THE GIRL ON THE FERRYBOAT
BY ANGUS PETER CAMPBELL (Luath Press £12.99)
By Harry Ritchie
Here's a strange one - a novel written
and published in both Gaelic and English at the same time. Aonghas
Phadraig Caimbeul, as the other edition of the book calls him, is an
award-winning Gaelic writer who advertises his skill and the quiet
virtues of his culture in this at-times-wonderful evocation of lost and
found love.
The book’s key
event is a moment where nothing actually happens - the narrator passes a
girl on a staircase on a ferryboat in the Western Isles. He is forever
smitten, haunted by that moment, doomed to live a half-life . . . until
he meets her again, in exactly the same circumstances, decades later.
It’s
a weird boldness to rely on such a crazy coincidence, but such is the
often dreamy flitting between the present and the past, between real
events and stories, that Campbell actually gets away with his plot
twist.
This unlikely but
memorable love-story is complemented by others, including a particularly
touching portrait of an old and very contented couple. All against the
magnificent backdrop of the Western Isles.