Far Inland
by Peter Urpeth
‘Far Inland is a shamanic story for our times. If story tells us of our past and vision speaks to the future, Peter Urpeth has combined both in this delightful work’ – Alastair McIntosh, author of Hell and High Water and fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology
‘The lonely terror of psychic disintegration and explosions of renewal are vividly and brilliantly conveyed here . . . full of authentic evocation’ – Tom Lowenstein, author of Ancient Land, Sacred Whale (Bloomsbury)
Raised in the Outer Hebrides, Sorley MacRath loved the moorlands and the brilliant night skies he knew as a child. But he knew as well the destructive power of the gift of ’second sight’.
As a young man he turned his back on the island for life in Glasgow where, ultimately, he would run an antiquarian bookshop. But events soon prove to him that his inherited powers are far greater than he knew.
A violent assault leaves him in a coma and triggers his initiation as a shaman through startling encounters with his ancestors, only for him to wake into a sceptical world with no place for his archaic powers, and he too is uncertain of their truth and unskilled in their application. Haunted by memories and loss, he returns to his island home determined to prove the truth in his powers and his worth. There, living in the long-empty family croft house, he is drawn back to the wild beauty of the moorlands and the Gaelic culture of his childhood. Set on the Isle of Lewis and in Glasgow, Far Inland draws on Gaelic and Inuit mythology and spirituality to inform a contemporary tale that is profoundly original, elegiac and redemptive.
An academic reading of Far Inland…
Reviews on Amazon:
5 five star reviews….
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 June 2010
An excellent novel, and all the more relevant as I live on the Isle of Lewis. Considered good enough that someone pinched our first copy and this was a replacement!
5* Review from Good Reads…
May 01, 2018 Flora Kennedy said it was amazing
"Far Inland" looks so very modest and unassuming and yet is a powerful, enigmatic and epic story beautifully told. The writing is just sublime; gorgeous and vivid whether the author is communicating the emotions of the characters or the wild landscape of the Outer Hebrides.
Peter Urpeth captures and details for us with poetry and wonderment a pivotal time in Hebridean history, our recent past, when we as indigeneous islanders suddenly found ourselves metaphorically 'far inland'.
The title is a net full of expansive themes both soulful and tangible. This story resonated deeply with me as it will for many of my first-born-off-the-croft-generation; those with native Gaelic-speaking parents who grew up with little of the language of our ancestors and the loss of something intrinsic to who we are.
However, "Far Inland" is much more than this. It's a universal story of human truths which will resonate with people of all backgrounds.
If you love, as I do, writers like Per Pettersen and Sjon who successfully mix magic with everyday, mindful detail like gutting a brown trout, preparing a fire, you will love Peter Urpeth. I savoured this book intensely and intend re-reading it many times along with 'Out Stealing Horses' and 'The Blue Fox' because the satisfaction of 'Far Inland' is deep and lovely in a similar way.
Sam Gilbert - Library Thing December 2008: 5+
Set in Glasgow and The Western Isles, Peter Urpeth’s first novel tells the story of a modern-day shaman, Sorley MacRath. It is beautifully written and intellectually exciting, but also moving and redemptive.
The writing stirs you in the way that northern landscapes and climate can stir you. It is intensely evocative of the wildernesses of north-west Scotland; and not just in the descriptions of weather and sea and mountains. Its language is sonorous and archaic, with "the billowed grandeur of Biblical Gaelic"; it is "ancient in its tone and melancholy", like Gaelic song. (The breathtaking "Ninth Stone" epitomises it.) As such, it is very effective at conveying the idea that island folk carry a legacy of hardship, suffering, and sorrow with them, even in contemporary times, and when they are far from home. Just like the crofters & fishermen who are his ancestors, Sorley's life is shaped by experiences of loss and violent death (often by drowning). The northern-ness of the language reaches beyond Scotland too: the grain of the Arctic north in Sorley and his kin, with their preference for the shielings out on "the moorland wilderness", Sorley's love of the Fir Chlis, and his attachment to the fox-piss-damaged Rasmussen volume underline this connection.
Its themes are intellectually stimulating too. There is much poetic exploration of big ideas like culture, ancestry, and time. On a number of occasions I was reminded of Eliot's line in Burnt Norton that "all time is eternally present" - like when Sorley takes a handful of silt from the pool and holds it "until it was again an ice flow, flowing from a glacier, far inland"; or when he is compared to "a salmon [running] back to its first home, the gravel bed, the river source"; or identified with An Sgarbh's "ruddy sail" as he walks out into the waves cursing Shony. The novel is full of stories-within-stories - most obviously in the Thirteen Stones section; but also in Danny's story, and Danny's story of Davy; and in the story of Sorley's great-grandfather the whaler and his second, Inuit family. The effect is to suggest that the underlying truth and meaning of human selfhood is connectedness to one's culture & ancestry, even when it is characterised by grief & pain: and as with Breabadair Diluain, turning away only defers & magnifies it.
It is also very interesting and moving on the subject of mental illness. Its "great sorrow", and its associated isolation and alienation are powerfully conveyed. But there is a duality as well: for Sorley, it brings "elation", even "ecstasy" and "euphoria"; and through it, he eventually finds himself, Neonach as he is. Fittingly, there is unresolved ambiguity over whether hie second-sight is 'real' or not. On the one hand, there is Sorley's drunken vision lying outside the pub under "woven plastic sacks...flecked with the remains of raw meat", a parody of the shaman’s calf-skin hide; but on the other, there is nothing to contradict the miraculous resurrections of Angus or Callum. ( )
samgilbert | Dec 9, 2008