This was quite hard book to get into a first, but trust me, it is worth sticking with it!, It is well written and the storyline is pretty unique. I now know a bit about wireless telegraphy from when it was still in the experimental stage!
It is set in Rathlin, a remote Irish island, at the very end of the nineteenth century.
I did chuckle at one of the lines in the book where the village gossip said about the contusions the men broth with them could steal a person's words and transmit them through thin air :-)
As well as the experiments with the wireless communications there is a young woman named Nuala. Abandoned by her family for the new world, she receives a proposal from the island's aging tailor. For the price of a roof over her head, she accepts..
Nuala is sent to cook for the engineers and there she meets an Italian man called Gabriel.
A meeting that could change Nuala's life forever!

The Watch House was not what I expected, but so much better than I'd anticipated. I read and enjoyed McGill's previous novel, but found The Watch House to be so much better, and worth the wait. I knew that the story centred around Marconi's experiments/work on Rathlin island, but didn't expect the human drama which played out alongside the technological advances.

This is really a book about language, things said and unsaid, the ways we translate others' words, and the ways language shapes experiences. As a semi-local reader I found the depiction of nineteenth century Rathlin fascinating, and I loved all the local names, though I do wonder whether other readers would need a glossary!

At the centre of The Watch House is the true story of experiments in telegraphic communication undertaken by Marconi in 1898 for Lloyds of London. The work was carried out between Ballycastle and Rathlin Island, the northernmost point of Northern Ireland, and in those days, an area of busy shipping lanes.
If this is the first novel based on these events, then the wait has been worthwhile. This is a fascinating and entertaining book. Bernie McGill combines a skilful presentation of the development of wireless communication with as good a set of fictional characters as you will come across.
Nuala Byrne’s family has emigrated to Newfoundland and she waits at home to look after her grandparents for their lifetime. Fallen on hard times in the new continent, her parents cannot afford to send Nuala her passage as planned, so her only choice, now alone, is to find a suitable husband. Options are limited, so she marries Ned McQuaid , thirty years her senior, and finds she has also acquired his older toothless, scheming sister Ginny, for whom she becomes maid of all work.
When work starts on the island, the locals are curious and worried about all these words now flying through the airwaves. Nuala is offered work cooking for the engineers, and gradually show herself to be a good student at learning and transmitting Morse code.
The pace of this read is faultless. When Nuala returns home each day from her work at the Watch House, Ginny enquires about the day’s events up there as a refrain to each set of events as they unfold. The dialogue is calm and elegant, (although there will be readers who might prefer a glossary of terms), sometimes darkly amusing but more often just dark and bleak.
This is a wonderfully researched historical snapshot and as good a read as you will find.
Thanks to Netgalley and Headline Tinder Press

I found The Watch House quite a hard read, in that I had to read it slowly. I needed every little piece of information to be absorbed thoroughly, or I would lose track and have to go back over previous pages again.

The story is heartbreaking and poignant, yet fully captivating. The information regarding Marconi’s Men, and the work they did was all based on true facts about Marconi using the small island off the coast of Ireland to test his wireless link between Rathlin Island and Ballycastle.

The book has a wonderful cast of characters, from those that you will have pure empathy for, to those who seem like they are filled with evil.

I was full absorbed by the writing, and the immense research that McGill has put into her work to make this a book that you want to take your time with. This is not a novel to rush, but one to savour.

It’s books like this one, that bring to the forefront what the past generations were like, and how hard they had it. This is an extraordinary story, both immensely tragic and heartening at the same time.

The Watch House begins with the birth of a child, a sick mother, and an unknown woman involving herself in a way that you suspect she shouldn't be.

Fionnuala (Nuala) Bryne is about to make a life changing move to Canada, to be with the parents who abandoned her when she was young, when the local Tailor makes his own life changing proposal of Marriage.

Nuala had given up hope of finding someone, knowing realistically that her parents would eventually send for her. But then the news arrives that they don't have the money for her passage and so she accepts the Tailor's offer.

