THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

David Robinson appreciates Donald S. Murray’s sense of history in his latest novel, The Loch of the Bees.

 

The Loch of the Bees
By Donald S. Murray
Published by Saraband

 

Just as copper is a good conductor of electricity and cotton a poor one, so some writers have a better sense of the past than others. By this, I don’t just mean that they might be able to reimagine what, say, a particular event a century or two ago might have felt like. That is indeed an impressive skill and, for writers of historical fiction, an essential one.

But the true masters of the art of writing about the past can imagine something else. As well as describing a historical event, they also have a sense of how the current of history also flows through their own fictional characters. This is a lot harder. If you or I had all the time in the world to research a particular historical event, perhaps we might be able to imagine precisely how it happened. But would we also be able to see how well or badly the past plays out in the minds of our characters? If, to extend my opening metaphor, it were somehow possible to show this  – I’m thinking back to S1 physics lessons in how to measure the flow of an electric current – would they be copper or cotton?

This is, I think, the particular skill of Donald S. Murray. The past’s current flows through the characters in his fiction so strongly that it almost becomes the story itself. That was the case with his award-winning 2018 debut novel  As the Women Lay Dreaming, in which he concentrated on showing how the trauma of the sinking of the Iolaire off Stornoway in 1919 unrolled across subsequent generations rather than just describing the disaster itself. Similarly, although ostensibly about the experience of twentieth-century Hebridean emigrants in North America, his 2024 novel The Salt and the Flame is at least as much about the emotional pull of the island – Lewis – they left behind. ‘The past,’ as Faulkner famously said, ‘isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.’

This sense of history as something which continues to shape the present is never more clearly displayed than in Murray’s latest novel, The Loch of the Bees. Its ambition is epic: nothing less than reimagining the lives of people living on a fictional Hebridean island from the eighth century to the present through a series of interlinked stories.  Few novels have such a sweep: even Adam Thorpe’s Ulverton, which reconstructs the unrecorded history of an English village, only managed the 300-plus years from Cromwell to Thatcher.  The novel it most reminds me of is James Robertson’s News of the Dead, which chronologically mirrors Murray’s novel with scenes ranging from early Scottish Christianity to the Covid pandemic. Although it deals with similar themes, structurally it is completely different.

Murray’s opening chapters have a dreamlike quality. There has been a battle, and a wounded warrior on the defeated side throws away his shattered sword into the nearby Loch nan Seillean (the loch of the bees), named after the insects buzzing around the corpses around him. (We will see the sword’s broken hilt recovered over a thousand years later when almost everything else has been forgotten). The bees, people then thought, carried souls into the afterlife, or maybe they just told the survivors’ families of their relatives’ deaths: religion still leaves such things unclear, unformalised by dogma.

But because there has been a battle, a holy man wants to clear away the pain from the land, so he builds a beehive shieling  on a crannog (man-made island) on the loch as both a ladder to heaven and escape from the world. The bees do not sting him, and he talks to the birds and animals, but when word spreads of his holiness and the local priests try to make the shieling a place of pilgrimage, he leaves it behind. Some people say he has been taken away by a friendly whale, others that he has been given wings and has flown away to another island where he is being fed honey by the bees.

In successive short chapters, usually edged with poems or snippets of fictional history, such legends gradually disappear from the island, though they live on longest among the moor-people who, as an incoming minister discovers to his horror, even in the nineteenth century ‘still worship the old gods of moon and water with far more fervour than they mouth their catechisms’.  Though stories surrounding the shieling are still being told, the islanders are learning to do so in a different language, whether because they have been press-ganged into the Napoleon-fighting Royal Navy, forced to emigrate in the Clearances, or taught English at the new school in the nearby township in the 1880s.

Even the school’s English teacher, however, realises that his lessons somehow diminish the island. Telling the story of the siege of Troy, he yanks hard at the ear of a pupil who explains why he doesn’t want to learn this new language: ‘Like my grandfather, I fear if we all learn to speak it, we will lose our real tongue, our hearts and minds.’ Maybe the boy was right, he thinks to himself. Maybe, like the Trojans, they would all live to see their ‘familiar existence collapsing because a peculiar gift had been left behind’.

Murray steers clear, however, of painting his fictional island as a paradise. Those who emigrated from it, one Canadian minister admits in the 1920s, brought with them ‘more than a little self-righteousness as well as a narrow vision and a sense of guilt’. That trait is more than present a century later in the hellish neighbour to a couple who have moved to the island from Cumbria. And the book ends not only with the rediscovery of a potent link to the past but with a very real threat of ecological disaster.

All the same, there is enough in the novel to make you realise that the teacher was right about what was lost when Gaelic started to wither: after all, we have seen from the outset how, in the loch of the bees, the linguistic link to the land is part of not just communal but even spiritual history. But Murray also makes a subtler point about history too: that the way it filters down through the generations isn’t a pellucid and continually flowing stream; instead it also involves gaps, accidental distortions, and deliberate myths. Dealing with the kind of history that has never been written down, this is inevitable. We might know that the ruined shieling by the shore is something to do with a holy man long ago, but we’re not quite sure what. There might be a folksong about a sailor who returned from the Napoleonic wars and spent the night there before disappearing again but we’re not quite sure why.

These are the realities of how history flows through all of us, and Murray’s novel captures it perfectly. The late Allan Massie – no mean writer of historical fiction himself – hailed Murray as ‘one of the best and most enjoyable novelists writing in Scotland today’. If he had lived to read The Loch of the Bees, it would have only confirmed his judgment.

 

The Loch of the Bees by Donald S. Murray is published by Saraband, priced £10.99.

 

David Robinson speaks to Gavin Francis about his latest book, The Unfragile Mind, and his experiences as a GP that have informed his writing.

 

The Unfragile Mind
By Gavin Francis
Published by The Wellcome Collection

 

Go into the clinics of most American psychiatrists, and somewhere on their shelves you’ll usually find a chunky copy of DSM-5. In its revised edition, the 1,120 pages of the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostically and Statistical Manual is supposed to define the latest frontiers of our knowledge about mental illness and how to treat it.  In Europe, its equivalent is the sixth chapter of the online database, ICD-11.

At a time when between a quarter and a fifth of young people now suffer from a mental disorder and one in four adults are prescribed psychiatric medication, you might expect both of these manuals to be the very cornerstones of our collective fight against mental illness. Yet to Gavin Francis, the award-winning writer and Edinburgh GP,  their rigid categorisation of mental illness isn’t particularly helpful. One day, he writes, it will seem ‘as overconfident as the old phrenology charts which claimed that human faculties could be gauged by the shape of the skull’.

His latest book – The Unfragile Mind: Making Sense of Mental Health – is, he tells me, ‘a call to reconsider some of the ways we think about mental ill health and do so with a bit more curiosity and humility. At the moment, a lot of people claim that we know that these conditions are facts of nature, whereas what we increasingly find, when we look into many of them, is that they’re aspects of culture, and vary hugely between cultures.’

Many people might not realise just how much of GPs’ time touches on patients’ mental health – Francis reckons between a third and a half of his appointments. In them, however, he seldom uses the diagnostic manuals. For one thing, he notices that they increasingly suggest that one syndrome might have a high risk of another when a) this might actually not be the case and b) would thus contravene the ‘Do No Harm’ principle of medical ethics. ‘Instead,’ he says, ‘I am much more likely to talk about my patients’ feelings and their suffering than their diagnoses.’

This doesn’t mean that he dismisses the mental health diagnostic manuals altogether: they might, he admits, have some value for  research and in specialised hospitals, but less so ‘in the unfiltered, mild to moderate end of the spectrum of human unhappiness’ of the GP’s clinic. ‘Lots of psychiatrists,’ he adds, ‘share my concern that by widening the conversation about mental wellbeing so broadly, many people are starting to think of themselves with pathological categories of illness rather than difficulties in thinking or difficulties in the way they feel. This is making mental health services so stretched that when you have a severe, even life-threatening, mental health condition, it is harder to get seen.

‘There’s a wonderful memoir by a psychiatrist here in Lothian called Rebecca Lawrence. Her book is called An Improbable Psychiatrist. She has a severe mental health condition that waxes and wanes but it hasn’t stopped her in her career. She writes about this issue too: that sometimes there’s so much talk about mental health that patients really struggling with it become difficult to hear. It’s a real issue for me as a GP, trying to get patients seen in the system who are, for example, troubled with severe schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder or bipolar disorder and for whom I can’t get proper support.’

Because of the numbers involved, much attention will inevitably be focussed on what Francis has to say about ADHD and autism, which he writes about in the last of his book’s 12 chapters.  In it, he notes  that referrals for adult ADHD psychiatric assessment in Edinburgh have recently gone from 3 to 25 per cent within five years due to metanosis, ‘a phenomenon in which one becomes aware later on in life that one’s characteristics might be accorded a clinical diagnosis’. In the US, 7 million children have now been diagnosed with ADHD, up from 2 million in the 1990s.  These are huge numbers, as are those (some 3 per cent of the UK’s population) now affected by autism – so huge, in fact, that Francis writes that autism ‘has moved from being something best understood as a disorder into the territory of a common manifestation of the way in which humans think, feel and exist’.

‘Obviously,’ he explains, ‘there are extreme ends of the spectrum whereby you would see that this becomes a disorder. But in nature, there’s no cut-off line. Wouldn’t it be nice if our culture could be a bit more accepting of difference?’

Because we still know so little about the electrical, chemical and neurological processes by which our brains handle experience and emotions, Francis argues, we shouldn’t be so quick on the draw with our mental health diagnoses. ‘I’m simply asking that we approach that with a bit more humility, rather than pretending we understand it. Because, let’s face it, in 30 years’ time, the theory will be completely different.’ Surprisingly (to me anyway), he adopts a similarly sceptical attitude to claims that any one particular therapy is inherently more effective than any other. ‘It doesn’t seem to matter,’ he writes, ‘whether someone engages in family systems theory or Gestalt, psychoanalysis or CBT, or whether they access counselling through a specialist counsellor or a psychiatrist, a mental health nurse or a GP.’ Whatever the system, he adds, ‘it’s the connection with the therapist that matters, and how much that person demonstrates genuine engagement with your problems that is going to help you get better.’

The key word here is, I think, humility: with Francis, it is a necessary part of the job of being a GP, with its ‘uncommon privilege of seeing through the facades we hide behind’. It is also something he noticed in his best mentors, learnt himself on his extensive travels, or found in the work of others, like intercultural psychiatrist Dinesh Bhugra, who has pointed out that in many countries what we would recognise as symptoms of depression would not be medicalised at all.

I ask how, given each consultation at his clinic is only meant to last 15 minutes, he manages to reach the emotional depths required, and there’s a certain humility there too (‘It’s something I’m working on and will work on my whole life’). ‘Some people are very straight to the point and want to open up straight away,’ he says. ‘With others, it takes many appointments to gain their trust. Some people are really open to new approaches, others come in with a very fixed idea of what they think they need, what they want to get out of our consultation. I don’t have the luxury of choosing:  I see everybody.

‘So some people might come in with a very particular idea of depression as a lack of serotonin in the brain, and they’re really keen on getting antidepressants from me. (In his book, he describes the once-popular theory that depression is caused by a deficiency of serotonin as a modern equivalent of the medieval theory of the body’s humours). I’ll chat to them, explore their ideas, concerns and expectations, and I’ll end up prescribing them some and they’ll benefit from it.

‘Someone else might say that they’ve just realised that their relentless, chronic low mood probably dates back to a period in their teens when they were kicked out of the house by their mother, and that was 50 years ago, but they’ve realised that they’ve lost the ability to trust people and that is the source of the problem. And with someone like that, I probably wouldn’t be suggesting straight away that we reach for a prescription, although it’s possible, but I would be starting to explore that and talk about what that means for them and whether they can use that  insight to rebuild a sense of trust in people around them and look again at what they love, what makes them happy in life, what makes them feel as if they’re flourishing.

‘With someone who comes to me with, for example, worries that they have a bipolar illness because their moods are all over the place, I’ll ask them what they mean by that, and about what the pressures in their life in terms of secure place to live, secure happy relationships, whether they’re economically stable or precarious, whether they’ve got satisfying work or boring work that they hate –  all these kinds of things are going to have an influence on whether they feel settled and at ease in their mind.’

