Rumours

Nicola Sturgeon has all the usual things she wants to achieve in her memoir: rumours to scotch, a legacy to spell out, and so on. But the most important thing to the former first minister seems to be telling her readers that she is in fact not Nicola Sturgeon. The ‘seemingly confident, combative woman who dominated Scottish politics for more than a decade, unnerved the Westminster establishment, helped lead Scotland to the brink of independence and steered it through a global pandemic’ (her words) is in fact an outfit that the real author of Frankly has been wearing for a very long time. She seems quite keen to cast it

This absorbing and wild debut feels at once muzzily folkloric and sharply contemporary. It follows Nell, an artist who lives on a wind-whipped island without ties or commitments – until, that is, a group of women living an even quieter life commission her to make an artwork that will tell their story. The Inions, as they’re known, have come from all over the world to Rathglas, a crumbling old convent overlooking the sea. Naturally, rumours abound about them being a cult or a coven, but really they’re ‘ordinary women wanting a different kind of life’, who have rejected hatred and inequality in favour of seclusion and simplicity. Gleeson, who in