Set in Scotland in the 1840s during the Highland Clearances (when the land-owning gentry decided that it was more profitable to clear their land of tenant farmers and their families and replace them with sheep), this incendiary and concise novel opens with an impoverished minister of the breakaway Free Church of Scotland worrying about money. He has left the safety and relative comfort of his previous ministry to begin again, and is worrying how he will support his wife Mary and himself.

He accepts the task of evicting the last remaining tenant from a tiny island. Ivar has lived alone and undisturbed for decades. The rest of his family had finally abandoned the island after years of diminishing returns from their labours, and to escape the crushing isolation.

Soon after disembarking onto the island, John falls from a cliff. He is found, unconscious and near death, by Ivar. John is nursed back to health by the islander, and in spite of the fact that they do not have a common language, they manage to communicate and build a fragile but beautiful connection. Ivar has not felt the touch of another human being, or even thought about how he must appear to another person, in many years. It’s the most poignant and memorable section of this fine novel.

John begins to compile a dictionary of Ivar’s language, and they learn to communicate, if fitfully. John is unable to tell Ivar that he is there to evict him, yet there is a deadline approaching in the form of the ship that is supposed to pick them both up and return them to Scotland; John to build his church, and Ivar to a very uncertain future. I won’t summarise any further, except to say that this is a tremendously good example of a short novel.