My last review (Land by Maggie O’Farrell) takes place on the remote West coast of Ireland in the 1860s, and now we shift to the Outer Hebrides, an archipelago on the Northwest coast of Scotland in the mid 1990s: rural, desolate, and beautiful, but economically limited to crofting, fishing, and tourism. Amid this landscape we meet Cal (John-Calum), a recent art college graduate, his father (John), a bible-driven church deacon and sheep farmer/textile weaver, and Ella, John’s mother-in-law who lives with them, though her daughter (John’s wife) left the marriage long ago. 

This is a wounded, fractured trio who live together mostly in silence, repressing their emotions, their dreams, and their secrets. Cal feels drawn home to help with the farm and weaving and his grandmother, but he wants nothing more than to escape to the mainland where he can live as a gay young man. John can’t stop his emotional and physical abuse as he tries to repress, atone for, and pray away his own homosexuality after destroying his marriage. And Ella watches it all, knowing the truth and trying to glue the family together. They are all lonely.

Emotional pain seeps through everywhere, and as a reader you just want to scream at them to speak their truth before everything and everyone explodes, but it’s the 1990s in a tight-knit Free Presbyterian community. They see sin everywhere: the AIDS epidemic, an out of wedlock pregnancy, even the “Saved” vs the “unsaved” in their own church where the former sit in the front and the latter group in the back.

So it’s not an easy read on the heart, and at times feels a little melodramatic with so many tortured souls, but it’s really well written, immersing the reader in this community and culture. So many excellent lines. To show the emptiness of Cal and John’s weekly calls, Stuart writes “their telephone calls (had) the feeling of a service line, like when you dialed the Speaking Clock and then reset your watch to it.” And later when Cal is reading ads of men looking for men, “they listed their physical attributes as though they were second-hand bikes, or old settees, a little worn perhaps, but sturdy and reliable and good for a few more years of gentle use.”

Powerful descriptions like that pop out all through the narrative, making the emotional drain worth it. 4.5⭐️