As I've often said, the good thing about re-reading a book after many years is that one often remembers nothing about the book other than that they enjoyed it and thus are drawn to read it again. That's the case with THE CAMERONS and myself. And exactly 40 years later I'm enjoying it all over again.

I read this book years ago and it always stayed with me. Unfortunately I couldn't remember the title or the author. After an extensive web search I found it was The Camerons by Robert Crichton and realized I had also read his books The Great Impostor and The Secret of Santa Vittoria, both of which were made into movies.

If you can get your hands on this book about a family of miners in Scotland and the mother , Maggie who is such a wonderful strong character, do read it.

i read the um...reader's digest version...and loved it so much that when i saw it in the boy scout op shop i grabbed it to read in the "not-quite-so-well-edited" version. looking forward to it.

Powerful novel brought to life through the complex lives of several characters, especially mother Cameron who we see mature from a sixteen year old who boldly leaves her bleak coal mining town and travel to the Scottish highlands to find her husband. Maggie Drum Cameron and her husband are almost opposites in personality but they share an iron resolve that supports their drive to rise above the dismal town devoted to 'hawking' coal and, and in doing so, they play a role in establishing the first miner's union in Scotand. The reader is carried beyond the superficial facts of the story by sharing the senses of the characters: their hopes and fears and loves and frustrations - all the fragile and proud feelings of the family.

So fucking beautiful and humanist and full of achy lucid wisdom you want to die. I loved this book almost as much as "The Secret of Santa Vittoria," which was one of the few books we had in my house growing up for some strange reason and which I therefore read over and over again. I think the readers of this century have a solemn obligation to resurrect Crichton's two novels and celebrate them. What could be more topical in 2019 than a labor struggle in a tiny coal mining town or an antifascist insurgency by a Machiavellian clown? But the plots of these novels don't matter as much as the quality of the writing and the magic of the storytelling. Are they sentimental garbage? Hell yeah they are. But trash like THIS--of this quality! of this accuracy! of this discipline! of this humanity! of this clarity!--is goddamn priceless, beyond literature, beyond normal criticism. I would gladly donate to a charity whose entire function was to buy Robert Crichton books and give them away to sad weirdos on the edge.

I read this book again after almost 20 years and loved it as much the second time. Crichton's examination of human nature and the interplay between those with power and those without is masterful. They only thing that disappointed me was that, in his changing focus from Maggie to Gillon to the family, I lost sight of Maggie too much. She was too far in the background, in my opinion. She was too strong a presence at the beginning to be pushed so far outside the main play. What I liked best was how immediate I found various scenes to be: Gillon going for the salmon, him preparing for and going to the lord's house, Maggie stealing off in the night on an errand that had me terrified for what she might do. The story is gripping and the backdrop of a Fife coalmine and the desperation of the people there too me to a world I never thought I might want to visit. Again.

Bir direniş, bir işçi romanı. Sosyalizm ve hukukun keşfi. Yaşar Kemal tadı var ama ötesinde daha başka... Üzerine söylenecek çok çok şeyi olan bir kitaptı benim için. Karakterlerin doğallığı ve hikayenin kuşatıcılığı ne büyüklükte evrensel bir roman okuduğunuzu gösteriyor size. Belki neredeyse yirmi yıl oldu Karamazov Kardeşler'i okuyalı ama sanırım modern bir klasik olarak bende belki de Dostoyevski'nin yanına koyabileceğim gönlümü fetheden bir kitap oldu "Cameronlar" ve o kadar çok satırın altını çizdim ki hem bir aforizmalar hem de tespit yığınağı oluşturdu dimağımda R. Crichton. Türk okurların bu yazarı ve eserlerini bilmemesi, kitabın sadece 70'li yıllarda çevrilip kalması gerçekten çok ilginç.
Bu kitabı bana Kızılbük, Datça'da sahilde tanıştığım o 60'lı yıllar devrimci hipi karizmasında 60'lı yaşların başında olan Ömer abi tavsiye etmişti bir gün batımı sohbetinde ki ona da buradan selamlarımı sunuyorum.
İyi bir roman, insanı ilahi bir gök içkisi gibi çarpıp yüceltiyor.
Belki bir ara altını çizdiğim satırları da buraya yazarım.

Oh, Robert Crichton, why did you only write two novels? And why are they both so achingly perfect and so tragically out of print?

Historical fiction set in a mining village in Scotland. Maggie, born into a family that has been digging coal for generations, wants more. The first step, she believes, is to find the right husband, and that means going elsewhere. On her sixteenth birthday she sets off for a resort town where she finds and beguiles an empoverished highlander who lives on kelpie soup and seaweed, but he's tall and blond and strong, and he can work. His name is Gillon Cameron.

She exacts a promise from him, that he'll come back home with her and take up coal mining until they've saved enough money to move on. Twenty years later, their five boys are now working in the mines along side Gillon.

Gillon is the most intriguing character here. He makes a life for himself, reads books about coal, comes to understand the geology, stumbles across a tiny and unvisited library and begins to read more widely. He gains the respect of the town and the miners, and he acts quickly and courageously to save the life of a young man caught underneath a slab of coal.

Little by little he comes to a place where he understands he has to challenge to mine owners, which puts him in direct opposition to Maggie, who is so focused on saving money that she can't bear the thought of any disruption. This is the heart of the story, and the resolution is not the one you might expect.

This is a first class historical novel, closely observed, excellent detail, but most of all, a story that works in all its parts.

I find that very few people who aren't Scottish can write Scotland well and avoid the 'cutesy' trap (my pet peeve). Robert Crichton is one of them, and this book is a wonderful read.

Crichton does a great job at conveying mining life in Fife (including the language), creating excellent characters and bringing up thoughtful discussions around socialism, miners' strikes and the Highland Clearances. No wonder it was a bestseller when it came out.

DNF

This is a big sweeping novel of a Scottish family named Cameron. It begins with Maggie Drum's 16th birthday. She meets a poor but proud Highlander, named Gillon Forbes Cameron. They marry and have many children. Gillon works in the mines while Maggie dreams of better days ahead. This is a fascinating story of a big, loving, family and gives an interesting insight into life in Scotland. I would recommend this big book to anyone who enjoys a detailed story full of interesting characters. The bonus of such a book is that you feel that you are well-acquainted with them when you are finished reading their tale.