"Island Voices" by Fiona MacDonald

Date: 04 August 2012 10:09:03

I'm on a bit of a Scottish island thing at the moment with my reading - the last book I reviewed here was 'Sea Room' (about the Shiants) and I've just started a book on Shetland, with another on St Kilda towards the top of the 'must read next' pile. This is the library book I finished recently which I enjoyed, it was a fascinating look at the Hebrides. Fiona MacDonald is a journalist of Hebridean descent, and for this book she travelled throughout the Hebrides (Inner and Outer) interviewing people and getting them to tell their stories. It's an impressive range - the youngest would have been about 12, the oldest in their 90s, and they spanned all sorts of backgrounds - born and bred on the islands, incomers, ex-Army, rich, poor, crofters, landowners and everything in-between. As I read through each person's story (each took around 4-5 pages) interesting things emerged around things like preservation of culture -vs- modernisation, the past and future of the Gaelic language, the place of young people in the population and the lure/turnoff of the mainland, how they view and are viewed by outsiders, etc. A really fascinating book, I'm so glad I picked it out to read. Hooray for libraries :)