The Tailor is decades older than her and lives with his interfering sister, Ginny. Nuala expected her to be gone when she married and moved in with the Tailor (Ned, but everyone calls him the Tailor) but has no such luck.

Not far from the Tailor's house is a place known as the Watch House, a place where Marconi has sent one of his engineers to carry out some test transmissions with the wireless telegraphy he has developed. Nuala is drawn there by a stranger asking for food in exchange for payment.

Nuala is a good cook, and the Tailor and Ginny are grateful for the extra money. Soon Nuala is swept into a world of codes and secrets, and she realises that there is more to life than a roof over your head and a makeshift family.

The Watch House is a very poetic novel in the language used, and this only makes it all the more captivating. Whilst there's plenty more I could say about it, I won't for fear of giving anything away. Just know that you need to discover this novel for yourself.

Rathlin Island lies off the cost of Country Antrim and is the northernmost point in Northern Island. In 1898 the East Lighthouse on Rathlin was used by Gulielmo Marconi to successfully transmit the first commercial radio signals across water from the lighthouse to Ballycastle on the Northern Irish mainland.

Rathlin Island is also an island full of myth and folklore, an island that in 1898 was still somehow stuck in a time warp, many unwilling to embrace the new fashions and ways that were slowly creeping in from the mainland.

It was also a time of great hardship as islanders struggled to scrape a living, many leaving for the mainland or emigrating to America to seek their fortune.

Set against this backdrop we meet Nuala, alone in her family home barely earning enough to keep herself clothed and fed. Her parents, brother and sisters long since gone to Newfoundland and her grandparents now dead, Nuala is waiting for her parents to send money for the passage to join them. When word from her family arrives that life is not much better and funds are not available Nuala is forced into accepting a marriage proposal from the Tailor. Moving into to his newly renovated house she is unprepared for the wrath of his sister Ginnie, who treats her pretty much as the housemaid and with obvious contempt.

When engineers from the mainland arrive to carry out experiments with wireless telegraphy on behalf of Marconi she is sent by Ginnie, always eager to make money, to cook their evening meal. What Nuala doesn't expect is her friendship with the engineer Gabriel, a man who recognises Nuala's intelligence and to the annoyance of local lighthouse keeper Tam Casey, teaches her the rudiments of morse code and telegraphy. As their friendship turns to love Nuala's marriage to the tailor, and life with his sister becomes a prison from which there is no escape and events slowly spiral out of control changing Nuala's life forever.

From the heartrending first chapter this novel drew me in and didn't let me go until i read the last page and closed the book.

First of all we had the island setting. An island that could be beautiful one minute, and wild and desolate, cut off from the mainland next. An island where the community is tight knit, where everyone knows everyone's business, where secrets are hard to keep.

Then you have the characters. Nuala, alone, slightly apart from the rest of her community, willing to accept her lot in life, yet willing to take risks realising her love for Gabriel may be the only chance she has of happiness no matter how shortlived.

Gabriel, Italian, full of new ideas, patient teacher, drawing Nuala in, promising nothing, yet always the perfect gentleman, always honest about his feelings for Nuala and their relationship.

The Tailor is portrayed as a pathetic, weak man, forever under the influence of sister Ginnie. Ginnie, herself is bitter and twisted, jealous of Nuala's intrusion in the life she shares with her brother. Her actions are those of an unhappy woman, a woman who thinks nothing of inflicting the cruelest thing imaginable on Nuala, never once thinking of the consequences.

This fantastic combination of setting and characterisation are wonderfully done by McGill. The island's weather perfectly matches the mood of the characters, creating wonderful imagery and drama. I had vivid images of Nuala battling the wind and the rain as she roamed the island in despair.

McGill cleverly weaved in the story of Marconi and the development of telegraphy and communications, using it to highlight the slow disintegration of island life, of the diminishing belief in the old ways and folklore, so prevalent on the island. You could clearly see the future for those island folk who resented and feared the new ways.

McGill has written a novel that will have you feeling a full range of emotions, from despair and anger to sheer joy. I have to admit to shedding a tear at the end, a sign of a novel that has held me in its clutches and not let me go until the very end.

