I do not have much time for the idea of the redemptive power of the countryside. I am not alone in this. Even theologians tend to dream of the day they enter the City of God rather than 1,000 acres of nowhere. But I will buy into a modern fairytale extolling the virtues of nature and country folk when told with wit and verve. So it is with Magnus Macintyre’s novel Whirligig.
This is the story of Gordon Claypole, an English businessman who finds himself among the singular natives of a Scottish island. Or rather, an almost island. Like much in the novel nothing is clear cut. Claypole is half Scottish, but a childhood holiday to Scotland brings home to him how un-Scottish he really is. Ironically this is at the hands of an almost beautiful girl, Coky, who is also only half Scottish, but can at least do a Highland Fling.
When the adult Claypole, now refusing to use his Scottish-sounding first name, returns to front a campaign for a wind farm it is not only the cast of eccentric locals who are against him. Nature itself seems to attack. Never before was a man more prone to fall into a sodden bog or icy loch than Claypole.
Told with real clarity it is not hard to imagine this story transferring easily to television. And like Father Clifford arriving in Ballykissangel, the country seems to hold the key to Claypole finding peace with himself and the locals.
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