Allen & Unwin Electric Brae book Literary fiction English Paperback 320 pages

Electric Brae has been credited with inaugurating a new direction in the contemporary Scottish novel. It is neither urban nor male-centred nor angry. Instead it is distinguished by its breadth of sympathy and generosity of vision. At its centre is the crumbling seastack of the Old Man of Hoy and the consuming relationship between a young artist, Kim, coldly passionate, talented, secretive, and Jimmy, a North Sea roughneck, engineer and climber.It is a story about passionate, painful love and ice-climbing, loss and renewal, loyalty and betrayal, politics and art, fathers and children. It also deals with the possibility of friendship between men and women, overturning and inverting stereotypes all the way.