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UK Holidays - The Guynd: A Scottish Journal
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List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $10.17
Your Save: $ 4.78 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Quantuck Lane
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 941.10859092
EAN: 9781593720254
ISBN: 1593720254
Label: Quantuck Lane
Manufacturer: Quantuck Lane
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 2007-04-23
Publisher: Quantuck Lane
Studio: Quantuck Lane
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Editorial Reviews:
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"Rathbone nails down a little bit of the Scottish soul in all its stark splendor."—New York Times Book Review
This memoir offers an American woman's uniquely privileged view into the pastoral Scotland of today. By turns funny, heartwarming, and occasionally sad, it is the author's account of her marriage to a Scottish landowner and of the years they spent together at "The Guynd," his large ancestral estate. We follow her steep learning curve in dealing with a grand and crumbling mansion still recovering from the effects of two World Wars, as well as an overgrown landscape, a derelict garden, troublesome tenants, local aristocracy, Scottish rituals, and a husband for whom change is anathema.
A son and heir draws the author into an intimate relationship with every tier of the local society, while a visiting American friend heightens the strain of the ever-present culture gap. Alternating between enchantment and despair, Rathbone digs into family and local history in an effort to understand her surroundings and free her husband from the grip of the past.
Like a letter home from a strange land, this book offers a view of Scotland not found in the guide books. The tale of the journey through the wrought iron gates and up the long tree-lined drive into the living past is both wry and poignant, both oddball and deeply reflective of the ties that bind us.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: a Scottish life
Comment: I really looked forward to reading this book because I have long wanted to travel in Scotland, and I enjoy the extended travelogue where people live in a new land for a long time and get to know the locals. This was a good book, but not great. I had unanswered questions when it ended. For example, why did it take her 10 years to realize she and he husband were incompatible? Why did she keep her apartment in New York during the time she was living in Scotland? I kept thinking that if this were fiction, some of it would be implausible. Still, the characters you meet are worth meeting, and I did enjoy the book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Lived it; Loved it
Comment: Ours was not the 'big' house, but the 'gardener's cottage' which we rented for a year, and both the marriage and the enterprise of that particular country home survive. But all the characteristics and challenges of the estate, garden, community, and home came to life again in the author's witty, canny prose. This is the best description of the many, layered facets of Scottish society and how the great homes and their residents fit into the scheme of their surroundings that I have read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Don't try this!
Comment: I enjoyed the book, but was shocked when I came to the passage describing how the author, while in a late stage of pregnancy, climbed a tall scaffolding to paint a wall. It seems like an amazing lack of judgment for someone who was pregnant late in life.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An engaging memoir about a Scottish mansion and a marriage
Comment: I wanted to read this witty memoir because of my romantic childhood fantasy of living in a mansion or castle in Europe. Oh how lucky the American author was to have fallen in love with Scottish man with an ancestral home and property. I was rather envious of their son, Elliot, who was able to spend his childhood exploring and playing in the gardens, on the lake, and in the house.
But life isn't a fairytale. This is a story about a deteriorated, cluttered mansion, its 400 acres and a marriage that started as a whirlwind romance and came to mirror the mansion itself.
There's a lot of humor in the writing. How could you not laugh at the author's stories about how hard it was to heat the house, find proper tenants, clear out a garden untouched for decades and to try to throw junk out when married to someone who can find a use for everything.
If you don't know what an Aga stove is, you soon will. I highly recommend this book, but suggest curling up in a warm house with a hot cup of tea and a blanket. You'll need it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Review from Mom
Comment: I bought this book at my mother's request. She loved it. I'll be getting it back from her and reading it too.
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