Although the characters would have been Gaelic or Scots speakers, Gunn has happily chosen to write in standard English throughout, making it easily accessible to non-Scots and non-Gaelic speakers. His portrayal of the sea as a heartless mistress, dealing out wealth and death arbitrarily, is wonderful, and the sailing scenes are some of the best parts of the book. But equally he is great at showing the wild landscape, and the remoteness of the villages even from each other. The novel opens at the end of the Napoleonic Wars amongst people who have been cleared (i.e. evicted) from the Strath of Kildonan and moved to the coast, where they are encouraged to take up sea fishing, something these inland farmers had no experience of. Initially the novel’s central character is Catrine, whose husband disappears (I would need to include spoilers to say how) and who is left to raise her infant son Finn as a single parent. Gradually Finn becomes the central character and the novel a Bildungsroman for him. An extract from chapter one, used as the subject for a reading on the B.B.C. school programme "Scottish Magazine" was printed in: B.B.C. Radio: Scottish Magazine Teachers Notes | Spring - Summer 1978 | pp. 3 - 4.

As a story it is full of pathos and describes the lives and changes of two generations after the Clearances where superstition, family bonds, survival on the land and sea, love and loss. It is also Finn's bildungsroman from boy to manhood, from his mother's baby to skipper of his own boat and the possibility of his own family. An extract comprising part of p. 577 appeared in: Glimpses of Gunn | Ann Yule and Alan Haldane | Neil M. Gunn Memorial Trust | Dingwall | 1990 | p. 43. An extract comprising part of p. 573 appeared in: Glimpses of Gunn | Ann Yule and Alan Haldane | Neil M. Gunn Memorial Trust | Dingwall | 1990 | p. 44. As he rounded the hazel treea butterfly rose from his feet. ...... It settled and slowly, without looking at it(except out of the very corner of his eye)he moved towards it, but not directly. He got within a few feet, but then could not restrain himself from rushing. The butterfly rose and danced on through the air, down the burnside." Neil Gunn’s masterpiece “The Silver Darlings” can be successfully read at a number of levels. In one sense it is a lively and readable account of the herring boom which came to the east coast of Scotland after the defeat of Napoleon. At another level it is a sensitive and perceptive portrayal of the relationship of the three main characters: Catrine, her son Finn, and Roddie, the man she marries. At a further more philosophical level - reflecting Gunn’s interest in Zen - it symbolically examines the contradictory forces which shape our environment, our lives and our beliefs. All these levels however are skillfully woven by Gunn around a parallel structure; a movement which Douglas Gifford describes as being “ from disruption and disharmony to unity and harmony.”Hearing my Scottish accent, another inquisitive nurse joined our company. I told them that, though it was written in English, it uses a Gaelic idiom, and therefore may be difficult for the uninitiated to understand. “Do you speak Gaelic?” I hit them with a line or two but confessed that I had forgotten more than I ever learned.

The novel was adapted for radio by John Wilson and was produced 3rd. September 1962 by Finlay J. MacDonald for the Scottish Home Service. A typescript of this adaptation is held at both the B.B.C. Glasgow and the B.B.C. script library (plays), London. A further radio adaptation was made by Tom McGrath and was produced in five episodes of one hour each by Tom Kinninmont in June - July 1982. An extract comprising part of p. 250 appeared in: Glimpses of Gunn | Ann Yule and Alan Haldane | Neil M. Gunn Memorial Trust | Dingwall | 1990 | p. 44.The heart of the book is about a woman and her son, Catrine and Finn. Hardship. Heartache. Happiness. It is written in beautiful prose, in which even the mundane becomes intriguing, amidst the mores and scruples of a culture baptized with the burn water of biblical truth. It is full of emotion as deep as the ocean from which the silver darlings are drawn. This novel was adapted for the stage by John McGrath, and first performed at the Citizen's Theatre, Glasgow on the 17th. August 1994, by Wildcat Stage Productions Ltd. Notes: This is a book of sweetness and light. Its very powerful realism serves to dissolve itself and make itself the ghostly, the somehow illusionary. The passions, tragedies, sounds, furies, sufferings and loves, death and birth somehow illude. I’ll end with a short quotation, from near the end of the novel. There are symbols here, but you need to delude yourself to delight as they fade before you: An extract comprising part of p. 17 appeared in: Glimpses of Gunn | Ann Yule and Alan Haldane | Neil M. Gunn Memorial Trust | Dingwall | 1990 | p. 42.