This review is part of the Literature World Tour.
I missed this when it first came out, but picked up on it a bit later thanks to good old Richard & Judy selecting it as one of their book club picks. It’s a sort of rewriting of James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confession of a Justified Sinner, brought into the modern day (and made far less impenetrable, too).
This book has a little bit of everything: humour, warmth, love – as well as a whole load of weirdness, beginning with a stone in the forest that starts moving and culminating in a full-on encounter with the Devil himself. The setting (in the wilderness of the highlands of Scotland), the overbearing village life, the old gothic manse - all these lend the necessary atmostphere to the book and even though it’s clear from the outset what happens, these factors all contribute to the sense of impending disaster.
I also enjoyed the way the tale was framed with the book, almost as fiction within non-fiction. Not only does James Robertson play with the Hogg story, he’s also playing with other narrative techniques too – I always love a bit of ‘unreliable narrator’.
This really is a book to make you think – not just about religion or death or nature versus nurture, all of those obvious themes, but also about the choices we make in life – career, location, partner – and how one wrong choice can lead to an awful lot of complication.
Highly recommended.
Previously in Scotland:Spex's review of The Changeling.
Next stop on the Literature World Tour: Scandinavia, comprising the countries Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.
