Book Review | The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall

For almost a decade, Rachel Caine has turned her back on home, kept distant by family disputes and her work monitoring wolves on an Idaho reservation. But now, summoned by the eccentric Earl of Annerdale and his controversial scheme to reintroduce the Grey Wolf to the English countryside, she is back in the peat and wet light of the Lake District.

The earl's project harks back to an ancient idyll of untamed British wilderness—though Rachel must contend with modern-day concessions to health and safety, public outrage and political gain—and the return of the Grey after hundreds of years coincides with her own regeneration: impending motherhood, and reconciliation with her estranged family.

The Wolf Border investigates the fundamental nature of wilderness and wildness, both animal and human. It seeks to understand the most obsessive aspects of humanity: sex, love, and conflict; the desire to find answers to the question of our existence; those complex systems that govern the most superior creature on earth.

***

Between land and sea, day and night, life and death and the like, there lie those borders that, much as we might try, we cannot deny. Equally, though, there are those we impose: make-believe borders drawn to defend against that which we fear, as well as to keep what we want for ourselves within.

Set in the pristine wilderness split down the middle by the border between Scotland and England—as powerful a haunt here as it's ever been—in the run-up to and the aftermath of 2014's hotly fought Independence Referendum, Sarah Hall's fifth work of fiction is a sumptuous study of truth and trust some are sure to slight because it seems slow... but no. The Wolf Border takes longer than I'd like to find its feet, but before long it's toddling confidently, then running rampant—not unlike the near-mythical infant its protagonist produces.

An age ago, wildlife biologist Rachel Caine escaped this close-knit community—most notably her suffocating mother—to run a sanctuary of sorts in Idaho. There, she learned how to live and how to love—not by befriending her fellows, but by watching the wild wolf packs that prowl the plains of the reservation.

At the outset of Hall's novel, Rachel has to head home for her first visit in what feels like forever:

The last ended badly, with an argument, a family riven. She is being called upon to entertain a rich man's whimsy, a man who owns almost a fifth of her home county. And her mother is dying. Neither duty is urgent; both players will wait, with varying degrees of patience. Meanwhile, snow. The Chief Joseph wolves are scenting hoof prints, making forays from the dent. The pups have grown big and ready, any day now they will start their journey. (pp.3-4)

See how the author suggests something of Rachel's situation in the same breath as introducing the wolves? That's not an accident. Next to nothing about this book is. The Wolf Border is almost impossibly purposeful: its every element is meticulously measured, developed with painstaking consideration, before being brought to a carefully controlled conclusion.

Book Review | The Visitors by Simon Sylvester

Nobody moves to the remote Scottish island of Bancree, and few leave—but leaving is exactly what seventeen-year-old Flora intends to do. So when a mysterious man and his daughter move into isolated Dog Cottage, Flo is curious. What could have brought these strangers to the island? The man is seductively handsome but radiates menace; and there's something about his daughter Ailsa that Flo can't help but feel drawn towards.

People aren't only arriving on Bancree—they are disappearing too. Reports of missing islanders fill the press and unnerve the community. When a body washes ashore, suspicion turns to the strange newcomers on Dog Rock.

Convinced of their innocence, Flo is fiercely determined to protect her friend Ailsa. Could the answer to the disappearances, and to the pull of her own heart, lie out there, beyond the waves?

***

A contemporary twist on an old fisherman's myth complete with an immensely atmospheric setting, a strong yet sympathetic central character and a missing persons mystery that'll keep you guessing till all is said and done—and then some—The Visitors by Simon Sylvester has everything including the girl going for it.

For all it has to offer, Bancree has seen better days. As a remote island off the coast of Scotland—bleakly beautiful, to be sure, but truly brutal too—it and its inhabitants have been hit hard by the economy's catastrophic collapse. "There was nothing on the island that wasn't already dying. Half the houses were for sale. The island population numbered only a few hundred, and that dripped away, year on year." (p.5)

Little wonder, as the only booming business on Bancree is whisky, and Lachlan Crane, the son set to inherit the local distillery, is at best "a bully and a womaniser," (p.36) and at worst? Well. Time will tell. For him and for Flo.

