The Golden Bird: Two Orkney Stories

I bought this after a recommendation from a friend and I was not disappointed. I preferred the first story to the second, perhaps because I read one straight after the other and wasn't quite ready to leave the characters from the first story behind. On the face of it this is simply two tales of everyday life, but without being too overt, the author showed how the landscape, the people, and the traditional way of life on Orkney gradually changed at the beginning of the last century. The sense of time moving, slowly yet relentlessly, was strong, as children grow up, old feuds linger in the minds of some, are forgotten by others, and some who've been away come back and try to adjust to life back in the village. The crofts survive as long as someone lives inside, but as soon as the houses become empty they quickly decay because the hearth has gone out. This was a really strong metaphor for what happened to life there.