52. Whisky Galore by Compton Mackenzie

I saw the Ealing movie adaptation of Whiskey Galore at an Ealing film festival in my younger days and quite enjoyed it.  I stumbled upon this trade paperback version of the book and thought I might enjoy it as well.  It served me as comfort and distraction during a trans-atlantic flight and then several subsequent nights of brutal jetlag from which I am still suffering as I write this.

It's a story of two small Scottish islands during the final years of WWII (1943 to be precise).  They are under rationing of many things, but it is the slowly dwindling and then finally exhausted resource of the island's whisky that is wreaking havoc among the psyche and relations of the people of the islands.  There are many subplots in this book and many characters.  The main one is the middle-aged English Sergeant who is engaged to marry the young Scottish lass, but whose father, famous already for prevaricating about everything, won't give his blessing nor agree on the wedding date.  The bad guy in the book, if there is one, is the local rep for English war security, who is the classic managerial popinjay spoilsport that nobody takes seriously.  He is always writing letters to his superiors, complaining about the laxity of the Islanders. We also have a nice school director who is also betrothed but completely beaten down by his puritan, domineering mother and too scared to tell her he is going to get married.

All these problems and the general mood and well-being of the region could be solved by whiskey and the solution arrives when a freight ship gets hung up on some rocks and turns out to be carrying 40,000 bottles of the best quality whiskey, to be sent to the US as part of I guess some lend-lease agreement.  The names, the descriptions of the bottles and the labels of all the different types of regional whiskeys was one of my favourite parts of the book.  I don't know if they were made up, but they were fun to read about and imagine.

It's a pleasant read, more of an exposure to the pleasant culture and people of these small islands, with an entertaining dig at English bureaucracy and superiority.  I was a bit confused at first, as I couldn't distinguish with any memory the various Scottish names (especially as several of them share last names), but once I got into it, it flowed nicely.

I left this book in a free book shelf in Amsterdam. I  hope it finds an appreciative next reader.