Thorfinn Ragnarson is an idle dreamer, the schoolboy son of a subsistence farmer on the invented Orcadian island of Norday, and considered mostly useless by all who know him. Various incidents set off daydreams, in which Thorfinn imagines himself in assorted historical roles – aboard a Viking ship which makes for Byzantium, the squire of a knight on his way to Bannockburn, a member of the people who built the brochs, press-ganged into the English fleet to fight the French republicans… But there is also a section which describes life on Norday at the time the novel is set, the 1930s, and centres around the mysterious young woman who comes to stay with the local reverend. This was my first experience of reading Mackay Brown, and I’m sure it’s my thing. I found the prose very simple and declarative, and while there were occasional moments of lovely imagery, much of it struck me as quite sketchy. The setting, of course, had its own fascination, and I actually spent an hour or so looking up brochs after reading about them in Beside the Ocean of Time (and even considered buying a book on the topic). There are some authors, you only need to read one novel or novella, and you want to explore their oeuvre further. While I liked Beside the Ocean of Time, and may well pick up copies of Mackay Brown’s books if I see them in charity shops, I’m not minded to actively seek out his other works. ( )

Beautiful mixture of the past and present. A placid and gentle novel with a happy ending, which is always a good thing. Still a good read, but not as good as others I have read by George MacKay Brown. ( )

Thorfinn Ragnarsson is a young Orkney islander with an enormous imagination, stretching into Viking expeditions, Neolithic family life, clansmen's battles, the second world war, and into his own future. The novel hops between epochs via the young boy's life and is steeped right the way through with Orkney's unique culture and history. As well as a wonderful story it functions almost as a full account of the flowering of an island's culture with contextual depictions of crofts, dialect and family life that far beats any old museum. ( )