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The Lantern Bearers
Sent away from home for the first time, Neil Pritchard spends the long summer of 1962 with his Aunt Nessie in claustrophobic Auchendrennan on the Solway Firth. Eager for a pastime, Neil sings for Euan Bone, a young Scottish composer whose star is rising fast. Becoming Bone's muse, the afternoons spent at the composer's home turn into the blissful focus of his adolescent dreams. Suddenly, however, Neil is expelled from his Eden - with devastating consequences for all...
256 pages, Paperback
First published July 5, 2001
About the author
Ronald Frame
42 books13 followersRonald Frame was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1953, and educated there and at Oxford. He is the author of thirteen internationally published works of fiction, is an award-winning television and radio scriptwriter, and has recently received international recognition for his short stories set in the fictitious Scottish spa town of Carnbeg.
In 1984 he was joint-winner of the first Betty Trask Prize for fiction. In 1999 his novel The Lantern Bearers was longlisted for The Man Booker Prize and won the 2000 Saltire Award for Scottish Book of the Year.
In August 2001 he delivered the inaugural Saltire Lecture at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, which received wide press coverage. He spoke at the New York Public Library in late October 2001 following appearances at the Toronto International Festival of Authors. The American Library Association named Ronald Frame as winner of the Barbara Gittings Honor Award in Fiction for 2003.
In 1984 he was joint-winner of the first Betty Trask Prize for fiction. In 1999 his novel The Lantern Bearers was longlisted for The Man Booker Prize and won the 2000 Saltire Award for Scottish Book of the Year.
In August 2001 he delivered the inaugural Saltire Lecture at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, which received wide press coverage. He spoke at the New York Public Library in late October 2001 following appearances at the Toronto International Festival of Authors. The American Library Association named Ronald Frame as winner of the Barbara Gittings Honor Award in Fiction for 2003.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 19, 2019
One of the 100 best Scottish Books.
In a very short Part One we find Neil Pritchard is about to turn down a contract to write the biography of a famous musician, Euan Bone, he knew in his youth. A diagnosis of cancer persuades him to change his mind. The much longer Parts Two to Four relate his remembrances of the summer he spent living with his Aunt Nessie in the town of Auchendrennan on the Solway Coast, where he was sent while his parents worked through the problems in their marriage. His boyhood treble singing voice gained him an entry to Slezer’s Walk, the house where Bone lived with his companion (as such a relationship was publicly referred to in those days) Douglas Maitland. To test how the music sounded, Neil was to be the vocal guinea pig performer of a piece Bone was composing inspired by a Robert Louis Stevenson essay “The Lantern Bearers”. Part Five rounds off the tale of Pritchard’s entanglement in Bone’s life.
Frame’s style here is writerly but nevertheless highly readable. The author being Scottish we of course have various comments on the country’s attitudes. “The Scots have a way of cutting other Scots down to size but Bone was lucky in that respect ..... received opinion” holding that he was a leading figure in Scotland’s musical renaissance. Via Neil, Frame tells us Bone’s music has a “typical unresolved Scottish conflict of intellect and emotion, that timid repressed life of the feelings.” We also have a typically Scottish observation where Neil says of his father, “My mother shot him A Look.”
The unfolding of Neil’s relationship with Bone, the explanation for Maitland’s unease at Neil’s presence in Slezer’s Walk, the awkwardnesses of Aunt Nessie’s navigation of ‘difficult’ areas of life to do with an adolescent boy, the repression of feeling in 1950s Scotland (I might add of Scotland since the Reformation till very recently indeed) are all brilliantly and subtly depicted. Neil’s complicated response to Bone’s distress, and distancing when biology intervenes in their relationship (which lead to the actions for which Neil wishes to atone years later) are beautifully handled. The only off note I could detect was the introduction - albeit offstage - of Scottish nationalist activists, but that provided the impetus for the novel’s defining moment.
On the evidence of this novel Frame is a master, The Lantern Bearers well worth inclusion in that 100 best list. Why had I not heard of him before encountering it? I obviously read too many London-based reviews.
