There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

I read this as an ebook but got hold of a copy of the hardback when it came out and wish I’d read it in hardback or even waited for the paperback to come out, for the simple reason that I prefer the amount of white space those two formats often provide around the text. Something which is important here, when the book contains so many of Grigor McWatt’s poems, as it helps to form a useful and marked break between the biographer Mhairi’s work and the poet’s own memoirs.

Including the poems contributed to my enjoyment of the book. It was fun to try and read them aloud, and then work out what they were saying before checking the source or inspiration behind it. I didn’t read many of the longer poems in their entirety, though, and have to confess that I skipped most later sections once the novelty had worn off.

Mhairi McPhail embarks on some literary detective work, and another aspect of Hame which I relished was in trying to put the pieces together and solve the enigma that is Grigor McWatt before his biographer did.

As the story of this loner bard, who is most well known for a popular song it irks him to hear being sung in his presence, is revealed, Annalena McAfee looks at the theme of identity and what it is to belong to people and places. Why we are drawn to some but repelled by others. Hame also meshes fiction with real events and people from Scotland’s past, which sometimes led me to google and check who was real and who was fictional.

There’s a great deal to like about Hame: the island setting, the characters, the ways in which mother and daughter adjust to their new home, or don’t, the use of real people and events as a backdrop and to lend veracity to the characters and setting, and the underlying themes of identity and belonging. Hame is as much of a rascal as its elusive bard, and well worth a wee look.

For me this was an average read - the pacing was inconsistent and at times I struggled to get through it.

I don't think this book will ever live up to the high expectations that come from the author's prowess as a literary reviewer and her husband's author status.

I did enjoy it and thought it was beautiful strange in its delivery of this intriguing and sometimes mystical story. I would read work by this author again.

I found this a difficult read. Some I found really interesting but the historical elements not so much.

Although I found the blurb very intriguing and I was expecting a very interesting read, I am afraid I could not get past the first 100 pages of this book. I didn't find the prose very engaging and I could not really understand where the plot, if any, was leading so I realised this book was not for me and had to give up reading it. Maybe a different reader, with other expectations would find the book interesting and would appreciate the intentions and skills of the author.
Nonetheless, I would like to thank the publisher and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read a free ARC copy in exchange of an honest review.

I live in Scotland, am interested in Scottish culture and history, but found this to be tedious, rambling and self-indulgent. Could not get very far before giving up.

Review of an ARC from the publisher.

Far too many references to other works and very little storyline to get involved in so I gave up.

I wasn't sure what to make of this tale - was it an gentle pastiche or was it supposed to be more? Mhairi and her daughter move from New York to a remote Scotland as she is commissioned to write the biography of a poet, Grigor. Parts of the book were beautiful, especially the genuine love for Scotland but parts felt overly self-indulgent. I would not dismiss McAfee as a writer but I feel this book tried to pull in too many directions to be truly successful

(.3.5 stars) The subtitle, “The Fascaray Archives,” gives an idea of how thorough McAfee means to be: the life of fictional poet Grigor McWatt is her way into everything that forms the Scottish identity. Her invented island of Fascaray is a carefully constructed microcosm of Scotland from ancient times to today. I loved the little glimpses of recent history, like the referendum on independence and a Donald Trump figure, billionaire “Archie Tupper,” bulldozing an environmentally sensitive area to build his new golf course (this really happened, in Aberdeenshire in 2012).

Narrator Mhairi McPhail arrives on Fascaray in August 2014, her nine-year-old daughter Agnes in tow. She’s here to oversee the opening of a new museum, edit a seven-volume edition of McWatt’s magnum opus, The Fascaray Compendium (a 70-year journal detailing the island’s history, language, flora, fauna and customs), and complete a critical biography of the poet. Over the next four months she often questions the feasibility of her multi-strand project. She also frets about her split from Marco, whom she left back in New York City after their separate infidelities. And her rootlessness – she’s Canadian via Scotland but has spent a lot of time in the States, giving her a mixed-up heritage and accent – is a constant niggle.

Mhairi’s narrative sections share space with excerpts from her biography of McWatt and extracts from McWatt’s own writing: The Fascaray Compendium, newspaper columns, letters to on-again, off-again lover Lilias Hogg, and Scots translations of famous poets from Blake to Yeats. We learn of key events from the island’s history through Mhairi’s biography and McWatt’s prose, including ongoing tension between lairds and crofters, Finnverinnity House being used as a Special Ops training school during World War II, a lifeboat lost in a gale in the 1970s, and the way the fishing industry is now ceding to hydroelectric power.

The balance between the alternating elements isn’t quite right – sections from Mhairi’s contemporary diary seem to get shorter as the novel goes along, such that it feels like there’s not enough narrative to anchor the book. Faced with yet more Scots poetry and vocabulary lists, or passages from Mhairi’s dry biography, it’s mighty tempting to skim.

That’s a shame, as the novel contains some truly lovely writing, particularly in McWatt’s nature observations:

In July and August, on rare days of startling and sustained heat, dragonflies as blue as the cloudless skies shimmer over cushions of moss by the burn while the midges, who abhor direct sunlight, are nowhere to be seen. Out to sea, somnolent groups of whales pass like cortèges of cruise ships and around them dolphins and porpoises joyously arc and dip as if stitching the ocean’s silken canopy of turquoise, gentian and cobalt.