In none of those cases, though, will Francis reach for a diagnostic manual. He’s not my GP so I can’t say this for sure, but based on this book – wise, informed, well-written, wide-ranging – he strikes me as being the very model of what one should be.  ‘He is the best physician, who is the most ingenious inspirer of Hope,’ Coleridge once wrote, and ingeniously inspiring hope about a bleak subject is exactly what this book does.

 

The Unfragile Mind, by Gavin Francis, is published by The Wellcome Collection, price £18.99

 

Shona MacLean leaves behind her historical thrillers in her new stand alone novel, The Cromarty Library Circle, which tells us of a year in the life of a community in the Highlands in 1871. It will be a year when the political upheavals around the world affects the close knit twon and the lives they’ve always known. In this extract, we meet the committee that decides on the town’s library books, giving us a glimpse into the dynamics and personalities of Cromarty.

 

The Cromarty Library Circle
By Shona MacLean
Published by Quercus

 

‘I believe you are in receipt of the ladies’ selection, Mr Gilfeather?’

Mr Gilfeather nodded. He was in receipt of the ladies’ selection, all right. Miss Elspeth Rose had handed it to him in the street, as if presenting him with an overdue butcher’s bill. He proceeded to read aloud the list.

‘Lady Charlotte: De Bourrienne’s Memoirs of Napoleon.’ Willie Hossack snorted and Mr Gilfeather, while privately deploring anything associated with the Corsican, shot the man a look charged with forty years of contempt. Sir William asked whether he was quite certain that had been his wife’s choice. ‘I wonder whether she did not mean rather to ask for a biography of the Empress Josephine?’

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Both title and author are written out quite exactly, and the translation recently brought out by Constable specified.’

Sir William said something to the effect that he would never quite understand his wife, and the listing of the ladies’ choices continued. Mrs Mackay had requested Sir Walter Scott’s Anne of Geierstein. It was the general apprehension of the community that the minister might not have his young wife entirely under his control. Rachel Mackay had been too clever for a lady’s maid and governess, and she might be too clever for a minister’s wife as well, but Sir Walter Scott could hardly be objected to.

Next came the choice of Miss Elspeth Rose. There would be no grounds for concern here: if something were to be disapproved of it would be Miss Elspeth who would do the disapproving. Her choice must be therefore, de facto, acceptable to all. ‘Miss Elspeth requests Mrs Hemans’ Records of Woman: with Other Poems.’

‘Heaven preserve us,’ murmured Farquhar Hossack from behind a copy of the Inverness Journal, ‘poetry! Don’t tell me the old bluestocking has discovered she has a heart. I had half-expected she would ask for Frankenstein.’

Willie Hossack coughed as if he had a beetle in his throat and Mr Fordyce hastened to fill the moment of awkwardness. ‘Miss Rose has made a fine choice, and I daresay that she has already read Mrs Shelley’s novel in any case.’

Dr Fraser turned to Farquhar Hossack. ‘No doubt Frankenstein is required reading amongst the anatomy students at Aberdeen, Fachie, if only as a warning against meddling with things that are better left alone.’

Farquhar lowered his newspaper. ‘You would have us remain in ignorance, sir?’

‘I would have our kirkyards left unmolested, sir,’ responded the minister.

No one in the room could have been unaware of what it was that Dr Fraser alluded to. The horrors perpetrated only three years since by William Burke and William Hare in the closes of Edinburgh were still fresh in the minds of everyone. How could they not be? Every week the papers continued to tell of suspected abductions and murders up and down the country, all to meet the insatiable demand for corpses of the anatomy professors that even grave-robbing could not satisfy.

The imputation was all too clear to Farquhar, who cast aside his newspaper and stood up. ‘Your kirkyards? It’ll be your pews that are unmolested, if you persist in your slavish devotion to superstition in the place of science.’ Having shocked the room, Fachie left, giving no farewells, even to his stupefied father.

Willie Hossack attempted to bluster something, but Mr Gilfeather ignored him and, as if there had been no unfortunate interruption, passed from the choice of Miss Elspeth Rose to that of her sister Anna, who had requested a copy of Miss Ferrier’s Marriage. The gentle amusement at this settled the company and threatened to start conversations, but Mr Gilfeather hurried on: Donal Deacon’s lobster boat would not wait in the harbour for ever. ‘Finally, we have the choice of Mrs Cameron, who has requested The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton.’

On hearing his mother’s selection, Ludovic Cameron groaned.

‘Bear up, Ludo,’ murmured the schoolmaster, from behind the sofa occupied by his friend.

‘Bear up? Cyril Thornton is a cautionary tale of a young man who, a disappointment to his parents, neglects the studies for which he was sent away and learns some bitter lessons by a career in the army. He returns home, a little too late to be of any great use to those he left behind, but in time to marry the dependable girl he should have married in the first place.’

‘Perhaps,’ persisted the schoolmaster. ‘But Hamilton writes an excellent comic character. He’ll soon have your good lady mother in fine form.’ The sequence of looks provoked around the room by this remark suggested that the idea of the austere Janet Cameron being elevated to the condition of ‘fine form’ was not one that persuaded anybody.

Sir William hastily suggested moving on to the gentlemen’s choices.

‘For myself, I should say Croker’s Boswell’s Life of Johnson,’ he began, ‘if only to see whether there is anything in the controversy stirred up amongst the reviewers.’

‘Ach, they are all so tight in with the booksellers,’ said Dr Fraser. ‘They do nothing but puff their favourites and manufacture controversies. It’s all contrived in order to sell more books.’

This point conceded, the selections continued. Isaac Fordyce, predictably enough, requested the first two volumes of Moore’s Life of Byron; Dr Fraser, to general surprise, asked for Heber’s Poetical Works. Mr Gilfeather turned now to Ludovic Cameron. His assistant clerk at the bank could be relied upon to be sensible. Ludovic requested Basil Hall.

‘The Travels in North America?’ queried Willie Hossack, alert that mention was finally made of something he had heard of. How on earth had the fellow got himself in here? Mr Gilfeather wondered. And then Hossack himself was piping up that he would like The Aberdeen Magazine ordered on his behalf. On his behalf! It would be his wife who was after it, thinking no doubt that she might one day read of Fachie’s exploits amongst its pages. As if there weren’t enough periodicals brought into the reading room as it was. Mr Gilfeather did not waste time on quibbling, however, and with a sniff at Willie Hossack’s choice, wrote it down.

 

The Cromarty Library Circle by Shona MacLean is published by Quercus, priced £22.00.

David Robinson shows his appreciation for original and compelling characterisation in crime fiction.

 

The Cut Up
By Louise Welsh
Published by Canongate

To The Shades Descend and The Shadows and the Dust
By Allan Gaw
Published by Polygon

 

Sometimes, if they’re in a particularly diffident mood, you’ll hear crime writers say that theirs are the easiest novels of all to write. At the very least, they’ll say that about the opening chapters. Most, after all, start off with a body being found, then a detective has to be summoned, then the pathologist has to explain how death happened, then there’ll be a few suspects and hey, before you know it, you’re halfway through your first draft.

Yet if you actually study crime fiction, you’ll get a rather different story. If, for example, you are lucky enough to be taught by Louise Welsh on the MLitt course in creative writing at Glasgow University, she’ll teach you that crime fiction is never just about the crime. Other things – character, place, originality – matter at least as much, if not more. And as she shows in her latest novel, she practises what she preaches.

True enough, The Cut Up begins with the discovery of a dead body. But after that, just count the original ways in which Welsh subverts the genre. This all starts with the man who discovers the body.  Tell me, for example,  how many gay Glaswegian auctioneers you have already come across  as lead characters in crime fiction. No? Me neither. Welsh’s Rilke is such a one-off that he can even get by without needing a first name.

Then there’s the mode of death. In The Cut Up, this is by means of a hatpin through the eyeball. Trawling through every novel known to Chat GPT, this seems to be quite original, although it does have a category for ‘Eye-Stabbing Deaths (Non-Hatpin)’. Welsh sharpens her plot even further by making the murder weapon the very hatpin which Rilke’s  boss (and friend) has just been waving in front of the cameras of a daytime TV show, adding helpfully that medieval knights used to use stilettos like that to stab enemies through the eye once they’d been knocked off their horses.

The biggest act of subversive originality is, though, still to come. Not only does Rilke deliberately wreck the crime scene by retrieving the hatpin but he then puts it in the next auction. Someone buys it and …  well, we’re off. The reader is hooked. Even if you hadn’t already encountered the wildly charismatic Rilke in Welsh’s debut novel The Cutting Room (2002) or The Second Cut (2022), you would surely be drawn in by such a  bravura beginning.

But although Rilke subverts all the usual methods of serving justice, he serves justice all the same. The police – corrupt and so incompetent they don’t spot the murder weapon even when it is under their noses – can’t be relied upon. And though the story I’ve outlined so far only takes us to Page 39 and contains no spoilers, Rilke is so convincingly Sherlockian in thought and deed, and so arrestingly stylish (brogues and demob suits) that we somehow know that he’ll end up finding the murderer.

Already, then, Welsh has moved the story a long way from the plodding procedural opening I outlined at the start. It’s on a different track altogether. The crime itself is, shall we say, interesting, but Welsh wants more than that. She always has. I remember a scene in The Second Cut in which Rilke is driving his close friend Les, a transvestite ‘who looked like Nureyev might have, if he had survived HIV and given in to the occasional fish supper’ in the passenger seat and three queer acquaintances in the back, two of whom had just been to a pro-trans demo in George Square. The scene itself was well-written, but two things about it made it stick in my mind. First of all, I realised I had probably never read about a car full of five queer Glaswegians. Secondly, I wondered why I never had.

So when Welsh tells her MLitt students that crime fiction isn’t just about the crime, this is the sort of thing she has in mind. Without either frightening the horses or writing a gender politics tract, The Second Cut showed how Glasgow’s gay life had changed in the two decades since she began writing The Cutting Room in 2000. Back then, the campaign to repeal Clause 28 (forbidding local authorities from ‘intentionally promoting homosexuality’) was in full swing; in 2022, she began its sequel with a gay wedding and continued with Rilke taking full advantage of Grindr.

In The Cut Up, there’s a hint that Rilke still is on Grindr and there’s a fling with a trans man. Yet far more important (at least to the plot) than Rilke’s sexuality is his character. His loyalty to his friend Rose is the reason he retrieved the hatpin in the first place. For the sake of that friendship – even though she is going out with a police inspector – he risks everything. He may be unconventional, but in all other respects he fulfils Raymond’s Chandler’s requirements for an ideal protagonist to the letter as someone who is solitary, uncorrupted, and courageous, ‘who walks down mean streets but is not himself mean’.

Another queer crime-busting protagonist comes to Glasgow in Allan Gaw’s To The Shades Descend, which is just published  by Polygon. Gaw, 63, winner of Bloody Scotland’s Crime Debut of the Year award in 2024, came to crime writing after a distinguished career as a pathologist. As the fourth in his Dr Jack Cuthbert series (The Shadows and the Dust) is out this month and the fifth due out later this year, his second career is clearly off to a flyer.

Now you may well think, particularly if you’ve read a lot of Patricia Cornwell, that a former pathologist like Gaw, who has run big research clinics and has amassed an intimidating amount of experience in his field, would want to go down the corpse-DNA-result crime-busting plot path. But no. When I talked to him recently, he gave me a number of reasons why he deliberately set his Jack Cuthbert novels in the 1920s and 1930s.

‘We are now in a position,’ he said, ‘where we can analyse and quantify any chemical in the world. Anything you’ve been poisoned with, for example, I can find –  I don’t even have to think about it. In some ways, it’s a little bit too easy. I wanted to show pathology in a world where you had to work much harder to get this information, to make it much more observational, because all through history, medicine has always been about observation. We talk about physicians attending their patients – they sit beside them and watch them, and that’s the way doctors used to work, because it was all they had.’  With the discovery of DNA, much of that attentiveness – ‘which is fundamentally about trying to form a connection with another human being’ – has been lost.

Gaw then said two things I’ve never heard from any crime writer, least of all one with a new book to plug: first, that he himself hardly reads any crime fiction, and secondly, that ‘there are probably quite a lot of people who do who won’t like my books. They’ll think there’s just too much dithering about for them.’

