The women of the tiny town of Fetter-Rothnie have grown used to a life without men, and none more so than the tangle of mothers and daughters, spinsters and widows living at the Weatherhouse. Returned from war with shellshock, Garry Forbes is drawn into their circle as he struggles to build a new understanding of the world from the ruins of his grief. In The Weatherhouse, Nan Shepherd paints an exquisite portrait of a community coming to terms with the brutal losses of war, and the small tragedies, yearnings, and delusions that make up a life. The second installment in The Grampian Quartet, The Weatherhouse is widely considered Shepherd's masterpiece and one of the most important works of Scottish modernism.
"A blazingly brilliant writer . . . She's so far ahead of us - we're always only starting to catch Nan up. Philosophically and stylisstically, she was extraordinary." --Robert MacFarland
Pressingly modern . . . Pinpoints timeless philosophical debates about the naming of things and our relationship to the environment--AMY LIPTROT
A blazingly brilliant writer . . . She's so far ahead of us - we're always only starting to catch Nan up. Philosophically and stylistically, she was extraordinary--ROBERT MACFARLANE
Largely unrecognised during her lifetime, Nan Shepherd is finally being acclaimed for her literary legacy - and her books are influencing a whole new generation of writers . . . The Weatherhouse - Shepherd's second novel . . . widely considered her best--Chitra Ramaswamy "The Scotsman "
Anna (Nan) Shepherd was born in 1893 and died in 1981. Closely attached to Aberdeen and her native Deeside, she graduated from her home university in 1915 and for the next forty-one years worked as a lecturer in English. An enthusiastic gardener and hill-walker, she made many visits to the Cairngorms with students and friends. She also travelled further afield - to Norway, France, Italy, Greece and South Africa - but always returned to the house where she was raised and where she lived almost all of her adult life, in the village of West Cults, three miles from Aberdeen on North Deeside. To honour her legacy, in 2016, Nan Shepherd's face was added to the Royal Bank of Scotland five-pound note.
Amy Liptrot has published her work with various magazines, journals and blogs and she has written a regular column for Caught by the River out of which The Outrun has emerged. As well as writing for her local newspaper, Orkney Today, and editing the Edinburgh Student newspaper, Amy has worked as an artist's model, a trampolinist and in a shellfish factory. This is her first book.
Conogate Books
Pub Date: December 22, 2016
0.7" H x 7.7" L x 5.0" W
224 pages
paperback