Mr. Mac is the
famed Scottish architect and artist Charles Rennie Macintosh. Me is young
Thomas Maggs, son of the local pub managers. Maggs is club footed and has a
talent for drawing; his fondest wish is to get out of little seaside village he
lives in and see the world. His family spends its time working hard and trying
to not upset his drunken, abusive father. When Macintosh and his beautiful, red
haired, wife rent a tiny cottage in the seaside village, Maggs suddenly has
someone who appreciates and even encourages his sketching of boats in the
margins of his schoolwork. Soon Maggs is entangled in the lives of the Macintoshs
as he sees lives that are very different from any he’s seen in the village.
This budding relationship is threatened by the onset of WW 1 and the warnings
the British government publish about spies and traitors; Macintosh speaks with
a heavy accent- could he be German? He walks the cliffs at all hours,
frequently using binoculars. There are German words in pamphlets in his house;
he even corresponds with a German! Could he be in the village to spy for the
Germans?
This is a
coming of age story; young Maggs has his first romantic relationship, works for
a rope maker to help support the family, learns to look at the world with new
eyes, and learns horrid fear as Zeppelins fly overhead. It’s also a story about
how abruptly lives can change; a village that people come to to enjoy holiday
becomes a watchful town with soldiers billeted in it, handmade rope is being
replaced by barbed wire, a Scotch artist is suddenly seen as a German spy,
people die or nearly die, and people are changed in ways no one thought they
could be.
The prose is
just lovely; it’s like the words were lovingly set by a jewel maker. Freud made
me able to see this little village and feel the fear of the Zeppelins. It was a
delight to read.
I received this book free from the Amazon Vine program. The above is an affiliate link; if you click through and buy something, Amazon will give me a few cents. Neither of these things influenced my review.
No comments:
Post a Comment