Generation after generation, these women are caught in the misery and despair they inherited from their mothers and their immediate social environment. Destined to face the same situations, reacting in the same fashion and ultimately facing the same consequences. These women live an infernal catch 22, as if the destiny of all the women in that family was predetermined to end tragically. Their life is a speeding runaway freight train on its way to the end of the line and the cliff beyond, on full power, without any brakes, or engineer at the helm, prisoner of unyielding rails hurling it towards destruction. A grim ending of a succession of miserable lives, marred by heartache, abject poverty, moral misery and cold absence of Love. A downward spiral that seems to go on for ever until one of them battles her way out of that nightmarish existence, by sheer will power and brute physical force. The comeliness of that woman is the blessing in disguise that allows her to break free and ultimately find peace, love and a chance at a normal existence...
She is not however, the heroine of the Novel. Her strength and compassion for her sister, and ultimately her niece, were the grains of sand that started the breaking down of the "Machina Infernale" on which the women in her family were riding powerlessly to their doom, one after the other. Her compassion fanned the flames of the rebel spirit and the courage of her niece who was already well down the road to perdition on which her ancestors had walked before her. Her niece found the courage to break the cycle and finally get her own chance at happiness, out of ignorance and out of misery. It took an extreme act of courage and an agonizingly painful sacrifice. One that would haunt her for the rest of her life, but she did it, not so much for herself, but for all the future generation of women in her family. She reversed singlehandedly the tide of misery for the posterity of the women that will come after her in her family. She did it for the only reason worth such a sacrifice in her eyes, for what she never knew herself from her own mother. She did it for love.
Historically factual, When The Crows Sings, opens a window in the privacy of the blue collar urban society of Scotland. A Northern European country, which is by all standards, an industrialized, developed nation. A country united with Wales and England under the Banner of the United Kingdom, not a sub-Saharan Country in the African Continent, not a nation of the Indian Peninsula or even in Latin America. The story begins in the early 20th century and ends nowadays. The shock comes from the scenery you glimpse through that window. The living conditions, the ignorance, the despair could have been plucked right out of a Novel of Emile Zola about the life of the working class in the 19th century Industrial Revolution in Europe. Never could I have imagined such absence of hope, such despair and deep poverty in Northern Europe in the 20th century, my century. The characters are my contemporaries, yet it could describe the state of mind of the inhabitants of the slums of Calcutta in India, or those of the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro.
Jacqueline Wales, uses her incredible talent to capture and to violently throw the reader in the midst of the characters. She teaches us not just the vernacular but the actual dialect of the Scottish common folks. There are moments of passion, joy and other powerful emotions. But be warned, this book will grab your full attention from the very first page and until the very end of the last page. It will leave you panting with emotional exhaustion trying to catch your breath. Your mind will be reeling for weeks after you've read the very last words on the very last page. A surprise at every turn, a tense story, wonderfully told, raw with precision and clarity, mind gripping and heart wrenching. This book is read by many women, but was written for everyone. I am as macho as a man comes, without the misogyny, but it still wrung my gut at every other page. I started reading it in the plane on my way from Miami to New York,on a business trip. I only put it down long enough to get into the cab and check in my Hotel. I skipped, unpacking, showering, dinner and read all night non stop till it was time for me to get ready for my first meeting in the morning. I went to the meeting with the book's omnipresence in the back of my mind, strangely focused in spite of the lack of sleep, but invigorated by the realization that the Strength of the Human Spirit knows no bounds. If an itty bitty little girl could surmount so much adversity with so much courage, against all odds and turn her life around in such a grand way, then there definitely is hope for Mankind. My meeting went extremely well. I felt strangely serene during the entire time, knowing that no matter how bad things seem, there is always a way to turn it around, no matter how seemingly impossible.
No matter what I just wrote about this book, you will be surprised by what you will read, you will be hypnotized and unless you are from Scotland and know firsthand what the book describes, you will not think of Scotland the same way again, at least not the Urban Scotland you imagine.You will talk about it to everyone you know and for years to come. Prepare yourself to be stunned.
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