By ‘dithering about’ Gaw means back story. But creating a complete character – from flashbacks to Jack Cuthbert’s schooldays and his early crushes on his fellow pupils, to facing the horrors of the Somme – was what drew him to writing in the first place. That, and showing the past as realistically as he could – not just of Glasgow in the 1930s, but also the embryonic form the science he has studied all his life was back then – alongside the attentiveness Gaw mentions to help solve crimes.

‘I wanted to write  book about a character: an interesting, complicated, layered character, where you weren’t going to know everything about them at first, but rather like peeling back the layers of an onion, you’d learn more and more about them and become more invested in them.’

Having read my way into his series so far, I think he’s onto something, and not least because this clearly holds true for Welsh’s Rilke too. However, even though I have rhapsodised about the brilliance of The Cut Up’s opening, it is really the strength of Welsh’s characterisation that keeps my attention to the end.  And although F Scott FitzGerald’s aphorism ‘character is plot, plot is character’ is drilled into anyone learning about crime fiction, if I was forced to pick between the two, I’d pick character every time. Wouldn’t you?

 

The Cut Up by Louise Welsh is published by Canongate, priced £16.99.

To The Shades Descend and The Shadows and the Dust by Allan Gaw are both published by Polygon, priced  £9.99.

 

A Death in Glasgow is an addictive new addition to the Glasgow crime fiction canon. This extract sets the scene for our detective, the tormented Sergeant May Mackay.

 

A Death in Glasgow
By Eva MacRae
Published by Century

 

Holly knows she’s being followed. The baseball cap pulled down, hood up, face shadowed, but she knows. She keeps craning back over her shoulder, pretending to be on the phone. Maybe that’ll make them back off. But there’s no one she can call. Nobody will believe her; else they’ll say it’s her own fault.

Along Union Street, the pubs are emptying into the cold neon night. Shapes come barrelling into her, forcing her off the icy pavement into the path of buses and Deliveroo bikes.

Haw, hen, watch where you’re going.

The temperature’s plummeted. With her big coat on and her legs pumping like pistons, her hair’s sticking to the back of her neck while the beads of sweat freeze on her face. That last vodka, or three, is climbing up her throat. She can’t stop to chuck up. She’ll be caught and then what? I only want to talk.

I only want to give you a wee cuddle. I only want to . . . When she gets to Central station, there’ll be plenty folk around. A public place. Safe.

Suddenly, the station entrance looms on her right like an escape hatch and Holly bolts towards it, elbowing through the drinkers, tripping on some homeless guy huddled on the floor. The steps up are mountainous but she’s taking them two at a time in her platform boots. At the top, she risks a wee keek back. Nobody. Her guts unclench a fraction. Was she wrong? Was it just someone who’d been behind her for ages, going the same way? Dark clothes and a hoodie. Could’ve been anyone. What happened in the pub was a shock, made her think she was being followed again. She just panicked. Deep breaths, her therapist said. She tries now, but the cold and the vodka are getting in the way.

On the concourse, Holly is hoping for calm and bright, but the station shops are all shut. No families or commuters, only gangs of drunk lads. The high glazed roof that floods the station with light in the daytime now feels like it’s coming down to trap her like she’s a bug under a glass.

There’s a big bunch of lassies out on a hen night, and maybe she can stand with them for a bit till her heart isn’t thumping and the floor stops tilting. She staggers forward, her arm brushing a handbag. One of them turns and snarls at her – she’s after robbing me, get the fuck away you – and Holly body-swerves the group in case the mad cow and her pals decide to jump her.

The heels on her boots looked great when she was getting ready to go out to the pub, but now they’re a liability. The floor’s shiny white, slippy- wet. Like a cloud. Holly can’t see where to land her feet. She slides, arms cartwheeling like a one-woman flash mob starting a performance. The lads all start laughing – fancy a wee dance, darling – and shout how they could give her the horizontal boogie of her life.

Holly spins back, looking for the way she came in, getting her bearings.

This time, she’s sure. Their eyes lock. The choking sensation is back, she can hardly breathe.

Instead of coming straight for her, they’re moving round the edge of the concourse, cutting off her escape to the taxi rank at the other exit. She searches desperately for any station staff in their hi-vis – not the police, the bastards’d have her in the cells. But what’ll happen when they finally catch up with her? They’ll tell the staff she’s drunk (not a lie) and that they’re looking after her (aye, right) and they’ll get her home safe. The polis will always believe them over her.

Then it hits her through the fog in her head. None of her mates from college live on the southside. She was never planning on sharing a cab. The illuminated sign for platform 9 swings across her vision like a beacon. It’s on the other side of the concourse, further than she remembers. Always platform 9 to get home. Holly fumbles in her bag for her ticket, pulling it out in triumph. Can’t follow her through the barriers.

Holly sets off with her Bambi-on-ice totter and sees the gate coming towards her, and oh my God, it’s even open. Go. Quick. Get away. Too late she realises her mistake. If she didn’t need to swipe through the barrier, then neither will anyone else. She stuffs the ticket like a betrayal into her coat pocket and runs.

The surface is gritty and there’s a better grip, but the flares of her trousers are flapping against her legs like broken wings. Her bag slips off her shoulder, a weight pulling her backwards.

On one side of the platform is a forest of big green pillars studded with rivets like the stumps of broken-off branches. If she can’t run, she can hide. In the distance, out across the river, she can see the train snaking towards the station.

The end of the platform is in darkness. Holly dodges behind a pillar, telltale breath pumping out of her like a steam engine. She puts a gloved hand over her mouth, tastes the wool, breath hot in her palm.

The train is coming; big blocks of light speeding towards her.

She peeks out. There’s no sign of anyone. She’s done it.

The train will take her home. Relief floods through her and an intense bubble of laughter expands the tightness in her lungs as she steps out from her hiding place.

Suddenly, she feels someone behind her, like a panting beast.

Holly sprints for the train, hand out like it’s a bus and it’ll stop. If she can just make it stop, she can get on.

Holly! Holly! She turns before she can prevent herself and sees a face, twisted and angry. Over the screeching of the train, she hears her own screaming. A bright palm is coming through the dark to grab her. She’s caught and there’s nowhere left to run. Any second, the fingers will curl like claws, and it’ll be all over. She was daft to think she could escape. The train is close, but it’s too late. She’s shaking her head. Knowing what she says, what she is, doesn’t matter.

The hand keeps coming. But when it reaches the front of her coat, it’s not a grab. It’s a push.

 

A Death in Glasgow by Eva MacRae is published by Century, priced £16.99.

There’s a lot of buzz for Frances Crawford’s debut, A Bad, Bad Place, and its teenage protagonist Janey Devine. We got in touch with Frances Crawford to ask her to tell us about her favourite teenage characters in fiction.

 

A Bad, Bad Place
By Frances Crawford
Published by Bantam

 

Teenage protagonists have a special place in fiction, offering a view from the no-man’s land between childhood innocence and adult selfhood. The five characters I’ve chosen are by Scottish writers, perhaps hinting at a deeper search for national identity (to which the teenagers in the room shrug and sigh!)

 

Frank The Wasp Factory by Ian Banks (1984)
It is a testament to Banks’ stunning writing that we feel sympathy for a sixteen-year-old engaged in bizarre rituals, animal torture and murder. Frank is both disturbing and hilarious, and the twist at the end of his astonishing tale is mind-blowing. In a stroke of marketing genius, early book covers included negative reviews from stunned literary critics – exactly the kind of shock horror reaction teenagers revel in! For all Frank’s shocking behaviour, the novel raises questions about identity and gender which resonate even louder today. And you will never ever forget what happened to Eric.

 

Chris Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon (1932)
Fifteen-year-old Chris grows to womanhood in this sweeping tale of post-First World War rural Scotland. The agonising choices facing teenagers are beautifully embodied in Chris’ struggle between emotion and intellect. Despite poverty and heartache, her distinctive goodness and connection to the Scottish landscape shine through. Underlining the encroaching changes to Scotland and the inevitable loss of war, the narrative never strays from Chris’ inner self. A beautiful portrayal of teenage life.

 

Janet O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker (1991)
When sixteen-year-old Janet is found dead wearing an evening dress her family are secretly relieved (first page revelation so not a spoiler!). An eccentric intellectual whose heart breaks for an injured bird but who cheerfully buries her baby sister, Janet is every teenager who yearns for individuality. Barker’s writing can shift from deeply comic to deeply moving within a paragraph, with imagery as surreal and strange as her protagonist. In a society which prizes conformity, we should all be more Janet!

 

Cora Only Here, Only Now by Tom Newlands (2024)
A compelling coming-of-age story set in a 1990s ‘manky wee hellhole’ of a town. Cora is neurodivergent, a term unknown in her world, and she fizzes with life, spirit and drive. Cora faces up to the deprivations around her with humour and courage, and embodies the way teenagers are shaped by and rebel against their background. The importance of friendships and alliances are authentically drawn, as is the hope of something better which burns in young minds. Cora’s voice is poignant, exciting and nuanced – she’s a teenager to root for.

 

Jane The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark (1963)
Follows a brief period in a shabby but gentile boarding house during the Second World War. Jane is part of the group between ‘eighteen and twenty’ and like so many teenagers, is eager to make a serious mark on the world while also craving the beauty and social poise she believes she lacks. Spark is a master of bringing out the oddness in her characters, and Jane who is admired for her ‘brain-work’ also longs to be thin enough to accompany the glamourous girls as they wriggle through the bathroom window, slathered in margarine. From the outset, we know tragedy is coming, and this gives the novel Spark’s characteristic unsettling edge. But we have Jane, funny, smart and conflicted, to guide us to the devastating conclusion.

 

A Bad, Bad Place by Frances Crawford is published by Bantam, priced £16.99.

 

We at BooksfromScotland are very much looking forward to Jenni Fagan’s new novel, The Delusions. We are introduced to Edi, working in administration in the afterlife where she processes the newly dead. And when it looks like there is going to be a mass extinction event on earth, it looks like it’s going to get chaotic in Arrivals. We asked Jenni Fagan to share her thoughts on why the afterlife continues to compel.

 

The Delusions
By Jenni Fagan
Published by Hutchinson Heinemann

 

I have always been fascinated by what we can’t see, what we don’t know, even as a child the idea that this world was the only one, never made sense to me. What happens after death is one of the great mysteries of life and I never found an explanation in any religion that made sense as to what that might hold.

 

The soul is eternal is something that did make sense, the soul doesn’t exist solely within the confines of the body, once the finite part of our life on earth is done, the soul would then separate and go on. I have had a few near death experiences in life that supported this feeling for me, I can’t explain it in depth (or won’t) but it is what I believe.

 

We are linked to so many more ancestors than we could imagine. Their lives on earth somehow eventually brought us into the world. So all those stories behind us, all those periods of history, and all of those folks who have already passed are not a separate thing. When I was researching for The Delusions I thought about that a lot. How the human race in its totality is so much more closely aligned than we are divided, it is the structures of society that teach otherwise and it undermines humanity full stop I think.

 

When you lose people you love your relationship with the afterlife becomes more distinct. I don’t feel like the afterlife is so far from this one. In a city like Edinburgh which is so ancient you can feel the dead and the living cross by each other all the time, in our street names, our buildings, our traditions, in our homes.

 

As a writer you dip in and out of the eternal every time you write. Those words may disappear one day but so will the sea eventually. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t there, a living thing, an extraordinary force of nature! Our moon won’t always shine but other moons will. If I lived a billion lives I’d still favour the moon I currently see in the sky each night. When you meet a newborn or carry life, you can feel a link to something so much more than us. I like the idea that the soul truly is the only thing a human owns and that every act affects it, that when we pass that’s the only thing we are taking with us and it will be luminous or not dependent on how we lived our lives, I don’t think anyone is granted a consciousness to not have to one day face who and exactly what they are, it certainly doesn’t always happen in this lifetime and far too many get away with spending their life in delusion whilst causing great harm to others. I wanted to create a world where the soul holds the DNA of a human life and one day that will have to be evaluated for everyone.

 

The Delusions by Jenni Fagan is published by Hutchinson Heinemann, priced £18.99.