Said seventeen-year-old has no intention of taking a job at the Clachnabhan factory when she finishes her final year. She'll be leaving home just as soon as is humanly—like her former boyfriend, who beats her to it at very the beginning of The Visitors. A whipsmart character from the first, Flo knows that Richard isn't the love of her life; still, she feels defeated when he makes a break for the mainland:

Going out with him was an escape—my route to freedom, a cord that connected me to the world outside. Richard had cut that cord, and I felt robbed and hollow, the cavern of my stomach writhing with tiny, wormy things. Frustration, envy, sadness. It should have me who'd escaped into a new life, drinking in bars and meeting new people. It should have been me doing the breaking up. The dumping. (p.83)

One way or the other, the deed is done, and for a moment, Flo is alone; as alone as she's ever been, at least. Then she makes a friend.

Book Review | Descent by Ken MacLeod

How far would you go for the truth? 

Ball lightning. Weather balloons. Secret military aircraft. Ryan knows all the justifications for UFO sightings. But when something falls out of the sky on the hills near his small Scottish town, he finds his cynicism can't identify or explain the phenomenon.

And in a future where nothing is a secret, where everything is recorded on CCTV or reported online, why can he find no evidence of the UFO, nor anything to shed light on what occurred? Is it the political revolutionaries, is it the government or is it aliens themselves who are creating the cover-up?

Or does the very idea of a cover-up hide the biggest secret of all?

***

The truth is out there, somewhere. But pinning it down can be pretty tricky.

In "an iffy skiffy future like none I would or could have imagined in my teens," (p.7) Scotland is independent, airships ride high in the sky, everyone wears capture glasses, and the poke bonnet has come back into fashion. Ridiculous, right? But that's reality, for Ryan—a teenage boy at the beginning of Ken MacLeod's new book whose coming of age over its conspiratorial course is dictated by the close encounter he has in the company of his neanderthal pal Calum.

It's not as if they set out to see something weird—they're just bored boys who decide one day, mid revision, to hike up a hill—but "that's how it always begins," isn't it? "You wanted a walk. It was a wet afternoon and you fancied a drive. The night was vile and you were minded to check on the cow." (p.14) And then the aliens came!

Actually, scratch that. The aliens come a little later. What happens on the hill, where Calum and Ryan are waiting out weather that's taken a turn for the terrible, is unusual, sure, but the "silvery sphere" (p.20) that appears may be no more than a drone, and the blinding white which knocks both boys unconscious for hours afterwards could be ball lightning... right?

They pair are understandably shaken by their shared experience, but whilst Calum learns to live with it, Ryan takes somewhat longer to move on—not least because of his dreams that evening. He is "terrified, but not surprised," to be visited by something other. "The creature was a cliche, your average working alien, a bog-standard Grey. About four and a half feet tall, with a bit oval head, skinny torso, spindly limbs, a ditto of nostrils and a lipless little em-dash of a mouth." (p.44) It transports him to its mothership, where a handsome pair of alien assistants impart some familiar words of wisdom before making our man-in-the-making masturbate and sending said back to bed.

Book Review | The Silver Bough by Lisa Tuttle

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com
IndieBound / The Book Depository

Appleton is a small town nestled on the coast of Scotland. Though it was once famous for the apples it produced, these days it's a shadow of its former self. But in a hidden orchard a golden apple dangles from a silver bough, an apple believed lost for ever.

The apple is part of a legend, promising either eternal happiness to the young couple who eat from it secure in their love — or a curse, for those who take its gift for granted.

Now, as the town teeters on the edge of decline, the old rituals have been forgotten and the mists are rolling in. And in the mist, something is stirring...

***

It's been a long while since we last heard from Lisa Tuttle. After a prolific period in the nineties and early noughties, the award-winning author appears to have gone to ground, and though The Silver Bough has only recently been released here in the UK, it was made available in the United States six years ago. So it's not a new novel... nor does it feel especially fresh.

