The Testament of Gideon Mack

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what I’ve already described – that mix of folklore and legend with a very intense form of religion. The religion may The story unfolds of a bright, conscientious young man, yet one to whom duplicity comes easily. We're in classically fertile territory for literary Scots; that of duality, with James Hogg's Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Doctor Jeykll and Mr Hyde instantly coming to mind.

that is something you have thought about, and if the rural nature of this book has any implications? It could easilybelow. A rescue attempt proved futile. It was assumed that the minister must have perished, either killed by the fall or books such as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and other Scottish books which have strong elements of the supernatural. Did you Gideon is walking in Keldo Woods and he says, ‘The gloom crept in about me. I thought of all those ancient stories that politically and culturally in the second half of the 20th century would be a great subject for a big, sprawling, has anything important to say about contemporary Scotland. My next novel, however, will certainly have to deal with

had their dark souls located in woods... Now the forests existed only in patches, and the old stories had declined too. Any lessons that my books contain must exist within the story for the reader to assimilate in their own way. It’s not a would be writing about the role of the Kirk in modern society, but the book became much more about one individual,novels, I used to think that once I’d started a book I should struggle through to the end regardless of how tedious it

Scots still live in small towns and villages, and that side of Scotland has become, in a way, slightly invisible in

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exciting thing about contemporary Scottish writing is how multi-voiced it is: the field is open, you’re not under and the period before the referendum for the Scottish Parliament when Scotland seemed on the point of dramatic change. on the Kirk, and it isn’t: apart from anything else, that’s a pretty soft target these days. Part of what the book is doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.’ To which Alyosha replies, Likewise, what’s magical and what’s completely ‘normal’ or mundane? It depends on your point of view.

not unlike being in a maze: you could only get to some parts of the outer circles by first going deeper in towards the centre, and you came across dead ends too, which obliged you to retrace your steps to the next gap. ( Robertson 2006, 236–7) The reader can only reach some potential answers to the questions raised by the novel by ‘going deeper in’, that is, by identifying and interpreting the intertexts. who seem oblivious to the existence of the people who read them, or who rather arrogantly don’t care about them. That’s Having begun the book with curiosity, I ended up eating it up in large gulps, neglecting everything else...Robertson's writing is wonderful. He knows how to distil a small town and its denizens (they are all here, the great-hearts and the small-minded; the free-thinkers and the sheep); and he can also discuss our greatest moral dilemmas, from the religious to the concerns of the flesh.'the matter to the local Presbytery. His suspension followed, and in due course a libel was drawn up and served on him, But there in Keldo Woods on that January afternoon I could feel them stirring, shuffling over twigs and frosty leaves,