Orkney, Amy Sackville

Nothing happens in this story of a professor nearing the end of his career and his young wife as they honeymoon on Orkney.

‘Take me north’, his wife says when asked where they should honeymoon. We never discover her name. Nothing happens as they pick their way through each day on this remote Scottish island. So little happens that the ordinary, everyday begins to be overwritten with meaning in the absence of anything deeper. Her daily hours spent on the beach in front of the cottage while he sits in his chair in the window, watching her instead of editing his latest book. The family they encounter with the teenage son. The mashing of prawns. The man living rough in the derelict cottage. The frequent nightmares of drowning. The constant glasses of whiskey. Even the rare appearance of an islander. They all have the tendency to acquire more than perhaps they actually represent.

There is an ending, one I half expected but also half hoped would not be. Whilst I was just a shade irritated with the ending that did eventually come, I found myself then going through all the non-events and occurrences that had happened and reinterpreting them, assigning them a different meaning as suggested by the final act. In that respect, in making me think about the story long after the words had run out, ‘Orkney’ became more notable in retrospective and certainly worth the time spent with it.