REVIEWS
Social lubricant in a postwar Scotland
The Black Eden is about the discovery of oil in the North Sea off Scotland in the period from the late 1950s to the 1980s. Knowing this, it would be easy to construct a narrative, even a whole novel, in line with much of the fiction to which readers in the 21st century have grown accustomed: traditional area, discovery of new industrial resource, upending of tradition, youth meet experience. The injection of a few regional dialects often gives a veneer of legitimacy. May I go far as to say that we know how the story goes?
Richard T Kelly’s novel is therefore important for going beyond this. It is an excellently evoked literary document of its time and place. His novel has many predictable narrative traits, but his characters are original, and his writing just about persuasive enough to give us a sense of what it may really have felt to be searching year after year for oil in the rocks