I was delighted to be invited on the blogtour for The Watch House and would like to thank @Phoebe_Swinburn and @TinderPress for a proof copy to read and review.

This book is really something special and reading it has proved total addiction as the author plays expertly with my emotions often leading me down the path of utter shock. What at first glance might seem a pleasant tale about the inhabitants of Rathlin island welcoming Mr Marconi and is magical wireless telegraphy soon turns into an altogether sinister affair.

Nuala Byrne living alone on the island (having been deserted by her family when they moved to Newfoundland) is content to wed Ned McQuaid, the Tailor even though he is 30 years her senior. She is however attracted to the fact that he is a man of some means and living in a well built house. When Gabriele Donati arrives on Rathlin to help oversee and utilise this new technology Nuala finds herself strangely attracted to him and now has time to reflect that maybe her marriage to the Tailor was a mistake. To say much more about the plot would spoil the hidden surprises, and the decisions that Nuala Byrne is about to make will alter her life and have a lasting impact on many of the inhabitants.

After a truly exceptional opening prologue the first part of the book shows an island slowing acknowledging and accepting the genius that is Marconi. This idyll is soon to be shattered by an evil act and the unravelling of the mind of a pretty young girl. Bernie McGill has the ability to retain a strong hold on the reader and there is no doubt that she is in total control, at times offering false security only to have this eroded by the evil that men do. There is some wonderful prose...."I was to lie quietly in the dark on my wedding night, it advised, and await my husband's arrival. I was to desist from moving around too much until the act of consummation was complete."...."It'll double as a christening robe when the time comes, she said winking at me. That's if the Tailor has any juice left in him."....."The tremble that grows and passes between us is like the first test notes of the fiddle, the song warming in the singer's throat, the drumming on the skin of the bodhran, till we find a rhythm that suits us both"......"He looks like a painted wooden puppet whose strings have all been cut. He looks like all the movement have left him."

Many thanks to good people of netgalley for a gratis copy in exchange for an honest review and that is what I have written. Highly recommended.

An enjoyable read from start to finish. I found the story really quite moving at times. I would recommend this book to others

Separated from her family who have emigrated to Newfoundland, Nuala thinks marriage will give her, if nothing else, security and a house of her own. Instead she finds herself saddled with a husband – the Tailor – many years her senior and unfulfilled both physically and emotionally: ‘I’m as trapped on this island, in this house, as I ever was before.’ Not to mention the Tailor’s malevolent sister, Ginny, who treats Nuala like a skivvy.

Intelligent, resourceful and relatively well-educated, Nuala finds herself constrained by her situation, social expectations and the customs of the islands. With her knowledge of healing and herbal remedies, handed down from her grandparents, she also has a sort of otherworldly quality being sensitive to the echoes, whether real or imagined, of those who have gone before on the island. I loved the distinctive voice the author created for Nuala, capturing the rhythm of island dialect.

I found the juxtaposition of past and present in the book really fascinating. The Marconi engineers are bringing cutting edge wireless communication technology to the island yet this is an island that can be cut off for days by bad weather. It’s the turn of the century and there is a sense of change, of a new era on the horizon but there is an equally strong sense of the islanders resisting this change, questioning the need for it.

The history of the island is also evident in the ancient place names, the stories etched into its caves and stones, and the unchanging rhythm of island life.

‘I stand on Crocknascreidlin and watch the boat come in. It’s a good place to stand, on the hill of the screaming women, above the dark hollow of Lagavistevoir. They’re as loud as they were when Drake’s men came and slaughtered all the men of the island. I am silent. I let them scream for me. They’re keening for my heart.’

Everything changes for Nuala when chance brings her into daily contact with the engineers installing the new technology: ‘They are Marconi’s men, come to catapult their words out over the sea.’ Nuala feels an immediate connection with one of the engineers, an Italian called Gabriel, who recognises Nuala’s potential and teaches her to use the telegraphy equipment. The development of their friendship brings with it consequences that create a wonderfully intense and dramatic story that will also surprise you as events take an unexpected turn. I was strongly reminded of the film Ryan’s Daughter, with its passionate love story and breathtaking scenery.