In a very short Part One we find Neil Pritchard is about to turn down a contract to write the biography of a famous musician, Euan Bone, he knew in his youth. A diagnosis of cancer persuades him to change his mind. The much longer Parts Two to Four relate his remembrances of the summer he spent living with his Aunt Nessie in the town of Auchendrennan on the Solway Coast, where he was sent while his parents worked through the problems in their marriage. His boyhood treble singing voice gained him an entry to Slezer’s Walk, the house where Bone lived with his companion (as such a relationship was publicly referred to in those days) Douglas Maitland. To test how the music sounded, Neil was to be the vocal guinea pig performer of a piece Bone was composing inspired by a Robert Louis Stevenson essay “The Lantern Bearers”. Part Five rounds off the tale of Pritchard’s entanglement in Bone’s life.
Frame’s style here is writerly but nevertheless highly readable. The author being Scottish we of course have various comments on the country’s attitudes. “The Scots have a way of cutting other Scots down to size but Bone was lucky in that respect ..... received opinion” holding that he was a leading figure in Scotland’s musical renaissance. Via Neil, Frame tells us Bone’s music has a “typical unresolved Scottish conflict of intellect and emotion, that timid repressed life of the feelings.” We also have a typically Scottish observation where Neil says of his father, “My mother shot him A Look.”
The unfolding of Neil’s relationship with Bone, the explanation for Maitland’s unease at Neil’s presence in Slezer’s Walk, the awkwardnesses of Aunt Nessie’s navigation of ‘difficult’ areas of life to do with an adolescent boy, the repression of feeling in 1950s Scotland (I might add of Scotland since the Reformation till very recently indeed) are all brilliantly and subtly depicted. Neil’s complicated response to Bone’s distress, and distancing when biology intervenes in their relationship (which lead to the actions for which Neil wishes to atone years later) are beautifully handled. The only off note I could detect was the introduction - albeit offstage - of Scottish nationalist activists, but that provided the impetus for the novel’s defining moment.
On the evidence of this novel Frame is a master, The Lantern Bearers well worth inclusion in that 100 best list. Why had I not heard of him before encountering it? I obviously read too many London-based reviews.
March 17, 2021
1962, and fourteen year old Neil Pritchard is sent to spend the summer staying with his aunt in a small town on the Solway Firth. He soon finds himself enlisted to assist the up and coming young Scottish composer Euan Bone who is working on a collection of songs. Neil's unbroken voice and his strict training as a choir boy make him indispensable and he becomes an essential part of Bone's inspiration. Working with Bone opens up a new world to the young Neil, and he is swept away in his new role and his infatuation with Bone. But an unforeseen occurrence puts a stop to their collaboration, and Neil find himself ejected with barley a word of thanks.
Neil's resentment later causes him to elaborate on his relationship with Bone, so setting in place a course of event that will lead to tragedy.
At the start of the new millennium the now mature Neil looks back to the idyllic summer he spent in his youth on the Solway firth, having been approached by a publisher to write about the composer Euan Bone. He must decide whether or not to accept this commission, knowing full well that in so doing he must reveal his part in the tragic events surrounding the composer.
The Lantern Bearers is a beautifully written account which captures the seemingly black and white years before the sixties really got going. Frame magically creates a likeable young Neil who is both naive yet aware, and who knows his sexual inclinations and recognises them in others. Recommended.
Neil's resentment later causes him to elaborate on his relationship with Bone, so setting in place a course of event that will lead to tragedy.
At the start of the new millennium the now mature Neil looks back to the idyllic summer he spent in his youth on the Solway firth, having been approached by a publisher to write about the composer Euan Bone. He must decide whether or not to accept this commission, knowing full well that in so doing he must reveal his part in the tragic events surrounding the composer.
The Lantern Bearers is a beautifully written account which captures the seemingly black and white years before the sixties really got going. Frame magically creates a likeable young Neil who is both naive yet aware, and who knows his sexual inclinations and recognises them in others. Recommended.
