The Hills is Lonely

-. . . I got the impression that they could imagine only two reasons why a woman should choose to settle down in Bruach: either that she was running away from the police, or escaping from a lurid past.- Neither reason applies to Lillian Beckwith, in this memoir of her convalescence on an isolated Hebridean island where -even the sheeps on the hills is lonely-. On Bruach island, she observes, muses at and joins the native crofters in their unique rhythm of life; where friends fistfight in the evening and discuss bruises the next morning; where the taxi-driver is also the lorry driver, coal merchant and undertaker; where the locals don't remove their hats during a funeral so their heads won't get cold; and where the post-office's 'opening hours' fit around the daily milking of cows and not the other way round! In a series of vividly drawn sketches, taking in birth, death, marriage and the seasons of life, Lillian Beckwith's writing is shot through with warm, cozy affection and droll wit.