Glen Lyon

When Perthshire writer Kenneth Steven spoke at the Old High Church in Inverness recently, he explained that he regards himself as a writer who is a Christian, rather than a Christian writer.

The distinction is an important one. A Christian writer will normally focus on explicitly Christian characters and themes, whereas a writer who is a Christian will (following in the footsteps of Jesus the storyteller) deal broadly with all aspects of life in ways which, though they may not be explicitly Christian will be imbued with Christian vision.

Much of the book of the Christian’s life - working, learning, shopping, relating, talking – will not be explicitly Christian and yet we should look for the mark of faith in almost every page.

To my mind, the imprint of the author’s faith is seen throughout Glen Lyon, the new novel by Kenneth Steven, published this month by Birlinn. It describes the arrival in the Perthshire glen of Somerled Stewart a young man who fled from his unloving parents’ home in the west.

Somerled creates a new life for himself in the glen, and marries sweet, troubled Anna, the blacksmith’s daughter, but their happiness is threatened by reverberations from the past.

The book reads almost as myth – there’s a timelessness about it, a sense that Somerled represents many who have found themselves in despair. Glen Lyon deals with universal themes – love, marriage, brokenness, the quest for healing and freedom.

I see the fingerprints of faith in the author’s emphasis on goodness and beauty. He has a powerful ability to deploy words which make live the beauties of nature and wildlife. His compassionate portrayal makes thoroughly good people interesting – people like Anna’s parents Allan and Martha who make for old Aunt Jessie a place of ‘laughter and love without fear.’ He celebrates the shy tenderness of Somerled and Anna’s sexual discovery.

But the author does not hide from darkness. He addresses Somerled’s rejection by his parents, and the sexual abuse of his sister Deirdre which casts a long shadow over her life, and the question of whether our destiny is shaped by things which happened before we were born, a poison seeping down the generations.

I love Kenneth Steven’s positive depiction of Christian characters. The minister in the glen who lives his faith ‘no matter what the cost.’ The old man on a wintry railway station, ‘desperately thin and frail’, handing out religious leaflets. For many novelists such a character would invite scornful dismissal. In contrast, Steven has Somerled wonder ‘at the devotion that made him stand there on such a day.’

And there is honesty in the novel about the nature of love. Somerled is not happy with the thoughts about love which he imagines or recalls his mother expressing: ‘Love is not about the bright days of summer’ but ‘about the dark days, the days of storm, the days when there is no power’, but in fact the whole novel explores whether the easy love of carefree sunlit days can even survive, let alone grow in the depths of winter.

One of Glen Lyon’s themes is the longing for a perfect place – for an island, for a secure place in the glen, for the beautiful world glimpsed at the bottom of the sea in the story Somerled tells baby Finn, a world beyond reach. It reminds me of writer C. S. Lewis’s conviction that our longing for a perfect place is God-given – we do not long for things which don’t exist, we are summoned by dreams of a better place.

None of this evidence proves conclusively that the author of Glen Lyon is a Christian, but knowing that he is a believer, we see it all as an expression of his faith.

The last 18 pages of the novel are gripping. Will the shadow lift? Will the story end in redemption and hope? Will the axe’s creative power be overcome by its potential to destroy? Will a first smile crease the baby’s lips?

And what of the pages of the book we are writing, the pages where our faith is not explicit? Do these pages evidence a love of beauty and goodness, a tenderness in relationships, a refusal to deny or hide from darkness, a commitment to overcome through enduring love, a resolve to let our longing for a better place inspire us to make better the place where we are?

Throughout Glen Lyon there is a sense of things waiting to be seen, waiting to be found. The creatures in drift wood, which Somerled’s skilful carving can set free, the things overlooked in previously-seen landscapes.

For all of us, things await our seeing and our finding. There is still enough light on the hills to see by if we will only lift our eyes.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 3rd October 2013)