Dougie Payne, the bassist from Travis, has written a charming rhyming book for children, starring the wonderfuly scrappy Poochie Pete whose big feet gets him in a lot of trouble. We have a sample here of the tale and it’s delightful illustrations by Rachel Seago.

 

Poochie Pete and His Very Big Feet
By Dougie Payne; illustrated by Rachel Seago
Published by Little Door Books

 

 

Poochie Pete and His Very Big Feet by Dougie Payne and illustrated by Rachel Seago is published by Little Door Books, priced £7.99.

Jim Crumley is one of Scotland’s best nature writers. His latest book, Symphonic, sees him visit places in Scotland and around the world searching for harmony in nature and asking how we can build a meaningful relationship with our planet. In this extract, he looks at the wonder and plunder of Everest.

 

Symphonic: Harmony in Nature and Why It Matters
By Jim Crumley
Published by Saraband

 

I dream of Everest. Who doesn’t who loves mountains?

Yet I never wanted to climb it. I was never cut out to climb it. Summits never enticed me. Even in the hard(ish) mountaineering phase of my life, it was always the company of mountains that beckoned; it was their take on the world I sought – that and the creatures that lived there, for these are the only true mountaineers. I have never seen Everest in real life. The closest I ever came to it is Switzerland. Yet I dream of Everest, and the sense of Everest percolates my dream. And the dream recurs, irregularly, but it does recur, a handful of times over perhaps forty years, the mountain seeking reacquaintance. The dream does not explain my presence, nor hint at what I might achieve there, except that it insists on the renewal of a bond. Even in my dream I don’t climb the mountain, I circumnavigate it: sunwise, always sunwise, so I move in harmony with the mountain. The dream insists on that too.

Black Elk, the famous holy man of the Oglala Sioux, had this to say on the importance of ritualising sunwise movement in a book called Black Elk Speaks (1932), written by poet John G. Neihardt based on conversations translated for him by Black Elk’s son:

 

You want to know why we always go from left to right like that. I can tell you something of the reason, but not all. Think of this: is not the earth the source of life, and does not the flowering stick truly come from there? And does not man advance from there toward the setting sun of his life? Then does he not approach the colder north where the white hairs are? And does he not then arrive, if he lives at the source of light and understanding which is the east? Then does he not return to where he began, to his second childhood, there to give back his life to all life, and his flesh to the earth whence it came? The more you think about this, the more meaning you will see in it.

*

I know about Black Elk at all because a woman in Austin, Texas, somehow came across two of my books, A High and Lonely Place (1990), which is about the Cairngorms, and The Heart of Skye (1994), which is a short collection of linked essays about the island. Having read these sometime in the mid-1990s, she sent me Black Elk Speaks because she thought I would be interested in what Black Elk had to say. She was right. I know nothing about her – we never met – and after my letter of appreciation for her gift, we did not stay in touch. Her great gift, though, was an awakening in me through Black Elk the idea that nature’s voice is the only common language the whole world knows, because the whole world IS nature. It has just echoed down the years one more time the moment I started to explain my dream’s insistence on a sunwise orientation.

Obviously, there is only so much faith you can place in a dream, even a recurring one that targets my affinity for mountain landscapes, but dream and real life share one common factor: I fear for Everest.

Everest is … was … should be … a sacred mountain. Long before Great Britain barged in beating empire’s drum, long before British surveyors realised they had the world’s highest mountain on their hands, it had two sacred names: Chomolungma in Nepal, meaning Goddess Mother of the Earth; and Sagarmartha in Tibet, meaning Goddess of the Wind. Indigenous sensibilities towards it over uncounted centuries honoured both the sacred and the female: Sir George Everest, after whom the mountain was clumsily re-named by the empire pedlars in around 1860, was neither of these things. But he was sensitive enough to think the honour was an unwise precedent, and he was right. The controversy would last for more than fifty years. Subsequent research suggests the surveyors wilfully dismissed the indigenous names, even denying that such names existed. Yet in the very early years of the eighteenth century, French Capuchin friars recorded the mountain’s name on a rough map of their travels, and that name was Chomolungma. So there is an argument to be made that the rubbishing of Mount Everest began with the British Survey of India the better part of 200 years ago, and the process continues unabated to this day. What characterised the acquisitive frenzy of empire building across the world by the European elite was the roughshod trampling of indigenous peoples’ sensibilities towards their own land, their own legend-making, their own place within nature’s limitless family of creatures and landscapes. That infinitely varied harmony wilted under a plague of discord.

The sacred mountain that was, and the profane one it has become, are symbolised for me by two twenty-first-century photographs taken three years apart. The profane Everest was photographed by Nepalese climber Nirmal Purja on 22 May 2019. It showed the final stretch of the south-east ridge leading to the summit crammed with more than 300 climbers, a jostling two-way queue of technicolour impatience, the summit of the world brought low by two different species of greed. One was the irredeemable ugliness of what Everest mountaineering has become, for it cares nothing for the mountain and everything for the bragging rights of the ultimate tick on mountaineering’s ultimate list. The other species of greed was the attitude of the authorities in Nepal and Tibet, not to mention the worldwide travel industry, which see in Everest only the goddess that goes on giving. Meanwhile, the squalor on the mountain is monumental. That photograph travelled the world generating headlines of disbelief and international disgust. Yet there was also a different species of anger within all those vested interests which cash in on Everest; anger that the truth had been told so graphically first on the front page of the New York Times, thence transmitted to the rest of the world in an instant. Behind that particular anger lay the fear that Everest would lose its colossal pulling power. Let’s hope.

Then, three years later, on this side of a pandemic during which hardly anyone travelled anywhere, American photographer Kittiya Pawlowski trekked into the Khumbu Valley, not to compound mountaineering’s restored post-pandemic profanity on Everest, but rather to seek out an encounter with one of nature’s most elusive creatures, knowing it was still alive and just about holding its own in the wider Himalaya. What she produced was an image of quite extraordinary beauty that restored to Everest at least the illusion of sanctity. The top 10,000 feet of Everest occupies three-quarters of the photograph, fleeced in great depths of snow, brilliantly sunlit, and raked by long diagonals of blue shadow. Its beauty and grandeur are restored, but only by distance: it appears unbesmirched by humanity’s detritus. But Everest is simply the photograph’s background, supplying context and atmosphere, not the be-all-and-end-all, not this time. The scene-stealer lurks in the deep shadow of a roughly triangular foreground, the photograph’s bottom right-hand corner. Somewhere around 18,000 feet on a flank of Pumori, tantalisingly lit, and occupying about half-a-square-inch of the whole image is the object of the photographer’s pursuit – a single snow leopard.

What Kittiya Pawlowski has achieved is nothing less than a vision of Chomolungma. Behold the sacred mountain!

One other thing about Everest and the dream. Circumnavigating the mountain was not a new idea when it insinuated itself into my decades-long preoccupation with what Everest has suffered at our hands, and then into my dreams. Those British surveyors were attempting their own version of it in the 1870s, deploying an admittedly ingenious method of circumnavigating the ban on almost all aliens in Tibet. The surveyors trained Indians disguised as religious pilgrims who were allowed in, and these men made notes on hidden scraps of paper and counted paces on prayer wheels. One such, Pundit Hari Ram, was reported to have ‘completed half a circuit in 1871, travelling in a wide arc north through Tibet from Darjeeling to Kathmandu’. That is one very wide arc. Some 112 years later, American climbers Jan Reynolds and Ned Gilette published an account of their own circuit, which they also split into halves, one in spring, the other in autumn. In total, it took them four months, and they walked 300 miles, all of it above 17,000 feet. They summarised it thus in a book called Everest Grand Circle:

‘We had seen Everest from all sides, and turned for home with a deep and intimate affection – a reverence – for the highest mountain.’

The words ‘deep’, ‘intimate’, ‘affection’ and ‘reverence’ are more or less unknown in the vocabulary of modern Everest mountaineers. Their absence is self-evident in the annual tonnage of stench and squalor that mountaineering inflicts on the mountain. Mountaineers leave it behind as a token of their disrespect and irreverence. Yet for thousands of years before mountaineering was invented, the native peoples of Tibet and Nepal had evolved their relationship with the mountain into that of an eternal goddess on the doorstep. Compare and contrast with Ed Hillary’s now famous celebratory greeting for fellow climber George Lowe as he and Sherpa Tenzing descended after their successful ascent in 1953:

‘We knocked the bastard off!’

 

Symphonic: Harmony in Nature and Why It Matters by Jim Crumley is published by Saraband, priced £14.99.

If you’re looking for an epic adventure on the high seas with a rag tag crew in a magical world inspired by south-east Asian mythology then Katalina Watt has provided! We caught up with her to find out more about her fantasical debut.

 

Saltswept
By Katalina Watt
Published by Hodderscape

 

Congratulations on the release of your debut novel, Saltswept. Can you tell our readers what to expect and what you wanted to explore in writing it?

Thank you! This is the first in a fantasy duology inspired by Southeast Asian folklore with queer main characters following a pirate, an acolyte, and a farmer on their quest of hijinks on the high seas. I wanted to explore eco-fiction and colonialism through a classic fantasy quest narrative and add elements of more contemporary fiction with classic things we love about the genre. There’s nature magic, courtly intrigue, and dark academia as well as swashbuckling,  The world of the Earthsalt Duology is queer-normative, with disabled folks, and rainbow families with a cast of characters who are outcasts in various ways.

 

You come from a publishing background. How have you enjoyed the publishing experience from a writer’s perspective? Was it as you expected?

It’s certainly been helpful to understand the industry from the other side. It helps keep me grounded and remember that decisions are business as well as artistic ones and not personal to me or my book. I love the collaborative process and I’ve been lucky that my team and I can geek out about the specifics together. It’s important to remember that everyone is on the same team and wants the book to be the best it can be, but you have to get on the same page matching those expectations and realities. One of my favourite moments was recording the Acknowledgements for the audiobook, a real full circle moment for me having spent a lot of my publishing career in audio.

 

Why did you decide to set your fantasy adventure at sea?

A seafaring quest is the fantasy equivalent of a road trip.  I have a curiosity and healthy respect for the sea. I don’t have seafaring experience but researching this book was so much fun and fascinating. I’ve always been obsessed with folkore around the sea and I think coming from two island nations – Britain and the Philippines, I’m interested in places where the economy and history is entwined with the land and sea. It can be bountiful – many people rely on the sea for their livelihood, but it can also be dangerous. I’ve got a morbid streak and found diving, particularly cave diving, captivating to research. People who work and live in and around the ocean are so admirable and brave from my perspective.

 

We have a bit of a soft spot here at BooksfromScotland for books that feature a ragtag bunch of protagonists. What were the challenges in handling a wide range of characters?

I wanted to challenge myself to write three different POV characters, all in first-person present tense, which is perhaps unusual for an adult fantasy novel. We follow Ris, a widowed farmer, Finlyr a rogue and a pirate, and Hanan who is a temple acolyte. I had an immediacy and could get right into the characters’ heads with clarity, as the cast start separately but come together. It was a challenge to identify whose perspective is needed at given points in the narrative, what secrets they’re hiding from each other, and what motivates them. There’s a lot of fun to be had playing with what the reader knows versus what the various characters know. The secondary characters were also great fun to write because we get little snippets of their insights but we never get to be fully in their heads.

 

You introduce your own magic system in Saltswept. Can you tell us more about creating this as part of your fantastical world-building?

In this world magic exists and is based on the idea of balancing energies in the natural world, but not everyone can use it. Those that can’t misunderstand and are afraid of magic. Those that can are called ‘gifted’, or more unkindly ‘touched’ and have a natural intuition for it, which can be awakened. When it is, they are taken to the temple of Aistra to train as an acolyte with the hopes of being chosen for the great honour of serving the monarchy.

From a craft perspective, I used a world-building bible which is adapted from a template as a basis for creating Paranish. It was useful to think about the macro and microscale of world-building, everything from the economy and climate to cultural norms, urban planning etc. In some ways it’s very liberating to create a secondary world in fantasy because you have a lot of freedom to choose and shape the world you want. But you also have to be intentional and cohesive with your choices so this feels like it could be a real place and so you don’t internally contradict the way your world works. It wasn’t only helpful for me with editing and writing the sequel, but also for my publishing team. It’s the iceberg where the reader only sees the tip, but all that ground-work is beneath the surface of the water and adds to the verisimilitude.

