AUTHOR INTERVIEW

Merryn Glover tells Nora Mcelhone about Of Stone And Sky, a novel about place.

For Merryn Glover, having a home in the same place for 15 years has been an unusual experience. Before that, the writer, who was born in Kathmandu and brought up in Nepal, India and Pakistan, went to university in Melbourne, Australia, and worked in Nepal with her husband, had never settled anywhere for more than a few years. Having trained to be a teacher of English, drama and dance, Merryn then progressed to involvement in community-based arts projects and working on plays for stage and radio, and writing short stories.

Fittingly, her first novel, A House Called Askival, was set in India and her latest book reflects the area where she has put down roots in the upper Spey Valley. According to Merryn: “The inspiration for Of Stone And Sky is undoubtedly this remarkable part of the Cairngorms – its landscape, wildlife and people, all of whom have shaped each other, for better or worse, over thousands of years.

“Themes of place and belonging are important in most of my work, so I am fascinated by the kinds of people who call this area home and what that means to them. It’s a part of Scotland that harbours an incredibly wide range of people from billionaire landowners to off-grid hermits, long-standing locals to incomers, the field sporting fraternity to passionate ecologists – sometimes all within one family. It is also an exceptionally significant and vulnerable natural landscape in critical need of protection, so there are challenging questions about how people and environment can thrive together here. Ultimately, Scotland is grappling with big issues around land reform – ownership, use and rights – and this novel is set firmly within that debate.”

The plot revolves around several generations of one family fuelled by stories and anecdotes learned while Merryn followed local shepherds on their rounds.

She points out: “There are, of course, actual accounts of people going missing in the hills, tenant farmers destroyed by the pressures on them, wildlife crime

and community struggles that all fed my thinking for the book. I don’t know why I chose a shepherd as the central character.

“The story began when I woke up in the middle of the night on the summer solstice 2013 and started writing. These were the first words: ‘A story. A land. A people. This place of beauty and history, of loss and hope. A shepherd’. What has become clear to me through the writing is that the traditional shepherd is caught at the intersection of much of the struggle around land use, so perhaps that is why he’s the character that turned up and got me to write his story.”

Over the past year, lockdown has thrown up challenges such as cancelled schools workshops, but Merryn says: “I have been exceptionally fortunate to live in such a beautiful place that I could walk right into natural beauty from my front door. In a strange and wonderful gift, my main project was writing the non-fiction book The Hidden Fires: A Cairngorms Journey With Nan Shepherd. It has sent me walking all over the range following her footsteps.”

Looking ahead, Merryn is also working on a series of children’s books, which tie Scotland and India together.

Of Stone And Sky, Merryn Glover, £16.99, Birlinn Ltd.

Merryn Glover.