AN ISLAND APART

Guesthouse cook Kirsty MacLennan gives up her post on the mainland for a marriage proposal that returns her to the islands where she grew up: more hardscrabble Hebrides romance from a veteran (A Proper Woman, 1987, etc.). Kirsty's suitor, even more laconic than she, is Ruari MacDonald, who's so taken by her hospitality and good nature, plus her vestigial Gaelic, that he writes her an unsentimental letter of proposal only a few days after they meet. After surveying her prospects, long-orphaned Kirsty wonders mainly whether it's proper for her to leave her petty employer's household without giving notice. She doesn't; in one of the novel's many small satisfactions, she announces that she's leaving as her husband (they've been quietly married by now) is calling a cab. Ensconced among the austere comforts of Westisle, Kirsty's baffled by Ruari's standoffish brother, also named Ruari, whose gruffness extends to ignoring her presence, volunteering not a word to her, and making it clear to his brother that he's made a mistake in bringing a woman to the desolate island. Even so, Kirsty becomes deeply attached to the place despite her husband's apparent lack of sexual interest in her (``She had married him for a home and the ring on her finger''), and the growth of her family—with her pregnancy and her informal adoption of Jamie Eilidh, an unwanted, stammering boy with an ethereal singing voice—seems to promise well for her future with Ruari, until a series of disasters (more surprising to Kirsty than to her readers) shows her where her deepest loyalties lie. Beckwith is a past master of the spare, uncondescending simplicity that allows Kirsty to reflect at close of day: ``First a new calf had been born, next she had been to a wedding, then her brother-in-law had broken his silence and now she was no longer a virgin.''