Book of the year, so far. Beautifully written. About a single location – Glen Conach – in the Scottish highlands over several centuries.
There is a bit set in the present, narrated by an elderly woman, Maja, whose history proves to be shocking. Most of the narrative is set in the early 19th century during the Napoleonic wars, and the narrator is the slightly unreliable Charles Kirkliston Gibb, an apparent antiquarian who visits Glencoe partly for somewhere to sit over the summer, the pretext being to translate a mediaeval or possibly earlier Book of Conach, about an early Christian prophet.
It sounds unpromising, but the 19th Century narrative about Gibb’s reaction with the family and locality is brilliant, as is the backdrop, which emerges right at the end during the covid crisis to Maja’s life.
Brilliant, but I have succeeded in summarising it very well!
Comments