The Lost Lights of St Kilda by Elisabeth Gifford

Elisabeth Gifford's new historical novel flips between 1920s St Kilda - a very remote group of Scottish Islands - and the war-torn France of 1940. Fred is a POW in appalling conditions, which has him dreaming about the girl he left behind a dozen years before. He's spent the intervening years working around the world as a geologist, but now it seems imperative for him to get back to Scotland to find Chrissie, the young woman he met on St Kilda where he spent a summer.

Chrissie belongs to one of the small number of families eking out a life on Hirta, the largest St Kilda island. While they have some crops and livestock, much of the inhabitants' livelihood comes from the seabirds that live on the cliffs. Island men daringly abseil from giddying heights - no safety harnesses here - to collect fulmar chicks for their oil and meat. Day trippers in the summer take the boat to visit "the last hunter-gatherers in Great Britain" and shop for island handcrafts.

Into this forgotten world Fred arrives to study rock formations with his friend, the dashingly handsome and trouble-making Archie Mcleod. Archie is the laird's son and fellow student who had caught the eye of Chrissie as a young girl. The story describes Fred's settling in and we discover the island through his eyes as well as the problem he has falling for someone from a completely different way of life.

Woven through this love-against-the-odds story is Fred's escape with a fellow soldier, their help from ordinary folk and the French Resistance, their nail-biting journey across the Pyrenees to Spain. It's an engrossing story with wonderful characters, tangled emotions set at a time of social and political upheaval. And while Fred's escape story had me on the edge of my seat, it was the descriptions of St Kilda that had me particularly captivated. Really and truly, this is a lost world.

The Lost Lights of St Kilda is a terrific read. I had previously enjoyed other books by this author, particularly Secrets of the Sea House (set on the Isle of Skye), but I think this the best so far. She has a knack for creating memorable characters - ordinary people often in extraordinary situations. A great book for historical fiction fans.

Posted by JAM

Catalogue link: The Lost Lights of St Kilda

The Listeners by Anthony J Quinn

This book is a crime thriller set in the gloomy, atmospheric lochs of Edinburgh, Scotland. Detective Sergeant Carla Herron is an inexperienced fast-tracked police officer. Carla is married to David, and has two young children, 3 year old Alice and baby Ben, with David being a stay at home dad. After the birth of her daughter Alice, she changed careers from teaching to the police.

Carla now faces one of her toughest challenges as a police detective. She is tasked with interviewing a patient at Deepwell psychiatric hospital who has confessed to the murder of psychotherapist, Dr Jane Pochard. The confession is vividly detailed but utterly impossible as the man is locked in a secure ward, under 24-hour surveillance. However, Dr Pochard is missing and the staff at Deepwell seem determined to hinder rather than help with the investigation.


Carla finds herself drawn into the dark history of the hospital’s past and uncovers a cult-like group: The Holistic Foundation of Psychotherapists; who seem to have the ability to ruin the careers of mental health practitioners who disagree with them.

I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about this book. Normally I’m a character driven person, I enjoy getting to know them and their lives. In this book it was the plot that drove me to keep reading. I really wanted to know what was happening and was drawn in by the gloomy, almost fantastical and dream-like setting and intricate writing.


At the beginning I struggled to empathise with the main character Carla Herron. She found it difficult to reconcile her job and motherhood, ultimately giving priority to her job at the risk of her home life and mental health. She is admirable in that she shows a tenacity to solve the mystery and a willingness to learn from her taciturn partner Detective Harry Morton.  

The book itself kept me guessing until near the end and I would recommend it if you like atmospheric, intriguing thrillers.

Posted by Ms Lib


Catalogue link: The Listeners

Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

If you have ever watched the television comedy series Black Books, real-life bookseller Shaun Bythell brings to mind Dylan Moran’s grouchy misanthropic book store owner. The Book Shop in Wigtown is in the southwest of Scotland and holds 100 000 mostly second-hand books spread over a mile of shelving. The town (population 1000) has reinvented itself as Scotland’s National Book Town and boasts 11 second-hand book shops and an annual book festival.

The Diary of a Bookseller describes one year in the life of the shop, including Blythell’s frequent foraging in private libraries in old estates, and tolerating his eccentric worker Nicky's weekly rescued food offerings from supermarket skips. There is a certain cosiness to the meandering day to day life and the seasonal changes.

Bythell includes lots of amusing descriptions of some of his customers, and wry observations about their behaviour: ‘...it appears as though someone has loaded his clothes into a cannon and fired them at him’ or ‘It’s a book shop not a rummage sale for goodness’ sake!’.

Bythell's passion for books is equaled by his disdain for the general 'but I can get it cheaper online' public and the online stores. His frustration at the mighty retail giant Amazon drives him to shoot a Kindle ereader, and then mount it on his shop wall akin to a trophy head. He has had to adapt to online book sales despite the frustration of keeping his sales up or losing his ‘ranking’ even when the technological issues are not his fault. Some of the obscure titles people buy from him online border on the farcical, such as Collectible Spoons of the 3rd Reich or Essential Foreign Swear Words.

The Book Shop is set in an amazing Georgian building, and it is well worth looking up photographs online of the store and the beautiful surrounding area; or if you are a total nerd like me, following the Book Shop on Facebook.

If you like books about books, with a dash of mild amusement, put The Diary of a Bookseller on your summer reading list.

Reviewed by Katrina

Catalogue link: Diary of a Book Seller