Wide Eyed

A picture-postcard fishing village at the southernmost tip of Scotland appears to be the perfect place for Betsy Gillander to abscond for a few days with her fianc. There, in a landscape marred only by a vast MoD range away to the west, the pale winter sun lights up this next step in the young woman's happy and structured life. But the light fades when a violent storm wraps itself around the village. For three days, the couple are trapped in their hotel room. Enforced intimacy widens Betsy's eyes to the indolent cruelty of the man she's agreed to marry, while in the bar, the villagers grow increasingly fearful for a boat caught out at sea. By the time the sun reappears, Betsy has dismissed her fianc and set herself adrift in a village shattered by the loss of the boat and seven of its sons. The pain of her break-up in the face of such tragedy produces in her a terrible guilt. But as she goes in search of catharsis, befriending one of the widowed, Betsy finds herself drawn instead into a cloistered, close-knit society with a morality far beyond her understanding. This extraordinary, potent novel of innocence lost and life transformed confirms Ruaridh Nicoll, author of the critically acclaimed White Male Heart, as one of contemporary Scotland's most exciting and original literary voices.