Fionnáin reviewed Quarry Wood by Nan Shepherd
A Life Imagined
3 stars
Nan Shepherd is famous today for her wonderful book exploring the Cairngorm mountains, The Living Mountain. This book, The Quarry Wood, came earlier and is s novel, concerning a protagonist Martha and her life going into university education.
The narrative flows very well, and the dialogue is brilliant, written in part in Scottish phonetic. However, the story doesn't ever really get going, and although it does describe an interesting set of characters and time, I found the book too slow to enjoy fully. It is more a poetic description of a time and place than a novel.