This short book is the story of frail Jess, her husband Hendry and her daughter Leeby. It is a portrait of life in a small scottish village, where small details such as buying a cloak or whether the bed has one or two blankets are all part of a complex dance of politics and status. And then at the end of this gentle portrait of life, everyone dies and we are left to judge the son who has taken to his London life and does not come home until after his family are gone.

The scots dialect is heavy, but has some charming words and turns of phrase. ( )

Various episodes in the lives of a poor Scottish family.

1/4 (Bad).

The humor occasionally works. The attempts at heart-string pulling are blunt, ham-fisted garbage. All of it is buried under a layer of near-indecipherable phonetic accent/dialect. It's hard to believe this is the same guy who would go on to write Peter Pan. ( )

A very early book by the author of Peter Pan, and my particular copy is a very old beautiful little book with a colorful textured 3-D cover that I definitely enjoyed carrying around for a few days. Over half of this book is written Scottish dialogue that was very difficult to get into. But, as with those subtitled foreign movies that seem so insufferable in the beginning, my mind eventually adapted, and it moved along much easier. Billed often as a novel, it is more a series of vignette short stories that take place in a poor little house and its inhabitants in the little village of Thrums, told through the eyes of a family friend that seems to spend summers boarding with them. The 'window' is that which the disabled lady of the cottage uses to stay connected to the outside world. Charming, sometimes funny, other times sad, but by the end, you feel that you know this simple little family rather intimately. Again, not for the faint of heart with the dialogue, but enjoyable, nonetheless, especially with my little volume. ( )