Hame - Hardcover

"Transportive and immersive." (Jonathan McAloon Financial Times)

"This searching and eloquent novel muses on identity, love and belonging." (Hepzibah Anderson Mail on Sunday)

"Bristling with life and passion and wit." (The Herald)

"Hame treads a line between light-hearted satire and a discussion on notions of home and belonging... A hugely entertaining, roller-coaster of a ride through poetry and language" (Liam Carson The Irish Times)

"Richly textured... The emotional complexity of the writing matches the landscape of the island and its surroundings." (Philip Womack Literary Review)

"There are joyful winks and allusions everywhere... an affectionate rebuke to Scots nationalists who pretend that questions of national identity are straightforward... 'hame' isn't so much where you're born, as where you hing yer bunnet'" (Sam Kitchener Daily Telegraph)

"Real historical figures interact with the fictional ones, blurring the book’s boundaries. It’s an immersive world, from smoky pubs in 1960s Edinburgh, filled with arguing poets, to the lovely descriptions of the island of Fascaray... Settle in your own home and explore." (Emerald Street)

"Ultimately, Hame is a novel about identity; both with specific regard to Scottish character and nationalism and to broader questions of how we attach ourselves to people over place, or vice versa, and of how we construct our personal life stories." (Will Gore Evening Standard)

"A remarkable performance." (Allan Massie Scotsman)

"Exploration of the idea that identity is a creative construct, not just the product of geography, but the imagination." (Claire Allfree Daily Mail)

Hame, n. Scottish form of ‘home’: a valued place regarded as a refuge or place of origin

In the wake of the breakdown of her relationship, Mhairi McPhail dismantles her life in New York and moves with her 9-year-old daughter, Agnes, to the remote Scottish island of Fascaray. Mhairi has been commissioned to write a biography of the late Bard of Fascaray, Grigor McWatt, a cantankerous poet with an international reputation.

But who was Grigor McWatt? Details of his past – his tough childhood and his war years as a commando – are elusive, and there is evidence of a mysterious love affair which Mhairi is determined to investigate. As she struggles to adapt to her new life, and put her own troubled past behind her, Mhairi begins to unearth the astonishing secret history of the poet regarded by many as the custodian of Fascaray’s – and Scotland’s – soul.

A dazzling, kaleidoscope of a novel, Hame layers extracts from Mhairi’s journal, Grigor’s letters and poems and his evocative writing about the island into a compelling narrative that explores identity, love and the universal quest for home.