Portrona

Norman Malcolm Macdonald’s last novel is set in a town not a million miles from that which we now know as Stornoway in the 19th and early 20th centuries – from the Bounty to the Iolaire he regarded it as the most important piece of writing he had done and the summation of what he wanted to say. The result is an epic novel in a short space teeming with characters as the sea teemed with fish; a novel which sums up the soul of the Hebrides and of the Gael. From landlords and the great estates, through Madame Volkova the Russian herring buyer, poets, fisherfolk, self-made men, factors, to the final moving reflections on the fate of the Iolaire which tore so much of the heart out of the Outer Isles, the author moves with the sweep and confidence of a man speaking not just for himself, but for a whole community. This book tells the story of two ships with totally unexpected connections with the town of Stornoway…over 900 books have been written on the Mutiny on the Bounty, the bo’sun of which was from Stornoway. The other ship connected with this town is HMS Iolaire, about which one book has been written.It says something about the vagaries of history that this should be so: three men died in the mutiny, 205 drowned on the Iolaire. The relevant dates are 1789 and 1919 and the book fictionalises a great deal of Lewis history bewteen these dates as well as telling as much as possible of the truth about the mutiny and the disaster.