Being spawned of the Isle of Lewis in the Western Isles of Scotland, I simply had to read a Lillian Beckwith book when I first found one. The first one was The Hills is Lonely which I read a couple of decades ago I think: I loved it.

The Hills has some really rich, you might think improbable, characters and I roared with laughter on many occasions. I used to go the Lewis with my family every year as my mother wanted a trek home and with hindsight I think we all loved it. So much so that most of us (we were a veritable tribe!) have recently gone back for a revisit. I arrived with son Andrew, sister Susan and her husband Neville this August to be welcomed by howling gales. Were we daunted? Not a bit of it! It's a fantastic place to visit: especially when there are relatives to make the stay much more worthwhile and the B&B is a Godsend run by a Philipinno lady with a 30 year Lewis pedigree!

Now, the book I'm reviewing here, Bruach Blend, has the distinction of having been bought in the bookshop opposite the Town Library in Stornoway, capital of the Isle of Lewis, by myself in August of this year.

Bruach Blend is a short book and I have to say at the very outset that I wished I'd been able to refind The Hills. Still, I enjoyed the book but didn't roar with laughter at this one. Winsome smiles is what I can best offer as a description of how I felt at times.

The two stories I have now read centre around the heroine Miss Peckwitt who is English and who has upped sticks and flounced off to the Western Isles ... not Lewis I should add but it all looks remarkably familiar to me!

Miss Peckwitt is well ensonced in the community by the time this book comes along and she is well versed in Island etiquette now. The source of a lot of her humour has evaporated along with this familiarity: she may have lost the observant eye with it.

There is a string of pleasant anecdotes to occupy the 153 pages of the book but it really comes alive at the end. The most redolent part of the book for me really is the last tenth of it when we are treated to what happens ... not ... on a Western Isles Sunday.

It was a source of bemusement to those of us who were townies visiting Lewis to find out that on Sunday, it was forbidden to:

• whistle ... Granny Mitchell would howl, "Sunday, Sunday"!
• polish your shoes ... honest, I was a shoe polisher par excellance
• watch the television
• play outside, especially in a happy way
• read a newspaper ... so it wasn't delivered until Monday
• and so on

Bruach Blend has brought all of that flooding back: we weren't on Lewis on a Sunday this August so can't give you an update on that aspect of life there! They've got street lights now, though.

Tomorrow was the Sabbath and already by four o'clock on the Saturday afternoon, or evening as it was designated in Bruach, the Sabbath calm descended over the village like a sad grey mist.

We felt that way as children too but I doubt that I would now: I am older, wiser, more tolerant and the rest, of course.

Not a rip roarer then but if you want something of a feel for the people you will meet in a Hebridean landscape, take a look at Lillian Beckwith's offerings and you won't be too disappointed.

Duncan Williamson
14 October 2005