November 8, 2022
One initially suspects that this will be a novel about Benjamin Britten (the Michael Jackson of so-called Classical Music) and his partner Peter Pears, just with the names changed: not-quite-adolescent boy acts as muse for the composer and is rudely dumped when his voice begins to crack. Yup, that's Britten all right. But the dynamic between composer and partner is fundamentally different and cleverly manipulated by the author in the direction of tragedy.
The writing is mostly quite fine, admittedly with the occasional continuity burp: on page 107 the scene switches from Mom's phone call to Dad's office to Mom's confrontation of Dad at the dinner table without any kind of setup or transition. I'm withholding the fifth star because some of the plot twists seem a bit too contrived, and because the name the author gives the composer -- Bone, with its twin suggestions of desiccation and tumescence -- is a bit more scurrilous than the narrative can bear.
The writing is mostly quite fine, admittedly with the occasional continuity burp: on page 107 the scene switches from Mom's phone call to Dad's office to Mom's confrontation of Dad at the dinner table without any kind of setup or transition. I'm withholding the fifth star because some of the plot twists seem a bit too contrived, and because the name the author gives the composer -- Bone, with its twin suggestions of desiccation and tumescence -- is a bit more scurrilous than the narrative can bear.
March 25, 2023
This is a supple and subtle narrative, about a young man's sexual coming of age, but also about the politics of sex in 1950s and early 60s Britain. It is also a book about the eroticism of music, about forbidden love, and about the difficulties and delights of high artistic creation. Sometimes the author's slight of hand seems almost too dexterous, but in the end it is a highly satisfying read, set mostly in a small town on the coast of Scotland. The title refers to a work by Robert Louis Stevenson that one of the protagonists is attempting to translate into a musical score.
April 1, 2024
Far too many reviewers have insisted on finding in this novel a thinly disguised a roman a clef of Benjamin Britain and his professional and romantic partner Peter Pears but by insisting on identifying the Bone/Maitland partnership of the novel with the real life of Britten/Pears they distort the actual events of the book (never mind the actual Britten/Pears partnership/relationship). It is like insisting that the character of Julius Klinger in Alain Claude Sulzer's 'A Perfect Waiter' is a portrait of Thomas Mann simply because he is a famous German author exiled from Germany after Hitler formed his first government in 1933 and forcing the novel to fit the facts of Mann's life even though they are utterly dissimilar. The complete absence of any similarity between Bone and Maitland and Britten and Pears, except that they are all classic musicians, is so comprehensive as to suggest that if you are a gay classical musician in a story set in the UK in the early to mid-twentieth century then you are by default of Benjamin Britten.
It is annoying, stupid, reductive and makes one wonder:
1.) if those who make the comparison know anything about the life and times of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears
and
2.) if they have actually read 'The Lantern Bearers' because it is hard to imagine anyone reading the novel and making such asinine comparisons.
What annoys me most about these distortions is that they have almost nothing to do with this novel and are an insult to Ronald Frame who is an exceptionally fine Scottish writer in fact this novel was voted one of the finest 100 Scottish novels and this was not an internet popularity poll but by the canvassing of the opinions of Scottish writers. None of them see it as a half-witted rewriting of the life of an English composer as some doomed man-boy or even man-man-boy love affair. Attempts to do so are simply absurd and, referring back to my doubts about whether many of the Goodreads reviewers had actually read 'The Lantern Bearers', most of those most anxious to find that man/boy or man/man/boy love affair seem to have missed the fact that it is (spoiler alert) not a love/sexual affair but the absence of one which triggers sets in motion the novels denouement.
For anyone who has read and admired Ronald Frame the fact that so many reviewers do not grasp the importance of Scotland to the author and the novel is infuriating while also not surprising. Most of the Goodread's reviewers barely notice that it is set in Scotland while those that do dismiss its centrality to the story. In a sense Scotland plays a much more important role in the outcome of this novel than a boy seeking revenge for being discarded (which in any case is not what motivated the boy). Again although reviewers ignore, forget, or never notice it, the motivation for the action which so fatally happens (I am trying to vague as I don't want to give away action) is the collapse of the boy's parents marriage.
