too much.… (plus d'informations)

A beautiful little rural tragedy, set on an estate in the west of Scotland during World War II and exploring complicated issues of social class, religion, different kinds of relationships with nature, and the way we deal with illness and disability in ways that are both very specific to the time and place and deeply universal. I was expecting it to be a kind of Scottish Of mice and men, and it was in a way, but deep down it reminded me more of someone like Kawabata, in the way the writing forces you to pay enormous attention to small details of social expectation and landscape.

The language is important as well, though, very poetic in places, and carefully graded in its Scottishness according to the character who is giving the point of view. Scots words appear in the text in an undemonstrative, matter-of-fact way wherever they do the job better and more precisely than their Standard English counterparts would, and it’s up to the reader to know what they mean.

I must read more by this man!… (plus d'informations)

Robin Jenkins was a prolific Scottish writer whose work spanned five decades. Although he achieved critical acclaim with The Cone-Gatherers, despite his impressive literary output he struggled to get published at various points in his writing life, and his previous books went in and out of print. Having experienced Jenkins' writing for the first time with Poverty Castle (which isn't one of his better known books), I'm calling this out as an absolute travesty. Shame on those UK publishers for denying this wonderful writer the success he deserved!

Poverty Castle takes the form of a novel within a novel, although the story of the novelist writing the book is a light touch, taking up a small percentage of the novel. That being said, it adds depth of poignancy to the overall story that is brilliant in both its subtly and gentleness. The writer (semi-autobiographical, by all accounts) is an elderly Scottish author who has struggled with writing success yet can't live without it. He knows he is writing his last novel, and is fixated with writing one "that is a celebration of goodness, without any need of irony". His long-suffering wife is exasperated by how much the book is taking out of him, yet despite herself slowly becomes equally charmed and beguiled by his characters.

The characters in question are the enigmatic Sempill family who are middle-class by birth but recent acquirers of a bequeathed fortune. With a charming, idealist father and ethereal mother who is obsessed with giving her husband a son, the five daughters are brought up in a self-sufficient Eden with a strong sense of social justice and encouragement to voice their opinions. With little to test their true moral fibre whilst they remain cocooned in their own idyll, as they grow older and inevitably flee the nest the writer calls into question whether their magnetic and radiating presence comes from an authentic goodness, or is ultimately a product of wealthy privilege and their own self-importance / self-delusion.

I hugely enjoyed the writing in this book. It pulled me in from the first sentence and kept me there until the last. Why I am the only person on LT to have reviewed this book is beyond me. If you enjoy old fashioned writing such as Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle then I think you'll enjoy this one.

I'll definitely be seeking out more of Jenkins' work. In the meantime, here's a great article that provides an interesting angle on the problem of being Robin Jenkins:

https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2009/11/goodness-in-a-fallen-world-the-fat....

4.5 stars - perhaps this book doesn't deserve for me to have fallen for it as much as I did, but Jenkins charmed me with his own old-fashioned goodness.… (plus d'informations)