Electricity

In pencil-written and drawing-spattered notebooks intended for her Australian granddaughter, an elderly woman, now in Edinburgh, remembers and relives her Hebridean childhood. The community thus recreated is one where modernity – its emblem the Electricity of Angus Peter Campbell’s title – collides and overlaps with all sorts of linguistic, cultural and other continuities. But this is no sentimental or elegaic excursion into a long-gone past What’s evoked here is a powerful sense of what it was, and is, to grow up amid family, neighbours and surroundings of a sort providing, for the most part, both security and happiness. - JAMES HUNTER

A beautiful portrayal of a Hebridean childhood. Elegiac and transfixing. A story of love and loss, a valediction but also a reaffirmation of joy and hope for humanity. It’s incredibly difficult to express how much the words, the gift for memory and language, in this novel have touched me. I couldn’t put it down. - SELINA SCOTT

Angus Peter Campbell’s “Electricity” is both lyrical and earthy, bringing to life a community of colourful characters and a tradition of island living that has a rhythm all of its own.  Full of warmth and wisdom and humour, it captures a society on the cusp of progress where everything – and nothing – is set to change.  Light and heat and water come to the island with the flick of a switch, but all modernisation prompts small births and deaths that bring approval and opposition in equal measure. Told through the reflective messages of a loving gran to her adored granddaughter, it is a story that is essentially about generational change, yet at its heart is a message as eternal as the island’s rocks. A beautifully gentle read, “Electricity”, tells of life and love, and the importance of embracing both the ancient and the modern. - CATHERINE DEVENEY

I loved this beautiful tale of community and what lies at its heart. The genius of this work is that we come to know the characters so intimately that we ourselves become part of their lives and story. A magic cèilidh!- KAREN MATHESON

The joy of being alive is the author’s gift to us in this book. It’s the novel I would take with me to the desert island - FR COLIN MACINNES

I enjoyed this book immensely. It reads beautifully, drawing you in slowly until it dawns on you that you’re hooked. A book which is as much an act of reverence as a work of fiction. - LOUISDE BERNIÈRES

A joy from beginning to end. - KAREN MATHESON

An enchanting novel and a kind one ... the sentiment here rings diamond-true. - ALLAN MASSIE, The Scotsman

Electricity reflects on the gentle way of island life before the bustle and demands of the modern world took over, recalls listening to his neighbour’s wireless that night, with the commentators’ description of events in the boxing ring igniting vivid pictures in his head. - SANDRA DICK, The Herald

A wonderful tale of recollection, of time passing, family and community.- BOOKS FROM SCOTLAND

Electricity could have been written by no other author at any other time...It'sa fine, warm, authentic piece of literature. - ROGER HUTCHINSON, West Highland Free Press

A wonderful and warm read that will raise spirits and gladden the heart, and is a reminder that there is no such thing as an ordinary life – every single one is extraordinary. When it comes to writing, Campbell is a true craftsman and Electricity is storytelling at its finest.- ALISTAIR BRAIDWOOD, Snack Magazine

I really enjoyed reading this beautiful new book and found it uplifting and deeply moving. The author has such a lovely turn of phrase, capturing big, important truths in seemingly simple lines. As I read, it kept reminding me of Seamus Heaney's poem The Railway Children. - MEL GROUNDSELL, Editor, Am Pàipear, Uist

Electricity is a lovely, life-enhancing read without being self-indulgent, it describes the past without being claggy or sentimental and conveys a longing for the connection and vivid personalities of a Hebridean childhood without cliched nostalgia. Although I grew up hundreds of miles south in the city of Belfast, I found myself nodding with recognition at his brilliantly authentic depiction of the eager child's mind. And there's a bonus for those without the Gaelic - reading Angus Peter in English feels like having a tiny vicarious brush with Gàidhlig itself. - LESLEY RIDDOCH

Like a Talisker savoured in front of a peat fire ‘Electricity’ is the real deal. Brimming with knowledge, simply told, the book like the dram, blooms as the scope of its ambition unfolds. This is ‘Cianalas’ the Gaelic longing for home, re-created from a technicolour Hebridean childhood by a grandparent in her Edinburgh exile. Few are better equipped than Angus Peter Campbell to chart the practical and cultural changes electricity brought to the Gàidhealtachd. Fewer still to craft a wiser or more eloquent ‘Sgeulaiche’ than Annie.- TED BROCKLEBANK

I’ve been deeply affected by reading ‘Electricity’. It’s stirred so many memories of my own childhood, so connected to Housman’s ‘blue remembered hills.’ - PETER PIDDOCK

A quirky touching novel which has as its core premise the transformation of the Hebrides through the arrival of electricity, but which is really a thoughtful reflection on the meaning of community… Campbell, who is a native Gaelic speaker from South Uist, has a poet’s eye for detail and a beautifully understated cadence to his prose. - SCOTTISH FIELD

Angus Peter has that rare talent of knowing his characters intimately, he can recite their genealogy and he knows their foibles. They are loved and cared for in a quiet maternal way, respected and protected from external predatory forces… This isn’t so much about nostalgia as a reminder of the proper rules of the game of life. - CATHY MACDONALD, Stornoway Gazette

Electricity is an amazing book, poetic, immersive, joyful.- LOUISE WELSH

He does write so well and the fact that he himself was brought up in the Utters at pretty much that time adds an integrity to a story that may have relevance if global warming continues to insist that we must all learn to live simpler lives so that others may simply live.MAXWELL MACLEOD, ArtWork

There is such beauty and loveliness in Angus Peter’s writing. - JOHN DEMPSTER, The Inverness Courier