Hellfire and Herring

I was raised in the East Neuk of Fife, an area that includes the old fishing village of St Monans. Hellfire and Herring is a vivid and moving account of the upbringing of Christopher Rush in St Monans during the 1940's and 1950's. His evocation of a way of life now vanished demonstrates the power of the word to make the local universal and to bring the past timelessly to life. Woven into the fabric of family life, village characters, church and school, Rush writes of folklore and fishing and the eternal power of the sea, the cycle of the seasons, the worlds of the imagination and the unknown, the archetypal problems of fathers and sons and mother love, and the inescapability of childhood influences far on into adult life. Hellfire and Herring.