Columba's Bones - David Greig

Packing shorter books was a sound plan, I'm on a roll with them - Columba's Bones is 183 pages, both myself and husband read it yesterday with plenty of time to discuss how much we enjoyed it. It's book 4 in Polygon's Dark Lands series which has different authors take a moment in Scotland's history and re-imagine it. It's an excellent series to date with the promise of more good things to come.

I've been sitting on this book for a few months - it came out in October last year - of all the books in the series so far it was the least immediately appealing to me and my expectations for it were relatively low. As it happens I loved it, it also turned out to be a good companion read with Carys Davies 'Clear', touching on some similar themes. 

It opens with a short description of Iona, I as it was known in early times, as the Viking Grimur sees it sometime around 825 as he lands in a raiding party. From the Viking's point of view the raid is of mixed success - they do not find the reliquary they seek, but they get plenty of other silver and slaves. From the monk's point of view it's disastrous, almost all of them are brutally slaughtered, their monastery all but destroyed. Grimur gets dead drunk and is buried alive - but emerges more or less unscathed so his day is more mixed. 

Grimur emerges from the ground to find a single remaining monk, and Una the mead wife responsible for seeing him into his premature grave are all that's left of Iona's population. everyone else has shifted to Mull or beyond where they'll be better protected from future raids. The three form bonds of friendship and affection despite their differences, and then as Autumn comes the raiders return threatening everything all over again.

It's a funny, often brutal, insightful book. Greig uses fairly contemporary idiom to good effect, succinctly capturing the emotions of his characters when faced with either the necessity to slaughter or the impact that violence has on those who witness it. The humour emerges in the relationship between Grimur and Una who make each other laugh.

Greig's obvious knowledge and love for the Viking saga's is something else I loved about this book. He captures the rhythm of them when he talks about his Vikings, along with their jokes and epic nature. Brother Martin's struggles are told in a different voice, closer to the plainsong chanting of the monks perhaps. Iona is used well too - a living island with a pull of its own on the imagination, there's a tantalizing hint that it's a place of magic - although the nature of that magic is ambiguous - it could mean saintly miracles, or the promise of a home.

More than anything though, I think I might be charmed by moments like this: 

"In August, the puffins had left I. A Thousand tiny bird ships with muti-coloured head-prows bob on the wild green sea."

It's a perfectly evocative description, and one of many that will make this a book to turn back to.