Orkney - Tapa blanda

"Poetic, dreamlike and beautifully written." --The Times

"In her adept hands this lyrical tale of a honeymooning professor and his enigmatic young bride brings the murky maritime beauty of the remote Scottish Archipelago to life." --Vogue

"Lyrical and compelling ... readers will be gripped from start to finish ... Orkney is entirely original. Sackville s beautiful and poignant novel reminds us of the real nature of tradition, which is not only to insist on retelling old stories, but also to remake them in our own image, for our own time ... In Orkney myth slips free from the dust and politesse of the library, and assumes a vivid, dangerous and unparaphraseable existence." --Times Literary Supplement

'A haunting novel set on a beautifully described remote island in Orkney ... It's like a folk ballad, full of otherworldly emotion and strange impulses. -Marie Claire

Delicate and haunting... With this intense, daring book, Sackville - already a writer of promise - has shown how very good she can be.' --Daily Telegraph

'Sackville clearly has a gift for the poetic, writing beautifully of everything she touches upon.' --Sunday Times

'Poetic, dreamlike and beautifully written' --The Times

'Its dreamlike ambiguity is heightened by Sackville's poetic sensibility. Her descriptive passages, while emphasising the bleakness of the landscape, do so with a lushness that hints at unseen beauty. Orkney is a haunting tale of longing and possessiveness that puts one in mind of the great literary studies of obsession' --'Paperback of the Week', Herald

'The prose is rich with marine imagery, and there's a haunting atmosphere of mystery and melancholy' --Independent on Sunday

'Deeply poetic and fanciful' --Independent

'Exquisite' --'Book of the Week', Sunday Herald

On a remote island in Orkney, a curiously matched couple arrive on their honeymoon. He is an eminent literature professor; she was his pale, enigmatic star pupil. Alone beneath the shifting skies of this untethered landscape, the professor realises how little he knows about his new bride and yet, as the days go by and his mind turns obsessively upon the creature who has so beguiled him, she seems to slip ever further from his yearning grasp. Where does she come from? Why did she ask him to bring her north? What is it that constantly draws her to the sea?