First of all I need to tell you that this is not crime-fiction. It is part of my challenge to myself to occasionally read outside my comfort zone. I am grateful to Bernadette at Reactions to Reading for recommending it to me.

Fish Meggie sets out to give a 21st birthday present to her grand daughter Laura - the story of her life, so that Laura will know her origins. She describes people and places that Laura has never heard of and a life so tough that it would be beyond Laura's wildest imaginings. It is a life that brings Meggie Tulloch from Scotland's northern islands to Fremantle in Western Australia.

Laura doesn't get to read her Grunnie's journals, written in exercise books in a variety of coloured pens, until she is facing a crisis herself, and at last she understands things about Meggie, and her own mother Kathryn, that have always been a puzzle. Her grandfather, known only to her through photographs, comes to life.

This story is a reminder of what those who lived through the 20th century went through, and how much life has been changed by technology, migration, and wars. ( )

I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt and presume that Amanda Curtin did not set out to deliberately cause me the messy embarrassment of unexpected tears in public. I’ll concede that she wasn’t to know that the tale of Margaret Duthie Tulloch – or Fish Meggie as I will always think of her – would have me sobbing uncontrollably and mumbling about allergies. Though if I’m to be scrupulously honest it wasn’t the story itself – achingly sad though much of it is – that made me cry but rather Meggie’s acute observations about her world and the exquisite prose Curtin has used to express her character’s thoughts. Laced with terms from several local Scottish dialects the book is a sheer delight for lovers of the written word.

Meggie was born of sea people in a tiny village in far north-eastern Scotland in 1891. As if the life of unrelenting poverty and hard work expected by all who were born in that place at that time wasn’t grim enough, Meggie suffered the additional curses of being female and having red hair, which according to local beliefs made her a danger to any fisherman, especially if she crossed his path just before he went to sea. Eighty-odd years after her birth Fish Meggie is ill and decides to write her story – or some of it anyway – as a present for her granddaughter and so begins to fill three notebooks with her memories.

In ELEMENTAL there’s not a trace of the twee romanticisation of poverty and hardship that infuses a lot of the historical fiction I’ve read. Meggie’s life begins with a different kind of childhood from the one we think of as normal today

Loved you were, aye, in the way of those days, a careless kind of love that took all manner of things for granted. But if you had a thought in your head there was none who would stoop to hear it and none to say you mattered the peeriest thing. And if you were a girl, you’d get used to that, aye. You would forever be the last, in a world where the words of men and the ways of shoalfish and the direction of the wind were what mattered.

I canna imagine a child of today taking it into their head that they were not the centre of all else. That the world was not waiting for the next thing they might say (p13-14)

Allowed to go to school only because the law demands it Meggie does develop a devotion to books which lasts her whole life and she also knows the love of her mother, her older sister Kitta and, for a time anyway, that of a stray dog who adopts her as his very own. But with her father and brothers gone fishing for much of the year the only man she has much contact with is her grandfather – a hate-fuelled, ignorant man who makes young Meggie’s life far harsher than it needs to be. As if living amongst a people “steeped in the ins and outs of restraint” and being expected to perform endless hours of back-breaking chores in freezing temperatures weren’t bad enough.

Sorrows do follow Meggie as she breaks away from her dreaded village for a life on her own which eventually takes her across the world to Western Australia but there is laughter and family and a love story too that combine to save ELEMENTAL from falling into the wallowing, misery-lit category of fiction.

As is usually the way though it was the things to which I could personally relate which sent me scuttling for tissues in the aforementioned sobbing incident. I was not quite two years old when the last of my grandparents died so I have no personal experience of any of the grandparental relationships Meggie describes but as both of my parents now have a form of dementia her observation about the differences between memory (a transient, unreliable kind of fact list) and memories (individual versions of the truth which stay with us forever) knocked me for six. As did her notion of her more elusive parent “A father was little more than an idea to me…a man-shaped shadow by the fire”. I stopped reading in public after that.

In case you’re in any doubt I adored ELEMENTAL. Even though it made me cry. In public. Even though I felt physically bereft at the early loss of the narrative voice of Meggie when the book abruptly switched to the voice of her granddaughter and her daughter-in-law for its conclusion.

It is a beautiful book.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. Why it hasn't been shortlisted for any literary prize is quite beyond me. It's at least as good, if not better, than many of its competitors.

Elemental tells the story of Maggie Duthie/Tulloch, now a grandmother aged 77. She is troubled by her life’s events, and decides to write down the story of her life for her granddaughter, Laura, whom she calls ‘lambsie’. Her memories are painful, and in writing down her story Maggie struggles between the impulse to conceal and the necessity to reveal the recurrent patterns of her life.

The novel begins in 1890 and spans four generations. Geographically, it moves from the remote coast of western Scotland and to West Australia. The novel is structured in four parts with each section covering a different period, and each with its own symbol.

The first two sections are excellent in terms of historical fiction. The setting and family relationships are so vividly realized and the voice of Meggie is so distinctive.

'Times were different then. Isn’t a child alive today who could have survived back then. I don’t mean the hardships of those days – the meanness of the food, the idea that children should work for their keep. Those are things that can be endured. The thing I venture would befuddle a child of today is this: in the scheme of the universe you were one notch north of a hindrance and two south of help. You would forever be the the last, the very very last, in a world where the words of men and the ways of shoalfish and the direction of the wind were what mattered.'

The grandfather, Granda Jeemsie, is a very cruel man. He treats the women in the house so badly, hates Meggie for her red hair, and kills her beloved dog. Meggie’s beloved sister Kitta gets herself in the family way, has to leave home and eventually walks into the sea.

The horrors of Meggies work life are vividly described – gutting herrings for long hours in fetid weather, at the rate of 60 fish a minute, hands freezing, wet, covered in salt, until her hands begin to rot – to the bone – and she loses part of her finger.

I found the shift in the final section rather disrupting but by the time I got to the end I could see she was actually attempting something quite complex and had achieved it.

The Scottish sections are full of amazing old Scottish words – quinie, bonxie, gansey, fulpie, clooties, limmer, muckle, selkie – and a glossary is provided. Obviously much research was undertaken to capture this dialect, but it rolls along well – and reminded me of The Year of Wonders.

This novel offers many rich pleasures and I shall certainly seek out a copy of The Sinkings, Amanda Curtin's first novel. ( )

I love this book! A thoroughly engrossing read; beautifully crafted. ( )