Findings by Kathleen Jamie and The Lewis Man by Peter May

December 2012

"It's surprising what you can find by simply stepping out to look. Kathleen Jamie, award winning poet, has an eye and an ease with the nature and landscapes of Scotland as well as an incisive sense of our domestic realities. In Findings she draws together these themes to describe travels like no other contemporary writer. Whether she is following the call of a peregrine in the hills above her home in Fife, sailing into a dark winter solstice on the Orkney islands, or pacing around the carcass of a whale on a rain-swept Hebridean beach, she creates a subtle and modern narrative, peculiarly alive to her connections and surroundings."
I was the odd one out in our group on this book.  I couldnt really connect to it.  After discussion though we realised that it was a book to  pick up from time to time and read a chapter - it isnt a book to be read as a whole.  Her writing is very detailed, and you can see her love of nature through it.
Overall Opinion: Fair... a bedside or coffee table book.
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Our second book for the fast readers was Peter May's The Lewis Man.
"An unidentified corpse is recovered from a Lewis peat bog; the only clue to its identity being a DNA sibling match to a local farmer. But this islander, Tormod Macdonald - now an elderly man suffering from dementia - has always claimed to be an only child. When Tormod's family approach Fin Macleod for help, Fin feels duty-bound to solve the mystery."
The main thread does continue from where The Black House left off, going further into Fin's past and present.
Overall Opinion: Great
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