Praise for 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 Campbells 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 Whats 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.Its incredibly difficult to express how much the words, the gift for memory and language, in this novel have touched me. I couldnt put it down. - SELINA SCOTT
Angus Peter Campbells Electricity is both lyrical and earthy,bringing to lifea community of colourful characters and a tradition of island living that has arhythm 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 ofa 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 storythat is essentially about generational change, yet at its heart is a message as eternal as the islands 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 ceilidh! - KAREN MATHESON
The joy of being alive is the authors gift to us in this book. Its 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 youre hooked. A book which is as much an act of reverence as a work of fiction. - LOUIS DE BERNIERES
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 neighbours 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's a 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 Paipear, 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 depictionof 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 withGaidhlig 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 Gaidhealtachd.Fewer still to craft a wiser or more eloquent Sgeulaiche than Annie. - TED BROCKLEBANK
Ive been deeply affected by reading Electricity. Its stirred so many memories of my own childhood, so connected to Housmans 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 poets 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 isnt 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
There is such beauty and loveliness in Angus Peters writing. - JOHN DEMPSTER, The Inverness Courier
