Ring Of Bright Water Trilogy

By Gavin Maxwell

Book Overview

'Gavin Maxwell's trilogy is essential reading' Sunday Herald

Fifty years ago Gavin Maxwell went to live in an abandoned house on a shingle beach on the west coast of Scotland. A haven for wildlife - he named his home Camusfearna and settled there with the otters Mij, Edal and Teko.

Ring of Bright Water chronicles Gavin Maxwell's first ten years with the otters and touched the hearts of readers the world over, brilliantly evoking life with these playful animals in this natural paradise. Two further volumes followed bringing the story full circle telling of the difficult last years and the final abandonment of the settlement.

For the first time the entire trilogy is available in a single narrative in this beautifully presented collection.

'If you like your wildlife, this is a must-read' Reader Review

'For lovers of otters this is an admirable compilation' Reader Review

'You will fall in love with Scotland' Reader Review

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140290494
• ISBN13: 9780140290493
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: Penguin UK
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 1.0" x 5.1"

Customer Reviews

Deeply Affecting

A difficult book (or trilogy of abridged books) to review, this - I suppose I should start by conceding that, despite the dark moments, the catastrophes, the sadnesses, the nature red in tooth and claw moments and the man blood-stained with gun and whatever comes to hand moments, this trilogy made me laugh out loud with joy and merriment more than any book I can remember reading since adolescence. The writing is superbly Thoreauvian at its best, particularly the descriptive passages of natural landscapes and, of course, otters! Maxwell doesn't pack the Transcendentalist reflective heft of Thoreau (What writer does?). But this is a good thing. I can't imagine Thoreau falling in love with an otter and writing so deftly about both them and his feelings toward them. Indeed, reading this book is more than a little like riding an emotional rollercoaster. But it is not in any way what is called "sentimental" - a word which, in so many cases, is simply what those lacking in emotional depth are wont to term the writings of those who possess such depths. The writer is an Oxford-educated stylist and man-of-learning whose love for the natural world and the wild creatures that inhabit it is deep and abiding. What else can I say? Well, there is a philosophical subtext here. On the first page, Maxwell writes that, "I had yet to learn that happiness can neither be achieved nor held by endeavour." Happiness is something one encounters - A hard lesson, but one which the reader (this one, in any event) feels he has learned, along with Maxwell, at the end.

Fantastic.

The story captures the essence of the Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland. The beauty and the brutality. The second and third books in the trilogy provide an honesty that leaves you with a respect for and a desire to know more about a man who lived this remarkable life. You will of course fall in love with the otters who allowed people to share their lives for better and for worse.