The lady in the bookshop said she had read this - she had to, it was featured at a literary festival she was organising - and described the author's voice as new. I thought that at the beginning but then became frustrated by the sea, the spray and the Orkney wind. It is the story of an ageing professor who has become obsessed with a young student. This isn't the first time a novel has been created around this theme. They marry and spend a 'honeymoon' on a remote Orkney island. Nightmares about the sea wake her up every night, she spends most of the day on the sea edge, blown about by the wind; he spends his days looking through a window at her out by the sea, blown about the wind. He starts to get jealous and at nudge, nudge comments of people they meet, silly old feel/young girl. Sea tales and legends arise, they get salt in their mouth from sea and sex - and in the end I wasn't too unhappy when she disappeared. The best part was the mental turmoil, bordering on despair, of a man aware of impending retirement, loneliness and loss of youth and credibility. ( )

An interesting and poetic tale laced with Orcadian folklore. ( )

This was a lovely atmospheric book. The story line was however very much as expected, not much the worse for that but you would need to be in the right mood to realy engoy this book and I was not

Slight but poetic. A literature professor marries an enigmatic, beautiful pupil 40 years his junior, taking her to her Orkney birthplace for their honeymoon. As the days slip past, he is ever more obsessed with her and her secret history, and she is ever more obsessed by the sea. Is she real? Does she love him? Will he become an echo of Merlin to her Niviane? Don't expect a clean resolution - this is an exploration of mythical tropes, deliberately left open to the reader to bring colour into the northern fog. ( )

A wonderfully written short novel that gave me serious prose envy. The plot is slight and predictable, but this is one of those books where it doesn't matter. The atmosphere Sackville creates is a delight to be caught up in. Recommended. ( )