The Last Ballad of Kinloch

This story is a small, fierce thing. It captures how culture is passed — through breath, through knees bent at work, through the fiddles and pipes in a longhouse — and makes the danger of removal feel like an injury to the body. Eilidh’s multiple roles (midwife, teacher, singer) are handled with confidence: she’s not an evangelist for the past but a practical guardian of it. The writing is unshowy but very precise; the line about her voice 'settling into the room like a lantern' is a perfect image of how art provides light in cold places. The moral dilemma — to keep songs where they can be lived or to send them to presses where they might be fixed but safe — lingers after the last page. A quietly powerful piece about memory, belonging, and the price of preservation.

I admire the ambition here but felt the treatment sometimes bordered on sentimental. The ceilidh is vivid, yes, but the narrative occasionally relies on familiar images — peat smoke, thatch, the noble rural figure — without fully complicating them. Lachlan is sketched well but other figures remain a bit shadowy; the visitor who brings news feels like a plot device rather than a fleshed-out force. Also, the tension between leaving songs in the mouth and putting them in print is interesting but not fully explored; Samuel Grant’s role deserves more moral friction. That said, there are moments of real lyricism that save the piece. Worth reading, but not as deep as it could be.

There’s a real tenderness to the way the writer sketches Kinloch. The sensory work is superb — turf on the air, wool, thatch, the way voices 'rose and fell in easy cadences' — which makes the political stakes hit harder because they're rooted in lived life. Eilidh is a memorable protagonist: practical as a midwife, soulful as a singer, and caught between two kinds of survival. The scene where people lean in when she threads a lament is heartbreaking in its specificity. My only tiny wish: more time with the songs themselves — a lyric or two on the page would have made the pressure of losing them even more acute. Still, a moving read.

Quiet, compassionate, and gorgeously observant. The author is brilliant at making the domestic feel epic: a ceilidh becomes a whole politics of survival, and Eilidh's singing is both comfort and weapon. The line about songs living 'under her ribs with the names of spring burns' is one of those sentences that make you pause. The emotional center — Eilidh's choice — is handled with real care; you never feel rushed into a tidy resolution. I also liked how the community's rhythms (children running, elders clapping) are used to measure time and loss. Highly recommended for anyone who loves character-led historical fiction.

I wanted to love this but found it disappointingly familiar. The 'singing midwife in danger of losing her community' is a trope at this point, and while the prose is competent the plot feels like a checklist: cottage-y opening, bright communal music, male stoic farmer, outsider bearing news. The threat of 'estate improvements' is presented but not interrogated — who benefits? Who enforces? The pacing drifts; the middle lags with reverie when the narrative needs sharper stakes. Also, the manuscript-to-press angle (Samuel Grant) is intriguing but underdeveloped, like a subplot sketched and then abandoned. If you love atmospheric description you’ll enjoy the piece; if you want a fresher take on displacement, look elsewhere.

A lyrical, restrained piece that really understands the politics of memory. The author uses sensory detail — the smell of peat, the patched curtains, the cadence of hands on tables — to show how culture is embodied, not just recorded. Eilidh's songs are not merely entertainment; they are a map of the land: spring burns, edges of stones. That specificity makes the threat of displacement much more heartbreaking. I admired the subtle characterization of Lachlan: his hands, his grunt, the way he listens when the visitor comes. Samuel Grant's potential role in transferring the songs to the presses raises interesting ethical issues about preservation and ownership. I felt greedy for more of this world, but what is here is rich and carefully wrought.

Loved this — so evocative. The longhouse scene is a gem: fiddles, pipes, hands on tables, and a voice that 'settled into the room like a lantern.' I actually laughed out loud at the child's shout during the drinking song; such life in a tragic setting. Eilidh as midwife/teacher/singer is exactly the kind of heroine historical fiction needs — practical, fierce, and tender. The prose sings and the stakes feel human. Can't wait to see where she goes. 🙂

Short, haunting, and full of texture. The ceilidh scene felt lived-in — I could smell stew and turf and nearly taste the peat smoke. Eilidh's choice (stay or take songs to the city) is such a devastating knot of duty, survival, and art. The author doesn't rush her; instead we live in the small moments that make the decision meaningful. I loved Lachlan's silent recognition when he hears the news — a tiny, devastating beat. This story stays with you.

This is an intelligent and empathetic take on the Highland Clearances — not sensationalised, but never flattening the pain. The prose is careful: images of thatch and wool, of hands 'like the planks of the table', ground the political threat in real human textures. I appreciated how the narrative frames oral tradition against the city and the press: Samuel Grant feels less like a character and more like the idea of inscription—what happens when songs move from muscle and mouth into print? Eilidh's dual role as midwife and keeper of names creates a powerful metaphor for cultural transmission. A small quibble: I wanted a little more about the mechanics of the estate improvements (the men who decide, the legal pressures), but that may be deliberate — the focus is on what is lost and what might be carried forward. Highly recommended if you like measured, humane historical fiction.

I was transported from the first line. The opening image of peat smoke laid 'like a slow hand across the glen' stayed with me all day — such an exact, tactile sentence. Eilidh is written with a rare tenderness: her voice as a lantern, the way songs live 'under her ribs' is the sort of small magic that makes historical fiction sing. I loved the ceilidh scene where the child's shout lifts the chorus — it felt alive and true. Lachlan's quiet strength, the grief threaded through the community's rhythms, and the looming threat of 'estate improvements' created real stakes without melodrama. The story balances the intimacy of the longhouse with the larger sweep of displacement perfectly. I wanted to follow Eilidh to the presses and also stay sitting at that turf-smelling table. A beautiful, mournful piece about what we carry and what we choose to save.