Those Other Times

'She has an undeniable gift for creating a scene, describing a moment . . . she can switch from the hilarious to the poignant on the turn of a phrase . . . a distinguished addition to the register of Scottish writers' - Aonghas Macneacail

'Like Neil Gunn, Bess captures the ethos of their mutual landscape and its idiom' - Jessie Kesson

'The joys and ardours of childhood are well-nigh perfectly conveyed . . . she has the gift, so necessary to a story-teller, of dialogue' - George Mackay Brown

Those Other Times is a powerful and perceptive novel which tells the story of Cis Clark, an incomer married into a close-knit fishing community in northern Scotland. Cis struggles to cope with her straitened circumstances and her family's fight for survival. A complex relationship exists between Cis and Marjie, her bright and sensitive daughter, who reacts to her mother's difficulties with her own emerging ambitions. Partly autobiographical this book is Bess Ross's first novel, and a work that helped to confirm her as a distinctive and talented voice in modern Scottish literature.