The Valley at the Centre of the World

This book was so good. I didn't to put it down! The characters were well rounded, and the storyline sucked you into it and made you feel like you were really there. The author did an great job telling this story.

Not a first visit to Shetland islands for me. No, first time was with the eponymous BBC show. One with relatively forgettable prototypical small town cop sort of theme, but absolutely unforgettable scenery. Well, this time returning, a proper literary armchair travel, is much much lovelier. Something about the quiet beauty of this book really resonated with me. And quiet it is indeed, nothing much occurs, just a small cast of characters navigated the vagaries of life and specifically life in a small isolated community with inviting views and forbidding weather. At the centre of the centre of the valley is David and Mary, an older couple, who are the soul of the place. The person older than them has recently passed away, their daughters left, although the boyfriend of one of them chose to stay behind and tries to make a go of it as a crofter with David’s support. Seriously, though, not a plot driven novel, so let’s talk about all the other things that make it great. The descriptions…ah, the author really does justice to his setting and you as a reader can get transported through sheer power of written word all the way to a subarctic archipelago in the Northern isles of Scotland. Pure literary magic. And then there’s the language…which actually initially almost had me pass this book by, all the mentions of phonetic dialect use, that can so really difficult to read and enjoy, but here somehow it works so well. It is mostly David who speaks the proper Shetlandic and though on the paper it looks positively wooly (and why wouldn’t it, given the number of sheep around) when you read it somehow it comes alive, you can actually hear David as it were and it helps immerse you in the atmosphere of the place all the more. In fact, David is perfect stand in for his beloved isle, he is constant, fair, kind, good person, good worker, loves the place he lives in completely and has no desire to be anywhere other than. Wherein his wife has come to love it through association and his not quite son in law is trying it out for size, for David there has never been a question about it, the man knows where he belongs. And through this book you might appreciate why. The sea alone, to be surrounded by it, even the Northern waters, there’s something majestic about that. So there you have it, a lovely novel with lovely characters set in a stunning place of natural beauty. It’s a sort of book to disappear into for a while and with the world being what it is, why wouldn’t you want to. I enjoyed this one very much. Such an engaging reading experience. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.