The Gathering Night

Reviews / Votes

Audacious. As warm and inviting as a hot spring on a clear winter's day. * * The Times (on The Sea Road) * * Gripping, its mix of reality and myth reminiscent of Louis de Bernieres. * * Scotland on Sunday (on Hy Brasil) * * A pacy, colourful and intelligent epic. -- Boyd Tonkin * * Independent (on Voyageurs) * * The heart of this novel is a place described so finely and so beguilingly that everyone who reads it will want to go there. -- Helen Dunmore * * The Times (on Light) * * Elphinstone creates a richly imagined world. -- Susan Mansfield * * The Scotsman * * A brilliant fictional evocation of a time that's usually given short shrift in history books . . . At the core of The Gathering Night is a very human story, a complex tale of love, revenge, murder and honour, a book that managed to be both gripping in terms of plot, engaging with character psychology and a hugely evocative exploration of time and place. -- Doug Johnstone * * List * * The Gathering Night offers us a totem plot centred roudn ideas of identity, interdependence and our own here-and-now. Where our experience diverges from the Auk People and our hunter-gatherer heritage, Elphinstone turns Go-between. -- Jen Hadfield * * Scottish Review of Books * * Employing her considerable skills as a historical novelist, Elphinstone imagines the lives of the hunter-gatherers who thrived in the period from the end of the Ice Age until the adoption of agriculture . . . Imagination is well-woven with avid research . . . The reader is ultimately engaged by Elphinstone's beguiling prose to listen well to the strange stories of struggle, stoicism and survival coursing throughout this challenging novel. -- Anita Sethi * * Independent on Sunday * * Elphinstone is a fine purveyor or evocative literary historical fiction . . . Excellently researched, it wears that knowledge lightly, concentrating on the human heart of the tale. * * Big Issue * * A cracking story. -- Graeme Warren * * British Archaeology Magazine * * A vivid tale . . . both lyrical and matter-of-fact, at times touched with humour . . . Perhaps the most telling achievement of The Gathering Night is that it persuades us to accept its entirely different
value-system without a qualm, and even to regret that humanity ever thought of swapping the hunter's spear for the tiller's spade. -- Adam Thorpe * * Guardian * *