Where Nothing Good Happens. At All.

Chronicles of the Canongate: The Highland Widow; The Two Drovers by Walter Scott
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There's always something to enjoy in Sir Walter Scott's stories, so I enjoyed these somewhat, but they're the least interesting of any of his writing so far that I have read.

He does well describing a place and time, making you see a world different than they one you're living in. That always has value. The hovel in the wilderness where the highland widow, the long-bereaved wife of a feared marauder, lives out her lonely years makes a deep impression. It's a sad view, but well drawn. And the description of cattle drovers, how they lived and how they performed their duties, is the answer to some questions I never posed but was glad to learn about nonetheless.

However, neither story is a real pleasure to read. Sorry (not sorry) for the spoilers, but they're sad, discouraging stories that only serve to make me appreciate so much more those stories with happy endings. I seldom start and less frequently finish books or movies that end in sadness. (I took a date to see Tess of the D'urbervilles once. That was horrible. Long and horrible.) Good people do stupid, bad things that ruin several lives at once. Ack. No, I am no fan of tragedies.

These two stories would have been a little more palatable if they hadn't been embedded in a tedious framing device, where the narrator, a man called Chrystal Croftangry, describes the manner in which he acquired the tales he was about to tell us. He does this only after relating much of his biography, none of which is to the point at all. (This is not the same narrator found in the Waverley novels. These Canongate stories came out after Sir Walter Scott stopped calling his books "By the author of Waverley" and everyone knew who was actually writing them.) The long introduction by the narrator is over 80 pages, almost half of the whole, and I don't recommend it to anyone.

Anyway, though I always enjoy reading Scott, this was the least pleasurable to date, and I hope the short novel included in the same volume is more like his other writing.

Recommended only for true Scott fans, and even then I dunno....

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