On a book - quick preview

I am an Island by Tamsin Calidas   - brilliant book.  Someone has used the word 'visceral' to describe it, and it is the  word I would use on how she lived near to nature.  It had a sad beginning, two people setting off for a Scottish Hebridean island, it is not named in the book probably because of the behaviour of the islanders. Husband and wife take on old dilapidated croft, through hard work they do it up, but sadly the husband is playing away and his infidelity breaks her down. She is also has fertility treatment which  does not work.

Off goes husband, sick of the life of self-sufficiency, back to the mainland and London.  She is left alone, and here we come to a twist in the story, she has an Asian parent resulting in a different colour of skin.  It is not accepted by some of the narrow minded people of the island, she is also attractive and the men treat her appallingly.  Let us take some words, bitch, whore, darkie, words that are still used for women.

Think of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC for short) eminently sane speech on being called a bitch and you will understand the humiliation she suffers, the tight rope she has too walk.  But she perseveres, her writing about the natural world is superb, wild swimming in winter, her closeness to the animals around her, her determination to succeed.

Selling her lambs at the local auction is another embarrassing moment for her as the auctioneer offers her as a fine young filly to sell, but she wins the prize in the end it is her sheep that get the most money.

All the time she is made to feel unwanted, it is Hector's croft what the hell is she doing, a single 'incomer' of a woman with no family running it.  She tackles this in the end as she does her life there. What I found from her writing was a life so fully lived and felt through the emotions that one wanted her to succeed - she did! 

And then as if by magic there is a review, or at least words from her book in the Observer.