What The Silver Bough is, on the other hand, is beautiful — particularly this edition of it, with its gorgeous adornment. More notably, I suppose, The Silver Bough's setting is obscenely appealing. Meanwhile its premise is all poise; its characters are undeniably attractive; and Tuttle's prose is almost criminally pretty.

But beauty, as they say, is only skin deep, and beneath the surface, The Silver Bough is a disappointingly noncommittal novel: a modern-day fable about a magical apple that doesn't go far enough, or fast enough. It's perfectly pleasant - easy reading for a few evenings - but a touch overblown, and problematically paced, I'm afraid.

As to that last, the lion's share of the blame can be shared between the three main narrators, all of whom, oddly enough, are Americans living in - or in one case visiting - a remote village in the north of Scotland.

There's the librarian, Kathleen, whose interest in Appleton's history leads to some strange revelations. Then there's the granddaughter of the last Apple Queen: Ashley has come to the country to fill out her family tree, though she secretly hopes to meet a hunkish Highlander while she's here. Last but not least we have Nell, a lonely soul whose only goal is to turn her back garden into an orchard. Little does she know that the key to the village's uncertain future is growing on one of her trees.

Once upon a time - for so this story goes - Appleton was a place famous for the fruit from which it takes its name, but now "the old orchards are gone; the Apple Fair hasn't been held in decades, and everyone has forgotten the real reason behind it. But the magic is still here, deep in the land — and the land knows. Every so often, it offers up a magical gift. The last time, that gift was rejected, and things began to go wrong." (p.254-5) Unless events develop differently on this occasion, Appleton is apt to fall to ruin forever.

The Silver Bough's fantastic last act may be too little, too late for some readers, but for what it's worth, the tale itself resolves relatively well.

My problems, in any event, were with the telling. Kathleen, Ashley and Nell are all outsiders, to a greater or lesser extent, thus the angle they offer on Appleton and its interesting inhabitants is curiously askew. Never mind that their perspectives aren't remotely representative: oftentimes, they're too busy remarking on how wonderfully quaint rural living is to focus on more meaningful matters... for instance the narrative.

Entire chapters pass without incident. Then, when something of note does go down, it's almost always glossed over, the better to get back to what Tuttle is interested in above all else: idling. Which is to say calmly taking in the sights and sounds of what is, admittedly, a pleasant, picturesque place.

The Silver Bough is not a bad novel at all — only disappointing. Some memorable moments - foremost amongst them a creepy encounter with several generations of ancients - are sure to stay with you long after the last chapter. In the interim, the prose is powerful, and the setting is simply tremendous; if this beguiling book doesn't sell you on Scotland, I don't know what will. What frustrates, finally, is that The Silver Bough is only a good book, when it could have been - or should have been, given Tuttle's talents - a truly great text.

***

The Silver Bough
by Lisa Tuttle

UK Publication: July 2012, Jo Fletcher Books
US Publication: December 2006, Spectra

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com
IndieBound / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading

Quoth the Scotsman | Lisa Tuttle on Beauty and the Book

Later this month, the fine folks behind Jo Fletcher Books are reissuing The Silver Bough by Lisa Tuttle. Originally released in the US in 2006, this lovely new edition marks the book's first publication in the UK — which is strange, because it's all about Scotland. Albeit a Scotland populated almost exclusively by Americans.

Now we have our fair share of settlers from The Other Side, sure, but the predominance of incomers in The Silver Bough struck me as oddly unsettling. Last I heard, there were still a few Scots left in the country... though you wouldn't think it from this fruit-based fairytale.

That said, the perspectives Tuttle presents in this text proffer an interesting angle on bonnie Scotland: an inversion of the unavoidable fact that when you spend any amount of time in a place, however amazing it may be, you become blasé about all it has to offer. The Silver Bough's characters, on the other hand, see Scotland for what it is: a space almost outside of time.

"The road leveled out, but then, almost immediately, it began winding downward in a long, slow descent. [Ashley] looked down at a mountainside covered in dark green pines like a pelt of thick fur, and up at a glittering, roaring cascade of water that tumbled steeply down over rocks. There were no buildings anywhere. It was all wilderness, with nothing man-made in sight but the long and winding road. 