 

Why do you think fantasy has had such a resurgence over the last few years?

I think it’s a combination of escapism and activism. Imagining a different world or different way of living is what fantasy is about and always has been, and it’s wonderful to see more diverse stories in the fantasy sphere and mainstream support for authors who have not been traditionally represented in the book industry. Fantasy stories can be both cosy and intimate in terms of stakes – focusing on one person’s arc in one place for example, but it can also be epic in scale – and sometimes in the same narrative. I’m so excited for the future of fantasy; we’re so fortunate to have so many passionate and dedicated readers and authors in this community.

 

Who or what are your writing influences?

Garth Nix, Ursula Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Emily Brontë, Angela Carter, Sarah Waters, Toni Morrison, and Becky Chambers to name a few!

 

Are there any other speculative fiction books coming from Scotland’s writers that you’re looking forward to reading this year?

We are very blessed to have so many excellent speculative fiction writers and here is just a sampling of what’s on offer this year!

The Salt Bind by Rebecca Ferrier, The Inn at the Foot of Mount Vengeance by Chiara Bullen, Homesick by Rhiannon Grist,  The Eynhallow Saga Book 2 by Heather Palmer, A Snake Among Swans by Hannah Kaner, In This City Where It Rains by Lyndsey Croal, The Cove by Claire Schultz, A Million Points of Light by C.L. Hellisen, Masquerade by L.R. Lam, The Haunting of Avis Lovelock by M.K. Hardy, The Mirrored Halls by Cailean Steed, Vervain Hollow by Catriona Silvey, Abyss by Nicholas Binge.

 

Saltswept by Katalina Watt is published by Hodderscape, priced £20.00.

On a cold, January day, wouldn’t we all like to be on a cruise on the Mediterranean? Maybe not if it means murder! Jonathan Whitelaw’s latest book, All At Sea, is a cosy crime caper that sees a captain of a ship slumped at the wheel with a knife in his back and two reality TV stars ready to go on the hunt for the killer. BooksfromScotland asked Jonathan Whitelaw to reveal his favourite sea-faring stories that inspired his setting.

 

All At Sea
By Jonathan Whitelaw
Published by HarperNorth

 

I have always loved the sea, ever since I was a little sprog. There’s something wonderfully endless about it, not to mention calming, soothing and all of those wonderful things. So it is, of course, natural, that I would set a murder mystery amongst the glistening blue waters of the Med. One of the requirements of being a crime writer, you get to do horrible things to and in places you love! Here is a list of five nautical favourites of mine to celebrate the launch (see what I did there) of All At Sea:

 

Moby Dick – Herman Melville
No list of sea related shenanigans would be complete without this epic. I recall reading it for the first time when I first went to university. It’s not the page-turning thrill-fest we’re all used to nowadays. But it paints character and setting perhaps better than most that have come after.

 

Death on the Nile – Agatha Christie
As a cosy mystery writer, I’m contractually obliged to mention Ms Christie at every turn. She is, after all, the guvnor-ess when it comes to golden age crime writing. And with good reason. While technically the action takes place on a river, it’s no less nautical for its plot and passion.

 

Jaws
I’ve opted for the movie version here, over the novel. Sacrilege, I know. But it’s purely through sentimentality. Many happy Christmas nights were spent gathered with my relatives watching the umpteenth rerun of Jaws on the TV, stuffed to the gunnels with turkey, ham and far too much chocolate. It’s such a summer movie that it always shone like a bright beacon in the bleak mid-winter of the festivities. And its portrayal of a deadly deep ocean off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard is so potent, I swear I can smell the salt of the ocean every time I watch it.

 

The Ocean – Led Zeppelin
Okay, I know I’m sort of cheating here as there’s nothing very sea-related about this song other than the name. A bit like the movie Moonraker and the original Fleming book. The ocean in this masterpiece is the crowd lapping up against the stage during Zeppelin’s 1970s pomp. But it has a catchy riff, some wonderful drumming and always takes me back to my carefree student days at Glasgow University.

 

Erebus – Michael Palin
I make no bones about how much of a hero Sir Michael is to me. A wonderful writer and all-round great bloke, his account of two expeditions made by the Royal Navy’s HMS Erebus to opposite ends of the planet is both riveting an insightful. Delivered with his usual aplomb and style, it’s a book that brings history to life in the very best way.

 

All At Sea by Jonathan Whitelaw is published by HarperNorth, priced £9.99.

Dàn nam Ban / Fate of Women is the debut collection from award-winning bilingual Gaelic English poet, singer and teacher Ceitidh Chaimbeul. It highlights women’s voices from across the generations, and explores themes of folklore, family, motherhood and cultural inheritance. Here is a sample from the collection.

 

Dàn nam Ban
By Ceitidh Chaimbeul
Published by Leamington Books

 

Bana-bhuidsich Allt a’ Mhuilinn

Duilleagan fuil-dhearga
nan laighe gu trom-uisgeach
fo ruaim bhalbh, nam measg
mnathan ciar-bhuidhe is ruadh.
Geugan bàna ri dìosgail
rabhaidhean dìth cead
ann an uspag na Samhna
sgeulachd lusgairean
ann an doire nam bochd.
Mac-talla nan taibhsean,
rionnach maoim is smùdan
dannsadh tron allt,
is gaoir chorcarach nan dithis
gun eucoir ach banalachd.

 

The Millburn Witches

Blood-red leaves
lie heavy-drenched
in silent anger, taints
yellow and amber women.
Naked branches whisper
warnings of intolerance,
in Hallowed breaths
stories of the healers
in Diriebught.
Echos of spirits,
shadows and smoke
dance through the river,
and the screams of violation,
two innocents – women.

 

An Taghadh Eile

’S tus’ as coireach, a nathair chòir,
chuir thu nimh na fuil
is shiubhal do bhriathrachas
fo mhìne a craicinn mus do thogadh dhi slighe peacaidh.

Nas tarrangaiche buileach an t-ubhal
is àirde a shlaodadh dha beul
nìor leig ann am Maitheas gum biodh beachd aice fhèin,
seach a sàsachadh leis na bha an dàn dhi.

Bhruadair i air iteagan brèagha air eòin fad às,
feur na bu guirme an gàrraidhean eile
’s i sgìth den mhil a bhlais i
an eanghlas Àdhaimh

Ach saoil, a nathair,
an robh i ga iarraidh –
ceum duirche a thaghadh
is e na thrìlleach fhàgail
an lorg beatha bhàin
fo ghrian a sìorraidheachd.

 

The Other Choice

You’re to blame, dear snake,
you poisoned her blood,
and your lexicon swept,
under the sheen of her skin, until
she could only take the path of sin.

The forbidden fruit was the greater allure
and lowering its height to her mouth,
heaven forbid she had an opinion of her own
discontent with the destiny laid before her.

She dreamed the fair feathers of far away birds,
the lush grass of other gardens –
sickened by honey and
swallowing Adam’s insipid milk.

But I wonder, dear snake,
if she wanted it –
to carve darkness’ path
and breach his monotonous peace,
abandoning her eternal perfection.

 

Fluraichean Buidhe

Bho thùs tha i air d’ aithneachadh –
d’ ainm daonnan air blas a bilean.
A sùilean làn de d’ ìomhaigh ghlan,
an dealbhan gan taisbeanadh dhi.
B’ e an turas seo a’ chiad athais
tadhal ort ’s air an eilean o chionn fhada.
Glamaig chumhachdail gun atharrachadh
le ceò a’ cumail an t-siabain bho na speuran.
Rubha na h-aiseig srònagach sa mhuir fharsaing
fo dhubhar bataraidh na maighdinn-mhara
Ach fhuaras flùraichean buidhe lamaisteach, calaisteach,
duilleagan grèiste a’ màirneadh na thachair.
Mar thaibhsear, a b’ eòlach air d’ àite tàimh
thàinig buatham brosnachail bhuaipe is
gun ghluasad, theann i ris a’ chloich
le tulchuis na h-òige is chuir i oirr’ pògag gràidh.
‘Tha gach cùis ceart, na gabh dragh,
gheibh thu flùraichean nas fheàrr a Ghanga.’

 

Yellow Flowers

From the beginning she knew you –
your name ever on her lips.
Her eyes bright-full,
your portrait revealed to her.
This journey was the first opportunity
to visit you and the island, in an age.
Glamaig, powerful and unchanged,
mist separating the sea-foam from the heavens.
The ferry point jutting into the wide sea
in the shadow of the mermaid’s battery
But we found yellow flowers, battered and wind-swept,
embroidered leaves reflecting what befell them.
Like a seer aware of your resting place
an inspired thought struck her and
without prompting, she approached the stone
with the confidence of youth and placed her tiny kiss on it.
‘Don’t worry, everything is as it should be,
you’ll get better flowers, Ganga.’

 

Bi modhail

Lìon caillich na suidheachain eile
nan suidhe gu dìreach is modhail.
Cnàmhan is anman a’ gleadhraich
le spèiread fhaclan.
Brògan grinne a’ seachnadh an t-sruth’
air gach taobh den trannsa.

Ginealaichean de bi modhail,
na cur car an gnothaichean –
cha robh am breith-bhriathar
na bu làidire na glocail shocair,
sùilean mall-rosgach is fiamh orra,
ag èisteachd ris an t-searmon ràpach.

Bu annsa leam rudeigin a ràdh ach,
a-rithist, mar as àbhaist,
cha d’ rinn mi dad
’s mi nam shuidhe gu dìreach is modhail
mar an ceudna
a’ speuradh os n-ìosal ri nèamh.

 

Be polite

Old women filled the other seats
sitting straight and polite.
Bones and souls shaking
with the strength of the words.
Neat shoes avoiding the stream
on either side of the aisle.

Generations of behave,
don’t cause a scene –
no word of judgement
just their tutting,
calm eyed yet awe-struck,
listening to the noisy sermon.

I really wanted to say something
but, again, as always
did nothing
but sit straight and polite
like the others,
swearing silently to the heavens.

 

Dàn nam Ban by Ceitidh Chaimbeul is published by Leamington Books, priced £9.99.

Does the Loch Ness Monster exist? Oh yes, and she’s a secret agent! In the very first graphic novel from Kelpies, the children’s book imprint at Floris, Secret Agent Nessie and her team of friends — genius inventor Bea the Beaver and quick-stinging Jelly the jellyfish — are on a mission to keep Loch Ness safe. Here, the team at Floris tell us more about the project.

 

Secret Agent Nessie
By Gary Chudleigh and Laura Howell
Published by Floris

 

 

‘I had a lot of fun writing for Jelly in particular,’ says Lego comics author Gary Chudleigh. ‘I took reference from every wee Glaswegian angry grandpa I knew. He’s bottled up lightning: always raring to go in order to help his team mates.’

When a gang of squabbling seagulls pulls off a heartless fish-and-chip heist, Nessie and her W.E.T. (Water Espionage Team) pals spring into action. But what monstrous master plan is their bird-brained enemy plotting from the ruins of Urquhart Castle? Laura Howell, the first female artist to have a regular strip in the Beano, loved illustrating the feathered felons for the book. ‘I enjoyed making them look as gormless as possible!’ she said.

Chock full of water fights, bird puns, larger-than-life characters and at least one stolen tractor, Secret Agent Nessie is a laugh-out-loud, full-colour graphic-novel adventure perfect for children aged 6 and up.

Gary’s favourite scene involves Nessie and friends coming together to take on the bad guys for the final showdown. ‘It’s my tribute to all the action movies I loved as a kid (and still do), and Laura drawing Nessie’s warpaint as tartan is the perfect touch.’

The W.E.T. (Water Espionage Team) have a secret base deep under the water of Loch Ness. The interior of Bea’s laboratory was a highlight for Laura – ‘It was entertaining to draw in all the details, but it’s also a pivotal character moment for both Bea and Nessie in the story.’

In a bold and wacky story full of twists, turns and puns, Gary hopes that children who read the book will learn that it’s okay to try something and fail, and that to truly succeed, they’ll need help from others. The ever-serious Laura hopes children will learn . . . to beware of angry chickens!

 

Secret Agent Nessie by Gary Chudleigh and Laura Howell is published, priced £7.99.

