Ring of Bright Water: A Trilogy

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.

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.