"Except for the traffic, there was nothing to fix you to a particular era. The scene was magically timeless. Wander off across that rocky meadow, or into the shelter of that dark forest, far enough to lose the sight and sound of the road, and you might find yourself in another century, meeting some hunky, shaggy, kilted Highlander..." (p.18)

Other than the idea of wild Highlanders, Tuttle hits the nail on the head here, and later, she touches on another of my lifelong loves.

Can you tell what it is yet? :P

"She loved the look, the heft, the weight, the smell and the fact of books — all those miniature embodiments of other lives, other times. Thoughts and dreams preserved for posterity to be summoned back to life through the act of reading. The buzz these days was all about the Internet, the world of online, digital knowledge, the necessity of being connected. But even though she accepted that the Net was not merely the waves of the future but the fact of present-day life, and did miss the access to it that she'd taken for granted in her old job, on an emotional level it could not compare, for her, with the magic of an old-fashioned, printer, real book. It was that, and a childhood fantasy of being able to live in a library, which had really decided her choice of career, no matter what sensible reasons she might tell other people." (p.49)

I'll have a full review of The Silver Bough ready to post on The Speculative Scotsman shortly, but for the moment, know that it's as unassumingly lovely as it sounds... if a little slower than I might like.

Film Review | A Lonely Place to Die, dir. Julian Gilbey

I had high hopes for A Lonely Place to Die. I don't know why. Perhaps I'll die?

In all likelihood it was the spectre of several other, far better films that did it. Almost every review I'd read of A Lonely Place to Die made reference to The Wicker Man, that bastion of creepy Scottish cinema - though it was made by an Englishman, funnily enough - and the opening moments reminded me a great deal of Scotch director Kevin Macdonald's majestic Touching the Void.

Fitting, then, that this is another film involving Scotland. Sadly it's a bad one; ambitious, but ultimately utter rubbish.

For a few moments at the very outset - before the credits have even rolled - A Lonely Place to Die seems like it might be worth the film it was shot on. Melissa George out of 30 Days of Night, which I didn't actually despise, and a couple of her mates - never mind their names - are rock-climbing up a sheer cliff somewhere in the nightmarish highlands of my great nation. They're getting Away From It All... including any real hope of help, should things go poorly.

Then, as if on cue, there's a near miss.

All the major players come away from it unscathed, but even so, it's quite thrilling. I'll give the film this: for nearly an entire minute, it does make you think... that halfway up a windswept mountain in the middle of nowhere would indeed be a dodgy place to bite the proverbial bullet.

It's hardly a claim to fame, nor indeed is it a reason to watch this nonsense, but I'm sorry to say A Lonely Place to Die doesn't get any better. In fact, immediately after the titles, things take a turn for the worse: our characters reveal themselves to be useless city-mouse idiots, to a one, and incredibly unpleasant people to boot.

Thankfully someone starts knocking them off in quick succession after they come across a Serbian girl buried in a chipboard box in the midst of the wilderness the next day, whilst eating Mackerel and egg sandwiches. They dig her up like good tourists and formulate a daring plan of action. Melissa George and one of her associates will throw themselves head-first off the nearest rocky outcropping, the better to raise the alarm a little quicker, meanwhile all the other folks will run about like ninnies until someone shoots them too.

I mean... really. Mackerel and egg sandwiches!

Melissa George is singularly dreadful in the lead role - mawkish, moody, and thoroughly unconvincing as someone with the slightest clue what they're doing - but she's still amongst the best of a bad, bad lot. A couple of supporting players manage to come out of A Lonely Place to Die largely unscathed: The Borgias' Sean Harris makes for a suitably cold-blooded killer, and Eamonn Walker from Oz is decent as mercenary muscle on the other end of the spectrum, but unless there was a huge wad of cash on the table, and I can't see how that could have been the case, I don't even want to know what drove them to this new low.