I have spent my time challenging other reviewers rather more than I intended to but I do so because it is such a fine, sensitive, beautiful and moving novel that I can not allow it to be reduced to the silliness I have read here on Goodreads. Ronald Frame is a very fine writer and this novel is a sharp, intelligent and very subtle examination of growing up and handling challenges in a very realistically drawn portrait of a period in UK and Scottish history when so much was on the verge of change. I sincerely hope I can introduce a few new readers to this book in particular and Ronald Frame's oeuvre as a whole.
It is annoying, stupid, reductive and makes one wonder:
1.) if those who make the comparison know anything about the life and times of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears
and
2.) if they have actually read 'The Lantern Bearers' because it is hard to imagine anyone reading the novel and making such asinine comparisons.
What annoys me most about these distortions is that they have almost nothing to do with this novel and are an insult to Ronald Frame who is an exceptionally fine Scottish writer in fact this novel was voted one of the finest 100 Scottish novels and this was not an internet popularity poll but by the canvassing of the opinions of Scottish writers. None of them see it as a half-witted rewriting of the life of an English composer as some doomed man-boy or even man-man-boy love affair. Attempts to do so are simply absurd and, referring back to my doubts about whether many of the Goodreads reviewers had actually read 'The Lantern Bearers', most of those most anxious to find that man/boy or man/man/boy love affair seem to have missed the fact that it is (spoiler alert) not a love/sexual affair but the absence of one which triggers sets in motion the novels denouement.
For anyone who has read and admired Ronald Frame the fact that so many reviewers do not grasp the importance of Scotland to the author and the novel is infuriating while also not surprising. Most of the Goodread's reviewers barely notice that it is set in Scotland while those that do dismiss its centrality to the story. In a sense Scotland plays a much more important role in the outcome of this novel than a boy seeking revenge for being discarded (which in any case is not what motivated the boy). Again although reviewers ignore, forget, or never notice it, the motivation for the action which so fatally happens (I am trying to vague as I don't want to give away action) is the collapse of the boy's parents marriage.
I have spent my time challenging other reviewers rather more than I intended to but I do so because it is such a fine, sensitive, beautiful and moving novel that I can not allow it to be reduced to the silliness I have read here on Goodreads. Ronald Frame is a very fine writer and this novel is a sharp, intelligent and very subtle examination of growing up and handling challenges in a very realistically drawn portrait of a period in UK and Scottish history when so much was on the verge of change. I sincerely hope I can introduce a few new readers to this book in particular and Ronald Frame's oeuvre as a whole.
December 13, 2022
A cleverly constructed but ultimately depressing story about a 14-year-old boy’s involvement with a brilliant composer over a summer holidays spent with a great-aunt in a small, Scottish town in 1962. It is especially fascinating and convincing in its portrayal of the creative process of musical composition.
The characters are all finely drawn, especially the boy protagonist Neil. The intense appeal to him of the glamorous household of the brilliant and sophisticated musician Euan Bone as a relief from his otherwise claustrophobically dull circumstances is utterly convincing. The inference is strong that if only Bone had properly committed himself to Neil’s happiness, the boy’s life could have been almost magically transformed for the better, but instead luck and the selfishness of most of the other characters in the story conspire against him. The pathos of the story is at its greatest in depicting his anguish at being suddenly excluded from the enchanted little world in which he had briefly seen his deepest longings beginning to be answered.
Bone is strongly reminiscent of Benjamin Britten in his genius, his prickly character, his fixation on pubescent boys and his callous manner of dropping them from his life the moment their voices broke and they no longer interested him. However, the redeeming features of Britten’s love for boys are largely missing here. Britten at least invested considerable time and emotion in his boys as long as they retained his interest, and he did much to further their careers. Bone did not. What Neil got out of their friendship was mostly the incidental result of brief acquaintance with inspirational genius rather than anything Bone gave out of love or for the sake of giving.
