THE HOLY CITY

The working poor of the town of Clyde's Bank, Scotland, jocularly call their community "the Holy City." By the end of this much-lauded bestseller, we know why--for journalist-cum-novelist Meg Henderson has so permeated her characters and events with warmth and spirit as to imbue them with a near-sacred quality, a kind of holy reliquary of memory. The tenement dwellers who toil in the shipyards suffer mass tragedy during the blitzkrieg of WWII, which somehow strengthens them even as it changes their way of life forever. Eileen McCallum, one of Scotland's finest actors, gives us a superb reading. She makes the book sound less like fiction than like a personal reminiscence. The intimacy and authenticity she thus provides considerably amplify the book's pathos. She makes the third-person narrator the strongest character, a "Bankee" who has accepted the blind mutability of time and chance that enables her--and the neighbors she writes about--to get on with the gritty business of living. Y.R. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 02]