A wonderful character study of the brave fisherman on the northern coast of Scotland in the early 1800's. ( )

As Catrine walked her journey from Helmsdale to Dunster, this book started to become up here as one of my favourites. Gunn's landscape and sea, sometimes still, sometimes riotous, in dark and daylight reminds me of Cormac McCarthy's writing, but with the added benefit that I know the Scottish moorlands, coast and Clearance straths. It was a joy to be taken there again, and at a beautiful, human pace. More and more, after McCarthy, it reminded me of the Odyssey - right to the end where Finn sees off his rival suitor. The oral tradition grows and grows through the book, especially when Finn revisits Stornoway, so it's very fitting that its own epic nature reflects those oral epics. At its most real it's at its most beautiful, whether you're deep inside the characters, half-keeping up with their thoughts, or joining Finn and Roddie in their tension, or climbing the sheer cliff with Finn, his heart in his mouth and adrenalin pumping. Of all the episodes in this episodic book, that first trip to Stornoway, through the south of the Pentland Firth, out almost to St Kilda, and then thrashed by the waves in the treacherous bay, was my personal favourite, but every journey, from the very first one, undertaken by Finn's father who he was never to know, Catrine's to Dunster, Finn's to the doctor, to the calm journey back in Finn's (Sulaire-inspired?) boat 'Gannet' - they all had me spellbound. It's a book I'd like to continue, but from Una's perspective perhaps, knowing what she did know, being who she was and not knowing what she didn't know (the dark siren gutting fish on Lewis, the pub fights. But that's because I admired the Bildungsroman nature of it for Finn and wanted the same from a female perspective. And it's a book I didn't want to end - or maybe, to end in Finn's old age, storytelling. ( )

For lovers of the sea, of the Scottish people, of people who live close to the bone, of history, of language, of storycraft, of the human spirit--this book is deeply satisfying on so many levels. ( )