Farewell Miss Julie Logan by J.M. Barrie

We have been in the middle of a heat, here in T-Town, Pennsylvania. We have been seeing the 90s during the day, and going to the upper 60s, and 70s at night. It's supposed to break today. But don't forecasters always say that?

For someone who really prefers a very mild, temperate climate - I loved Scotland for many reasons; the weather and I got along fine, except when it hailed upwards - this end of Spring, hint of Summer heat wave has me already grouchy, sticky and dreaming of cooler climes.

I hide out in my house as much as I can, but with a little one who loves to be outside, my days of hiding out in the dark are fairly over.

By the time the baby has gone down for the night, and the heat is beginning to ease, I'm in my bed desperate for a read, because my brain has already been fried.

But then comes the problem. I am once again between books. I am waiting on two books to come into the library, and the books I have by my bedside aren't stirring enough for me. I wanted something I would love, something that would be beautiful, have some teeth to it, and perhaps give me images of a cooler place than right now.

My hand fell upon the thin green book with the gold gilt lettering across the front, Farewell Miss Julie Logan - a Wintery Tale. By J.M. Barrie.

I first met this book when I was doing my year abroad in Glasgow. I took a class on Modern Scottish Literature, and this little book was on the required reading list. A friend of mine went halves on the book, so we each read it about once, and called it good. That copy eventually went home with her Canada, somewhere near Toronto, though I have no idea where she, or it is.

When I came back from my year abroad, I brought home the memory of this book with me. But everywhere I looked, it didn't exist. It didn't show up in Barrie's biography. It didn't show up on Amazon as being in print. It was equally absent from Barnes and Noble and Ebay. Where it actually was, the copy that would be come mine, was in a small antique bookseller in Boston. The edition I have is from 1932. Not a first edition by a few years, but beautiful, readable, and like finding a favorite sweater, fit me perfectly.

We all know J. M. Barrie from Peter Pan, the Little White Bird, Peter and Wendy.... He was immortalized by Johnny Depp in Finding Neverland which chronicled - somewhat fictitiously - his friendship and eventual guardianship of the Llewylln-Davies' children. What many of us don't know is that he was a gifted playwright. Peter Pan first showed up on stage, a few years before the book was ever written. He was also known as the Scottish Jester to an English court. He was a Scot - born in Kirriemuir - who eventually went and lived in London, because that's where the theatre scene was going. So he wrote more for the English than for the Scots.

Going along with his writing, he was part of what is known as the Kailyard genre. Kailyard meaning cabbage patch. So the genre of fiction that was pastoral, rural, idyllic, quaint. Kailyard fiction tended to be overly sentimental, and to be marketed towards Ex-patriots who had moved away from their homeland and wanted to read about 'the good old days.' Usually a young man would be the beloved of the village, he would go away to university, or to school. He'd score well on all of his exams. He'd make everyone proud. He'd win all sorts of awards for smarts and sports. And then something tragic would happen - consumption, scarlet fever, fill in the blanks here - and the young man would die, at home, in his mother's arms. He would be forever young. Forever beautiful. And forever beloved of his village and friends. the end.

Peter Pan does this to a point. Pan never grows up. He is always youthful, he is always beautiful, and he always defeats the enemy.

But I digress.

Farewell Miss Julie Logan isn't what I would call Kailyard although it does deal with a young man - a minister in this situation - at his first assignment. He is challenged to write a journal of the time when the glen is locked - snowed in as we would say in this neck of the woods. Now this is set in early 1900s? So there's no snow plows., no John Deere's. When you're snowed in, you're snowed in. The English tourists challenge Adam Yestreen - our still wet behind the ears minister - to keep a journal because they say (and others say it also) that when people are snowed in, when the glen is locked, people go weird. (Jack Nicholson demonstrated this so beautifully in the Shining...)

Farewell Miss Julie Logan is written as Yestreen's Journal.

It's a beautiful, thin book. A lovely voice, complete with Scottish dialect scattered throughout. The dialect isn't enough to distract, but brings you closer in to the text, and the characters. It gives you the story through Yestreen's eyes, though at some points we may begin to question the reliability of the narrator. It leaves us with the question of what is reality, what is not reality, even when some say otherwise.

This is my Wintery book that I usually read in winter, but I read now because I am too warm with summer. And I am quite happily ensconced in the glen currently with Yestreen and his tale. If you feel the need, I am sure you can dig your way a tunnel to join us.