The novel Orkney by Amy Sackville will whisk you away to a barren island in the farthest northern reaches of Scotland, where an old university professor and his white-haired, pelagic young wife (once his student) hole up in a wind-battered cabin for their honeymoon. While the girl spends her days on the shore, staring out to see, her doting husband watches her more and more frantically, trying to maintain an already-fragile hold on this mysterious woman whom he loves to obsession.The author's saturated imagery makes the novel seem like poetry in disguise. You will find yourself getting lost in the sound of wind, waves, and water. The voice of the narrator will suck you into his mental web of unquenchable-fixation; and the young woman he has claimed as his own will quickly become just as spellbinding to you as she is to him.
Just to get a sense of Amy Sackville's gorgeous, vivid writing style, here are a couple choice quotes that really lingered with me while I was reading this book:
"She falls asleep instantly; these few nights I have spent with her, she has swum deep before I have even steadied my breath. And as she dreams her submarine dreams I lie beside her, a whale's carcass, a wrecked ship, a vast ribcage in the dark blue deep; and she is a tiny luminescent silver fish, picking me clean, in and out of all that's left of me, bare bones long since freed of flesh or rigging." (61)
"Out at the sea's edge, the water churns over, a static rolling like horses pawing the ground; it comes to her feet in a wash of foam and fret. She is a kind of orphan, a ragged orphan, out there on the beach, as if abandoned. Wilfully abandoned. The forsaken mermen remain in their chariots, observing their daughter, withholding, squinting into the strange glare." (159)