That's just a taste of all that A Lonely Place to Die has to offer. On the bright side, I suppose there are some bleakly beautiful establishing shots of Scotland... director and co-writer Julian Gilbey stages a few reasonably interesting scenes... and there's certainly some small promise in the premise. But it's every inch of it squandered by bad acting, an obscenely obvious script, and in general an overwhelming sense that no-one, whether behind the camera or before it, has a notion as to what they - or this film - is about.

One other thing: there are far too many characters in service of what is essentially a story that's been told a hundred times a hundred times better before. Think Hostel in Scotland meets Dog Soldiers without the dogs, or better yet: don't bother. To be fair, by the point at which this particularly pitiful attempt to make a uniformly miserable movie interesting had become altogether unwieldy, I could have cared less; I just wanted A Lonely Place to Die to be over.

Eventually, it was. So it could have been worse!

Film Review | Valhalla Rising, dir. Nicholas Winding Refn

Movies are a lot like meals, if you think about it. Most will go in one end and - pardon me for saying so - out the other; these are sustenance of the basest variety. They keep you going, but the memory of them is never more than a trace, and not even that for long. However, there are also those films, and those foods, more about the art than the end result... those experiences which will remain with you for years to come, imprinted upon your memory like scars - fading with the passage of time, perhaps, but never to disappear entirely.

Valhalla Rising is an experience squarely of that latter variety, and it is powerful enough to leave a festering wound in its wake.

Shot entirely on location in Scotland - my own back yard at that! - Valhalla Rising is an elegaic chronicle of a quest for vengeance, and redemption. Danish writer/director Nicholas Winding Refn, whose oddball work on Bronson you will surely recall, bids us follow a mute warrior known only as One-Eye from a time spent in wretched captivity, through an escape aided by visions, and finally on a pilgrimage to the holy land. But when One-Eye arrives in the country his lurid dreams have heralded, he and the men who follow him - including Are, a boy slave of the same Norse chieftain who caged One-Eye for so long, and Kare, who hopes to see his dead sons again - they find not heaven, but hell.

Valhalla Rising is only loosely narrative-driven, and I dare say it is no more character-driven than that, though Mads Mikkelsen's bravura performance gives One-Eye an emotional arc of sorts. Rather, it's all about the land, and the life of the land; about a time and a place so forbidding that men and all they strive to do, and die for, are meaningless - so much miserable drizzle in the wind, which seems unceasing throughout Valhalla Rising.

Or perhaps not, for Refn's latest and surely greatest resists such pat understanding at almost every stage. What it is one moment is not at all what it is the next. It is, thus, a difficult film which demands a certain cerebral investment in order to appreciate on any level, but be sure your devotion will pay a handsome dividend when all is said and done.

Now I do not mean to suggest Valhalla Rising is devoid of action. Skulls are crushed, insides are aired out, and at least one head is detached from its traditional resting place and mounted on a pike. When the violence comes - in sudden, shattering bursts set to a spare soundtrack by PeterPeter and Peter Kyed momentarily swollen to an oppressive cacophony of churning - you will not mistake it, nor soon forget it.

Yet I cannot imagine action fans will come away from Valhalla Rising satisfied. Life for those folks One-Eye comes to blows with proves nasty, brutish and short, and the violence which inevitably results from these close encounters is not so much satisfying in itself as it is sickening. Add to that: there is no clear thread to grasp at in the intervening periods between one fight and another. As to how devotees of Refn's more visceral (and rather less artful) Pusher trilogy will react to this film, it's really anyone's guess.

And the hatchet swings both ways. Just as Valhalla Rising's transcendent tack is sure to dissuade one vast camp of viewers, so too will the occasional explosions of gruesome gore and industrial grinding offend such sensibilities as to inspire another - the arty and the farty - to prepare precious arguments about bad taste and the state of entertainment today.

Yet there will be those who can both stomach the sight of stomachs, and invest in the contemplative interim in the stirring sights and sounds of Scotland as was. Those folks - though there may only be a few of them - will come away from Valhalla Rising staggered, as I did, and single-handedly sold on anything Nicholas Winding Refn sets his sights on going forward, as I am.