There is considerable irony in Bone being partially ruined by Neil’s false accusation that he had done something sexual with him. This alleged harm facilitated his downfall at the hands of those with an already-vested interest in it, while contrarily the real harm he had done was in heartlessly rejecting rather than responding to a boy who evidently longed for more intimacy, whether sexual or not. This is why the boy punished him. It was actually entirely fitting that his handling of Neil was his downfall, and doubly ironic that society had completely the wrong end of the stick regarding the rights and wrongs of his conduct.
Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, a love story set at Eton College, https://www.amazon.com/dp/191457107X.
The characters are all finely drawn, especially the boy protagonist Neil. The intense appeal to him of the glamorous household of the brilliant and sophisticated musician Euan Bone as a relief from his otherwise claustrophobically dull circumstances is utterly convincing. The inference is strong that if only Bone had properly committed himself to Neil’s happiness, the boy’s life could have been almost magically transformed for the better, but instead luck and the selfishness of most of the other characters in the story conspire against him. The pathos of the story is at its greatest in depicting his anguish at being suddenly excluded from the enchanted little world in which he had briefly seen his deepest longings beginning to be answered.
Bone is strongly reminiscent of Benjamin Britten in his genius, his prickly character, his fixation on pubescent boys and his callous manner of dropping them from his life the moment their voices broke and they no longer interested him. However, the redeeming features of Britten’s love for boys are largely missing here. Britten at least invested considerable time and emotion in his boys as long as they retained his interest, and he did much to further their careers. Bone did not. What Neil got out of their friendship was mostly the incidental result of brief acquaintance with inspirational genius rather than anything Bone gave out of love or for the sake of giving.
There is considerable irony in Bone being partially ruined by Neil’s false accusation that he had done something sexual with him. This alleged harm facilitated his downfall at the hands of those with an already-vested interest in it, while contrarily the real harm he had done was in heartlessly rejecting rather than responding to a boy who evidently longed for more intimacy, whether sexual or not. This is why the boy punished him. It was actually entirely fitting that his handling of Neil was his downfall, and doubly ironic that society had completely the wrong end of the stick regarding the rights and wrongs of his conduct.
Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, a love story set at Eton College, https://www.amazon.com/dp/191457107X.
Read
July 27, 2017A swift but engrossing read, which paints an atmospheric picture of youth, longing and regret against a remote backdrop (both in location and time) and the compelling mystique of a rarified artistic circle with secrets. For all that the location is distinct, the elements drawn from the life and relationship of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears are almost too on the nose, particularly as this fictional composer is such a poor relation (his rate of work is pretty pathetic and it’s a poor composer who is unable to function without a singer in the room to try out notes as they’re being written). Actually it is in the description of the creative act that the book is at its weakest, pretentious and overblown, whereas the rest of Euan Bone’s existence is portrayed with an understated lightness of touch that makes the adolescent sense of attachment then loss absolutely convincing. Understatement is also key to the slow burning narrative, which arrives at a devastating conclusion without sentimentality or melodrama.
May 16, 2012
This is a book I return to every few years, and think about at times. It's unusual in being in large part about the creation of a musical composition. The boy Neil Pritchard is a collaborator with the composer Euan Bone; the romantic effect of co-creation is shown splendidly. Neil lives in a kind of paradise until his voice breaks, leading to his expulsion, and eventually to revenge.
At least one detail is that Frame uses comes directly from the life of Benjamin Britten. I wouldn't say that Bone is based on Britten, but there are parallels between the real and the fictitious composers that will make this book more interesting to readers familiar with Britten.
At least one detail is that Frame uses comes directly from the life of Benjamin Britten. I wouldn't say that Bone is based on Britten, but there are parallels between the real and the fictitious composers that will make this book more interesting to readers familiar with Britten.
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