In this fine novel Gunn returns to the world of the small Highland community, but now a darker mood has crept in which was to characterise many of his later novels. The Highlands are no longer seen as a source of inspiration, but as a prison, confining the spirit and enclosing the inhabitants in an atmosphere of prejudice and suspicion. Written in 1945, The Key of the Chest contains some of Gunn's most evocative writing and is reminiscent in some ways of both Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood and Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes.
The Reviews
Paperback
304 pages
Price: £6.99
ISBN: 9780862417703 Other editions
Neil Gunn was born in 1891. From the 1930s on he was recognised as one of the leaders of the Scottish Renaissance. He died in 1973 and his books with their timeless themes of alienation and conformity, of loss and acceptance, have found a new audience in the present generation.