1593 was a dangerous time to be a healer in Scotland. The Wise Witch of Orkney is a pacy historical novel that tells the story of Elspet Balfour, suspected of witchcraft by the Earl of Orkney. Luckily, the queen has her summoned to Edinburgh to look after her while she is pregnant with James VI’s baby under the disguise of a lady-in-waiting. The subterfuge isn’t easy to maintain, and life at court is full of extra intrigue too. Below is an extract from the novel telling of Elspet leaving her beloved Orkney.

 

The Wise Witch of Orkney
By Anna Caig
Published by Black & White Publishing

 

Elspet throws open the deep wooden trunk in the corner of her one-room home and throws its contents into a pack next to her on the brushed earth floor. She’s sent Gillie and Broden to visit her friends, the Laird and Lady of Stenness, an hour away at the big hoose Skarravoe. If the Earl’s soldiers return, she doesn’t want her children to be here. She knows the laird and lady will keep them safe, and hidden if necessary, for as long as she is away.

‘The laird has some new paint colours he wants to show you,’ she said to Broden, holding him tight and breathing in the warm scent of his hair before turning to Gillie. ‘And the Lady of Stenness was telling me of a new astronomy book she wants to read to you. They’ll love to have you stay for a peedie while.’

Elspet knows she must leave immediately; the soldiers may return any moment. But there are some things she cannot leave behind. The trunk, decorated with twisted ornamental swirls, had been carved by her mormor. She wants to touch its whirls and spirals, feel the wood her grandmother had painstakingly sculpted, take comfort in her meticulous work. But she stops herself – there isn’t time.

Rummaging under a stack of blankets, she finds a pile of small, bulging cloth pouches and examines each one quickly before pushing them into the pack.

Margaret stands in the doorway, looking out down the lane impatiently. ‘Mistress Balfour, we must go now. My bluff won’t buy us much time.’

So it was a bluff . Was any of what Lady Margaret Livingston told the soldiers true?

‘I can’t leave without these plants.’ Elspet pulls out the last of the pouches and pushes them under her clothing at the bottom of her pack. ‘I’ve no idea what herbs you have in Scotland – I might not be able to do my work without these.’

‘You won’t be able to do anything at all if the Earl’s soldiers capture you.’

Elspet knows she’s right. ‘I’m almost ready.’

She looks into the trunk a final time to find her thick woollen travelling cloak. It may be summer but the year is already turning towards darkness, and she’s heard the winter lingers longer South. Th is cloak was Mormor’s too. She pulls it round her shoulders, hoping for some kind of protection.

What she’s really doing is stalling for time. She doesn’t want to go. Looking over at the pile of crumpled blankets on the bed set into the wall she shares with the children, her eyes swim with tears.

‘How will the laird and lady comfort them tonight?’ she says, more to herself than the glowering woman in her doorway.

‘Come on now. Children don’t need us half as much as we like to think they do,’ Margaret says, striding across the room and picking up the sack. She awkwardly wraps her arms around it and holds it against her chest.

‘Beatrix is waiting at the boat,’ she adds. ‘And I too have no desire to see the Earl’s men again.’

Elspet doesn’t understand any of this, but this is the path God has chosen for her, to go with this woman and use her skills to serve the Queen of Scotland. She follows Margaret out to the horses waiting under the hazel tree that stands like a sentinel outside her home. She glances down the lane; no one is coming. Not yet. She takes the pack from Lady Margaret and rests it on the saddle in front of her as she mounts the horse. They break into a gallop towards the harbour.

 

*

 

Elspet hears them as she follows the ladies up the boarding plank. Hooves, thundering down the hill to the small harbour on the Bay of Ireland where the ladies’ boat is docked, away from the many curious eyes in Orkneyjar’s busier ports.

More of the Earl’s soldiers have come this time. At least ten riders are drawing closer, an unmistakable figure on the leading horse. It is the Earl of Orkney – Patie has come himself.

Margaret has seen them too and turns to the men untying the ropes that hold the boat fast into the dock. ‘Hurry,’ she calls. ‘We must sail immediately.’

The sailor looks up. ‘That’s the livery of the Earl. We should wait and—’

Margaret doesn’t let him finish. ‘We will sail immediately, or you’ll see none of that fee you negotiated. I know very well it is far above the usual rate for this crossing.’

The man looks confused, as unused as Elspet is to hearing a woman issue orders at sea. But a full purse is a powerful argument, and he nods quickly before untying the last rope and stepping aboard.

The horses have reached the top of the slipway now. The Earl’s thin white face is clearly visible under his black peaked hat, his small eyes scanning the boat. Is he looking for me, or for Lady Margaret Livingston? Elspet wonders. Perhaps both of us.

As they move out into the bay and a gap appears between the boat and the dockside, Elspet sighs with relief. Patie and his men reach the waterside, their horses coming to a sudden standstill to avoid galloping straight off the edge of the dock and into the sea. Th e Earl’s eyes are trained on her, that strange brown so light it’s almost yellow. His lips curl in a sneer, showing his small teeth. Elspet shudders and instinctively takes a step back as the boat picks up pace. Th e further away they sail, the more Patie’s face becomes an indistinct blur, but ranyie pangs still stab Elspet’s stomach – that sneering expression, one she kens all too well, stays with her long after the dock has faded from view.

Beatrix looks at Margaret in panic. ‘The Earl of Orkney knows we’ve visited his islands. He knows we have Mistress Balfour.’

This clearly wasn’t part of the plan, then. Th e Earl of Orkney is the King’s cousin, an illegitimate one, but a cousin nonetheless – perhaps it isn’t surprising the women had hoped to avoid him.

‘It couldn’t be helped,’ Margaret snaps. ‘We knew the risk we were taking.’

‘What if he sends word to the King?’ Beatrix asks.

This is not an auspicious beginning to Elspet’s task. If the Earl of Orkney warns the King, this plan will be over before it’s even begun. ‘He will send men after me. After us,’ she says.

Margaret frowns. ‘How long will it take him to muster ships?’

‘A few hours at least. He’ll have to ride back to Kirkwaa, gather his sailing men and ready a ship.’

‘We’ll make for Durness then,’ Margaret says. ‘It’s a smaller port and he won’t expect us to go ashore there.’

Margaret goes to instruct the captain, and Elspet turns to look at the sea beneath them, calm today. The home she’s never left before slides further and further into the distance.

Next to her, Beatrix chats away without requiring any response. ‘We’ll have much time on our journey, Mistress Balfour. We will go to Dunrobin Castle first. We hope the Countess of Sutherland will help us prepare you for life at court before we travel to Edinburgh. You can teach me all about how you will treat the Queen, what plants and herbs you will use.’

Elspet turns her thoughts to what lies ahead but her foresight fails her; this is a situation beyond her imagining, the future shrouded in thick haar. If it wasn’t for the Earl’s men on her back, she would never have agreed to go with these ladies. Her heart is sore for her children before the islands have even faded from view. When will she return to them? Indeed, will she ever return to them? At least they’ll be safe at Skarravoe with the Laird and Lady of Stenness.

She shakes those thoughts away. She must believe she will see them again, or she’ll never be able to take on the task ahead.

Three orcns are playing in the boat’s wake below – their grey water-slick backs glistening where they catch the sunlight. Th ese are the creatures after which her island home is named – the subject of so many Orkneyjar tales: orcn selkies who shed their skins to come to the land and dance. Elspet must put on a new skin now, the skin of a noblewoman.

 

The Wise Witch of Orkney by Anna Caig is published by Black & White Publishing, priced £16.99.

When Joanne, a troubled woman, discovers her birth father was a serial killer, she’s forced to confront a terrible question: what if the darkness in her own soul is a direct inheritance from him? This is an intimate and chilling psychological thriller. In this extract we find Joanne at her adoptive mother’s funeral feeling like an outsider.

 

Original Sins
By Linda Duncan McLaughlin
Published by Into Books

 

I hide out in the crematorium loo, shaking, searching my bag for non-existent hankies and fishing awkwardly for the end of the loo-roll in the dispenser. Who designs these things? I can’t believe what I’ve just done. I know what they’ll be thinking: Always was an odd yin, right enough, but still, her own mother’s funeral… And there’s still the purvey to get through. I hear the door open and know it will be one of the aunts.

‘Joanne? Are you in here, love?’

It’s Mina. Best of them.

‘Yeah, I’m here.’

‘Thought you might be,’ she sighs. ‘I’m sorry you got upset there, pet, but listen – we need to get down to the hotel, and nobody’ll be able to move till we go. Your Aunt Annette’s getting a wee bit… Well, you know what she’s like.’

‘I’m just coming, Auntie Mina,’ I manage. ‘I’ll be out in a minute.’

‘Okay, love. I’ll wait for you outside.’ The door clicks shut.

I sit a moment longer, clutching my fistful of loo-roll scraps, listening to the silence. There will be a show of sympathy, of understanding, for what has just happened. But later the cabal will convene, condemning me for flouting the rules, for committing the worst possible crime, of drawing attention. This wasnae about her, they’ll say, it was about her mammy.

And they will be right. This is about my mammy – but not the one who’s just translated into smoke and ashes, wisping into the ether. This is not about Alice, the only mammy I’ve ever known, Mum, who took me in and brought me up as her own. This is about my real mammy, the one who gave me away when I was barely two months old.

When they find out that I’ve decided to try to find that one, the shit is most definitely going to hit the fan. I promised Mum that I would never try to trace my birth mother, and they all know that. But Mum is dead now and, all the way through her painful dying, at the back of my mind was the knowledge that at last I would be free to betray that promise. Even though the guilt of that betrayal will probably stay with me forever.

But I need to – have to – know who I am. Who I come from. If I don’t do it now I never will. And if that costs me all of the family I have left, then that’s the price I have to pay.

And that actually is quite funny, isn’t it?

*

The funeral purvey is everything I expected. The hotel is overwarm, over-chintzy, and someone has over-ordered the buffet: platters of sandwiches and sausage rolls and bright cakes are piled high on the tables. My one insistence had been on an open bar, and people are already well-furnished with pints and wineglasses and are chatting animatedly. The room hums with a rush of post-funeral relief.

At first, people tip-toe around me, unsure whether to speak to me or not. Mina sits me down at a table buttressed with cousins, and there is an awkward pause as we all look at each other. In recent years I’ve given up trying to keep track of exactly how many cousins I have; I don’t even know the names of some of the newer additions. And of course, technically, I’m not related to them at all.

Do I sound less than familial? Perhaps. And it isn’t necessarily just because I’m adopted – I know plenty of adopted people who have relationships with their families every bit as close as any blood tie could be. Not finding out till I was fourteen was a little traumatic, maybe, but hey, I was adopted in the 60s; they did things differently then, didn’t they? Mum and Dad thought they were doing the right thing, not telling me. They’d always intended to, they said, but somehow the right moment had never arrived; by the time it did, accidentally, I was just about old enough to handle it.

As a child I had wondered, of course, why I was so different. Why I hadn’t inherited the boldness, the temper, the sheer brawliness of my mother’s boisterous family. Or the dark good looks and humour of my father’s side. I was totally unlike my cousins: not in the least physically brave, hopeless at ball games, uninterested in their feuds and constantly-changing alliances. While they romped through urban jungles, I found my adventures in books; when I did well at school, they were both contemptuous and faintly intimidated. I was an alien, unable to join their tribe; finding out there was a perfectly good explanation for that was, in some ways, a relief. And as their juvenile teasing morphed into a darker bullying I built a wall of don’t-care bricks against it until it was strong enough to repel any attempt at attack.

I was a burr under their saddle, however. And the older I grew, the more spiky my defences, the more of an irritation I became. Staying on at school was bad enough, but going to university, and sponging off my parents, and thinking myself better than them, and moving to England (of all places), and landing a cushy, under-worked, over-paid job in some soft southern college? It just served to compound my crimes – and I didn’t care, in fact I welcomed the growing distance. And while they looked askance at my weird taste in clothes and music, I failed to hide my lack of interest in telly soaps and Z-list celebrities. A pity? Perhaps. Could try harder? Almost certainly. I did regret the lack of love between us, now that I was older and more forgiving – but it was equally too late to try mending those fences now.

