I reviewed Malachy Tallack’s 60 Degrees Northin these pages last year Tallack, a second-generation Shetland good-lifer, circled the earth following the 60th parallel, only to return and feel none the easier about his island home. And while it may be specious to build a theory on an empirical sample of two, the experience of belonging to such a counterintuitive migration seems to produce writers preoccupied with places and the spaces in between them. Now that generation has come of age, and there’s a third burgeoning – but while to the outsider they may appear fully integrated into the culture, there’s no doubt many feel apart in this place, which is itself so profoundly apart. When I first visited Orkney in the early 90s, I was surprised to discover second-generation good lifers speaking with the soft and Scandinavian-tinged local accent, and to learn what a sizable proportion of the population they comprised. The so-called “good lifers” took their sobriquet from the sitcom of the same name, but unlike Tom and Barbara, rather than transform their Surbiton back gardens into God’s green acres, they headed north and became crofters. Fortunately other young people were repelled by those self-same bright lights. Despite improved transport links, much of the traditional industry – farming and fishing – was becoming economically marginal, while younger islanders were drawn to the bright lights down south. T he Northern Isles of Scotland were in danger of becoming thoroughly depopulated in the 1960s and 70s.

The outrun amy liptrot summary