The Weatherhouse

Description

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.

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.

Spellbinding -- ALI SMITH 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 Pressingly modern . . . Pinpoints timeless philosophical debates about the naming of things and our relationship to the environment -- AMY LIPTROT Shepherd is a fierce looker. And like many fierce lookers, she is also a mystic * * Guardian * * 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 * *