For centuries male Fascaradians have sailed in the autumn, at the time of the ripe barley and the fruiting buckthorn, to hunt the plump young solan geese or gannets – the guga – near their nesting sites on the uninhabited rock pinnacles of Plodda and Grodda. No true Fascaradian can suffer vertigo since the scaling of these granite towers is done without the aid of mountaineers’ crampons or picks.

“Hame” means home in Scots – like in McWatt’s claim to fame, the folk-pop song “Hame tae Fascaray” – and themes of home and identity are strong here. The novel asks to what extent identity is bound up with a particular country and language, and whether we can craft our own selves. Must the place you come from always be the same as the home you choose? I could relate to Mhairi’s feeling that there’s nowhere she belongs, whether she’s in the bustle of New York or “marooned on a patch of damp peat floating in the North Sea.”

Although the blend of elements initially made me think that this would resemble A.S. Byatt’s Possession, it’s actually more like Rachel Cantor’s Good on Paper, which similarly stars a scholar who’s a single parent to a precocious daughter. In places I was also reminded of the work of Scarlett Thomas, Sara Maitland and Sarah Moss, and there’s even an echo of Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks in the inventories of dialect words.

If you’ve done much traveling in Scotland, an added pleasure of the novel is trying to spot places you’ve been. (I thought I could see traces of Stromness, Orkney; indeed, McWatt reminded me most of Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown.) The comprehensive, archival approach didn’t completely win me over, but I was impressed by the book’s scope and its affectionate portrait of a beloved country. McAfee is of Scots-Irish parentage herself, and you can tell this is a true labor of love, and a cogent tribute.

A narrative that explores identity, love, belonging and the universal search for home.

Mhairi McPhail very tidily packs up her life and relationship in New York and moves to the remote Scottish island of Fascaray in the Hebrides with her nine year old daughter, Agnes. She has accepted a commission to write a biography of the late, internationally renowned, Scottish poet, Grigor McWatt.

But who was the cantankerous old man? As she sifts through his house, poems, letters and journals she hopes to unlock a hoard of truth-telling treasures that will illuminate the life and work of the Bard of Fascaray, the poet regarded by many as the custodian of Fascaray’s and Scotland’s soul. On top of all this she has to struggle to adapt to her new life on this remote island cut off from much of the world.

There are extracts from Mhairi’s journal, Grigor’s letters and poems and his evocative journal ramblings about life on the island. There are many parts of the book that are unintelligible unless you are Scottish, and the poems are particularly difficult to make sense of. But the book aptly conveys the beauty of the island, the hardship of life these and the special types of people it takes to live there.

Saphira

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review

I could not finish this book. I couldn't get into it at all and it held no interest for me at all. I can't imagine many people sticking with it past the first few pages which were jam-packed with information in a style that just put me off.

I don't think my review will help in any way to sell this book so I haven't published it online.

I'm really sorry but this book just wasn't for me. I tried to get into it but really wasn't enjoying it.

Somehow I just couldn't get interested in this book. I have delay my review and reread most of it, but it's just not for me. A little bit boring and slow. Really sorry.

I am sorry but I was unable to finish this book. I think perhaps I requested the wrong book for me. I managed to read to around 17% in the hope that the story would start but it never seemed to get anywhere.

The book starts with a very detailed description of Fascaray describing the topography in great detail, the climate, the geology of the area, the villages, ruins, compiled from previous writings from Roman and Viking times, a description of what the various raiders would have seen from above if they had been able to fly; a bit of history and then what Mhairi McPhail saw as was approaching Fascaray. The language used to be fair painted a vivid picture in my head but this part of the book was just too long. I might have been more comfortable with fewer words and a couple of drawn maps of the area. I felt as if it read like a school text book and I was back at school in the 1960s being forced to read a book full of facts. I didn't find the writing style very engaging. There is just too much information.

Then we get information about the 'famous' Grigor McWatt. I know that is the point of the book - Mhairi is spending two years in Fascaray researching into Grigor McWatt's past. There is blend of present and past, with inserts of McWatt's writings and poems. Maybe that is where I got the feeling of reading an old school book but I found I was getting slightly muddled as to what was McWatt's writing and when it changed to the voice of Mhairi.

On top of all that much of the poetry was writting in the Scots tongue (and some in Gaelic). I am Scottish, am familiar with some Scots language (but not an expert) but in the book some of it was just too obscure and too much. At the back of my mind I felt the author was kind of showing off how much knowledge she has and had to put it in the book. Personally, I found it a bit irritating. Less is more. However I accept it is all part of the story of the poet and writer Grigor McWatt

I tried to keep reading in the hope that I would get to more of the present day story - I want to know more about Mhairi and her daughter and how the settle into life on the island or not, but I didn't really get that far.

I would kick myself if the story picked up a few pages further on but I just feel I cannot read any more - for me, it was becoming a chore and as I read mainly for pleasure and entertainment, it should not be a chore.

I am sorry I could not finish the book.

I really enjoyed thia book i was hooked from the srart and read within a few days.