As well as a wonderfully involving story, I loved the way the author explored themes of communication and translation. Nuala and the other islanders struggle to understand and are suspicious of the concept of wireless communication.

‘Ginny says it’s not right to separate a person from their words, to put that much sea between the two. A body could say anything then and feel no responsibility for it. Who’s to say, she says, that at that remove, those words belonged to a person at all? […] A word is a thing to keep close, always, she says.’

Gabriel, as a native Italian speaker but almost fluent in English, is fascinated by the Gaelic language and the meaning of words. ‘He’s thinking about translation. He’s thinking about the dots and dashes and the chart of the [Morse] code that hangs on the watch house wall.’ Morse code comes to form an important role in Gabriel’s and Nuala’s relationship.

In her fascinating afterword, Bernie McGill writes, ‘As a fiction writer, I am always looking for the gaps between recorded events, the spaces in between’. In this novel, I think she has definitely succeeded in filling those ‘gaps’ and ‘spaces’ with a really involving, compelling story. The Watch House is beautifully written with an atmospheric setting, characters I cared about, and an underlying sense of mystery. For me, it’s the epitome of a good read.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of NetGalley and publishers, Tinder Press, in return for an honest review.

The start of this book is wonderfully dark and bleak. It caught my interest immediately. Set mainly in 1898 & 1899 on Rathlin island in Ireland I found this book rather special. After the dark start the narrative goes back a year and we begin to learn about Nuala Byrne's life. The story weaves the fact that Marconi used the island to test his wireless transmission in Morse from there with Nuala's. Nuala's family have left Ireland for the new world and she is to join them later. However that falls through and she is left with few choices. When she has a proposal of marriage from "The Tailor" of the island she decides to accept.

I did find this quite a slow burn book to start with. The writing has a poetic lilt to it and the language and tone is unquestionably Irish and from an earlier time. There is quite a lot of descriptive writing here; it is great for giving a fullness to the setting and the people but maybe slows things down more than I would have really liked. It is not a book to be read fast nor can it be; it is one to savour. Once I understood that I settled back to enjoy the tale.

Now married Nuala spends some time at the Watch House where the test transmissions are taking place. She begins to understand something of the far wider world. I really did find her one of the better characters I've read in quite some time. I was completely engaged with her and her story. Her life and feelings became clear to me and I understood and empathised. I really liked the ending of this book - something I rarely say. All in all this is a powerful and moving story. I found it deeply satisfying as a read in some way I find hard to explain.

With thanks to Headline/Tinder Press for the opportunity to read this.

A terrifically emotive first chapter sets the tone of foreboding that continues right through to the end. The action settles down after that first burst and we see the dull, impoverished grind Nuala is born into, with few opportunities for change. She is trapped on a small island, is married to a much older man and shares her house with his waspish, malevolent sister. But no sooner has she resigned herself to her limited circumstances than the most exciting thing happens. Marconi’s wireless men are setting up a station in the Watch House and Nuala becomes involved, first as cook and later as assistant to the exotic Italian running the show on Rathlin island. She is entranced, by both Gabriel and the whole process of the wireless telegraph, and sees how constricted her little world is. The omens for a happy outcome are not good, but Nuala thinks she has little to lose, until the time comes when she does have something to lose, and there lies the tragedy foreshadowed at the beginning of the book. There is a nice twist at the end which I won’t spoil, but it goes some way to relieve the bleakness of Nuala’s story.

A very descriptive novel in terms of landscape, strong on atmosphere, and with some memorable characters, all of which I enjoyed. Masses of detail about the early days of wireless I loved rather less but it served to highlight how new and magical-seeming the technology was for the people of late 19th century Ireland and how far removed from modern society Rathlin was. Historical fiction with a twist of romance, perhaps I’d recommend more for a winter fireside than a beach read.