Edition: [1st ed. ]
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Dutton, New York
Date Published: 1961
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. 211 p. illus. 22 cm. Sequel: The rocks remain. Ex-Library expected imperfections. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Date Published: 1987-10-06
ISBN-13:9780140039238ISBN:0140039236
Description: Good. Paperbacks are previously owned. They are all in readable condition. They may have previous owners stamps, labels or names written or on them. The covers and spine may have creasing from previously being read. They may have light highlighting or underlining. The corners may be bumped and there may be a small number of bent pages. Older books may have fading/discoloration due to light exposure. * read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Fawcett Crest, Greenwich, Conn., USA
Date Published: 1962
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. 1962 Fawcett Crest paperback. NOT EX LIB! Clean, lightly toned pages with some reading wrinkles & bent page corners, gently creased spine, moderate edgewear, mild cover scuffing & fading. 208 p. Includes Illustrations. Sequel: The rocks remain. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Fawcett
Date Published: 1967
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Signed by previous owner. Nice soft cover, lightly read, light shelf wear to cover, yellowing to pages, stk #2175c9. 208 p. Includes illustrations. read more
Binding: MASS MARKET PAPERBACK
Publisher: Fawcett crest
Description: Good. B000GWTNZ0 Good condition, minor wear. Pages slightly yellowed from age. Some stains on cover, crease mark on spine. No other major marks or damage. 100% satisfaction guaranteed. Great customer service and a no problem, EZ return policy. Real people, real service, since 1981. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Crest Book
Date Published: 1962
Description: Good. No Jacket. Covers Lightly Soiled, Corners/Edges Worn, Spine Creased, Sm. Tears On Spine/Front Cover, Remainder Mark, Interior Unmarked, Good Reading Copy. read more
"I osmosed the movie based on Ring of Bright Water as an animal-obsessed kid, and read the book not long after. While I imagine that some British neomarxist critics might furrow their brows at Maxwell's use of a pastoral escape device that drives the plot, I'm not coldhearted (or disentangled from ideology) enough to dismiss Maxwell's love of both the rustic Scottish seascape, and of otterkind.
Devastatingly sad at times, but sleek and beautiful, this is an animal story classic that has mostly gone unappreciated by American readers in recent decades."
"A strange book by a strange author. It's always marked as a nature classic and a children's book, but the first classification needs a big old asterisk and the second is kind of bizarre. Yes, Maxwell lovingly describes the antics and affection of cute otters, though only in the last two thirds of the book. And then his story is often quite dark. I had this vague memory of reading this as a kid -- I do remember otters -- but now I wonder whether I got more than a couple of pages in -- and maybe I saw the movie instead, a sort of Disneyfied adaptation that came out in the 60s. "Ring of Bright Water" is a sort of Scottish "Walden," the (quite adult) story of a romantic loner living in a remote shore cottage in the West Highlands, a kind of Robinson Crusoe, really, who combs the beaches for flotsam and jetsam but whose inner life seems just as guarded as Crusoe's. I love passages like this one, describing the seashore at his house near the Isle of Skye:
"When one is alone one's vision becomes more extensive; from the tide-wrack rubbish-heap of small bones and dry, crumpled wings, relics of lesser lives, rise images the brighter for being unconfined by the physical eye. From some feathered mummy, stained and thin, soars the spinning lapwing in the white March morning; in the surface crust of rotting weed, where the foot explodes a whirring puff of flies, the withered fins and scales hold still, intrinsically, the sway and dart of glittering shoals among the tide-swung sea-tangle; smothered by a mad parabolic energy of leaping sand-hoppers the broken antlers of a stag re-form and move again high in the bare, stony corries and the October moonlight."
This poetic vision of the life in dead detritus prefaces the stories of death and life that Maxwell will tell. His loyal dog Jonny, who doesn't feature all that centrally in the first part of the book, grows old and dies; Maxwell's grief over his death comes after and before scenes of animal violence-rabbit hunting, goats dying, a massacre of fish. Maxwell decides he cannot replace Jonny with another dog, but soon decides he wants a pet otter instead. This is where I almost put the book away without finishing it: he procures his otter in Iraq (it's the 1950s, when the British were still "in" Iraq) and brings it to Scotland-which I found weird and somehow irritating, since there are plenty of otters already in that region. I guess I assumed when I bought this book that he had tamed some of the wild Hebridean otters, which seems more charming than the truth, which is that he smuggled (not exactly, since there were no or fairly lax regulations on the importing of wild animals in those days) his otter Mijbil into Britain, under not very pleasant conditions. (Let the sensitive reader beware.) In keeping with his general lack of introspection, Maxwell hardly grapples with the ethical aspects of all this. I don't want to discourage anyone from reading the book, really, since: a) the author is himself a curious specimen; b) his writing, especially in describing wild places in the Highlands, is often powerful; and c) his depiction of otters is detailed and moving."
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