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Orkney (2013)

by Amy Sackville(Favorite Author)

3.4 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1619021196 (ISBN13: 9781619021198)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Counterpoint

review 1: There's no doubt this book is beautifully written but the storyline of two unlikeable guffs on their honeymoon on a remote Orcadian island just bored me to tears. There is something so creepy and unsettling about a 40 year age gap for a start, I then got so fed up of being force fed imagery and alliteration of the sea. It dragged in for page after page. And lastly I am just sick of reading about islanders being portrayed as suspicious grotesque old goats swaddled in bundles of cloth and muttering unwelcoming phrases in an unintelligible dialect. So patronising and so completely the opposite of the Orkney character which tends to be warm, welcoming and friendly. Ok maybe everyone apart from the man's wife was grotesque to him, in her shadow, and that he didn't want to share... more her with anyone. But that wasn't too clear and came across as insulting. I felt sorry for the guy in the end but hey ho. I was quite glad to be done with it.
review 2: I've read Amy Sackville's first novel The Still Point and enjoyed it greatly. Probably more than this one (Sorry, but it seemed a little self-indulgent) but that's not to say I didn't enjoy this. I enjoyed it's otherworldliness; the narrator's gradual unravelling (enjoyed is wrong, I felt so sorry for him), and the writer's trust that she didn't need to tie it all up with a bow at the end. I don't think I would ever thrust this book into the hands of another with a 'you must read this', because I sense she is a an acquired taste. But if anyone were to show me one of her books and say 'did you enjoy it', then I would happily say, yes. Yes I did. less

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