 

Original Sins by Linda Duncan McLaughlin is published by Into Books, priced £11.99.

Elissa Soave’s third novel, Common Ground, sees her return to a character from her debut Ginger and Me: Germaine Hounslow. She is called upon to act when the allotment she manages is earmarked for a new development by the South Lanarkshire Council. In defending the allotment space she finds herself within a community that she didn’t know she needed. BooksfromScotland chatted to Elissa Soave about her heartwarming tale.

 

Common Ground
By Elissa Soave
Published by HQ

 

Hello Elissa, what can you tell our readers about your new novel Common Ground?

Common Ground is about a group of outsiders who each have a plot at the local allotments. Initially, they appear to have nothing in common and very little to do with each other but when the allotments are threatened with closure, they have to work together to stop that from happening. Before long, they discover that the allotments are not just plots of land, but a place to find community and connection. Set in Viewpark and Uddingston again, readers of my earlier novels will meet up with some familiar faces, notably Wendy and Irish Mary, as well as being introduced to a host of new characters who I hope they will find themselves rooting for. It’s my most optimistic novel to date, as it imagines a world where we can all share the same space, working towards the common goal of making that space fruitful for everyone.

 

This is your third novel now, do you now feel like you’re a dab hand at this writing and publishing game now?

Ha, if only! I still feel like a complete newbie and panic when anyone asks me about my writing process, wondering if I have one yet. I feel that I’m learning as I go, each book teaching me more and giving me a little more experience for the next one. Maybe if you ask me again in ten years’ time . . .

 

Common Ground is a wonderful tale of local resistance and community. Why are these themes important for you to explore as a writer just now?

I’ve always been interested in how community works, what makes a good community, and how is it that some people find themselves outside the community. These themes were also explored in my first novel, Ginger and Me, where Wendy desperately wanted to be part of a community and struggled to find her way in. Common Ground takes a different approach. It shows how people can come together to create their own community, and how being part of such an endeavour can promote happiness.

I think it’s pertinent to focus on these issues at a time when the idea of ‘community’ itself is under threat from all sides. Public swimming pools are closing, library hours are shrinking, men’s mental health sheds are being axed, pensioners’ clubs are shutting down. You could say this is an economic necessity but I see it as symptomatic of the prevailing ideology that individualism trumps collective wellbeing. And of course, the people most affected by this approach are those who can least afford to lose public services. It’s really a question of what kind of society we want – one in which the privileged have everything and the rest of us make do, or a community-based approach where everyone’s happiness counts.

 

Are you green-fingered? Does nature influence your creative work?

Green-fingered, no. In fact, some would say quite the opposite. I was lucky to have the advice of my father-in-law on the gardening aspects of Common Ground and we did have some good laughs about my ignorance in this area. For example, there’s a scene where I wanted a very colourful profusion of flowers so I googled flowers in shades of pink, red, purple, etc and added them to the scene. My father-in-law had to point out to me that not all flowers bloom at the same time of year. Ahem.

As to the influence of nature – and without going too Kate Middleton – I do believe in the healing power of nature and the outdoors. So, in the sense that all of an author’s lived experience feeds into our work whether we realize it – or admit to it – or not, then yes, nature does influence me. With the characters in this novel, most of whom are troubled or hurting in some way, I really think that working with the soil and nurturing plants in the fresh air and away from modern distractions, goes a long way to making their lives better.

 

In a novel with characters who are brought together by circumstance rather than familial connection, how you do decide and create your cast of characters?

What a great question! With Common Ground, I wanted to show that even when we think we are very different to others, at heart, humans share broadly the same experience. For this to work, I needed a whole range of diverse characters. So, the cast includes Kevin, a young man who is severely facially disfigured; Germaine, who has left behind a troubled past for a new start at the allotments; Mohid and Farah, who lead a seemingly perfect life but are hiding the reason for their heartbreak; and Isabel, whose husband, George has been diagnosed with early onset dementia. Outwardly, they are a group of individuals with very little in common, apart from their allotments, but by the end of the story, the group has had to work together towards a shared goal and discover that perhaps there is more uniting them than they think. I hope to leave the reader with a sense that there is joy in community and a place for everyone within that, and that collective wellbeing matters and is worth striving for.

 

What authors and books have influenced your writing?

James Kelman was, and remains, hugely inspirational to me. When you look around at the books doing well in Scotland today, you can see his influence everywhere – whether this is acknowledged or not. Janice Galloway’s The Trick Is To Keep Breathing made a big impression, as did Rachel Cusk’s The Temporary. This last book may seem surprising as it is set in an English middle class milieu, quite unlike my own novels, but this is the first time I recall reading about a young woman’s interior life (even though she was insufferable), and that was eye-opening to me. More recently, I have been a huge admirer of Anne Donovan’s work, I am in awe of the way she combines the tragic with the comic so effortlessly.

 

Are there any books from Scotland you’re particularly looking forward to reading this year?

Of course new novels from big names like Ali Smith and Douglas Stuart are reasons to celebrate. Also, if I can cheat a little on this question (because these are not strictly speaking new books), I was very excited to read that Polygon are to reissue seven new editions of the works of Agnes Owens. Owens is often described as one of Scotland’s most overlooked writers and I’m afraid I am guilty as charged. She is a writer I feel I should have read by now and I fully intend to put that right this year.

 

Common Ground by Elissa Soave is published by HQ, priced £20.00.

Devour Everything by Sarah Stewart contains poetry that celebrates all that life can throw at us and how we make it through – the mundane made heroic and sacred. Enjoy this sample from this defiant collection.

 

Devour Everything
By Sarah Stewart
Published by Tapsalteerie

 

Illusory

‘Behind the illusion of everyday life lies the reality of dreams.’
– Werner Herzog, Fitzcarraldo

In the way that you turn a corner on to a street
you knew when young and catch your breath:
its dimensions calcified, unchanged

in the way that a stuck door creaks open
to reveal a garden full of honeysuckle,
sheened with snail-slime, netted with cobwebs

in the way that orderly rooms, scrubbed clean,
lose their patina of interesting dirt –
watermarks, spilled ash, candlewax, bluebottles

in the way that your fingers will find the chord
on a piano, knowing the claw-stretch
years without playing

in the way that the moon will sequester and release
a view of spires and slates
on a bed of staggered indigo

in the way that a man walks out of smoking ruins
clutching his workbag, still wearing
sameshoes samesuit samecoat as this morning –

in the way that you are falling
through barred cloud, streaked bronze,
dropping like a stone

in the way that we are animals
and our bodies remember things.

 

Second-Hand Dress

i

I surmise
by the tight bodice
the original owner was narrower than me.
Athletic? Played tennis?

It’s an odd colour:
off yellow? Gold-adjacent? Ugly,
but appealing in its vagueness.

Washed twice, it still offers
a hint of musk; violets
sharpening in the heat.

It asks me, constantly,
with every swish of the fabric
who do you think you are?

 

ii

A confusion of mirrors, prisms.
I watch from a rising escalator:
a shopgirl yawns, then disappears.

Vanishing lines of mannequins
lipstick bullets in rows:
Strip Me Down, Men Love Mystery.

The dress too tight across my ribs.
Butterscotch, that’s the colour.
Mouthful of sweetness, sweetheart.

 

Japanese Wind Telephone
for Peter

When you asked me for a love poem
I told you about a glass booth

containing one object,
a disconnected rotary phone:

black, shiny as whale-belly
from which the grieving

can dial the numbers
of their lost ones, speak

to the listening dead.
I promised

that after you were gone,
I would keep telling you things:

how our children are growing;
how the blown apple blossom

fills the gutter
outside our house;

how our neighbours
still make love so loudly

and when they wake me
I find I have reached again

for your hand.

 

Sweetheart

I want to make you good things.
To simmer and fold
until cream and sugar clot
into caramel; to roll and unmould
dainty madeleines or macarons.
It’s no use. I’m better at pickles,
ribbons of courgette cut and plunged
into vinegar. Show me love,
and I’ll show you hands smeared
with vermillion chilli, crushed garlic,
splinters of ginger
under every fingernail.

 

Devour Everything by Sarah Stewart is published by Tapsalteerie, priced £12.00.

The Salt Bind is a gothic, fantastical fairy tale that pays tribute to all those women named as witches in the 18th century. In it, Kensa is a daughter of a feared pirate, but she is determined to make her own mark in the world, training in the secrets of The Old Ways. This extract relays the appearance of an unwanted omen.

 

The Salt Bind
By Rebecca Ferrier
Published by Renegade Books

 

Ever since she could remember, Kensa had been unwelcome. That’s what came with being the daughter of Alexander Rowe. Rumour was, after he was hanged and strung up over Percuil River, his body refused to rot. Others say his body disappeared altogether, swallowed by the tides for an unpaid debt. Kensa thought she remembered that day, too – the hanging – and if she didn’t, she’d been told of it so often that a memory had formed nonetheless.

And she’d been told what she’d done.

‘That chit crawled on to the scaffold and put her hands in his pockets,’ said Old Sal. ‘Thieved from her own father afore he was cold.’

It was true, but Kensa had not taken money. Instead, she had removed a hagstone from her father’s coat. It was as large as her palm with a hole knuckled through it. She could not forget the first time she’d seen it. Her father had come home from sea, rattling with gifts and thick with beard. He’d chased her round their small cob- walled dwelling and placed that hagstone to her eye.

‘Here’s how I know when a storm’s coming,’ her father told her. ‘Here’s how I know to go wrecking.’

Although the hagstone had not protected him from the law and the noose, it was a comfort to Kensa. A weight as natural as her own flesh, carried from one scorn to the next. Her fingers strayed to it now in the salting house, nerves hidden behind that flat, hard mouth.

In the corner, quiet as always, Elowen played with another child. How easily she made friends. Charming everyone with her cow- long lashes and dainty steps. Ones that would always follow Kensa, asking her to slow down, to wait, to stop. And her name a question, always a question, asked over and over: Kensa? Kensa? Kensa?

She turned away, stretching to glare inside a half- filled barrel. A dozen pilchard eyes stared back. Her chest grew tight. It always did when she thought on her father. Distracted as she was, she did not see Elowen approach. ‘Kensa?’ A sudden pull on her sleeve startled her, her fingers slackened, the hagstone tumbled into the dark and bounced beneath Old Sal. And when the heavy- set woman fell, it was with a hard thump. One which brought a pilchard barrel with it, clattering into two others and sending the carefully packed fish and salt across the bloody floor. Four hours’ work gone, a hard night ahead, a wage that had to be earned.

Kensa scrabbled for her hagstone and found Old Sal’s face pressed into hers.

‘I didn’t mean to—’

Her excuses fell unheard, replaced by threats to box ears and tan hides. ‘You’re as twisted as your father was,’ said Old Sal. ‘He brought badness with him and now you’ll do the same. Out, go on! Take the little one with you! I want you gone.’

Kensa’s neck burned. Eyes – woman and child and pilchard – turned to her. She opened her mouth to protest and closed it, firmly, teeth clacking together. Head down, she wrenched herself from the salting house, dragging Elowen behind her.

Anger kept Kensa walking. Portscatho’s natural incline, a deep slope to the ocean, propelled her towards the harbour. A full moon lit the cobbles, turning what would be red in daylight into a long black stream. By the sea wall, the men had finished unloading the boats and sat together with lit pipes and empty tankards. Only when she felt a tug on her arm did she slow, remembering the shorter legs which struggled to match hers.

‘Kensa?’

‘No,’ she spat, furious.

One word and all the shame inside her reached out to echo against the receding tide.

Elowen gasped, a small huff into Kensa’s face, only a hair’s breadth away. The men on the wall quietened, their low murmurs fading as they listened. Next came a chance, a beat where Kensa could have sunk down, grasped her sister’s arms and apologised. After all, it was not truly Elowen’s fault, it was a mistake. Yet she did not, could not admit it. The younger child, eyes spilling over with tears, wrenched herself away and ran. Her buckled shoes slapped shingle and her fair hair trailed behind her. She left Kensa standing there, with curdled seafoam and fish blood stiff and drying on her skirts.

 

It served her right. Kensa repeated this to herself as she paced. Near by, the drunken men at the harbour were laughing at lewd jokes, though the few words she overheard made little sense to her. Of course, it was always Kensa in the wrong, never her sister.

