I AM AN ISLAND
BY TAMSIN CALIDAS, TRANSWORLD, £16.99 (HB)
This account of one woman’s journey from trauma to tranquillity on the unnamed Hebridean island to which she fled after an imperilled London existence is one heck of a ride.
If escape-to-the-country books about scones and mischievous goats are your thing, then this is not for you. Amusing anecdotes and community spirit are noticeable in their absence (I wondered, for example, whether anyone had taught Calidas animal husbandry).
Instead, alcoholism, misogyny, racism, jealousy and ostracisation provide context to the author’s equally harrowing personal circumstances. There is graffiti. There are drunk neighbours almost crashing a tractor into the croft, broken wrists, suspicions regarding her ram’s death and the colleague who asks Tamsin if she wasn’t ashamed to be seen with her father “because he is a darkie”.
Brutality is gripping. Only when Calidas eventually finds peace in nature does the book lose its rhythm – though here, wildlife and landscape (the “gull-wracked rocks where the seals are slipping in and out of the deeper water”) are powerfully observed.
Spanning nearly two decades, this memoir is already recent history as the island cautiously admits incomers and ideas. Nevertheless, if you labour under a rosy illusion of rural idyll, then maybe read this after all. If recent months have taught us anything, it’s that both community spirit and pernicious prejudice can thrive in the city and countryside alike. Calidas shows us that to tackle this truth, you first need the courage to face it.
Julie Brominicks, nature writer