This is one of the Scottish small press books I picked up at the Edinburgh Book Festival bookshop. The story takes place in a Scottish village in the eighteenth century, on the cusp of the Enlightenment.

Reverend Burnett is a bad-tempered man who feels superior to his superstitious village congregation, and yearns to be accepted by scholarly society in Edinburgh. His chosen study is antiquities; so when one of the villagers, digging peat, comes across a strange and ancient icon, he takes it up to the manse. But soon afterwards, the villager is dead and his daughter is having eerie dreams and carrying out feats of supernatural strength. To deflect suspicion or out of genuine resentment, the villager's family start to point fingers at the minister's lonely daughter.

In different hands, this could have been a great story. Unfortunately, the writer is not very good at 'show, not tell', especially on major and implausible plot points like the village turning against the Minister's daughter (why her and not her father? We're told that her dead mother was beautiful, kind and loved, and she is much more part of the village than her father). It would have been so much more horrifying in the hands of a writer who could give us a creeping sense of how the village is gradually turning against her. I also think it would have been better if the writing left room for doubt about whether the mysterious events were caused by supernatural means or whether it was just hysteria. These would have added uncertainty and therefore suspense to the story.

Overall, a bit of a missed opportunity. ( )