A Son of the Rock

Harvill Secker, 2018, 309 p, plus iv p Glossary of Chapter Titles and i p Bibliography.

Set on an unnamed Scottish island, The Gloaming is an extended riff on the selkie legend, with additional elements of the fantastic. Mainly concerned with the lives of Islay, Mara and Barra, the three children of an ex-boxer, Peter, and a former ballerina, Signe, incomers to the island who live in a large house – complete with shark jaw for a doorway – which they intend to convert slowly from dilapidation to a hotel, it also explores familial resentments and duties. Barring the first’s, its chapter titles contain one word – ballet terms for those about Signe, boxing ones for Peter, and Scots for the children. While in some cases these are apposite, in others the connection between the title and the chapter’s content seems more than a little forced, if it exists at all.

When inhabitants of the island are about to die they start to slow down. This is an indication they will turn to stone, a fantastical conceit of Logan’s whereby the bodies end up on a hill as statues, a process usually attended by the island’s inhabitants as a ceremonial act but sometimes undertaken alone. This whimsy is not really explored fully as the hub around which the story revolves is Mara, who suffers a facial disfigurement the night she tries (and fails) to rescue Barra from drowning. In later life she forms an attachment to Pearl, a later incomer to the island, whose house lies within a hill and who at first can be read as the embodiment of the selkie legend. On their first meeting Pearl tells Mara she is a mermaid, by which she means she performs as one in an aquatic travelling show. Their later sojourn away from the island as a double act (selkies always leave) is a brief interlude only though. The pull of family is too strong.

Logan does pull off some tricks with apparent narrative viewpoint but her asides on readerly expectation of a story’s destination prefigure too strongly her intentions.

The Gloaming is fine as far as it goes, certainly better, more cohesive, than the author’s previous novel The Gracekeepers.

Pedant’s corner:- “When he arrived he wouldn’t fail to miss her” (context demands, “he wouldn’t fail to see her”,) “the sort that comes in packs of four at discount shops and only shattered if you threw them hard on a tiled floor” (and only shatter if you throw them.) “Didn’t that use to be…” (used to be,) “‘whatever I have to do make her see’” (to do to make her see.) In the Glossary; besom is defined as “a broom, a woman of loose morals and a cheeky child.” (A broom, definitely but I’ve not heard it used in the context of a woman of loose morals, only of one cheeky or nosy) drouthy is given as thirsty for strong drink (it just means thirsty, not necessarily for strong drink,) mauchit (spelled this way the “ch” would be pronounced as in loch; it isn’t. The online dictionary of Scots language has mockit – one instance of maukit – though I have seen mocket.)