July 24, 2017
McAfee’s long novel about a small island is at once fascinating and frustrating. It centers on Grigor McWatt, a fictional Scots nationalist bard who arrives on the (also fictional) Hebridean island of Fascaray in 1942, declares it his soul’s true home, and remains until his death in January 2014. That August, Mhairi McPhail, the granddaughter of a Fascaray legend who was raised in Canada, comes to Fascaray to organize a McWatt museum and write a scholarly book on him. Mhairi has her young daughter in tow but has left her problematic husband in Brooklyn. As she struggles to reorient and reinvent herself, Mhairi discovers inexplicable gaps in McWatt’s life story. The novel interweaves Mhairi’s first-person narrative with excerpts from her study of McWatt and his texts, including lists and jottings from his 14,000-page Fascaray Compendium and numerous classic poems he has rewritten in Scots. Mhairi’s voice is witty, and the metafictional play—which, like McAfee’s 2012 debut novel, The Spoiler, exploits tensions between authenticity and invention, subject and writer—is clever. But the narrative’s momentum and Fascaray’s resonance as an emblem of both Scotland and the notion of home get buried in the avalanche of “nonfictional” detail. The novel can be tough going for anyone not fascinated by and knowledgeable about all things Scottish.
July 1, 2017
An idiosyncratic and ambitious novel from the author of The Spoiler (2012)."Hame" is Scots for "home." This is a novel shot through with Scots poetry (invented by the author), interwoven with passages from the diary of a Scots poet (invented by the author), broken up by excerpts from a scholarly work on said poet (invented by the author, obviously), and studded with footnotes (referencing works invented by the author). There's a glossary here and a bibliography. There are recipes. All of this is to say that, while the words "a novel" on a book cover can usually be read as a simple description, that phrase, in this case, is instead a rather provocative assertion. Certainly, McAfee is not the first novelist to use invented texts and scholarly apparatuses in service to contemporary fiction. Possession by A.S. Byatt is an obvious comparison. Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and the fiction of Umberto Eco also come to mind. But Eco combines erudition with a healthy appreciation of juicy Gothic tropes. Clarke has magic. And there's a fateful connection between the figures Byatt invents and the scholars who study them. What McAfee presents here will, perhaps, be most familiar to readers of J.R.R. Tolkien--who gives readers orcs and elves, sure, but in service to exhaustive worldbuilding. The island of Fascaray is Scotland in miniature in both landscape and history. Mary, Queen of Scots; Bonnie Prince Charlie; and Charles Rennie Mackintosh have all visited this remote place. And Grigor McWatt spent his life cataloging the place in both prose and poetry. McAfee's protagonist, Mhairi McPhail, moves from Manhattan to an island in the Hebrides because she's writing a book about the "Bard of Fascaray" and because her marriage is over. The verse is convincing enough, and Mhairi's study of McWatt certainly reads like an academic text. But ask an academic: how many people read their books? The sections presented from Mhairi's point of view are more accessible, but the snarky tone is a bad fit here. While it's easy to envision diverse readers attracted to this book, it's difficult to imagine any reader who isn't skimming over vast swathes of the very, very, very long text. Impressive worldbuilding, but to what end?
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September 1, 2017
In the wake of her failing marriage, Mhairi McPhail, armed with a book deal and her nine-year-old daughter, sets out for the Scottish island of Fascaray to write a biography of Grigor McWatt, its most famous son, and to establish a museum celebrating his life and works. A poet and tireless chronicler of island life and Scottish history and politics, McWatt was best known for one small ballad, "Hame tae Fascaray," which became something of a national anthem recorded by the likes of Bob Dylan and the Three Tenors. In spite of her archival training and family connection to the island, Mhairi faces a formidable challenge as she pores through McWatt's voluminous oeuvre and attempts to penetrate his fiercely guarded private life. His relationship with the devoted Lilias Hogg was well documented, but there's still much to discover about another woman, the elusive "Bonny" Jean. VERDICT If McWatt were a more compelling character, or his story had a little more drama, it might have warranted McAfee's (The Spoiler) over-longish treatment (complete with footnotes, glossaries, inventories and a bibliography). As it is, there is still something to admire in this prodigiously imagined life. [See Prepub Alert, 3/13/17.]--Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
September 1, 2017
Mhairi McPhail, a Canadian expat and former New York resident of Scots heritage, flees her disintegrating marriage with her nine-year-old daughter, Agnes, and lands on the remote Scottish island where her grandfather was born. There she intends to write the biography of the island's poet and chronicler, Grigor McWatt, known as the Hebridean Pepys, and establish a museum in his honor. In her ambitious novel and mock epic, Hame, Scots for home, McAfee interweaves extracts from Mhairi's journal and alleged writings by McWatt, along with glossaries, recipes, and the words and music to a song. Even though the island itself, Fascaray, is fictitious, and Grigor is a composite of various Scots figures from literature and the arts, McAfee refers to historical events (the Highland Clearances, land raids) and real people (Robert Louis Stevenson, folk-song collector Margaret Fay Shaw). McAfee's achievement is considerable as she creates an enjoyable Scottish brew of the real and the unreal and addresses matters of identity and self-invention, the precarious nature of minority languages, and the idea of home.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)