Beside the Ocean of Time

I bought this for £2 from George Kelsall's bookshop in Littleborough. It is a fine example of the best things in life being (nearly) free. The luminously poetic prose generates a warm, satisfied feeling and a desire to savour each word. I had a similar feeling reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road but eventually that book's bleakness made me frightened to turn the page and I had to put it down, hopefully not for ever. Beside the Ocean of Time recounts the history of an Orkney Island told through the dreams of a crofter's son growing up before the Second World War. He is described as "idle and useless" by his school teacher. The small community has accumulated oral history and fable related in pub, smithy and schoolroom. This is suddenly lost when the island is turned into an airstrip to protect Scapa Flow. The poet-narrator leaves for the war and a Bavarian prison camp but returns to the deserted island to live in the beachcomer's hut and to repair an old abandoned fishing boat and toil at his unattainable poem. A ray of hope shines through the haar described in the final pages. The island is not completely deserted.