‘Elowen?’

Where had she gone? Now it was Kensa’s turn to ask, call, wait.

Her voice bounced off cob wall and quarried stone. There was no answer. She cuffed her nose with her sleeve and walked. Uphill was home, a small dwelling elbowed into a long terrace which lined the main road through Portscatho. Elowen had gone the other way, along the path which bordered the coast and dipped precariously close to the sea. Kensa went after her. As she began to move, her anger was replaced with worry, then guilt. She called out again and again. No reply. How far could Elowen’s legs have taken her? Kensa pushed on, faster, her path a gloom of ferns and tree roots. She knew the stories, had been raised on them, about the beasts who would snatch a child from its cradle or a maid from her virtue, should the Father of Storms – the Bucka – wish it. Kensa did not like to think on him too close to the sea, lest her thoughts summon him, impossible though it seemed. To her left, the ocean sighed and over the waves came a sound.

It was a low, keening cry. A wail like wind across a rum bottle, clear and high and sweet to hear. Loud, terribly loud: inhuman and unanimal. It tightened a knot in Kensa’s chest. Her feet pummelled the earth as she sprinted towards it, that sound, and the creature who made it.

Elowen had got there first.

From a high point on the path, Kensa saw her sister standing on the Towan’s shore, dwarfed beside a ship- sized mass. She was a thin stripe against a hulking body. Could it be a whale? It cried again, loud enough to shake the ferns at Kensa’s waist and call her towards it, towards Elowen, towards nothing she had ever seen before.

This was no whale. This was a sea monster.

 

The Salt Bind by Rebecca Ferrier is published by Renegade Books, priced £18.99.

In Search of Gems is a wonderful collection of reminiscences and nature writing about precious stones and crystals that can be found around Scotland. Each memory and exploration is then followed by a beautiful poem. In this extract, Kenneth writes of pearls, and the pearl-fishing travellers that searched for them and sold them in the summer months.

 

In Search of Gems: Finding Treasure in Wild Places
By Kenneth Steven
Published by Saraband

 

It so happens that half the world’s freshwater pearls are found in Scotland. It’s the case too that the Romans knew this, and that that’s one of the reasons they were intrigued to come here in the first place. I like to think that at some point in those early times, a traveller made it to the markets of Rome. He was curious to follow the rivers and in the end pursued them until he found his way to what was then the capital of the world. And in his purse he had a handful of pearls and he showed them to someone and they wondered, asked questions, even though they had no words in common. But he came back rewarded to his northern land all the same, and what he had brought with him was never forgotten.

It’s clear that knowledge of pearls and fishing for pearls has been with the travelling community from time immemorial. A whole culture grew up around it; they created special crooks that could go deep into river water to search for the most likely mussel shells. Because it wasn’t that every one might contain a pearl: it was the crooked ones, the misshapen ones. What had happened was that some piece of grit had got inside the shell. The shell almost sensed that this had taken place, that something alien was present. New material, what we know of as mother of pearl, was swirled and smoothed around the foreign body. And more and yet more as the shell grew. So the travellers would keep an eye on the crooked shells that were in one particular river; they would turn them, make sure that all was as it should be when they came back to that river the following summer. It might have been that it was first and foremost the men who had the opportunity of fishing for pearls: the women were too busy at other tasks. One way or another, this was not considered their domain.

I think of the sheer joy that must have been derived from exploring those rivers in the summer months and keeping watch on those mussels that held the pearls. The travellers knew how to lift those particular shells, the mis-shapen ones, and by then another year of growing had passed. It was the joy of summer in nature. As travelling folk they were a part of the natural order of the seasons and the years in Scotland, as much as the Sami people were with their herds of reindeer in Arctic Scandinavia. Yet the paradox that in both instances the settled community didn’t begin to understand their way of life, but instead despised them. The youngsters were mobbed in school and the neighbours in their villages and towns, by contemptuous locals. Yet back then it was the travellers who knew nature best; who were one with the rhythm and the dance of the seasons.

The travellers were able to tell from which river a particular pearl had come, and more than likely those experts from the settled world could too. It was all to do with the minerals that were found in any particular body of water. So there would be a subtle blue sheen from one certain river, or a gold glow from another. I strongly suspect that such knowledge would be handed down from one generation to the next; not only this, but all the lore that governed this culture.

In the old days, and I’m really imagining the nineteenth century here and the first decades of the twentieth, the travellers would visit the castles and the lodge houses where the well-to-do ladies loved their pearls. On the doorsteps, the travellers would show off their handfuls of pearls, most likely towards the end of those summer months, and be rewarded with a few coins for them. There was a particular jeweller on the banks of the Tay by the name of Cairncross, and the travellers would take their treasures here too, for they knew this was a place they’d get a fair price for their pearls. Until not long ago, the biggest pearl fished from a Scottish river was kept here. You had to ask to see it; the pearl was kept in a safe in a back part of the premises, but would be brought out for you to see.

*

I went back a few years ago to visit a beach I’d known on the River Lyon. I was with a group of American students and teaching a Scottish course. I wanted them to know about pearl fishing and we happened to be passing this place I’d known of old. I ran with several of them to this beach on the river, for if possible I wanted to bring back at least one shell to show the whole group. The river didn’t let me down: there were perhaps half a dozen mussels there on the reddish sand. I took one, even though now you’re not even supposed to take a shell if you find one. Some of the largest can grow to be the size of a whole hand; this one wouldn’t have been longer than my little finger. It still amazes me that these magnificent shells grow in a river. Never mind whether they have pearls inside; they’re treasures just as they are. May we learn to look after them, to keep them safe.

 

Pearls

They were the reason the Romans came here –
river things, spun into milky globes over years
and years.
I often wonder who it was who found them first;
those mussels, dark shells whorled and folded
like hands in prayer, embedded in deep feet of
shingle.

The travellers knew who they were. The unsettled
people
who followed the seasons, the stars, yearned only
the open road
They carried the knowledge of pearls inside
them, secret,
could tell the very bend over river each pearl had
come from –
this one like the pale globe of Venus at dawn,
this one a skylark’s egg, and this the blush of a
young girl’s lips.

Yet the Romans never reached the Highland
rivers
where the best pearls slept. They were kept out
by the painted people, the Pictish hordes
bristling on the border like bad weather.
The pearls outlived even the travellers, whose
freedom
was bricked into the big towns long enough ago,
who did not understand any longer the
language of the land.

In the last part of the north,
in the startling blue of the rivers,
the shells still grow. Their pearls are stories
that take a hundred years to tell.

 

In Search of Gems: Finding Treasure in Wild Places by Kenneth Steven is published by Saraband, priced £8.99.

In her creepy, gothic tale, author Elisabeth Wolf sends grieving librarian Anne Adams to a remote country house in the West of Scotland. Instead of the peace she was craving, she finds the job much more than she bargained for. This extract is her first inkling that the library is not what it seems.

 

Winterbourne 
By Elisabeth Wolf
Published by Black & White Publishing

 

After lunch I became lost in the work. It was engaging and engrossing, and I certainly worked longer than my four hours that first day. Dusk fell and I hardly noticed, until I felt something brush softly against my cheek. I looked up from the screen and a shadowy form passed in front of my eyes. I raised a hand and a gasp of shock escaped me.

A moth. A huge moth was fluttering around my head. My heart practically smashed its way out through my ribs. Since childhood I’d been terrified of moths. I stood up, kicking my chair over behind me, arms flailing, as adrenalin flooded like ice through my veins.

As the moth settled on the keyboard of the laptop, I took three or four steps back, panting. My back came up against the closest bookcase and I grabbed hold of the middle shelf on either side of me, clenching my knuckles.

‘Calm down, Anne.’ I spoke out loud. ‘Just a moth. Can’t hurt you.’

I stood staring at the creature as I waited for my heart rate to drop back to normal. It was just a bloody moth, after all. On the moth scale of things, it was a giant. Its fat, hairy body must have been three inches long, and as it rested, wings open, I guessed it had a wingspan of about five inches. From a distance it was mottled black and gold, but as my interest overcame my fear I crept forward, so I could see it in more detail. The body was mostly black, with partial gold stripes, a little like a wasp. The forewings were black with small flashes of gold, like watermarks, while the hindwings were gold with two black bands on each. At the front of its head, two antennae quivered like thick gold wires.

I took another step closer. The was no mistaking the image on its thorax. A human skull marked out in golden tufts of hair. It was a death’s-head hawkmoth, something I’d never seen for real before now, but which had haunted my childhood imaginings and flooded my heart with fear.

As I stared, slack-jawed, breathing hard, the creature manoeuvred itself around on the keyboard and let out an angry scritch.

I ran to the library door and out onto the landing, slamming it shut behind me.

Leaning against the wall, I gave myself a good talking-to. It was just a moth. Yes, a big one, that could apparently make a noise. But it wasn’t malevolent and it didn’t want to harm me. Moths don’t bite, I told myself. I tried to convince myself. But I was sure I’d heard somewhere that an angry hawkmoth could nip, and this one was huge.

The house was silent around me, but somehow it seemed to be breathing with me too. I felt dizzy, so I squatted down and put my head between my knees. Somewhere, in the distance, floorboards creaked. Another noise made me jump, but I realised it was just the cormorant outside. A cormorant. Not necessarily the one I’d seen on the jetty. They all looked and sounded the same, didn’t they?

When I felt calmer, I went up to my bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. How stupid was I to get scared half to death by a moth? I pressed the towel against my eyes, straightened my hair in the mirror and took a deep breath. Hopefully it would have gone by the time I got back to the library, but if it hadn’t I’d simply open one of the windows and shoo it out with a rolled-up newspaper.

The house was still quiet as I made my way down the stairs, the atmosphere heavy. I felt nervous, but I was determined to overcome my fear. I put my hand on the library door handle,

pushed it down and swung open the door.

This time I screamed, using up all the air in my lungs. There wasn’t just one hawkmoth. There was a multitude. A black cloud of moths, dancing in the air, filling the room with the soft whisper of beating wings. They were settled on every flat surface and crawling on the spines of the books. They perched on the flowers in the vase and flitted round the light fittings which hung from ceiling. As the draught from the moving door alerted them to my presence, some of them started to make the same scritch noise that the first moth had made when it landed on my keyboard. Now there was a cluster of moths on the keyboard and more crawling up the screen. I slammed the door shut and screamed again. Then I ran as best I could without the aid of my stick towards the stairs. Clutching at the banister, I took the stairs two at a time. Mrs Cooper was opening the kitchen door just as I arrived on the other side of it, and I barrelled into her, making us both stagger back against the big table.

Mrs Cooper grunted with the impact.

Robert Cooper, who was sitting at the table studying a newspaper, looked up. ‘What’s the matter, girl?’

I fought for breath, stepping back from Mrs Cooper, who looked me up and down as she straightened her apron. ‘Moths,’ I gasped. ‘The library’s full of hawkmoths. Hundreds . . .’

The Coopers stared at each other for a second, two seconds. ‘It’s a sign—’ said Cooper.

Mrs Cooper cut him off . ‘Robert Cooper, go up there and flush them out, please.’

Cooper gave a mock salute, the bitter sarcasm of which was unmissable, but he pushed back his chair and ambled out of the kitchen.

I looked at Mrs Cooper. ‘What did he mean, it’s a sign?’ Mrs Cooper turned away from me. She had something bubbling in a pot on the range. ‘The stuff and nonsense that comes out of that man’s mouth.’

‘But . . .’

‘Go and help him, Anne. It’ll only take a couple of minutes to get them out. Can’t let them stay and nest.’

I caught up with Cooper at the top of the grand staircase and grabbed the top of his arm from behind.

‘What did you mean?’ I said as he turned to look at me.

‘What sign?’

He pulled away and carried on walking towards the library. I hung back. I didn’t want to see the hawkmoths again. I’d hardly stopped shaking from the first encounter. He opened the door and stepped inside.

‘Nothing here,’ he said with a raised voice.

I went to the open door. Cooper was standing in the middle of the library and he was right. There wasn’t a single hawkmoth to be seen. I grabbed for the door handle, unsteady on my feet.

‘What the . . . ?’

 

Winterbourne by Elisabeth Wolf is published by Black & White Publishing, priced £16.99.