Orkney
Amy Sackville
Publisher: Granta Books
Paperback / Softback
£9.99
Mr B's review
I couldn’t put down this modern retelling of selkie stories. The main character is a greying literature professor who found himself in love with his student: a young woman who is elusive and unearthly pale. The book spans the days of their honeymoon on Orkney, days which are full of whiskey, his reminiscing over how they met and his new bride being pulled from reality by nightmares and her desire for the sea that she cannot swim in. Their charged relationship and the remote setting are surreal and yet so compelling in the details.
Description
On a remote island in Orkney, a curiously matched couple arrive on their honeymoon. He is an eminent literature professor; she was his pale, enigmatic star pupil. Alone beneath the shifting skies of this untethered landscape, the professor realises how little he knows about his new bride and yet, as the days go by and his mind turns obsessively upon the creature who has so beguiled him, she seems to slip ever further from his yearning grasp. Where does she come from? Why did she ask him to bring her north? What is it that constantly draws her to the sea?
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